The kinds of questions you're asking aren't necessarily covered systematically in CS curricula either unless you specifically take a networking course, and even then, depending on the class/professor, specific application-level protocols like HTTP might not be covered in depth. I didn't really get a deep understanding of the networking stack (especially specific application-level protocols) until I started working on networking products, despite taking and doing well in a 400-level networking class at my university.
I honestly think Wikipedia is a fantastic and fairly in-depth resource for technical topics. I would start here and follow as many links as you need to get a better understanding of what's going on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model
Protocol specifications are also surprisingly readable. Here's the HTTP protocol RFC (request for comments): http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html
As a newer programmer recently remarked to me, it's tough when you get going because you don't even know where to look. It's a lot like learning a new (spoken) language: immerse yourself, understand that bewilderment and frustration is normal in the beginning, and keep at it until you hit that inflection point where it starts making sense. The fact that you even want to get from "phrase book" to "fluent speaker" is a good sign.
Did you read the article? The journalist is in fact saying that the "digital divide" doesn't exist because that conceptualization of the issue is too simple and doesn't leave room for the nuances of how people who aren't seen by the dominant cultural narrative as being technologically sophisticated are, sometimes, very wired in their own ways.
The critique is trying to draw attention to the ways we provide enormous amounts of money for programs that try to get people to use technology in the "right" way, which is, as the interviewee states, basically measuring everyone by how much they use technology the way affluent white men do. Other people are finding ways to appropriate technology for their own needs and uses that are just as valid and valuable for their own situations but these aren't recognized in the way this money is meted out and the ways the success of these programs are measured. For instance, you could argue that teen engagement with online social networks now serves a crucial function in identity formation, which is valuable and possibly, more useful to some of the kids than some of the things you learn in class. If, for instance, you're a 16 year old kid coming out, I'd venture that having social support in that process will probably be more valuable 20 years down the line than memorizing the difference between sine, cosine and tangent.. but when it comes to what NTIA will use as a measure of success for their programs, it'll be the trig scores.
Edit: a good starting point for research into the (imo, really important) functions online social networks serve for teens is danah boyd's dissertation (as well as some of her other work). She's not my favorite but her stuff is probably the best known. http://www.danah.org/papers/
Just a personal viewpoint based on the limited information available (and not meant as a personal knock on the OP since I don't know him or his particular situation in detail):
I would be extremely wary about joining a tech start-up that has to go through an open job application process for a CTO. If the founder can't make enough of a believer out of someone within his or her own network to join, I would see that as a bad sign -- not just in terms of the start-up's idea but also the founder's ability to sell his or her idea. If it's the case that the founder doesn't know viable candidates in his or her own network, then I'd be doubly concerned: it's a tech start-up and a strong network within tech circles will be necessary for other resources down the line (future engineering hires, advice, potential investors that add value to the company, etc). Additionally, if s/he isn't really plugged in to the tech community, I'd worry that s/he doesn't truly understand the business, my skills as it relates to the business, and the value that I bring to the table. And in this particular case, I'd also be concerned that social networking is what this start-up revolves around and the founder (again, from my limited view on the outside) doesn't appear to be able to network effectively enough to at least get introductions to suitable CTO candidates through secondary connections.
I'm not saying that this is necessarily the situation here but that's my thought process just based on the information available. I consider things like sales ability, existing network and hiring ability to be essential things for a non-technical founder to bring to the table before I would consider working for him or her -- otherwise, I'm almost as well-off starting my own thing and own a hell of a lot more equity.
There are a handful of non-technical people I know that I would join in short order if one of them ever called to talk about a job at his or her start-up. And if I declined I would refer them to other people I know that might be interested because I know no matter what he or she is doing, s/he has a great chance of succeeding. If you're not the kind of person that inspires that level of loyalty, being a lone non-technical founder at a tech start-up seems like it would make an already arduous journey incredibly difficult.
It's a fascinating complement to the "apple supply chain" articles that were making the front page a while back. None of the articles I read mentioned China's rare-earth mineral export policies as one of the factors that led to its virtual lock on electronics manufacturing - most of them rather characterized it as a snowball effect. If this was as important to the erosion of US manufacturing as it seems, this could be an important missing piece for hardware manufacturing (and its jobs) to come back to the States.
(Not that semiconductor manufacturing jobs are the kinds of "good" jobs we're so desperate to grow here, c.f. Karen Hossfeld's ethnographic study of the immigrant women who made up the bulk of silicon valley's manufacturing workforce)
Definitely agree: they have everything in place for this. Having a personal relationship with that many small business owners around the country is huge and there's so much low-hanging fruit in the "MIS for small biz" space. There's a lot of startups that are making headway here (Square, etc) but they don't nearly have the resources (the biggest being the massive sales org) that Groupon does. As soon as Grpn ships a new product along these lines, they can call hundreds of thousands of potential customers that already know the sales rep on the phone and are possibly already paying a competitor for a sub-par product.
If I were Andrew Mason, I'd be looking to acquire a small-biz focused product company at this point to accelerate the process and start shipping asap.
Not to mention trying to partner with dating sites and the like to offer offline inventory to their users - new revenue stream for both parties, and solves the problem of awkwardly have to choose where you're going and figure out who's paying...
Seconded. Some of the most successful academics I know keep regular 9-5 hours and leave their work at the office, have spouses and children, etc. I've noticed a lot of them are fantastic at time-boxing and that some of my less successful colleagues aren't so much, and the freedom the academic schedule gives them ends up being more of a hindrance than a help.
I recently left my PhD program too (I'm "mastering out" in local parlance ;)) and what this post doesn't address is what I found to be the hardest part: making a decision to leave a world where people that leave are construed as a failures (note: contrary to my expectation, I've only received support in my decision from my awesome and anomalous department.) (Also, I should note that I left a software industry job to do the PhD so I knew I shouldn't have difficulty finding a job.)
For anyone who wants to take the leap but is afraid or unsure, I offer some words that were incredibly helpful for me from some of fantastic friends. To quote my amazing advisor from his response to my "I'm leaving" email:
'We had a Head of Department at Lancaster who used to stomp around the corridors moaning - "I've just lost another student to industry. He's got a great job, has a starting salary bigger than mine, is working on a fabulous project with better resources than we have. In what mad world is this judged as a failure?"'
And another colleague, who's currently a junior professor:
'You know, most Ph.D.ers are smart and successful people. Hence they have a difficulty in saying “This is not for me”. They instead say “I’ve been successful all my life, and I finished everything I started, so I should finish this as well”. By saying that, they choose to hang in there for many years in a depressed state.
Sometimes, the most courageous thing and the best thing to do is to quit when you know you would rather work in another capacity, or when you know you don’t want to work in academia. I congratulate you on your decision and I hope the best for you. ( In case you later decide to come back to academia, it will be waiting for you, so I would not worry about it.)'
Best of luck, those of you that are struggling with the decision. If you're anything like me, if you decide to leave you'll feel better than you have in years =)
I took the same route, "mastering out", and that cultural perception that "leaving your PhD is failing at life" was my biggest hurdle. I knew I could get a job, knew that I could probably find something interesting, but the looks of pity and disgust from my colleagues were not so easy to ignore. I think the comment I heard most often was, "what a waste."
Until I was actually out. Then I started getting furtive emails asking me questions like, "how do you write a resume?", "is the pay ok?", and most often, "are you happy?"
I still think a PhD is absolutely worth it in many cases, and trains you to be a scientist better than any other path. But it's a long hard road, and there are many people out there (me included) who do it because it's presented as the default path. If you're interested in physics, or biology, or any other science, it's just what comes next after undergrad. And that's not a good enough reason.
Edit: 'You know, most Ph.D.ers are smart and successful people. Hence they have a difficulty in saying “This is not for me”. They instead say “I’ve been successful all my life, and I finished everything I started, so I should finish this as well”. By saying that, they choose to hang in there for many years in a depressed state.
Part of that's due to incentives; like a corporation, universities don't primarily think institutionally about what's in your best interests. Hence you also rarely find companies happy that you left to take a better job, though you might find some individual managers who're supportive of a decision to move on.
For universities, people who leave PhD programs earlyish are a particular negative, because at least in the US, typically universities subsidize the masters portion of your education if you enter into a PhD program, out of research funds or departmental TA funds, whereas students who enter explicitly intending to get a masters have to pay tuition, and don't usually receive a stipend (though a few can land TAships). What they expect in return is that later in your PhD you'll publish a bunch of papers which bring them some prestige, help out on grant applications, etc. So if you enter a PhD program, stay for 2 years for the coursework/masters portion, and then leave, from the university's perspective it's like you're really a masters student who somehow tricked them into treating you as a PhD student for 2 years, and got away without paying tuition--- but without staying long enough to produce the expected ROI in publications. It also hurts the graduation-rate statistics in some ways of calculating them, and as education is getting more metrics/assessment heavy, that can matter too.
At least, that's from an administrative/bean-counter perspective; from a cultural perspective among researchers themselves, attitudes are more varied and have more complicated reasons. In areas where industrial partnerships are important, I think the reaction is often fairly positive, because a former student now working at a large company is a good connection for a lab to have.
Some of the negative reactions I think are just due to people not conceiving that other people could have different preferences/aptitudes. You can also find the reverse, where e.g. the attitudes if you left a startup after two years to pursue grad school can range from confused to "you're throwing away a golden opportunity" type views, to outright derisive ("couldn't make it in the real world"). Unfortunately I think it's pretty common for people to be pretty invested in what they did as the definition of success (whether it's research or entrepreneurship or whatever), and to generalize that to thinking that people who quit that route and try another one are therefore failures.
This is funny to me. I decided I was definitely leaving during an internship and most of my coworkers and friends thought it was a great idea. My advisor and closest academic colleagues were supportive as well.
I joked that the PhD program was like a girlfriend no one liked, but they waited to say so until I quit.
Do keep in mind, while we're all bashing academia, that there are those who go the opposite direction. I finished a researchy undergrad, went to industry, basically got miserable, and have gone right back to apply for PhD programs. I'm incredibly happy to know I have at least the one admission, even if it doesn't have guaranteed funding!
Just for full disclosure, I did the same, in that I did research and publication as an undergrad, worked in industry briefly and then went back to do a PhD (in my case, I had gotten in before I finished undergrad and deferred my admission to work for a bit.)
Personally, I'm not bashing academia per se -- I think it's great for people with the right mix of temperament and motivation. The travesty is that so many people that start PhDs go in without a clear understanding of what the degree entails and what characteristics are necessary for success in their programs and the tenure race. I could go on for a long time about the reasons but I think a lot of it boils down to the way schools work up to undergrad -- the kinds of qualities that get you good grades up through college are not well correlated with the things that make you a great researcher. The worst is in fields where the norm is for undergrads to go straight into PhD programs.
And please note I'm not at all saying this as a comment on your situation. I suspect the fact that you've done research as an undergrad probably means you have a good handle on what you're getting yourself into =)
I quite agree, actually, and I'm glad that my undergraduate department had an actual course to solve this problem.
CS491DD: Empirical Research Methods in Computer Science
One of my favorites, despite the incredible workload. Though for my field I would have preferred Formal Research Methods in CS, but hey.
There's also the NSF-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates program, which is basically "summer internship in graduate school." If you do those and like it, you should go for a PhD, because you like academia.
On the other hand, I really didn't like industry when I got there, and for that I blame the fact that I didn't have an industrial internship in college. I didn't know what I would think of full-time industrial programming until I got there.
I'm sure this is a personal thing, but I agree completely - and I think it's often self-imposed. It's only after leaving academia that I can accept that successfully completing my PhD wasn't a failure, or tantamount to admission that it was a mistake.
On PhD programmes you're often dealing with people have been conditioned from an early age to view themselves as defined by effortless academic success - finding something hard, or accepting that there are interesting challenges outside academia can be very difficult.
Think of it as a heuristic tool to analyze and evaluate human behavior when you need it. And if you find it useful, try learning the basics of a few other frameworks and/or theories too: social capital (and social network analysis in general), labeling theory, diffusion of innovation, etc. In particular, technologists (and particularly entrepreneurs) that don't have some sort of exposure to sociotechnical research are missing out on a tremendous resource, imo.
That's quite funny. I love that book! (The first half, at least.) Keith Johnstone lives in my town and I've occasionally crossed paths with him at the local grocery. Anyway, sure, his chapter on status games is brilliant. But not as a guide to living. There are much better guides to living in there than that :)
'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy
Daniel J. Solove
George Washington University Law School
San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, p. 745, 2007
GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289
(From: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565)