VMD-L Mailing List

From: Axel Kohlmeyer (akohlmey_at_gmail.com)
Date: Sun May 15 2011 - 11:51:22 CDT

hi olaf,

On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Olaf Lenz <olenz_at_icp.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I am not sure whether I really agree, as I am afraid that it can easily
> get out of hand. Who decides which job offers are relevant for the VMD

i wouldn't worry too much about that. there are so few relevant (whatever
that may be) positions to be offered anyway and i doubt that posting to
the list will be very efficient. to the best of my knowledge, the vast majority
of people that would be qualified for that kind of position are not subscribed.

> mailing list? I do not want the mailing list to become a job offering
> list, I get enough spam already.

based on my experience on other mailing lists, those postings will be
less frequent than the annoying (to me) posts from people that are unable
to unsubscribe from the list. also, if job postings should be discouraged,
then this should be enforced also for new software version postings
for software that is not related to VMD. ;)

there is one rather interesting aspect to the whole thing: the justification.
apparently, all the "usual" ways to match people with positions are not
effective. but i suspect the reason for that is far deeper: there are not enough
qualified candidates, since we don't educate students for
computational research.
we just require them to know "data" and produce "results" from
(optimized to work)
exercises and don't give them the room to make mistakes and learn from them.

moreover, there is no alternate way to get these skills. 10-15 years ago, where
a deeper understanding for what happens in a computer was essential to
make it work _at all_, a sufficient amount of people got interested.
but now things "just work" and thus there is less pressure to acquire
the required computational skills _and_ there are increasingly more
positions for computational work. but then again the emphasis is on "work"
and "results", not so much developmental work (which can even be poison
for a career). one can easily see this from the type of questions on the list.

cheers,
     axel.

> Olaf
> --
> Dr. rer. nat. Olaf Lenz
> Institut für Computerphysik, Pfaffenwaldring 27, D-70569 Stuttgart
> Phone: +49-711-685-63607
> 

-- 
Dr. Axel Kohlmeyer
akohlmey_at_gmail.com  http://goo.gl/1wk0
Institute for Computational Molecular Science
Temple University, Philadelphia PA, USA.