I don't see how anyone can be hired "straight after college" unless they come straight to Google or Goldman Sachs who can afford _extensive_ training programs.
College education these days looks more like a luxury good, not a job prerequisite. It is of more value if you want to do research or work on bleeding edge fields like advanced artificial intelligence or biotech, but if you just want to be a decent software engineer, it doesn't make economic sense anymore, in my opinion.
(Disclosure: worked 10 years in the industry before finally getting my degree — because I wanted to move to R&D).
Most people going into software jobs aren't doing a lot of actual development. I've seen people who aren't techy at all and know nothing about code do a 1 year masters and go into a well paid software dev job at very large companies on a decent salary. The only experience they have is maybe 6 months doing a bit of Java. But at the end of the day they're dealing more with bureaucracy than code and bug fixing of already established systems meaning they don't really need knowledge on good architecture and practices.
Many guys I know had very little experience beyond few classes in school. Everyone in our year found a job eventually including weakest students.
Plenty even studied physics or something similar instead of computer science and then got job in company desperate for people on the basis of "you are smart so we guess you will be able to learn". Actually turned out that if you have brain for physics or math, you can learn programming reasonably fast too. (And ended up being better then weak cs students.)
They would not be suitable for all companies and positions obviously, but grasping enough of basics so you can be useful enough to create part of frontend pages/load data from db/whatever with a bit of supervision is not that hard.
Very common in large businesses like Citi, AllState etc. I know several people who have followed this path. They usually turn out to be people who code very little for a couple of years and then move on to product management roles and things like that.
Having to maintain an older system for a while teaches you more about good architecture and practices then all the theory you can read. People who never had to maintain the thing tend to have very theoretical ideas about what is important and what not.
You don't know whether your code is maintainable until you had to maintain it for a while.
Is a technically-focused university diploma fundamentally different than a trade-school certification, aside from the particulars of what material was learned?
In my experience, your point is valid regarding some software jobs, but not all.
As I've worked my way into more technically demanding roles, it's been very useful to have a foundation of big-O analysis, the expressive power of different levels in the Chomsky hierarchy, (mathematical) optimization theory, graph theory, compilers, and/or computer architecture.
Many of these topics could be learned by a bright person on-demand.
However, some of the topics are important to be familiar with before taking on a project, because they let you avoid costly, time-consuming mistakes.
Those can be learned outside of the university, though. Some certification that takes them into account would be useful. Having to waste 4 years and a ton of money just so you have a piece of paper showing people that you know what you knew before seems extremely wasteful.
It pretty often works that way. However, you need network of friends for that - someone who knows you and knows you are generally smart giving you a chance despite you knowing only a little.
School acts a bit like equalizer - it allows you to a.) create network b.) acts as alternative to experience in case you don't have network.
a major part of the mission of any college is its ability to pick a curriculum that actually has value for the student's life and career - topics whose study will be truly worthwhile.
colleges are saying "of all the topics you might study, out of the vast ocean of knowledge which a person could not hope to master in ten lifetimes, we have selected a manageable but critical/valuable/useful subset."
based on your comment and many others, it seems colleges are failing at that part of the mission. it seems the world is simply changing too fast and most colleges fail to keep up.
When I entered the world of work after graduating from a UK CS course in the late 1980s pretty much all employers expected that fresh graduate hires would need ~6 months before actually being a net gain in productivity. You also didn't need to have direct relevant experience as they were expecting to train you up in whatever it was they did.
Now managers expect everyone to "hit the ground running" and as one consequence employees are much more careful about only acquiring skills that will be of use when they come to move to their next role. Hardly surprising.
The Goldman Sachs graduate training program is a joke. Having gone through it, I doubt that technical training is even the point of it. I think they just get everyone together to have a big holiday so that when the graduates start real work, they have that prebuilt network to help them out. Thats not at all a bad thing, but their technical training is rubbish.
If you look at other degrees, it is quite possible to get hired right out of college.
Unfortunately, the job might just be management at the local box store. They tend to not care so much about what your degree is in so long as you have one. Nurses generally have no trouble finding work either.
"College education these days looks more like a luxury good, not a job prerequisite". This very much depends on the field. I've seen administrative assistant positions that require a college degree, especially if it is at a large company. Sometimes it is just a legal requirement: A school superintendent in indiana needs to have a teaching license. The school business manager doesn't need that - merely a 4 year degree in business, though a masters degree is more normal.
You just have to expand the industry you are looking at to find it: obviously, there are lots of exceptions.
Big tech firms hold campus hiring events. Many companies aggressively go after college grads. Some even go after juniors for internships (which is great for the company - it's a several month opportunity to vet a candidate without commitment. If things work out, the candidate gets invited to come onboard when they graduate).
College hires won't get very exciting work initially. At a fast moving company, they're going to be learning on the job (which means they need to be dynamic/adaptable and curious). Unfortunately, this can mean picking up operational work that more seasoned engineers don't enjoy (however, still a great opportunity to learn and grow for most).
Doesn't work that way for me. Can you cite the saying? I know of a dialect in which the 'o' in 'on' is long, but that doesn't change the spelling, and 'one' doesn't sound like it. ('Own' does.)
as a current student I see no value in Universities to be honest other than the gathering of smart people in one place, which could be replicated for far cheaper. Everything else can be learned online for free, universities have no value proposition in the 21st century.
I was lucky enough to realize this at 15. I've got to be in the top 1% of high school drop outs. After you get to a certain level professionally everyone just assumes you have a college degree anyway.
Similar experience as a college grad in a field where everyone is expected to have a Ph. D. After a while people just started adding a "Dr." to my name.
I would offer the opposite opinion where the life lessons learned in a proper university's atmosphere can have (albeit less tangible) positive career effects.
I'm frequently put in situations that draw on social skills that I honed during college, and I'm not just talking about partying. Things like student government or other organizing events help me as a technical consultant.
I felt like this for part of college. I came around, and I regret not "buying in" earlier. Often in life I've thought that the thing around me didn't have much value and I lived in my own little world. I finally got enough experience for it to click that you can find value in most situations, including college. And in fact college has unique qualities that you may not be able to find again later in life. I hope you are having a blast.
In an ideal world, I would recommend people to go to university iff they want to do research level work. For everyone else, there should be on the job training and a highschool education which teaches you how to efficiently approach a new subject on your own.
In reality, the undergraduate programs take the place of a proper highschool education and businesses look to degrees for accreditation, so I think it's very dangerous to tell people that there is "no value in universities"... On the other hand, if you happen to live in a country where universities charge you tens of thousands of dollars every year, the situation is entirely different. That is crazy and everyone knows it.
Gathering smart people in one place is exactly the point and the major value add. It facilitates the construction of robust social networks of people in a field, even at the undergraduate level. That enormously valuable and impossible to replicate online.
I have to say I agree. In high population density areas I've never had trouble find groups of intelligent people working on issues and sharing ideas - active political groups, political philosophy Meetup groups, programming groups, etc. Usually these groups are more interesting than their college counterparts, since they have a greater diversity of individuals, avoid things like the inherent student/professor divisions one finds in college, and often are more in touch with real world problems and experiences.
Nor is there a shortage of cultural and intellectual events - there are often free talks from famous authors, different cultural festivals, art exhibits, etc. Or sports, for that matter.
I remember reading on a financial site that bundled products are often a disadvantage for the consumer, since they force you to buy products you don't need. This is how I feel about college. I appreciate that there are many people who don't take advantage of cultural and intellectual events unless pushed, or people who don't want to live in a population dense area outside of a dormitory setting. But there is often a lack of understanding that many of us do take advantage of these things outside of a college area, that the world isn't necessarily an intellectual wasteland outside of the university setting. But when we want the necessary credentials for a career provided by a university (and the somewhat poor training that accompanies it), we're forced to pay for many things we simply don't want or need from the university.
For certain fields, however, college definitely does offer value beyond merely being a societal convention in which the intelligent all happen to descend upon some bucolic village for 9 months out of the year.
Are you going to buy your own electron microscope? Glassware? Broker bulk deals with chemical suppliers? Can you afford an MRI? Purchase a billion different journal subscriptions at exorbitant costs? For these types of equipment it makes sense to pool together resources and achieve economies of scale, which is (beyond social mingling) where the main advantage of college lies in my view.
This is probably good advice for a few people, especially fields that one can self-study and actually get hired.
For a multitude of others, however, there isn't much space to work around if you don't qualify for scholarships, grants, and the like - neither can such education be avoided. I'd rather nurses, doctors, and teachers to go to school - for example - and I very highly doubt you'll get similar knowledge otherwise. I'm also not sure how else folks will get practical experience - I'd not let a new nurse, with no classroom experience, draw my blood.
Rather, don't waste money on a (financially) useless degree. If you want to learn arts or history or gender studies, there are much much cheaper ways than to dump $100K on your education.
I got downvoted before for stating that position, but HN has been a little hypocritical on that matter. On the one hand, when discussing issues of automation, many state that there will always be enough of jobs, we just have to educate people better and in the right fields.
On the other hand, I often see the statements that people should be able to learn (and get paid for it) anything they want.
The problem is that the value of the degree is dropping significantly. I'm unemployed right now because all the tech support positions require a bachelor's degree. I already have a year and a half experience. Why should I have to go to college to get a position that should be entry level?
Tip: Ignore that 'requirement' as we all know its not one. Apply as usual, if it comes up, state your experince and enthusiasim are equivalent. They may pay you less, but seldom will the lack of degree in IT be a hard stop. The only trick is to bypass HR filters. I find talking first to the hiring manager before floating a cv works best. They can bypass the bs, and many are impressed that you did more than shoot another email in to the abyss.
The fact that this is the case is pretty terrible. And the only reason talking to the hiring manager first works is because it's not the norm. If everyone does it, the value is lost.
Same with the degree. When everyone has a degree, it's not special anymore. It's merely a way to get people in debt and transfer the cost of job training to the employee.
HN is not made up of one person, but even if we assume it was, is it hypocritical? Education does not equal schooling. One could advocate for educating people better while not believing that the postsecondary school system that currently exists is sufficiently filling that role.
Majority of students follow the market and go for business degrees or similar. Gender studies or whatever are a bit of red herring - not that many students and mostly clustered on top schools - e.g. wealthy with connections (at which point their degree truly matters less).
Notice the article was discussing biology degrees. Classic STEM. Chemistry is awful too. In reality STEM is now just TE. And The E may be collapsing soon too (and the T can't stay where it is forever, we don't need 150 million programmers in America).
So categorizing degrees into "useless" and "useful" is -- at best -- whistling past graveyards if you are still lucky to possess one of those "useful" degrees. Or maybe it's wishful thinking.
What's with all the socialist propaganda from Bloomberg today? Plenty of HN readers make over 100k straight out of college. It's not taxpayers fault that you didnt spend your time wisely in college
Ah, The Just World Fallacy... i.e. My success is due to my hard work and life choices.
Step 1: Have a big brain.
Step 2: Pick wealthy parents.
Step 3: Pick a career that doesn't get automated 10 years after you pick it. (Law students Chose Poorly..)
There are plenty of people from advantaged backgrounds who do poorly, and plenty from disadvantaged backgrounds who do well. The reason for that is degree of effort and life choices.
Further, this undercurrent of resentment toward people from advantaged backgrounds is rubbish. There's no cosmic roll of the dice that determines into what circumstances a person is born; rather, that's the direct result of parental choices to have children, knowing full well their own life situation.
I'm talking about Europe (where college is in general more affordable and there is no stigma associated to getting your degree from a public school), but if you are looking for employment as a professional at an established company, with no previous experience, not having a degree will definitely make it harder:
- To get an interview in the first place.
- To get a decent starting salary.
- To get into management positions as you progress.
I think the same way, as I'm my mid-30s and I've always only worked for small(ish) companies as a programmer ever since I dropped out of college, but I had a cultural shock recently, as a close friend of mine had to provide a paper-record (don't know the exact English term) with all his college grades when he recently got hired as a software architect by a medium-to-large software company (500+ devs based in several Eastern European cities). I found that crazy, I guess I'll stick to working at small companies for as long as they'll employ me.
I've worked for several large companies in the US. I've never needed to provide college transcripts.
Further, after significant involvement in the interview and hiring process at my last position (a very large technology company), it's my belief that this would be counter-productive to most firms. Finding candidates that have the skillsets necessary, fit the culture, and perform well in the interviews is difficult enough.
It's more likely that an employer in Europe, or Asia will ask for this. If you were coming to the US on an H1B visa, you'll have to file paperwork as part of the credential evaluation. For me, this involved a third-party reviewing that my degree was equivalent to that from a US university.
Your comment on "fit the culture" can be considered somewhat offensive, and an indicator to candidates that they may want to consider other opportunities.
A rather unfortunate one, at that, as it legitimizes all sorts of bias. At best, it's an intellectually lazy way to conceptualize a whole bundle of soft skills.
>A rather unfortunate one, at that, as it legitimizes all sorts of bias. At best, it's an intellectually lazy way to conceptualize a whole bundle of soft skills.
I think you're a ways off here. Culture is character (and not a "bundle of soft skills"). Some companies want candidates that value and empathize with customers. Others may want candidates that demonstrate integrity and ability to collaborate with others. Often, these values are codified as principals to work and measure by. When a candidate fails to demonstrate valued traits, or provides examples that are contrary to those values, that is "not a culture fit".
I think you and I largely agree. My point is that companies can avoid intellectual laziness by doing exactly what you just did: being clear about what specific skills and behaviors they value.
Because "culture", in vernacular, does not mean what you propose. Would you agree that it broadly consists ofthe shared history and norms that bind a group together socially? That's not a bad thing in and of itself, but it does implicitly defining other people as outsiders. When you add "fit", it can become exclusionary. That's what I mean by the term legitimizing bias.
If he was doing the job and doing it well, I don't see why it's a big deal. Universities used to be where you had to go to learn something new, but with the internet, anyone can learn anything they choose to.
It does matter for some non-IT positions (economics, law) and big companies tend to create general rules (e.g. everyone has to prove he has degree he claims to have).
Plus, while it does not matter whether you have degree for programming, it does matter whether you lie about it.
In 20 years, I've never even been asked about my non-existent degree. Not even one time. I've mostly worked at 'big 5' companies, and their equivalents in the game industry.
This is my experience as well. Dimensions of character and past work are better indicators of good candidates. Degrees get little attention outside of college hiring.
My company verified my degrees. I know they did because I had graduated from a master's program around the same time I sent in the paperwork to HR, and they needed me to physically bring in my diploma as proof of graduation (the university records hadn't been updated in all systems yet).
I didn't need transcripts though. You don't need a transcript to verify that someone obtained a degree.
Counterpoint: when I was applying at Google they did ask for a full copy of my college transcript. Not sure how much weight it was given in the hiring decision, but it seemed important to the recruiter.
> I think the same way, as I'm my mid-30s and I've always only worked for small(ish) companies as a programmer ever since I dropped out of college, but I had a cultural shock recently, as a close friend of mine had to provide a paper-record (don't know the exact English term) with all his college grades when he recently got hired as a software architect by a medium-to-large software company (500+ devs based in several Eastern European cities).
Just a guess but I'd say they've been burned in the past by people lying about their transcripts (class/grade history) and as a result they ask for it going forward. Either that or overzealous HR trying creating more work and process.
I've never heard of a company in the USA asking for a transcript. I'm not aware of anyone asking for a copy of a diploma either. Though presumably if you lie about it on your employment application and they subsequently find out about it it'd be grounds for termination with cause.
There are plenty of examples of people succeeding on a "professional" level with no degree in their field of work, or no degree at all. Especially in CS/IT.
"Being a professional" is about your ability and how you go about doing your job.
I think being able to do the job at a "professional" level implies you have experience in the subject matter. Now, that experience may not be formal... but formal experience isn't the end-all-be-all anyway.
There are plenty of CS masters/PHD holders who write horrifically unprofessional code.
I agree you probably need a degree but it doesn't have to be a college degree. There are many European countries where trade/vocational training is working well and most people don't go to college.
I'm very early in the process of looking for a job in Europe, and lots of things do indeed seem to be different. Here are some things I've been asked to provide prior to an interview (that none of my US-based employers have requested) :
* Full life-long gapless CV
* marital status
* family status
* hobbies
* original college transcript
* multiple references
* picture
To your point, there definitely seems to be more stigma against those without college education. I once accidentally sent a resume without my college info, and was asked matter-of-factly if I was "uneducated". In the US, most employers don't even seem to care about my schooling anymore since I have 5+ years of professional experience.
It probably varies (country by country inside Europe, and even company by company), but being asked about marital, family status, hobbies and picture seems unusual to me.
Gapless CV, degree transcript and references are more common.
I live in Europe, I'm about to finish my Bachelor that I don't care about. I study engineering and don't think I have learned that much and have pretty much been a waste of time.
But before I went to University I was unemployed, working as a industrial cleaner, working as a seller in a little Ice cream parlor, and customer support ( through the phone ) and more unemployed.
So yes my degree is just to get in the door, it's ridiculous but it's the world we live in. Maybe I could have tried harder, maybe this and that. But I'm not the only one in my class that thinks like me and had the same experience.
Because I really don't care, because I just do it to get a job. And my grades are pretty much average in everything so shouldn't be worse off than the rest.
I just do it to not be unemployed or work low paying jobs for the next 40 years.
As an American, my perspective is that this right here is why bachelor's degrees are becoming worth less and less.
By your own admission, you've learned little. You've put in just enough effort to pass your classes. You aren't seemingly interested in the field. And you're not motivated to learn more on your own in a field where knowledge is rapidly obsoleted.
The credential of a university degree was previously a signal of having learned about a topic, having worked hard in doing so, having interest in the field, and (at least in this field) being interested and/or capable enough to continue learning as necessary.
If it's no longer a strong indicator of these things, why should employers value it as highly? My own experience mirrors your admission here: fresh university grads frequently lack even the bare minimum ability that would be expected to be productive. Many don't follow this pattern, but they're the exception rather than the rule. And they get hired while the others don't.
It's not the degree that gets you the job, it's the ability. And if you have a degree but little ability, you're not getting the job. The focus on going to university should be about getting the ability, but it's become about getting the credential, even though the credential was never really the valuable part to begin with.
I want to be clear here that there's no judgment on my part of you or your character. You're doing what you think is best and/or necessary in your life and it's not my place to try and find fault with that. I'm only trying to point out that your approach seems symptomatic of a larger problem — and one that I don't have meaningful solutions for. I do worry though that just getting the credential won't be enough to give you the chance of success you're hoping it will, but I wish you luck regardless.
I actually agree with just about everything you say, I see the problem with it as well. But since I don't see any other solution and lack the ability to change society on the fundamental level needed to solve this problem, then I feel like I "Have to play the game".
Yes we don't know at all how it will turn out, but I at least think that I can't be worse of than if I hadn't gone to university.
People feel like they need to get a degree nowadays because it's seen as the only path available to get a good, stable career. We've shifted to a "service economy," which is just a fancy way of saying all of the jobs where people had leverage and unions were shipped overseas in order to benefit the capital owners. Intense specialization is now required to help those people and companies who won the globalization game to get richer. Those who are unable to specialize will continue to face a shrinking quality of life.
I see two options available to us: Either we restrict globalization to increase demand for lower-class labor(which would then create Unions, increase consumer spending, lower inequality) or we can introduce universal basic income(which would at least let the lower class survive while their jobs continue to be outsourced). Either way, there will be stiff opposition from the major corporations, and thus the politicians will fight against it.
FWIW, I never graduated from college but turned out quite successful, at least as far as job position and compensation goes. I make well over average at a popular software company in the Bay Area.
Still, for the past 3 years I have been using my weekends and evenings to work on my BS in CS. And, while surely I was able to be successful building software without it, a new clarity has come that had never been there before. Perhaps it's because I have industry experience to draw on but I regret not having done this earlier in my life (I'm 39). So my point is, if you're in college reading this now, please do yourself a favor and see it through to completion. You're in a fortunate position (even though the daily grind sucks), take a deep breath, pause, and enjoy it.
It's not worth a whole lot because I imagine tech is one of the few industries that don't follow the trend (especially in the bay area). I know this is a tech site, but MOST careers are not in software.
Is it possible that people just get a clarity with age? I'm 37 and also feel like I have had a fog lift this decade.
I would like to hear a few other folks here share whether they felt a general increase of clarity and insight as they have come into their middle ages.
My dad always said he did his best thinking in his 40s. He said that he knew he wasnt as fast or as sharp, but still having a lot of that, plus a really good working model of the world by that point, left him with the best product of those factors.
It could be. The clarity I'm speaking about came more from being led deeper into areas that I'd never had a need to explore in my job. E.g. How computers truly work, physically and mathematically, the specifics of scheduling algorithms used in operating systems, the utility of bit masking in assembly... I never had a need for any of that. To your point though, I may not have appreciated it when I was 18-22. I think I might have just gone through the learning motions, like when you learn the fundamental theorem of calculus; it doesn't immediately strike you as how amazing it is unless you've got the mind for that sort of thing (I don't) or you have a teacher that forces you to pause. In any event...
Going back to school after being in the software industry seems like it's more effective. I had similar sentiments with how during college I just went through the learning motions. Now going back and going through the material after some industry experience, everything makes so much more sense and is more engaging. Knowing how the concepts immediately relate to my work helps motivate and solidify my learning.
On top of any age effects, I think there's definitely a thing where academic learning can make more sense and its applications seem more useful once you have some practical experience in the area.
It's amusing that the suggested solution is to go and spend more money on a graduate-level degree. That feels eerily similar to the conventional wisdom that every single high school student should go to college majoring in a STEM field, which seems to be losing a little steam over the recent years.
I should have stayed for my PhD 22 years ago, but back then it was only for acedemia track. These days there seem to be plenty of freshly minted PhD. Maybe that will soon be the minimum job qualification.
And people on HN wonder about the disconnect between the pay of the Big 4 and their eternal complaints of 'we can't find any engineers'. Maybe they aren't just greedy, maybe there is a nugget of truth in their statements.
What about double majors? Or a BS with a minor? Knowledge in multiple subjects can create a synergistic effect. For example a double major in computer science and biotechnology - or something similar - could be effective. I think that jobs are becoming less specialized, and also workers need to do several things well.
"“Several years ago it became very clear to us that master’s education was moving very rapidly to become the entry degree in many professions,” Dr. Stewart says. The sheen has come, in part, because the degrees are newly specific and utilitarian. These are not your general master’s in policy or administration. Even the M.B.A., observed one business school dean, “is kind of too broad in the current environment.” Now, you have the M.S. in supply chain management, and in managing mission-driven organizations. There’s an M.S. in skeletal and dental bioarchaeology, and an M.A. in learning and thinking."
I'll add to this too. We have had potential employers invited to speak in front of classes for the joint MS/PhD program, often ~6 employers for the hour of class time, and this happened a few times. One guy said '... entry level positions for MS students like you ...', though I was half asleep, I did pick that one out of the talk. When the Q&A part came around, I asked him about it. He said "We will not hire any engineer without a MS. The MS is now entry level", and the other people there agreed with him. This was in bio-medical engineering, fwiw.
This article talks about wage growth for college only. There's no comparison to high school grad's wage growth or those with graduate degrees. You are jumping to conclusions about the value of a college degree without accounting for alternatives.
Most high school grads won't become programmers. They will work in warehouses, low level healthcare jobs, etc. The wage growth for high school graduates is worse than college graduates. It's a problem with the whole economy, not colleges specifically.
Its easy to say that those who go to college make more, which is true, but those who go to college generally have higher goals and will work for years in suffocating living conditions. Not that they knew of that beforehand (gotta leave that out to get that special debt money), but they adapt. I don't think college creates success in programming, its yourself. In fields such as Medical or physical engineering, I completely agree that schools dedicated to that play a significantly bigger part, though.
When everyone has a degree, it just shows that undergrad level should be tought in HS. Oh and yadda yadda 'everyone has a degree, except subhumans with GED' is partly becoming true in peoples eyes...
The number of newly graduated college students per year has increased approximately 50% in the last fifteen years. A reduction in average wages would be expected from supply and demand alone.
However, I don't think an "oversupply" is the correct explanation. At least in the technical, engineering, and manufacturing fields that I know, companies are desperate for more good people. And this is even as STEM graduation rates are at an all time high.
Looking at it from the the graduate's side, every single clueful person I know that graduated in the last five years is employed, and quickly so.
How can can average wages be going down, even demand increases?
The key is that we are talking "average wages". College graduates in any field are not a uniform bunch.
The number of new competent individuals graduated seems to be holding steady, while around them grow an increasing sea of people who don't show up for work, or have a clue about getting actual work done in their profession.
>How can these apparently conflicting facts be true? The problem is that many of the people who graduate do not have either the technical skills or the personal skills to make a positive enough contribution to be hired.
Isn't this simply a Just World fallacy? Outside of the simulations of economists, I know of no example where the labor market operates with this degree of narrative and rationality.
It used to be, in engineering school, 2/3 flunked out or changed majors. Even with the remaining 1/3, there are the C/D students. I'd only want to hire the A/B students.
I think people are figuring out engineering is a lot tougher than the "making stuff".
How about because there are more women in college, and they undercompete on compensation? This would predictably drive average compensation down. Maybe men should be encouraging women to compete more aggressively on salary?
It's all supply and demand. Supply of graduates is up massively, demand is down due to outsourcing and centralization of the good jobs. This creates falling wages for graduates, who have to take what they can get because of their student loans.
It's hard to be passionate when wages are going down, jobs are getting concentrated to a handful of urban centers, cost of living(especially in housing) is going up like crazy, and companies work you as much as you can and show no loyalty, all while the profits of those companies are larger than ever. Oh yeah, and the fact that you start out your career $40k-$100k in debt to get a piece of paper because middle class jobs have been outsourced kind of puts a damper on things.
So, when people get a master's degree in something they are passionate about, like Medieval history, they are idiots who should go into STEM (Actually, TE, but I digress).
When those people go into STEM, they are fools for pursuing a field they aren't passionate in.
When they don't go to school, and can't get any jobs, because they all require bachelors degrees, they are lazy, and unmotivated.
Saturation or oversupply seem possible. Number of bachelors degrees awarded in 2015 was 14% higher than in 2010, but US population increased only 3% during this time.
"College graduate" means almost nothing anymore. When not having a college degree became a social shame, the US government decided it needed to socialize the pride of achievement that true college grads used to get to feel.
>"College graduate" means almost nothing anymore."
Exactly. I have 2 degrees, obtained about 8 years apart, so I've spent a few years doing undergraduate work. Not sure what it's like in the US, but here in Canada it's nearly impossible to flunk out of University. Between the ability to find "bird courses" with the help of technology to rank and rate classes and profs, to the garbage incentives of "if this person flunks out, there goes next year's tuition" pretty much everyone can scrape by.
Undeniably this has been a trend downward in wages into wage stagnation. The share of GDP to workers is on a near 50 year decline since the mid-70s[1]. Wages and raises, once a staple of America and working hard to achieve a good life, has become lost and efficiently worked out of the system.
Wage stagnation for 15 years heavily and 40 years overall does a number on the wallet while the costs of everything are far beyond inflation[2].
America has lost the ability to give meaningful wage increases to keep growth going in a consumer based economy. When the consumer based economy is low on fuel (cash in wallets and accounts) then it sputters.
Back in the day America viewed wages as a sign of good work and companies saw benefits of increasing workers pay. This led to more money in the system, employees that buy and recommend where they work, better customer service, better informed employees and more.
To "Make America Great Again" either raise wages as a function of work over time/productivity or drive down the dollar so Americans can get raises again. In both cases the wealthy will have to be willing to pay their part, but they didn't get rich by paying.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadI know for fact that minimum wage has risen, so wage stagnation cannot be true.
College education these days looks more like a luxury good, not a job prerequisite. It is of more value if you want to do research or work on bleeding edge fields like advanced artificial intelligence or biotech, but if you just want to be a decent software engineer, it doesn't make economic sense anymore, in my opinion.
(Disclosure: worked 10 years in the industry before finally getting my degree — because I wanted to move to R&D).
Plenty even studied physics or something similar instead of computer science and then got job in company desperate for people on the basis of "you are smart so we guess you will be able to learn". Actually turned out that if you have brain for physics or math, you can learn programming reasonably fast too. (And ended up being better then weak cs students.)
They would not be suitable for all companies and positions obviously, but grasping enough of basics so you can be useful enough to create part of frontend pages/load data from db/whatever with a bit of supervision is not that hard.
You don't know whether your code is maintainable until you had to maintain it for a while.
The industry could do really well out of recognizing that it's a vocational occupation and switching to an apprenticeship model.
In computer science you will learning about generic concepts like parsers, compilers or whatever.
For vocational you would learn about something specific like asp.net mvc.
As I've worked my way into more technically demanding roles, it's been very useful to have a foundation of big-O analysis, the expressive power of different levels in the Chomsky hierarchy, (mathematical) optimization theory, graph theory, compilers, and/or computer architecture.
Many of these topics could be learned by a bright person on-demand.
However, some of the topics are important to be familiar with before taking on a project, because they let you avoid costly, time-consuming mistakes.
School acts a bit like equalizer - it allows you to a.) create network b.) acts as alternative to experience in case you don't have network.
This is the unspoken down side to the German model if Hans take the vocational track he will be limiting his career progression.
a major part of the mission of any college is its ability to pick a curriculum that actually has value for the student's life and career - topics whose study will be truly worthwhile.
colleges are saying "of all the topics you might study, out of the vast ocean of knowledge which a person could not hope to master in ten lifetimes, we have selected a manageable but critical/valuable/useful subset."
based on your comment and many others, it seems colleges are failing at that part of the mission. it seems the world is simply changing too fast and most colleges fail to keep up.
Now managers expect everyone to "hit the ground running" and as one consequence employees are much more careful about only acquiring skills that will be of use when they come to move to their next role. Hardly surprising.
Unfortunately, the job might just be management at the local box store. They tend to not care so much about what your degree is in so long as you have one. Nurses generally have no trouble finding work either.
"College education these days looks more like a luxury good, not a job prerequisite". This very much depends on the field. I've seen administrative assistant positions that require a college degree, especially if it is at a large company. Sometimes it is just a legal requirement: A school superintendent in indiana needs to have a teaching license. The school business manager doesn't need that - merely a 4 year degree in business, though a masters degree is more normal.
You just have to expand the industry you are looking at to find it: obviously, there are lots of exceptions.
Big tech firms hold campus hiring events. Many companies aggressively go after college grads. Some even go after juniors for internships (which is great for the company - it's a several month opportunity to vet a candidate without commitment. If things work out, the candidate gets invited to come onboard when they graduate).
College hires won't get very exciting work initially. At a fast moving company, they're going to be learning on the job (which means they need to be dynamic/adaptable and curious). Unfortunately, this can mean picking up operational work that more seasoned engineers don't enjoy (however, still a great opportunity to learn and grow for most).
Solution: Don't waste money one college.
I'm frequently put in situations that draw on social skills that I honed during college, and I'm not just talking about partying. Things like student government or other organizing events help me as a technical consultant.
In an ideal world, I would recommend people to go to university iff they want to do research level work. For everyone else, there should be on the job training and a highschool education which teaches you how to efficiently approach a new subject on your own.
In reality, the undergraduate programs take the place of a proper highschool education and businesses look to degrees for accreditation, so I think it's very dangerous to tell people that there is "no value in universities"... On the other hand, if you happen to live in a country where universities charge you tens of thousands of dollars every year, the situation is entirely different. That is crazy and everyone knows it.
Nor is there a shortage of cultural and intellectual events - there are often free talks from famous authors, different cultural festivals, art exhibits, etc. Or sports, for that matter.
I remember reading on a financial site that bundled products are often a disadvantage for the consumer, since they force you to buy products you don't need. This is how I feel about college. I appreciate that there are many people who don't take advantage of cultural and intellectual events unless pushed, or people who don't want to live in a population dense area outside of a dormitory setting. But there is often a lack of understanding that many of us do take advantage of these things outside of a college area, that the world isn't necessarily an intellectual wasteland outside of the university setting. But when we want the necessary credentials for a career provided by a university (and the somewhat poor training that accompanies it), we're forced to pay for many things we simply don't want or need from the university.
Are you going to buy your own electron microscope? Glassware? Broker bulk deals with chemical suppliers? Can you afford an MRI? Purchase a billion different journal subscriptions at exorbitant costs? For these types of equipment it makes sense to pool together resources and achieve economies of scale, which is (beyond social mingling) where the main advantage of college lies in my view.
For a multitude of others, however, there isn't much space to work around if you don't qualify for scholarships, grants, and the like - neither can such education be avoided. I'd rather nurses, doctors, and teachers to go to school - for example - and I very highly doubt you'll get similar knowledge otherwise. I'm also not sure how else folks will get practical experience - I'd not let a new nurse, with no classroom experience, draw my blood.
I got downvoted before for stating that position, but HN has been a little hypocritical on that matter. On the one hand, when discussing issues of automation, many state that there will always be enough of jobs, we just have to educate people better and in the right fields.
On the other hand, I often see the statements that people should be able to learn (and get paid for it) anything they want.
I disagree with both of these positions.
Same with the degree. When everyone has a degree, it's not special anymore. It's merely a way to get people in debt and transfer the cost of job training to the employee.
So categorizing degrees into "useless" and "useful" is -- at best -- whistling past graveyards if you are still lucky to possess one of those "useful" degrees. Or maybe it's wishful thinking.
One bubble is not enough to counter data.
There are plenty of people from advantaged backgrounds who do poorly, and plenty from disadvantaged backgrounds who do well. The reason for that is degree of effort and life choices.
Further, this undercurrent of resentment toward people from advantaged backgrounds is rubbish. There's no cosmic roll of the dice that determines into what circumstances a person is born; rather, that's the direct result of parental choices to have children, knowing full well their own life situation.
- To get an interview in the first place.
- To get a decent starting salary.
- To get into management positions as you progress.
It's usually called a 'transcript' (in British English at least)
(That would be a hell of a strange thing for a potential employer to ask for here, too.)
But yeah, at the same employer, they apparently don't ask for proof of a master's degree (or BS).
Further, after significant involvement in the interview and hiring process at my last position (a very large technology company), it's my belief that this would be counter-productive to most firms. Finding candidates that have the skillsets necessary, fit the culture, and perform well in the interviews is difficult enough.
Your comment on "fit the culture" can be considered somewhat offensive, and an indicator to candidates that they may want to consider other opportunities.
I think you're a ways off here. Culture is character (and not a "bundle of soft skills"). Some companies want candidates that value and empathize with customers. Others may want candidates that demonstrate integrity and ability to collaborate with others. Often, these values are codified as principals to work and measure by. When a candidate fails to demonstrate valued traits, or provides examples that are contrary to those values, that is "not a culture fit".
Because "culture", in vernacular, does not mean what you propose. Would you agree that it broadly consists ofthe shared history and norms that bind a group together socially? That's not a bad thing in and of itself, but it does implicitly defining other people as outsiders. When you add "fit", it can become exclusionary. That's what I mean by the term legitimizing bias.
Plus, while it does not matter whether you have degree for programming, it does matter whether you lie about it.
I didn't need transcripts though. You don't need a transcript to verify that someone obtained a degree.
Just a guess but I'd say they've been burned in the past by people lying about their transcripts (class/grade history) and as a result they ask for it going forward. Either that or overzealous HR trying creating more work and process.
I've never heard of a company in the USA asking for a transcript. I'm not aware of anyone asking for a copy of a diploma either. Though presumably if you lie about it on your employment application and they subsequently find out about it it'd be grounds for termination with cause.
Some people lie about qualifications.
"Being a professional" is about your ability and how you go about doing your job.
There are plenty of CS masters/PHD holders who write horrifically unprofessional code.
Gapless CV, degree transcript and references are more common.
What countries have this problem?
But before I went to University I was unemployed, working as a industrial cleaner, working as a seller in a little Ice cream parlor, and customer support ( through the phone ) and more unemployed.
So yes my degree is just to get in the door, it's ridiculous but it's the world we live in. Maybe I could have tried harder, maybe this and that. But I'm not the only one in my class that thinks like me and had the same experience.
I just do it to not be unemployed or work low paying jobs for the next 40 years.
By your own admission, you've learned little. You've put in just enough effort to pass your classes. You aren't seemingly interested in the field. And you're not motivated to learn more on your own in a field where knowledge is rapidly obsoleted.
The credential of a university degree was previously a signal of having learned about a topic, having worked hard in doing so, having interest in the field, and (at least in this field) being interested and/or capable enough to continue learning as necessary.
If it's no longer a strong indicator of these things, why should employers value it as highly? My own experience mirrors your admission here: fresh university grads frequently lack even the bare minimum ability that would be expected to be productive. Many don't follow this pattern, but they're the exception rather than the rule. And they get hired while the others don't.
It's not the degree that gets you the job, it's the ability. And if you have a degree but little ability, you're not getting the job. The focus on going to university should be about getting the ability, but it's become about getting the credential, even though the credential was never really the valuable part to begin with.
I want to be clear here that there's no judgment on my part of you or your character. You're doing what you think is best and/or necessary in your life and it's not my place to try and find fault with that. I'm only trying to point out that your approach seems symptomatic of a larger problem — and one that I don't have meaningful solutions for. I do worry though that just getting the credential won't be enough to give you the chance of success you're hoping it will, but I wish you luck regardless.
Yes we don't know at all how it will turn out, but I at least think that I can't be worse of than if I hadn't gone to university.
I see two options available to us: Either we restrict globalization to increase demand for lower-class labor(which would then create Unions, increase consumer spending, lower inequality) or we can introduce universal basic income(which would at least let the lower class survive while their jobs continue to be outsourced). Either way, there will be stiff opposition from the major corporations, and thus the politicians will fight against it.
Still, for the past 3 years I have been using my weekends and evenings to work on my BS in CS. And, while surely I was able to be successful building software without it, a new clarity has come that had never been there before. Perhaps it's because I have industry experience to draw on but I regret not having done this earlier in my life (I'm 39). So my point is, if you're in college reading this now, please do yourself a favor and see it through to completion. You're in a fortunate position (even though the daily grind sucks), take a deep breath, pause, and enjoy it.
I would like to hear a few other folks here share whether they felt a general increase of clarity and insight as they have come into their middle ages.
My dad always said he did his best thinking in his 40s. He said that he knew he wasnt as fast or as sharp, but still having a lot of that, plus a really good working model of the world by that point, left him with the best product of those factors.
Or maybe it's just obvious and not true at all.
MS the new BS
BS the new HS diploma
I should have stayed for my PhD 22 years ago, but back then it was only for acedemia track. These days there seem to be plenty of freshly minted PhD. Maybe that will soon be the minimum job qualification.
"“Several years ago it became very clear to us that master’s education was moving very rapidly to become the entry degree in many professions,” Dr. Stewart says. The sheen has come, in part, because the degrees are newly specific and utilitarian. These are not your general master’s in policy or administration. Even the M.B.A., observed one business school dean, “is kind of too broad in the current environment.” Now, you have the M.S. in supply chain management, and in managing mission-driven organizations. There’s an M.S. in skeletal and dental bioarchaeology, and an M.A. in learning and thinking."
Most high school grads won't become programmers. They will work in warehouses, low level healthcare jobs, etc. The wage growth for high school graduates is worse than college graduates. It's a problem with the whole economy, not colleges specifically.
However, I don't think an "oversupply" is the correct explanation. At least in the technical, engineering, and manufacturing fields that I know, companies are desperate for more good people. And this is even as STEM graduation rates are at an all time high.
Looking at it from the the graduate's side, every single clueful person I know that graduated in the last five years is employed, and quickly so.
How can can average wages be going down, even demand increases?
The key is that we are talking "average wages". College graduates in any field are not a uniform bunch.
The number of new competent individuals graduated seems to be holding steady, while around them grow an increasing sea of people who don't show up for work, or have a clue about getting actual work done in their profession.
Isn't this simply a Just World fallacy? Outside of the simulations of economists, I know of no example where the labor market operates with this degree of narrative and rationality.
Not desperate enough to give the recent college grads a raise, apparently
It used to be, in engineering school, 2/3 flunked out or changed majors. Even with the remaining 1/3, there are the C/D students. I'd only want to hire the A/B students.
I think people are figuring out engineering is a lot tougher than the "making stuff".
To bring up the average salary? Does that matter to any individual?
My generation's apathy doesn't come from nothing.
When those people go into STEM, they are fools for pursuing a field they aren't passionate in.
When they don't go to school, and can't get any jobs, because they all require bachelors degrees, they are lazy, and unmotivated.
What exactly is an 18-year old do?
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_322.10.a...
http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table
Exactly. I have 2 degrees, obtained about 8 years apart, so I've spent a few years doing undergraduate work. Not sure what it's like in the US, but here in Canada it's nearly impossible to flunk out of University. Between the ability to find "bird courses" with the help of technology to rank and rate classes and profs, to the garbage incentives of "if this person flunks out, there goes next year's tuition" pretty much everyone can scrape by.
Wage stagnation for 15 years heavily and 40 years overall does a number on the wallet while the costs of everything are far beyond inflation[2].
America has lost the ability to give meaningful wage increases to keep growth going in a consumer based economy. When the consumer based economy is low on fuel (cash in wallets and accounts) then it sputters.
Back in the day America viewed wages as a sign of good work and companies saw benefits of increasing workers pay. This led to more money in the system, employees that buy and recommend where they work, better customer service, better informed employees and more.
To "Make America Great Again" either raise wages as a function of work over time/productivity or drive down the dollar so Americans can get raises again. In both cases the wealthy will have to be willing to pay their part, but they didn't get rich by paying.
[1] https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2016/06/2393/
[2] http://fortune.com/2015/09/01/heres-the-real-reason-you-dont...