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lampey
Mar 27, 2012

evol262 posted:

The increasing availability of nontraditional options makes it more important, not less, as the number of people you're competing against who have degrees goes up proportionally.

The industry's legacy of "no degree, no problem as long as you can do the job" stems from the relative newness of the field and the tendency of early professionals to come from other specializations as the "computer person" who's now managing the business' VAX and math/physics majors learning how to code to run computations.

When pretty much anyone can get a degree these days, stagnating wages, and a glut of unemployed degreed people, what's an employer's incentive to hire entry level people without them? To pay you wages on par? There are people in these threads all the time asking for advice switching to IT. Why hire a high school grad or dropout when someone with a degree will do it for the same price?

It has never been more important, and it's only going to keep getting more so.

There will always be exceptions, but the industry is changing.

And, as noted, it's better to do it while you're young than to wait until you need it and you're trying to juggle other obligations while you try to finish a multi-year program so you can get on with your life and your career. Even the nontraditional options take years as a best-case. Do you want to wait until it's "important"?

The increasing commoditization of IT means that individuals require less job specific knowledge to perform the needed roles, and it takes less time to learn than previously. A bachelors degree is not without merit, but many of the experiences that result in a being well rounded can be learned while on the job. If someone was 30 years old and wanted to get into IT should they get a 4 year degree first?

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evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

lampey posted:

The increasing commoditization of IT means that individuals require less job specific knowledge to perform the needed roles, and it takes less time to learn than previously. A bachelors degree is not without merit, but many of the experiences that result in a being well rounded can be learned while on the job. If someone was 30 years old and wanted to get into IT should they get a 4 year degree first?
If this is your level of reasoning and reading comprehension, maybe should avoid IT for other reasons. You're arguing against something I didn't say. Don't make me a strawman.

The idea that it takes less specific knowledge and less time to learn job skills is patently false compared to even 10 years ago, when the average candidate could have been expected to have grown up on a command line and moved into an entry-level role deploying applications on physical hardware, likely Windows. Virtualization, configuration management, devops, cloud paradigms, scripting (even on Windows) for basic tasks, and other industry drivers are shifting the knowledge of how to be a "pro" further away from what a consumer can reasonably be expected to know, not towards it. It's abstracting away the daily experience.

That aside, I'll put it in real simple terms for you.

I didn't have a degree when I started and I don't need one now (yet). I got a degree a couple of months ago, but it's not IT-related. You're right that some of what a degree offers can be gained on the job (not much, because a degree is not vocational training, and you're unlikely to teach yourself mathematical induction so you know how to prove recursion, or learn formal logic, or whatever -- school shouldn't teach you Node.js except as a means to learning abstract concepts which are mostly irrelevant to the job and theory you may never use).

But that's not the point. The point is that a 30-year-old or an 18-year-old (under the assumption he/she'd be trying to get 4 years of work experience instead of college) without a degree is competing against a pool of applicants who, increasingly, do have degrees, and aren't looking for more pay than those without. What is the incentive for me to hire someone without a degree when I can post a position and get a hundred applicants with one?

Once you have the experience you don't need the degree, but getting into the field without one is a lot harder than it was 10 years ago or 5 years ago. The industry isn't regulated (ala nursing, law, engineering, accounting) and will probably never outright require a degree. But the "degree or X years of relevant experience" is slowly starting to go away for junior and entry level jobs. And a few years after that, you can expect many of the people in senior positions to have come through that experience and senior postings will do the same.

For those of us working in the industry with years of experience already, it doesn't matter much.

But the slew of "I don't have a degree and I'm doing fine in my mid-level position" (this mostly includes "senior" admins, devs, and systems engineers, including myself, since we're mostly mid-level on a company's org chart) is also stupid. When you start bumping up against the director, .*VP, and C-level positions where a degree isn't optional, you see where it limits you.

I get staying on the technical track. I'm still on the technical track, too. But I'm a senior Dev who's been a senior admin, and a senior engineer, and I'm 31. Bluntly, though I enjoy my work and I'm good at it, I'm good at solving this class of problems. I want to solve bigger problems, and new challenges interest me. And that probably means go into a leadership role (I like mentoring a lot, but technical/team leadership roles aren't what I mean). Degrees aren't optional if I want to succeed there.

Please give me a good reason why a degree is not a good career move which doesn't involve "I made it to my mid-level position without any problems after starting in 1995-2010"

YOLOsubmarine
Oct 19, 2004

When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

lampey posted:

The increasing commoditization of IT means that individuals require less job specific knowledge to perform the needed roles, and it takes less time to learn than previously. A bachelors degree is not without merit, but many of the experiences that result in a being well rounded can be learned while on the job. If someone was 30 years old and wanted to get into IT should they get a 4 year degree first?

You just keep making statements that don't actually have any obvious relationship to reality as if they were self-evidently true. And yes, a 30 year old who wants to get into IT should also work towards a 4-year degree because he will already be behind many of his peers on the job ladder and the lack of a degree will hold him back even more. You don't get a degree to make you better at your future job (though it might do that), you get a degree to get a better job, which will ultimately mean that your future jobs are also better because you started from a better place.

Fiendish Dr. Wu
Nov 11, 2010

You done fucked up now!

NippleFloss posted:

... a 30 year old who wants to get into IT should also work towards a 4-year degree because he will already be behind many of his peers on the job ladder and the lack of a degree will hold him back even more.

Oh look, a conversation about me!

I'm 31 now, was 30 when I officially broke into IT. I've got just over 3 semesters left in my B.S. in IT Management.

When I decided I wanted to get into IT, I chose another path and enlisted in the Navy. My original contract was for a CTN rating, then it changed to IT, then I got screwed into the choice between aviation and subs (I enlisted during the peak of The Great Recession of 2009 when everybody and their uncle enlisted). I chose aviation then when I arrived at my command I volunteered for every little bit of IT work I could do. During this time I also completed most of my degree because I knew I would need it when I got out.

Vet status and a secret security clearance helped me get my first gig and pure luck got me my current one. I managed to get into the architecture team for a fortune 500 company - I'm one of the 2 lower level guys where everybody else on my team has masters and typically over 15 years of experience. The other lower level guy I work directly with is working on his Masters.

I mentioned I got my current gig from pure luck and I'm telling the truth. I am not getting on a high horse just to brag, but I can provide a unique perspective. I am severely under-qualified compared to my peers, so I am doing everything in my power to do the job to the best of my ability and prove my worth (which is working out well for me - I'm not here to gently caress around). The "degree" conversation comes up often because of the college prestige dick-measuring that goes on, and when it comes up around me I usually sort of change the subject to my experience in the military - and since non of them were enlisted (most are immigrants anyways) it usually provides interesting conversation.

I said all that to provide a little background so I can say this: if you want to be in a top level team then get your loving degree. If you're happy floating around in the mid-level position then fine, we need people like you too. After all, if everybody applied themselves and got their degrees then my office wouldn't have people to empty my trash can, brew our coffee, and clean our bathrooms.

edit: so - can it be done without a degree? Yes. But why do it the hard way?

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

lampey posted:

The increasing commoditization of IT means that individuals require less job specific knowledge to perform the needed roles, and it takes less time to learn than previously. A bachelors degree is not without merit, but many of the experiences that result in a being well rounded can be learned while on the job. If someone was 30 years old and wanted to get into IT should they get a 4 year degree first?
You know what critical piece you're ignoring? Modern IT jobs require more skills than they used to regardless of how long it takes to learn any one of them.

Most IT salaries aren't going down, they're going up, which is the opposite of what would be happening if the jobs were getting easier. Pretty much every IT job from technical writer up through business analyst requires a tremendous amount of multidisciplinary skill, and more effort than ever to align with the goals of an increasingly complex business. Availability strategies that used to be the purview of architects are now everyone's concern because of the idiosyncrasies of the cloud. Everyone needs to worry about storing and processing absolutely gargantuan amounts of data or they lose their competitive advantage to companies that do. Sure, desktop support CJ work is easier now than it was 10 years ago, and sysadmins manage marginally fewer apps because of SaaS. But you're out of your fuckin' gourd if you think there's less people on the business side to impress and not more, or that the soft skills associated with a degree are becoming in any way less important in the workplace.

NeVeH
May 18, 2014

Tab8715 posted:

It's weird how some companies require degrees and others do not. My cities local hospital requires a one for nearly every IT-Position yet browsing both Google's and Apple's positions there are quite a few that specify bachelors or equivalent experience.

EDIT - I largely agree with evol's posts, a degree while isn't absolutely needed it only makes your career easier. If I could go back in-time I wouldn't have majored in Political Science but probably MIS or a 2-year technical degree.

As far as I understand Google used to be very picky about Degrees/GPA/Test Scores in hiring, until they crunched their data and discovered that employee performance had very little correlation with educational background.

I'm also a political science major, but combined with finance. I managed to weasel into a Niche tech company doing "Data Analysis" work largely because they liked people with business degrees. Eventually a different company gave me a shot at a low paying Jr Developer role.

Gumball Gumption
Jan 7, 2012

With the current climate towards higher education I kind of wonder if a degree is going to stay relevant. As a younger generation moves into management and hiring roles I would not be apprised if they started caring less about degrees. You already see that with younger startups.

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD
Get a degree that way when you can't find a job you can at least still feel superior to the people without one.

wicka
Jun 28, 2007


Misogynist posted:

But you're out of your fuckin' gourd if you think there's less people on the business side to impress and not more, or that the soft skills associated with a degree are becoming in any way less important in the workplace.

No one really cares what specific subject matter you learned in college; you probably forgot most of it the second you graduated. A college degree is a piece of paper that says for four years you worked with others, you met deadlines, and you accomplished a reasonably complex and stressful goal without giving up. Walking in to an interview and saying "well I taught myself how to code" tells me that you can code, not that you can do the job.

E: Thants

wicka fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Aug 17, 2014

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Sometimes the soft skills associated with a degree could be something as simple as a decent grasp of the English language. The amount of people I have met, emailed and exchanged documents with that have no idea how words are supposed to work is depressing.

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

jim truds posted:

With the current climate towards higher education I kind of wonder if a degree is going to stay relevant. As a younger generation moves into management and hiring roles I would not be apprised if they started caring less about degrees. You already see that with younger startups.

This is the opposite of the industry trend.

"Younger startups" also have more people with degrees than did "young startups" three decades ago, or two decades ago during the .com boondoggle.

The current "climate towards higher education" is a lot of young people who got degrees because they had been told a degree in anything at all will get you 6 figures and a corner office, then they all got law degrees because that would get you six figures". The world doesn't work that way. But now they have a ton of loans and no good way to pay them back, so they're railing against it.

It is true, though, that not everyone needs to get a degree. And not everyone can make six figures. And not everyone should go to school. But think of it this way:

We're in one of the most lucrative industries in the country, with demand for foreign workers so high that the H1B visa pool fills up instantly every year, with jobs in the hippest cities in the country (with some of the highest cost of living in some of them).

Having a degree has always been a competitive advantage. I really don't mean what you mean by "younger startups", but github has more degrees than Microsoft did. This is true for everyone else. In no startup known for success (we can just pick top100 websites and companies who've been bought out by major players) is there a bias or backlash against degrees.

I suspect you were trying to make an unfalsifiable statement. Or conflating non-entry level workers (like the infrastructure admins or lead coders) who already have experience.

I'll repeat: why should I, as a hiring manager, founder, or whatever even hire someone without a degree when I can get someone with a degree and the same amount of experience for literally zero extra cost? Because that's the market. And that's the direction it's been going in for a while.

More people are getting degrees, not less. In no industry are they becoming less desirable.

If you want to make this argument, please give concrete examples of companies defying every metric.

wicka
Jun 28, 2007


evol262 posted:

The current "climate towards higher education" is a lot of young people who got degrees because they had been told a degree in anything at all will get you 6 figures and a corner office, then they all got law degrees because that would get you six figures". The world doesn't work that way. But now they have a ton of loans and no good way to pay them back, so they're railing against it.

You are EXACTLY right. When I finished school I had no idea what I wanted to do or even if I wanted to stay in IT, so I ended up working data entry for about a year and a half. Every single person I worked with had at least a bachelor's degree (a couple had or were working on master's). But they all had degrees in fields that had no defined career path, at least at the bachelor's level (e.g. biology, anthropology). People think they're against higher education, but they're really just against poor planning.

Plus, it's not a coincidence that all this angst over student loans sprung up at the same time that states are being pressured to lower taxes and thus reduce higher ed funding.

Fiendish Dr. Wu
Nov 11, 2010

You done fucked up now!
So here's a different spin on the whole degree / certification thing: With the advent of free MOOC's like on Coursera, how valuable do you think certified specializations are, or will be?

Considering the weight given to "soft skills", you would get much of the same, and many of these free classes are taught by top level education centers like MIT or Berkeley. Should these be given consideration? Do you think they will be looked at negatively because of the free nature?

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

So here's a different spin on the whole degree / certification thing: With the advent of free MOOC's like on Coursera, how valuable do you think certified specializations are, or will be?

Considering the weight given to "soft skills", you would get much of the same, and many of these free classes are taught by top level education centers like MIT or Berkeley. Should these be given consideration? Do you think they will be looked at negatively because of the free nature?

I'd say just do it.

My argument "for" degrees is largely aimed at entry-level people (or more broadly, anyone who thinks that having a degree may be competitive against your experience) and people who are bumping up against hard executive-level requirements.

I'd pursue those 100% if I had interest, and I suspect employers would like them

JHVH-1
Jun 28, 2002
The startups I interviewed with a few years ago all wanted someone who can jump right in and work long hours without oversight. So you basically have to be young and know your poo poo and willing to enjoy long hours of "work-life balance" (Usually translate into them having a ping-pong table). Unless you already know the ins and outs of whatever tech they use they probably won't hire people just because they have a college degree.

Che Delilas
Nov 23, 2009
FREE TIBET WEED

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

So here's a different spin on the whole degree / certification thing: With the advent of free MOOC's like on Coursera, how valuable do you think certified specializations are, or will be?

Considering the weight given to "soft skills", you would get much of the same, and many of these free classes are taught by top level education centers like MIT or Berkeley. Should these be given consideration? Do you think they will be looked at negatively because of the free nature?

It looks like vocational training to me, which is great! Especially if you can take the knowledge you gain from these courses and create something or do something that you can show off; another bullet point on the resume, especially something you can point to in an interview and say, "This is what I did, this is why I chose to do A, B and C this way, here's the URL of my project log, this is what I liked and disliked about it, this is what I would have done differently a second time around," etc. That stuff is gold in an interview, especially if you enjoyed the project, because your passion will come through, and it's concrete so it won't trip an interviewer's bullshit alarm.

It's still not a degree. If you just take the course and get the certificate and don't do anything else with it, it's probably going to look like any other cert to an interviewer. It's going to be worth more the more you do with it.

wicka
Jun 28, 2007


JHVH-1 posted:

Unless you already know the ins and outs of whatever tech they use they probably won't hire people just because they have a college degree.

This would be a good point had even one person suggested hiring people solely because they have a degree. Unfortunately, literally no one ITT has said that.

Methanar
Sep 26, 2013

by the sex ghost
.

Methanar fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Aug 6, 2016

Gumball Gumption
Jan 7, 2012

evol262 posted:

This is the opposite of the industry trend.

"Younger startups" also have more people with degrees than did "young startups" three decades ago, or two decades ago during the .com boondoggle.

The current "climate towards higher education" is a lot of young people who got degrees because they had been told a degree in anything at all will get you 6 figures and a corner office, then they all got law degrees because that would get you six figures". The world doesn't work that way. But now they have a ton of loans and no good way to pay them back, so they're railing against it.

It is true, though, that not everyone needs to get a degree. And not everyone can make six figures. And not everyone should go to school. But think of it this way:

We're in one of the most lucrative industries in the country, with demand for foreign workers so high that the H1B visa pool fills up instantly every year, with jobs in the hippest cities in the country (with some of the highest cost of living in some of them).

Having a degree has always been a competitive advantage. I really don't mean what you mean by "younger startups", but github has more degrees than Microsoft did. This is true for everyone else. In no startup known for success (we can just pick top100 websites and companies who've been bought out by major players) is there a bias or backlash against degrees.

I suspect you were trying to make an unfalsifiable statement. Or conflating non-entry level workers (like the infrastructure admins or lead coders) who already have experience.

I'll repeat: why should I, as a hiring manager, founder, or whatever even hire someone without a degree when I can get someone with a degree and the same amount of experience for literally zero extra cost? Because that's the market. And that's the direction it's been going in for a while.

More people are getting degrees, not less. In no industry are they becoming less desirable.

If you want to make this argument, please give concrete examples of companies defying every metric.

I made a lovely quick phone post so let me expand, a lot of the backlash is because degrees have gone from being a good to have to a must-have with not a lot to actually show for them. This thread can't seem to even agree on what hiring someone with a degree gives you. We have too many people in IT with a degree that has nothing to do with IT so it isn't technical skills that the degree is giving people. Soft skills? Sure, being in college will help with soft skills. But it should not take someone 4 years to learn how to write well and work in a team. And having pretty much any job should help develop your soft skills, even a guy slinging hamburgers at McDonalds should be picking up how to interact with people and work in a team.

I don't disagree that a degree is a good career move, if you are trying to get into an entry level position or move up a degree will probably let you beat out someone who has the same work experience and certs as you. However, I think the reasoning behind it is a lot of bullshit. So my lovely post was me wondering if they'll be a backlash to that trend as a generation that has had to deal with the degree being the ground floor moves into hiring manager/founder/whoever is hiring positions.

Also as someone who just hired for an entry level position I did pick the candidate based on the fact that he was getting his degree. He was older, had a really long list of help desk jobs, but the fact that he was still going to school and learning suggested that he'd work in the position. The guys who'd been hired before who had degrees and a long history of experience were complete poo poo because they were in their 40's and decided that learning and effort were beneath them.

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

be nice wicka posted:

No one really cares what specific subject matter you learned in college; you probably forgot most of it the second you graduated. A college degree is a piece of paper that says for four years you worked with others, you met deadlines, and you accomplished a reasonably complex and stressful goal without giving up. Walking in to an interview and saying "well I taught myself how to code" tells me that you can code, not that you can do the job.

E: Thants

While HR may think having a degree means this it really doesn't and we'd be better off just saying 'Get a degree because it fills a checkbox'

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

go3 posted:

While HR may think having a degree means this it really doesn't and we'd be better off just saying 'Get a degree because it fills a checkbox'

It actually does a little bit, in the same way as staying at employers for longer than a year early in your career does. It says "I can hack it even when it's lovely because I see you the long-term value in this". I mean, a degree doesn't say " I have job skills " (necessarily), but it does say "I'm able to complete long-term projects"

jim truds posted:

I made a lovely quick phone post so let me expand, a lot of the backlash is because degrees have gone from being a good to have to a must-have with not a lot to actually show for them. This thread can't seem to even agree on what hiring someone with a degree gives you. We have too many people in IT with a degree that has nothing to do with IT so it isn't technical skills that the degree is giving people. Soft skills? Sure, being in college will help with soft skills. But it should not take someone 4 years to learn how to write well and work in a team. And having pretty much any job should help develop your soft skills, even a guy slinging hamburgers at McDonalds should be picking up how to interact with people and work in a team.

I don't disagree that a degree is a good career move, if you are trying to get into an entry level position or move up a degree will probably let you beat out someone who has the same work experience and certs as you. However, I think the reasoning behind it is a lot of bullshit. So my lovely post was me wondering if they'll be a backlash to that trend as a generation that has had to deal with the degree being the ground floor moves into hiring manager/founder/whoever is hiring positions.

Also as someone who just hired for an entry level position I did pick the candidate based on the fact that he was getting his degree. He was older, had a really long list of help desk jobs, but the fact that he was still going to school and learning suggested that he'd work in the position. The guys who'd been hired before who had degrees and a long history of experience were complete poo poo because they were in their 40's and decided that learning and effort were beneath them.

I'm phoneposting, too, and even though I have to repeat it, I want to be clear about the fact that I didn't have a degree for the first 8 years of my career and I don't think having one will change my prospects a hell of a lot until I go into upper management.

That said, even if I don't think the "soft skills" of a degree necessarily matter (and the availability of non-traditional options makes that harder to assert anyway), and I do think the IT industry in particular has a lot of people who don't like change and see the doors we came in through slowly getting gated with degrees, the backlash from a few pro-"bootstraps" startups doesn't drive industry trends compared to financial giants, large software firms, and people who just follow traditional practices so they hire whoever (meaning, largely, degrees) ala github/etc.

Comradephate
Feb 28, 2009

College Slice

go3 posted:

Get a degree that way when you can't find a job you can at least still feel superior to the people without one.

I know of no fewer than 5 people from my graduating class in high school who were very openly condescending towards me when I didn't go to college who are now underemployed doing menial jobs or are completely unemployed with their bachelor's degree. Meanwhile I'm making drastically above average income in a very expensive city despite spending 3 years as a semi-nomadic drunk before deciding to actually pursue a career.

I hope their degree makes them feel superior to me, because they certainly need something to comfort them while they make the schedule at Panera. :smug:

Gumball Gumption
Jan 7, 2012

evol262 posted:

It actually does a little bit, in the same way as staying at employers for longer than a year early in your career does. It says "I can hack it even when it's lovely because I see you the long-term value in this". I mean, a degree doesn't say " I have job skills " (necessarily), but it does say "I'm able to complete long-term projects"


I'm phoneposting, too, and even though I have to repeat it, I want to be clear about the fact that I didn't have a degree for the first 8 years of my career and I don't think having one will change my prospects a hell of a lot until I go into upper management.

That said, even if I don't think the "soft skills" of a degree necessarily matter (and the availability of non-traditional options makes that harder to assert anyway), and I do think the IT industry in particular has a lot of people who don't like change and see the doors we came in through slowly getting gated with degrees, the backlash from a few pro-"bootstraps" startups doesn't drive industry trends compared to financial giants, large software firms, and people who just follow traditional practices so they hire whoever (meaning, largely, degrees) ala github/etc.

This is true, and I don't really disagree that a degree is a good way to get a foot in the door and is quickly becoming the only way. I'm just pissed at the overall system and wish it was different. If you're trying to get into IT a degree will be a big help, I just feel bad that you need to spend 4 years and a stupid amount of money just to start.

Swink
Apr 18, 2006
Left Side <--- Many Whelps

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

So here's a different spin on the whole degree / certification thing: With the advent of free MOOC's like on Coursera, how valuable do you think certified specializations are, or will be?



There's a big idea* going around these days that coding is more of a trade than it is a profession, and these courses that teach you to code are the new tradeschool. (I'm simplifying a lot here).

How much cred will you get for a Coursera speciliasation or Udacity 'Nanodegree'? Depends on the employer. There would only be a very small percentage of employers who even know what a MOOC is. However it does demonstrate learning, which people look for.

I reckon MOOCs might take off. However I also think that the MOOCs of the future will be nothing like they are today.

For the record I am one week into the Coursera course "Web Application Architectures". So far I am not super impressed but it is early days.




*It rolls around on the silicon valley focused twitter feeds and blogs that I read. I never hear it mentioned in the *real world* that I actually live in.

Swink fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Aug 18, 2014

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

Comradephate posted:

I know of no fewer than 5 people from my graduating class in high school who were very openly condescending towards me when I didn't go to college who are now underemployed doing menial jobs or are completely unemployed with their bachelor's degree. Meanwhile I'm making drastically above average income in a very expensive city despite spending 3 years as a semi-nomadic drunk before deciding to actually pursue a career.

I hope their degree makes them feel superior to me, because they certainly need something to comfort them while they make the schedule at Panera. :smug:

I guess on the converse, the people who were :smuggo: about me dropping out of high school to drink and experiment with recreational drugs for a few years instead of going to school (there's a reason why I'm 31 with an 8 year career and it wasn't school -- hi5 wasted youth buddy) are mostly doing OK, if not as world-changing as I hoped for them.

The people who didn't are selling appliances.

There's some overlap (went to college, selling appliances), but it's mostly consistent.

That's probably just the way my friend group split, though, and I'm probably the "didn't go to college, making dramatically above average income despite spending years wasting his life" outlier for them, I guess.

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.
I hate to be that guy, but it's worth pointing out that being hired for your self-taught skills is way more likely to work out if you're born a male of an unobjectionable ethnic group (or at least sound like one on your resume).

Fiendish Dr. Wu
Nov 11, 2010

You done fucked up now!

Swink posted:

For the record I am one week into the Coursera course "Web Application Architectures". So far I am not super impressed but it is early days.

I'm actually taking that one too (alongside my actual BS coursework). I've gotten my wife to sign up as well, who really doesn't know about tech stuff at all. It's been fun so far from that aspect.

Swink
Apr 18, 2006
Left Side <--- Many Whelps
I'm being harsh. He seems to have a handle on the theory (which is the whole reason I'm taking it).

Comradephate
Feb 28, 2009

College Slice

Misogynist posted:

I hate to be that guy, but it's worth pointing out that being hired for your self-taught skills is way more likely to work out if you're born a male of an unobjectionable ethnic group (or at least sound like one on your resume).

Do you have actual evidence of this or are you just looking to stir the pot?

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Misogynist posted:

I hate to be that guy, but it's worth pointing out that being hired for your self-taught skills is way more likely to work out if you're born a male of an unobjectionable ethnic group (or at least sound like one on your resume).

Wasn't the whole thing of 'high school diploma', and then 'college degree required' just an attempt by the white man to keep darkies out of corporate America?

mayodreams
Jul 4, 2003


Hello darkness,
my old friend
A quick diversion from degree chat.

I pulled this from an IBM x346 that has been in service for about 10 years and has be crashing a lot lately:



Nope. Nothing wrong there. Definitely not lovely 3rd party ram with corrosion on the contacts. :psyduck:

Gumball Gumption
Jan 7, 2012

Bob Morales posted:

Wasn't the whole thing of 'high school diploma', and then 'college degree required' just an attempt by the white man to keep darkies out of corporate America?

College degree required does seem to help the rich keep rich and the poor stay poor.

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.
You heard it here, folks. Employers want people with degrees because they're waging class warfare.

GreenNight
Feb 19, 2006
Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

Just answer interviews like this, ok?

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

psydude posted:

You heard it here, folks. Employers want people with degrees because they're waging class warfare.

You don't think that's even partially true?

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

The funny part is how racist companies can be - especially small ones. I live in a city that's 50% black, and I've worked for 5 different companies who were family owned and operated, by white people of course. They vary from construction to transportation to manufacturing.

You know how few black people I've worked with?

First company had ~ 120 employees, two of them were black. Second place had 60 employees, no black people. Third place had 30 employees, no black people. 4th place had 200 employees, 4 black people. Current place has about 70 employees and none of them are black.

So either one of three things are happening here:

1) No black people are applying.
2) No qualified black people are applying.
3) The owners are racist and told HR you shouldn't hire many darkies.

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.
Do you live in the south, by any chance? Because my past two jobs have had plenty of black employees, all of whom had college degrees, so maybe your anecdotal evidence is more grounded in your employers not actively fostering a climate of diversity and less to do with The Man using education to keep people down.

e: The poor quality of primary education in minority neighborhoods is obviously a latent dysfunction of the lingering racism in this country. That being said, I hope you realize how enormous of a leap it is to claim that the rising demand for degreed candidates is part of a plan designed to keep economically disadvantaged people out as opposed to, say, a result of there being more college-educated adults than ever before.

psydude fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Aug 18, 2014

Gumball Gumption
Jan 7, 2012

psydude posted:

You heard it here, folks. Employers want people with degrees because they're waging class warfare.

Nothing that extreme, no one is sitting in their office cackling about all the poor people they are keeping from getting jobs. But it is a lot easier to get a degree if you have money, the price of a degree keeps rising, and it is increasingly becoming the only way to get a for in the door. The price just to get in is getting higher.

Fiendish Dr. Wu
Nov 11, 2010

You done fucked up now!
No black people here, but plenty of minorities. We use lots of Oracle. You get one guess.

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GreenNight
Feb 19, 2006
Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

600 person company. 100 or so in the office, all whites. Rest in the manufacturing plant. All minorities.

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