Bloomberg To HS Grads: Be a Plumber 368
An anonymous reader writes "This being college graduation season, the insights provided by commencement speakers should be familiar by now: find work in a field you're passionate about, don't underestimate your own abilities, aim high, learn to communicate and collaborate with others, give something back to your community. Billionaire Mike Bloomberg, whose current job is Mayor of New York City, evidently decided to break the mold by advising less academically adept youngsters to consider a career in plumbing. High wages, constant demand, no offshore competition. 'Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College — being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal'. Ouch! And hey, like a lawyer, a plumber can always dabble in politics."
Not actually a bad idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as we need competent programmers, DBAs, network administrators, etc., we also need plumbers, carpenters and electricians. Not everyone has the talent or desire for college, and I think we as a society ought to recognize that. Of course, that means less income for colleges and bankers providing student loans, so I'm not surprised that this is being billed as a radical idea.
Know what you want to do, and plan accordingly (Score:5, Insightful)
Why just for less academically adept folks? (Score:3, Insightful)
The most insulting part of his statement is that a hands on trades type job is just for the less academically adept.
While I am partial to electrician work, a trades type job is great for just about anyone.
I am actually getting out of software development full time and working toward becoming a professional electrician because I am very into renewable energy and would love to work outside installing solar and wind equipment.
Electrician, plumber, carpenter, mechanic, heavy equipment operator, landscaper, etc are all great jobs for a person who wants to do them, academically adept or not. Suggesting they are only for "less"er people is insulting, stigmatizing and shameful.
Re:Skils || Trades == Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which highlights another good reason to be a plumber. Everyone understands why the job is necessary but nobody wants to do it. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of IT.
Re:Not actually a bad idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
This right here is what needs to stop: just because you're a plumber, or a carpenter, or an electrician, doesn't mean you're dumb. Likewise, going to college doesn't mean you're smart.
People need to stop looking down on blue collar jobs, and stop treating "going to college" as the highest honor they can bestow upon on themselves. There are way, way, way too many people going to college and doing pointless and ultimately useless degrees. Hell, there are way too many people going to college and doing things like CS degrees who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.
We need to get back to the idea that learning blue collar work is just as socially acceptable as white collar. We need to get away from the idea that you must go to college and get a degree or you're a "failure". We should bring back real apprenticeships; for blue and white collar workers.
Re:Not actually a bad idea. (Score:0, Insightful)
Also, I am waiting for the Latino community to rise up and complain that he is anti-immigrant as this will take work away from all the latinos that hang out in front of home depot.
Re:Not actually a bad idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
:) With only a few exceptions, the best software designers I've worked have degrees in engineering, physics, or mathematics. It drives the people with C.S. degrees nuts. :)
Re:Not actually a bad idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh... I spent 3 1/2 years at a 2 year business school studying programming. Yeah, I partied a bit more than I probably should have. Never did bother to finish up those last 3 classes and get my degree, since I found a good job, which was the goal I had in mind in the first place.
Since then I've had a mostly successful career in IT. I say "mostly" because things got pretty rough these past few years during the recession, but I'm back on track now and making more than I ever have. During my career, I haven't used *one single thing* that I learned in college. Everything I've done that I actually got paid for has been self-taught. In fact, in my current role as a Linux sysadmin for a very large ISP, I spend all day working with things that didn't even exist until I had been out of college for a good 7 years. Even the coding I do, and I do plenty, doesn't benefit much from my programming classes. Aside from bash scripts, everything I write is OO, and that was only just starting to be talked about when I was in school. C++ didn't start getting taken seriously until several years after I was done.
Never, not even once, in over 25 years, has my lack of a college degree even been mentioned in a job interview.
College is valuable (potentially) in only 3 ways:
1.) To get your foot in the door for that first job. IMHO, getting that first job without a degree may be a lot of work, but far less work (and far cheaper) than a degree.
2.) To prove to people of a certain mindset that you "can play the game". It's proof that you can jump through hoops, even when they're ridiculous.
3.) The social aspect. This is the most valuable part. You have 4 years to start building your "network".
It has nothing to do with showing that you can do a job, because college does NOT prepare you to do "real world" work. For the most part, it doesn't even teach you useful skills. Maybe a few "general concepts" that you can apply, but that's about it.
Re:You might think your plumber makes big bucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure Bloomberg wants everyone to become a plumber so he could lower his plumbing costs. That's the ticket.
My brother used to work for Bloomberg the financial company as a programmer and he was getting paid a shitload of money for it right out of school. If Bloomberg was speaking purely in his own self interest, he would be telling everybody to be a programmer so he could lower those costs.
Being a plumber is more secure than anything in IT. It's not a job that can be outsourced and it requires some training, so not anybody can do it right off the bat.
Re:You might think your plumber makes big bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read his comments? He was not saying that everybody becomes a plumber, but that those who are not as academically adept should. I think he is right. If you don't have the grades and you seek a higher education job then most likely you will get a crap job with a big loan, with bs money. However, you could become an awesome plumber and that work cannot be outsourced. It is not a bad idea IMO! The trades are rated too low in America. Guess where trade skills are rately highely? Oh yeah GERMANY! Guess which economy is doing really well? Oh yeah GERMANY...
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Which highlights another good reason to be a plumber. Everyone understands why the job is necessary but nobody wants to do it. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of IT."
Not exactly true. I am about to finish my very late (in age of 33) BSc in CS. Guess how many students (in percentage) choose to learn high level sysadmining or hardware engineering? Yeah, maybe 10% to each (or even less). Sysadmins sometimes have it worst than plumbers. In result, there are very few of them. Hardware engineering is fun, but also much harder than software engineering.
Re:Had you gone to a real College... (Score:2, Insightful)
Based on your defensive posture, I can only draw two possible conclusions.
1.) You are currently a student enrolled in one of those ridiculously priced "leading universities"
or....
2.) You are a professor who either works for one of them, or earned your degree there.
After nearly 3 decades in this line of work, I have never met a coworker or colleague who considered their time in college to be anything other than a gigantic waste of huge sums of money. And that includes colleagues with Masters and Doctorates from "leading universities".
Neither of those things are true. In fact, I'm not American, so my university course was not 'ridiculously priced' at all and did not involve 'huge sums of money'. Maybe your line of work doesn't benefit from anything you could learn on a degree course, and all the skills needed can be picked up by spending a few hundred bucks on books from Amazon.com. I'm sure there are plenty of software development jobs that meet that description. That doesn't mean that nobody benefits from university. Your excessive confidence in your conclusions about why people go to university, why people might defend university education or what people might gain from it are just based on wild generalisations from your experiences and those of the people immediately around you. It's an example of the limitations of 'anecdotal evidence'.
As for 'defensive posture'... You didn't finish your degree and it just so happens that your considered position on universities is that they are worthless. At the first sign of criticism your assumption is that I must have a vested interest. Hmmm...
Re:Also (Score:2, Insightful)
I am contemplating the same thing again as I have done it before.
I was in nuclear power and radiological controls. It just was not fun anymore and the challenge was gone. I went from about $100K year in the late 1990's doing that to roughly $32K in a starting job in IT. My wife has bounced around doing different things as well. Long story short, we are now up to about $175K/year. 12 years into IT and I am up a network manager at a large international company and my wife is an insurance agent.
Guess what, doing IT is starting to not be fun either. It is time to move on again. I've gone as far as I think I want to go with it.
We STILL live in the same house (paid for now) and still drive old POS cars just like when we were making $40K/year. Most of my clothes comes from Target, Wal-Mart or the clearance rack at some department store. The average income in my neighborhood is about $75K per household and we fit right in.
Do not compete with the Jones, keep your recurring expenses low and you will not be a slave to where you work and a specific income level. I tell myself this once a week... If I HAVE to commute to the big city and HAVE to be in IT when I get to my upper 50's (I'm 42 now) to make ends meet, I have FAILED.
Once my 20 something kids finally move out, Home Depot, here I come.