Bachelor's Degree: An Unnecessary Path To a Tech Job 287
dcblogs (1096431) writes "A study of New York City's tech workforce found that 44% of jobs in the city's 'tech ecosystem,' or 128,000 jobs, 'are accessible' to people without a Bachelor's degree. This eco-system includes both tech specific jobs and those jobs supported by tech. For instance, a technology specific job that doesn't require a Bachelor's degree might be a computer user support specialist, earning $28.80 an hour, according to this study. Tech industry jobs that do not require a four-year degree and may only need on-the-job training include customer services representatives, at $18.50 an hour, telecom line installer, $37.60 an hour, and sales representatives, $33.60 an hour. The study did not look at 'who is actually sitting in those jobs and whether people are under-employed,' said Kate Wittels, a director at HR&A Advisors, a real-estate and economic-development consulting firm, and report author.. Many people in the 'accessible' non-degree jobs may indeed have degrees. For instance. About 75% of the 25 employees who work at New York Computer Help in Manhattan have a Bachelor's degree. Of those with Bachelor's degrees, about half have IT-related degrees."
So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to earn 1/3 as much as an engineer, and barely enough to survive in NYC, then don't get a degree. Otherwise, go and fucking learn something.
Re:So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to earn 1/3 as much as an engineer, and barely enough to survive in NYC, then don't get a degree.
*sigh*
If someone is looking at college as something that will help them get a job or make more money, then they shouldn't fucking be in college to begin with. Education is meant to better your understanding of the world and everything around you. We need *fewer* people going to college and university, because a lot of them have a "I just want to get a job/make money!" mentality, and that makes colleges and universities lower standards in an effort to get money from the people who want degrees.
Otherwise, go and fucking learn something.
You can learn plenty without spending tons of money, especially in the information age. As someone who has a degree, it's absolutely appalling that hordes of people who shouldn't be in college or university are causing standards to drop. This 'Everybody's gotta go to college!' mentality needs to die, and fast.
Re:So basically... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why? Would the idea that your non-degree earning colleague managed to learn just as much as you without wasting 4 years of their life and tens of thousands of dollars? Do you feel the need to tell yourself you're smart and special because you attended college, and working with someone
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Re:So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Lets look at it like this, If person A can come up with the same results, but put forth half the effort as person B, why shouldnt person A be paid more? (or have to work less hours for the
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If he reached the same position as you did in with less effort, chances are he'll continue reaching the targets he has faster and with less effort. Learn from it, or you're going to be angry and resentful the rest of your career, and as the biggest companies in the industry are run by drop outs you may very well end up working for them.
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the biggest companies in the industry are run by drop outs
Sounds like MBAs really are a worthless degree then.
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Non collegiates generally have gaps in knowledge
Most people from college seem to have those gaps, too. Or do you think that being a college graduate automatically indicates that a person is intelligent or well-informed? It doesn't.
You're talking about college education done well and comparing it to self-education done wrong (otherwise the gaps in necessary knowledge would largely not exist, but there is no way to be 100% informed about everything); that's not a very good comparison.
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Re:So basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I think the elephant in the room is that we need a lesser focus on "higher education" and a greater focus on "trade schools". In fact, that's what's happening already, in a half-assed way, when people have the mentality "I just want to get a job/make money!" They're thinking of our colleges and universities as trade schools, and those schools are, to some extent, setting themselves up to be trade schools.
The only real problem that I see with all of this is that we can't make up our minds what we want. Lots of people want to go to schools that will teach them a trade that will make money, but call it a "trade school" and those same people think that it's beneath them, that it's low-class. They don't like learning a broad spectrum of generalized and abstract concepts, but they've been taught that either you go to college, or you should work the cash register at a fast-food restaurant-- there's no middle ground. There are professions like plumbing, which make decent money but people think are for stupid low-class people, and then professions like IT support which are considered more "professional" though it often amounts to similar work-- you're a mr. fix-it working with computers rather than pipes.
It's in coherent.
Meanwhile, colleges are actually more focused on research dollars, sports teams, and frat parties than providing either a "higher education" or a "trade education", all of which confuses these issues even more. I'm of the opinion that these things impede each other, and we need to begin to separate them back out. Young people who have no interest in studying anything and only want to party should go to cities and communities where they can get drunk and messy, instead of coupling that experience with "education". We should have minor league sports teams which have no college association, and let promising young athletes get jobs in those leagues instead of taking sham courses in big universities. We should look at how we fund and handle research and see if so much of it should be taking place in universities. We develop respectable trade schools for young people to learn a trade (or for older people to retrain in a different trade) for instances where people are looking for practical employable skills rather than abstract knowledge.
All of these things are achievable if only we could get our collective heads out of our asses. Unfortunately, I have very little faith in humanity being able to do that sort of thing.
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This 'Everybody's gotta go to college!' mentality needs to die, and fast.
Yes... but at the hiring authority of corporations first. Whatever credentials they demand, job seekers must provide.
Right: No degree == Bad pay (Score:3)
Exactly!
All the examples are relatively low-paying jobs, not the high-paying jobs that everyone says tech is great for.
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28.80 for support specialist is low paying???
When you live in a place where rent on a 300 square foot shoebox is over $1,200/month, yea, that's kinda low.
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That's a princely amount anywhere outside of a big city, though.
No kidding - I've looked at what $1,200/mo can rent you around these parts, and the short answer is "a fucking mansion. On 20 acres. With your own lake."
Of course, if you live here and have that kind of scrilla laying around, chances are you don't rent, people rent from you.
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so move somewhere where you can get a 2K foot home for under 900 a month like I did,
Way ahead of ya, Hoss. I pay about $600/mo for a 1,400 sq ft home on a quarter acre in town, because I own - even if I didn't, I could rent the same house for less than $750/mo.
I doubled my pay eventhough it stayed the same simply by moving, and i moved into a larger home to bat
That's what happens if you're lucky.
If you're not lucky, your pay gets cut because lower cost-of-living areas also tend to pay less for the same work, but it should even out so that you're still coming out ahead.
If you're unlucky, you'll end up making significantly less than you did in NYC, but the difference in cost-of-living should
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That isn't what a CSci degree is for (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, that said, a lot of support techs clearly would benefit from more formal schooling - but it could be done in a less cost and time consuming manner than a 4 year degree.
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Having said that, one specialty in programming and Software Engineering would benefit greatly from CSci students having some experience with help desk work: User Interface Design.
Everything I know about User Interface Design, I learned in my first two professional jobs where I had direct contact with end users.
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Unless a programmer is working for a very large company, there's a good chance they're in pretty direct contact with their users.
Throwing someone into contact with users doesn't help someone become good at UX. Just look at the multitude of Open Source projects -- most of them interact directly with users and still end up with pretty atrocious UX that is designed based on the programmer's workflow and how easy it is to implement.
You did something wrong. You need to do step A, B, C, and you skipped over B!
Every time I hear this from a developer, I cringe. Good UX is a choice. You can
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Most of them maybe, but the really good ones are not that. Computing science has very little to do with programming.
Re:That isn't what a CSci degree is for (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. Using the term "Computer Science" for what most degree programs teach is purely the result of the growth of the industry. 70 years ago you couldn't get a Computer Science degree. 50 years ago, you could get a Computer Science degree without ever having used an actual computer. 30 years ago, the only degree in computing you could get was Computer Science, and it encompassed the whole of the field. 20 years ago, Computer Science began to mean "software" instead of Electrical Engineering's "hardware". 10 years ago, the field was so broad, so diverse, and encompassed so many disparate technologies that required significant specialization that you could get a specialization certificate on your CS degree. Today, you can get a 4 year Bachelor's in any number of fields including Information Technology (sysadmin, netadmin), Information Systems (DBA, Systems Analysis), Information Management (management for IT), Software Engineering (web design, application programming). Computer Science is again a theoretical area of research and development on the theory of computers. All these other fields born from this CS research once again free it to be what it once was: mathematicians and logicians playing with number machines.
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Of course, the minimum necessary requirements are actually irrelevant in a competitive environment where there are a surplus of over-qualified people.
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There exists people who "aspire to do tech support"?
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Misleading title (Score:5, Informative)
While across the ecosystem, 44% of jobs do not require a Bachelor’s degree, the majority of tech jobs in tech industries require some degree of education. With a Bachelor’s degree, and in some cases, an Associate’s degree, many opportunities exist within the New York City tech ecosystem.
"accessible" (Score:2)
Degree (Score:5, Interesting)
I got a Bachelors in Network Administration from a state school. It wasn't required for my current job, but it certainly helped get me noticed and hired. Beyond that, the main advantage of the degree was having hands-on experience with Cisco gear and server OSes in a simulated production environment. Of course, you could find a training course that does that for much cheaper and without the bullshit lib arts requirements. In the end, I'd say it was worth it because I was able to get it at a reputable state school and my ending loans were about 2/3rds of my first year's salary, which wasn't bad at all. I certainly wouldn't have paid private school tuition for it.
The purpose of universities (Score:2)
In our contemporary world, you can do two things at university: gain knowledge by studying and acquire prestige by graduating. Some people are there for the first, others for the second. For the people who are there for the second reason the degree is nothing more than a leg-up in the hiring process afterwards. This have created a large number of college educated people who, for the purposes of their jobs, don't need to be. The fact that there exist a large number of jobs that don't require a college degree
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If only (Score:3)
If only HR managers understood this or knew that computer science has nothing to do with computers. The entire computer industry was built by college dropouts and is ruled by technology that changes faster then a 4 year degree. Hire people that understand technology and can learn new tech on the run. Degrees are meaningless in tech and are becoming more so in all areas.
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Hire people that understand technology and can learn new tech on the run. Degrees are meaningless in tech and are becoming more so in all areas.
So, how do you propose to do this if those people do not have a considerable body of experience?
Will everyone have to work on some open source project while flipping burgers for years to prove their worth?
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
That's like a driver saying auto mechanics has nothing to do with his job. You might not understand how computer science influences everything you're doing on your job which is probably why your search algorithm results always suck. Just because there are some glaring stellar examples of guys dropping out and making boatloads doesn't make that best path to success. The average IT guy is...average! He's not some 160 IQ natural born leader with a business sense. This Slashdot meme of crapping on formal education needs to stop. Yes, lots of people can drop out or never go to college and make a good living churning out web pages or iPhone apps, but that's not the best path to take.
The best thing for anyone entering the field to do is get a 4 year degree and get the formal education you'll never get on your own. I say that as a guy in the industry for about 12 years who went *back* and finished my degree. I sat through that last 2 years in class almost every day thinking of coding/design errors I'd made in the past based on what I was taught.
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If only HR managers understood this or knew that computer science has nothing to do with computers. The entire computer industry was built by college dropouts and is ruled by technology that changes faster then a 4 year degree. Hire people that understand technology and can learn new tech on the run. Degrees are meaningless in tech and are becoming more so in all areas.
Degrees are not meaningless in Tech. They may be in some specific low end tech jobs, but that's a different question. The purpose of university is to teach you how to learn, communicate with others, and how to write. Granted, a large number of people in the tech world have enough natural curiosity to learn on their own without being taught. However, they miss the breadth of knowledge that a college graduate is exposed to (assuming that the college graduate was actually there to learn and not just party)
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It's possible to get a job without a degree... (Score:5, Insightful)
But honestly, the degree at least helps you get your foot in the door long enough that they may at least be willing to talk to you.
When you are competing with dozens of people for the same job, and if many of them have a degree and you do not, regardless of your actual skill or talent, in my experience it's unfortunately true that the employer probably won't look at your resume any longer than it takes to throw it in the round file.
That said... I've also known people who have lied about their degree in order to get a job... and it hasn't ever worked out for them very well.
It's time consuming, it's expensive, and it'll put you in debt for years to come as you work like an ass to pay it off... but as one who's travelled both roads, I can only say that it's worth it.
Re:It's possible to get a job without a degree... (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience, you won't get an HR person's attention unless you have the alphabet soup after your name. A bachelor's gets the resume out of the round file. A MCSE/CCIE/RHCE gets it scheduled. A CISSP or TS-SCI clearance gets it to the tech guys to be interviewed. In fact, when I got out of college, most interviews went like this:
Interviewer: "Do you have a CISSP or TS-SCI? No? Next in line, please."
It really didn't matter about experience... one could be clueless in IT but have a MCSE, and be further along than someone who had many years in the field, but didn't have the cert.
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If you want a job at a place that values passing tests and towing the line,
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The ironic thing, most of the places were private companies without a government contract. They wanted the security clearance because someone else did the vetting for them.
It isn't how I like to be, but just what narrow piece I saw after graduating college. Without the alphabet soup, you never had a chance of passing the first rounds.
All My Jobs Required a BS at Minimum (Score:2)
That's not my experience in the "tech industry". Every job I've had - Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, Tennessee - have required a BS at minimum. I work with people who don't have a degree, and they are in "tech" positions that pay less and have fewer advancement options.
I guess "Tier One Help Desk" would meet the articles criteria, but who would want to do that job for the rest of your life?
In fact, now that I think about it, TFA is 180 from my experience, not only is higher education critically importa
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I know a number of people, including myself, who started at jobs like that with no degree and did not get stuck as tier one support all their life. Lots of tech jobs claim to require a degree but don't really.
The thing is you have to just realize that "bachelors degree" really is shorthand for "Degree, or reasonable experience". If you don't have experience, they want to see a degree. If you have experience, the degree is often optional.
Just off the top of my head I can think of about 4 people without degre
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Yea, no degree and I'm a Sr Unix Admin. I am investigating pursuing a degree, more for personal education than career advancement though. At this point, I can't see how a degree would improve my chances of keeping my job or getting a different one should this one fail :)
[John]
the real issue.... (Score:3)
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Most of those are H1B bait. Some HR boffin is doing the diligence to set up another round of imported indentured servants.
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Re:Certifications and experience are more importan (Score:4, Interesting)
Having managed myself to generate counter-factual results with such industry certifications, I have zero faith in them. A University may not be your idea of a suitably custom crafted trade school but it does imply a bit more depth than cramming for some multiple guess exam.
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It's just a badge... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Look at it this way. The HR person will have two stacks of resumes. One for people with a degree and one for people without. Odds are the only time they'll delve into the non-degree pile is if they find no one in main stack to fill the position. This isn't to say you MUST have a degree to get a job. I lack one and have been employed for a long time. But I'm realizing that as my age gets up there, it will be desirable to get one for my next job.
I actually saw a job posting for a network engineer that was giving preference to people with a Master's degree.
/. Your killing me (Score:2, Interesting)
Aside from the fact that I saw this load of crap on reddit awhile ago, this summary is painful to read again. The "is accessible" just made me want to cringe. Any job is accessible without a degree when there is no legal requirement for the practitioner to have a degree. You might as well post that 44% of the 128,000 jobs are prime candidates for H1B. I can spin these figures too.
You don't need a college degree .. (Score:2)
... to be a computer programmer or sys admin or DBA. Many short-sighted companies may not hire you, but why do you want to work for a company that cares more about a piece of paper than the abilities of it's staff. Be willing to start at the bottom so you can spend 4 years having someone else train you. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for it yourself.
After several years as in those fields, you won't need a degree to become an engineer or architect. Anything you might have learned 10 years earlier
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The Consequence (Score:4, Insightful)
So it's the "tech industry", so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
What jobs are they looking at here?
computer user support specialist
customer services representatives
telecom line installer
sales representatives
(With new york city wages)
So what you're saying is that people working in the shit-end of the industry don't need the same credentials as the people working the high-paying end of the industry?
Golly gosh-darn!
It's like manager at the local McDonalds doesn't need to have the same pedigree as the CEO of McDonalds corporate.
And maybe... just maybe... that night-shift manager has just about the same chances of rising to CEO of McDonalds as the help-desk wage-slave has of becoming the lead software architect.
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Director of Information Security, six-figure income, no degree. Not exactly the "shit-end of the industry". I've known IT managers and directors (and one CSO) who can make the same claim.
Maybe... just maybe... there are career ladders in IT and IS that don't lead to staring at a monitor for hours on end writing algorithms that the users will break.
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As someone who hires and manages tech support workers (and has done so for a few different companies), I can say that the point being made isn't as trite as all of that. When I look at a resume or interview someone, I don't ultimately pay very much attention to the education. The reason why is that most degrees are virtually useless for the work.
I've known and hired people who have degrees related to computers/engineering, and others who have no degree or have a degree in something completely irrelevant
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I did help desk work for three years and I still forget this lesson sometimes since I switched to software dev. DID YOU REBOOT should be stapled on everyone's wall in every office on th
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There's some truth to that, though a lot of things don't actually require a reboot-- even when they say they do. One of the secrets is that sometimes, asking someone to reboot is just a customer support tactic. For example, if I have 5 things to do in the next hour, and only time to do four of them, I might ask one of them to wait until they have time to save all of their work, reboot the computer, and check to see if they're still having problems. I might not expect that rebooting will fix the problem,
15 years experience only! (Score:2)
Reading through the comments did no one else see that in the article the company that was focused on only recruited people with 15 years industry experience?! I suppose the owner wants people to work for 15 years without pay as an intern before getting a position at his company? Looks like there are just too many people for every decent job.
Like many of us, I am in tech. (Score:3)
Yes, if your company makes it's money making and selling software or hardware, SOME of the high end jobs are different. Similarly, the guys that make toilets have some high end jobs that are not blue collar workers.
But most of us don't write the big code. Instead we install, maintain and fix stuff that some idiot took a big dump in.
We are plumbers, not Management. Hell, we even hate the 'suits'.
For the majority of jobs, we don't need a BA. Honestly, my BA was in political science, not computer science. Yes, I took post-graduate classes, yes I taught myself. But NOTHING I learned from teachers at my university is essential to my job.
problem of academia not tech (Score:5, Interesting)
this is a problem ****across academic disciplines**** and not in any way related to tech specifically.
dropping out of college is a reductive concept...and using people like Jobs or Gates as examples is patently foolish
if you realize your college **program** sucks, transfer to one that doesnt
if you realize your career goals cannot be reached through a degree, then drop out
if you want to have a **career** in tech, get a degree in tech
these stupid studies are so reductive & leave out so many salient factors...disregard!
What exactly is a "tech industry job"? (Score:2)
Tech industry jobs that do not require a four-year degree and may only need on-the-job training include customer services representatives, at $18.50 an hour, telecom line installer, $37.60 an hour, and sales representatives, $33.60 an hour.
There seems to be some confusion here. What exactly constitutes a "tech industry job"? I wouldn't consider any of the above three positions to be that. Customer service (as opposed to technical support) is a low-paid non-technical job that usually involves reading off
Other than NY? (Score:2)
telecom line installer, $37.60
and think WTF have spent the past 10 years doing??? It took me 10 years, a degree, tons of hours of work, to get my salary up to that level and I am sure I could have been running some RG-58 pretty efficiently for the past 10 years.
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It took me 10 years, a degree, tons of hours of work, to get my salary up to that level and I am sure I could have been running some RG-58 pretty efficiently for the past 10 years.
Do you want to be digging trenches, fishing wires through walls, and squeezing yourself into tiny crawlspaces and/or attics full of sharp points, mold, and vermin?
Electricians get paid good money, too, and for the same reason – it's a difficult trade job that requires both physical dexterity and a reasonable level of intel
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Double.
You have to pretty much double your salary to be equivlent to working in NY. The cost of living is twice as much.
So $37/hr is more like $18.5/hr here in the midwest. Which is still pretty damn good pay for the sort of work involved, but not what I'm making as an engineer.
One problem with that (Score:2)
Except some companies, like HP, flat out will not hire unless you have a degree.
It is standard HR practice to use whether you have completed college as a criteria for hiring.
It's true - most programmers don't need college (Score:4, Insightful)
In my long experience as a coder, systems architect, and manager of teams, I have found that for most programming jobs a college degree in CS just isn't necessary. In my early days, few programmers or 'software engineers' even had CS degrees - we had history majors, music majors, a few math majors, etc. Music majors tend to do quite well as they are attracted to patterns and elegance.
Especially today, web programming is rarely concerned with developing deep algorithms, rather with assembling a set of tools. So a mechanical mind may do quite nicely, and a strong desire to make sure things are correct given all possible inputs - like an accountant, a good programmer won't be satisfied unless every 'penny' is accounted for.
When hiring, I often found the CS majors as having an inflated sense of their own abilities, and a general lack of knowledge of how programming is generally done in the real world - hacking on some other schmuck's broken legacy code that nobody can figure out. And a kid who started programming in high school and just kept working at it may have five years of real experience before they get their first job, and does it because he/she can't _stop_ doing it.
The company I work for now has a chief programmer who started writing games in high school, never went to college. He's pretty good, though he needs more real world experience to see how to prevent problems - that's the hardest thing, knowing enough and gettin the habits to avoid the bugs in the first place, which is only possible AFAIK in just experience.
Once they are in the job, then I would definitely encourage, even require, continuing education - go ahead and take some classes, read the books, try things out. Then they will be learning the algorithms, the techniques, in the context of what they already know.
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When hiring, I often found the CS majors as having an inflated sense of their own abilities, and a general lack of knowledge of how programming is generally done in the real world - hacking on some other schmuck's broken legacy code that nobody can figure out. And a kid who started programming in high school and just kept working at it may have five years of real experience before they get their first job, and does it because he/she can't _stop_ doing it.
I'm really sick of how this seems to come up every time every time people debate the merits of a CS degree. Does it occur to nobody that maybe, just maybe, a fair chunk of the students who chose CS in college are also the kids who started programming in high school (or even earlier!) and have a fair amount of practical experience before they ever get hired because they work on their own projects? And that maybe their CS degree helped open their eyes to new ideas and furthered their learning? I don't unde
Too Broad a Scope (Score:3)
The phrase "tech job" is often used without distinguishing between engineering-like jobs and technicians' jobs. This study goes further still, including "jobs supported by technology" - given how technological out society has become, that could be a very broad group.
during slow economies credentials count more (Score:2)
Their examples (Score:2)
Of course you don't need a bachelors for a job that has little critical thinking requirements. If you want a secure job that pays well, is salary, and has good benefits, you may want a bachelors degree.
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I do. Actually, slightly higher at the moment.
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My total benefits put me in the top 25% of industry average for my position and region (systems engineering manager in the midwest). If you're consistently making below industry average then you are either a very poor negotiator, your skills are below average in value, or you value something else about the jobs you take more than monetary compensation.
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I've been trying to find people in the tech industry who actually make these "industry average" salaries pushed out by roberthalf/etc ... so far, no luck.
The salary numbers come from surveys, and the employees surveyed have an obvious incentive to inflate the numbers.
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Are you in the same region as those surveyed? These are all in NYC where you have to have a wage like this to even come close to affording a tiny apartment. The same pay in iowa would have you living in a pretty large house, its all relative. Same would go for california tech jobs, so the majority of people filling out these surveys are going to be where the majority of these tech workers live (NYC and california) so obviously they are going to appear inflated to anyone living outside of those areas
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I don't know the ins and outs of H1B, but don't they usually require a master degree?
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I don't know the ins and outs of H1B, but don't they usually require a master degree?
No.
If I remember right, a 1 year TN visa for a Canadian required either a 4-year degree, a 2 year degree + 3 years experience, or 5 years of experience. I could be wrong, but I believe that the requirements for a H1B are similar.
Re:H1B - a path to a Tech Job (Score:5, Informative)
Yes but a TN visa is not the same as an H1-B visa. The TN is intended to be used as a temporary work permit and has to be renewed annually. AFAIK, it can be renewed indefinately. If you're Canadian then you're in luck. Unlike many other countries there is no annual limit on the number of TN visas issued. Countries like India and China typically have 5-6 year backlogs (or longer) due to quotas.So as long as you're not looking for permanant residency you can get a TN and just keep renewing it.
If you want to be on the path for "permanent residency" then you need to get an H1-B visa. Which, of course, is more difficult to get. But once you get it, it's good for 6 years. It can only be renewed once. But having an H1-B is a direct path to citizenship. The hard part is getting the H1-B. After that, getting citizenship is easy. You don't even need an attorney. I did mine myself.
It's possible to get an H1-B without a Bachelors degree if you have sufficient experience and you can show that there is a shortage of skills in your particular area.
Re:H1B - a path to a Tech Job (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike many other countries there is no annual limit on the number of TN visas issued. Countries like India and China typically have 5-6 year backlogs (or longer) due to quotas.So as long as you're not looking for permanant residency you can get a TN and just keep renewing it. If you want to be on the path for "permanent residency" then you need to get an H1-B visa. Which, of course, is more difficult to get. But once you get it, it's good for 6 years. It can only be renewed once. But having an H1-B is a direct path to citizenship. The hard part is getting the H1-B. After that, getting citizenship is easy. You don't even need an attorney. I did mine myself.
You need to get your facts straight.
A: There is no 5-6 year backlog for TN visas for India and China. India and Chinese nationals are not eligible as primary applicant for a TN visa.
B: You could be referring to H1-B visas, but then you would still be mistaken as there is no 5-6 year backlog for those either. H1-B visas are processed on a first-come first-serve basis until the annual limit is reached or when a high number of applications is received (all applications in the first week will usually be put in a lottery system). Unlucky applicants can try again next FY.
C: H1-B is not a direct path to citizenship. The path from H1-B to citizenship requires permanent residence, which requires a sponsoring employer.
D: I suspect you are not being truthful when you say "I did mine myself". That is very difficult, as you generally need an employer to sponsor your permanent residence (form I-140), and BTW, the same goes for your H1-B (form I-129). The only exceptions to the I-140 sponsoring requirements are people who have an extraordinary ability (EB1-A category). If you are able to file all the required paperwork yourself and get it approved, then you are truly extraordinary and I humbly bow to you.
E: It is the permanent residence part that has a huge backlogs, up to 8 years for certain countries.
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Re:Modded down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shows where the bias is here! Obviously, we don't have ANY qualified persons in the US for this GIANT SURPLUS of jobs that we have with the employment numbers DECREASING?!?! So, let's bring some cheap foreigners that we don't have to even pay minimum wage. Let's bring LOTS of them to use Suckerberg's fwd.us propaganda.
Oh there are lots of candidates, but they want to be paid first world wages. That's the real issue.
Re:Modded down? (Score:5, Insightful)
or you can turn it the other way around, ask the person why he wants to get paid 33$ or 37$ an hour in the first place as I think this is a very high amount to get paid. I could assume that over 50% of a paycheck goes to the house, appartment or mortgage then the problem ain't the paycheck alone but rather what he pays with it. Don't pay for waht you can't afford is what I can tell from lots of people. They got 3 floor house when they can alone afford a garden house anyways.
It's NYC. $37/hour doesn't go that far, especially if you have a family.
Re:Modded down? (Score:5, Informative)
or you can turn it the other way around, ask the person why he wants to get paid 33$ or 37$ an hour in the first place as I think this is a very high amount to get paid. I could assume that over 50% of a paycheck goes to the house, appartment or mortgage then the problem ain't the paycheck alone but rather what he pays with it. Don't pay for waht you can't afford is what I can tell from lots of people. They got 3 floor house when they can alone afford a garden house anyways.
It's NYC. $37/hour doesn't go that far, especially if you have a family.
Then it might be time to move. Back in the nineties I moved out of the San Francisco bay area, where I had lived most of my life, because I took a hard look at the cost of living and the chances of ever owning a home, and decided that my salary as an engineer would never get me out of the apartment, much less raise a family. Finding a high tech job at the same salary in an area with lower cost of living was like getting a huge raise. And the quality of life is higher, the level of crime is much lower, and there's significantly less traffic. Of course, the temperatures and weather vary dramatically from the bay area, but the other things made it worth the trade, and we can always visit.
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I can certainly see an argument for moving, but the poster I was replying to suggested that the only reason people might need more than that kind of wage (roughly $80k / year) would be because they're wasting it on luxuries like a massive house or some such. Which is not the case.
I agree with that. It's a classic problem -- a high cost of living in a given area tends to either drive wages up beyond national average, or drive living conditions down compared to the same career opportunities in other areas. Usually a combination of these.
I still keep in touch with a few people in the Bay Area, and the only ones who own a home live many miles to the east and endure an hours-long daily commute. Most are still renting apartments well into middle age. A few have invested in condos, whi
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or you can turn it the other way around, ask the person why he wants to get paid 33$ or 37$ an hour in the first place as I think this is a very high amount to get paid. I could assume that over 50% of a paycheck goes to the house, appartment or mortgage then the problem ain't the paycheck alone but rather what he pays with it. Don't pay for waht you can't afford is what I can tell from lots of people. They got 3 floor house when they can alone afford a garden house anyways.
Or you have, say, a family, and your children have a desire and aptitude for fields that really do need a college degree. Or should only the children of the ruling class get to aspire to something other than a phone tech gig?
Re:Modded down? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or we could turn it around again and point and laugh at losers like you who think everyone should be psychic and not buy homes with a 30 year mortgage because they should see that 15 years in the future some cretin will say "why should this person get paid $33 or $37 an hour" and work to cut their pay.
What does your crystal ball see in your future?
Mine sees wages continuing to deflate. Of all my friends during dot com boom, only two of us kept our houses after the bust. He, because he fully committed his salary at the time and now owns it outright, and me because I bought a smaller house in a child friendly neighborhood, and managed to find enough work post boom to keep up payments. Those who bought huge show pieces in gated hives are all gone now. Living in apartments or had moved out of state looking for work, or in very rare cases moved into sales or management. And don't let the rhetoric fool you -- sales and upper management are worked like dogs, constantly aware that they need to justify their inflated salaries or be replaced at a moment's notice.
My crystal ball sees a continuing flood of third world workers willing to accept convenience store salaries, and a lot more locals out of work. My boss actually brags in status meetings how much money he's saved with H1B workers, and how he intends to hire them whenever possible. (I'm a "legacy employee" grimly determined to hang onto my job.) In the meantime, morale has never been lower, communication suffers, and project continuity is almost nonexistent. But as long as the practice looks profitable on the short term, it will continue.
Part of me thinks that business is running mostly on inertia at the moment. Eventually we'll reach the point where consumers can't afford the non-essential trinkets that make so much money, because there aren't jobs anymore that pay enough to afford them. Currently it's a downward spiral, with companies paying less, causing consumers to have less to spend, reducing sales, which cause companies to find more cost cutting measures. (Currently, the biggest fad of which is hiring third world workers.) In the meantime, it's just a different kind of race to the bottom.
Oh, and I'm not just sitting around waiting for the axe to fall. I'm working on starting a new business in a completely different kind of work, one that involves directly interfacing with people, a skill that H1B employees generally lack. As a local, communication skills are your biggest advantage. Don't forget that, it might become useful some day.
Re:Modded down? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Modded down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone studied long term survival/performance of businesses that went whole-hog into H1B versus businesses that opted for local workers and paying them to keep high quality?
That's a truly excellent question. Not as far as I know. It's possible that the phenomenon has not been going on long enough for the effects to be apparent from outside the company. Big corporations tend to have a lot of inertia. I think that's the only reason HP still exists as a company.
Re:Modded down? (Score:5, Informative)
I have a different view on this matter and it's very much linked to my experience and not necessarily what is actually happening.
When I was working as a supervisor in a call centre for a well know h/w manufacturer, we were struggling to keep staff because pay was too low. Increasing pay was not an option as the product revenues were way too low and support is just an overhead nobody wants to pay for. An option would have been selling the products for more but that would mean less product sales. At the end of the day due to shortage of staff (due to better jobs available out there) and the requirement for cheap support it was almost fully outsourced.
All in all, this problem is caused by each person's greed. Here's why I say this. Lets say you go to Best Buy to purchased a gaming mouse. If you have the same mouse with 2 options: 1) $40 with support from Asia, 2) $45 with support from North America. I can assure you that most consumers will pick option 1. This is where we fall flat on our faces.
Why is management making these decisions? They are doing their jobs. Even if they know how harmful it is to our working class, they still have to do it. Companies pay their managers well to do this. Saving money is an important part of management and is one of the easiest metrics to measure. In the long run managers will be next on the list but for now they are safe.
If you look at TED talks there is one that somewhat covers this topic. It talks about how outsourcing jobs will eventually cause economies to level out. This obviously isn't good for us right now since we are at the top of the podium but we can hope that within 15 - 20 years things will have leveled off.
For now my only advice to anybody working a job is: Work hard because if you give management a reason to outsource, they will.
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The problem with this thinking is that outsourcing jobs reduces the number of people, holistically, who can afford to buy non-essential products. So eventually, your sales go down anyway. Perhaps not right away, especially if you were on the leading edge of the outsourcing curve, but it's inevitable.
A "gaming mouse" (to use your example) assumes people who (a) have the free time to play games, (b) have the discretionary income to buy games, (what are computer games, still $60 per seat?) and (c) have eno
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So 66% of tech jobs are not available to you without a bachelors degree?
The remainder is 56%, not 66%... and of those 56%, we don't know how many of them are accessible with an B.Sc but require, for example, an M.Sc.
But of course, your point remains...education gives you much more job opportunities.
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Companies are not interested in wasting time teaching you skills on the job if they can avoid it.