College is not where you find a career. College is where you have fun and drink beer

[Undertoad]

10-15 years ago, the programmers couldn't manage stuff... because it was pretty tricky business just to manage 1-2 servers. Now, systems are better, much easier to run, disk space became cheap, and hardware is commodity. So now full-time system administrators may run 500-1000 systems.

And they may do it in the cloud - which means no need for hardware expertise, no having to know how to wire the server closet.

It goes back and forth. These are good days for developers, but in the years between the Y2K crunch and the Apple revolution, the country had about 1M fewer coders than it does today.

[Undertoad]

It's excuses. I know PHP4, I could just learn object-oriented programming and do PHP5 and then I'd be hireable for that. 6 weeks if I'm not working, 6 months if I am.

Or fuckin Drupal or Wordpress or JQuery, people like that shit.

On the other hand, after chasing resume keywords for over half my lifetime, to get uninspiring jobs in cubicle farms, under Office Space bosses who are miserable and want to share their misery, now you say I should consider moving away from family friends and J... for who for what? I am dog tired of this approach to life.

[infinite monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

It's excuses. I know PHP4, I could just learn object-oriented programming and do PHP5 and then I'd be hireable for that. 6 weeks if I'm not working, 6 months if I am.

Or fuckin Drupal or Wordpress or JQuery, people like that shit.

On the other hand, after chasing resume keywords for over half my lifetime, to get uninspiring jobs in cubicle farms, under Office Space bosses who are miserable and want to share their misery, now you say I should consider moving away from family friends and J... for who for what? I am dog tired of this approach to life.

Seriously. The Job is the be-all end-all purpose in life. If one does not have The Job, then one is stagnating and lazy. Our entire purpose on earth is not to be happy (whatever makes you happy) our purpose is to attain and hold onto The Job. No one cares about your misery, if your misery makes you rethink The Job. You better shuck and jive and jive and shuck your ass off to get and keep The Job, or you might as well crawl into the sewer. When you are old enough to leave The Job, you may have a couple years to enjoy the buck-fitty you put away for your few years alive after The Job. Or, you might die first. No matter, others will fill The Job.

In other words, I hear ya UT, I hear ya!

[Pete Zicato]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

On the other hand, after chasing resume keywords for over half my lifetime, to get uninspiring jobs in cubicle farms, under Office Space bosses who are miserable and want to share their misery, now you say I should consider moving away from family friends and J... for who for what? I am dog tired of this approach to life.

I didn't say you should move. Just that it's an option.

What I heard you saying was that your degree was crap because it won't get you a job anymore. But that's provably false.

I can tell you from experience that there are plenty Office Space bosses out there. But I also know that there are jobs out there without that kind of crap.

But now I'm wondering if you belong in CS. Is there a CS job you'd like to have? If so, what?

[Undertoad]

Thread hijack, it is now all about me!

My life is not a good narrative to make my original point.

Specifically CS as in the Sciencey part of it? The best and brightest of us was supposed to go off to Bell Labs and do work writing compilers, but instead they took the one with the 4.0. I don't think I've done much with the S part of the CS. Not much call for it round here except maybe at the defense contractors.

I would like to be: the guy who designs and runs the website and supports the desktops and laptops of the 20 other people who work there. They would let me write the marketing bits of the website, because Julie? The one who is supposed to be head of marketing? She kinda sucks. I would just write everything, and they would say, oh that's perfect, just leave it like that. And they like me doing desktop support, because I'm genuinely friendly with everyone. And they all talk about me, after that day I figured out how to get all the SKU information out of the Excel and right into the eCommerce thingie. Local hero for that one, and also for when I set up an online time card web thingie that has enough Javascript that they can move numbers around until they add up to 40.

I don't know what that job title is. Is it CS? I guess it doesn't really need a degree, even. Nothing my Algorithms class covered for sure. I don't think they advertise for it. But that's what I would like to be. I would be awesome at it.

[elSicomoro]

I think M's company here in KC is looking for someone like that. The company itself is actually based in Jacksonville, and you might be able to do it remotely.

[infinite monkey]

Would be nice to get a remotion!

[tw]

Originally Posted by Pete Zicato

But now I'm wondering if you belong in CS. Is there a CS job you'd like to have?

What exactly is CS? Many college computer programming courses are about teaching Word, Excel, and Access. That's computer science?

A TV show "Uncover Boss" demonstrates the problem. Company bosses have no idea how the work gets done. A boss must understand what is going on at least three levels below him. When the boss has no idea, then first impressions are more important than what an employee can do. In the case of "Uncover Boss", the employee is rewarded with gifts rather than a boss actually addressing problems he has created.

Many IT bosses have little grasp of how the system works. Beause, in many organizations, its about telling his boss what he wants to hear rather than supporting employees who then better serve customers. In such organizations, losses due what never happened are apparent maybe four or more years later... by not appearing. IOW a boss never learns why he needed the more qualified employee.

So, yes, it is a problem for an educated worker who is 'over qualified'. Especially when a boss only understands Word, Excel, Access, e-mail, and stock quotes. So what really is computer science?

[Pete Zicato]

Originally Posted by tw

What exactly is CS? Many college computer programming courses are about teaching Word, Excel, and Access. That's computer science?

That's bullshit misdirection, TW. Yes, many CS departments provide courses for Word, Excel, etc. but those are for business majors etc.

Here's the current degree program from SPU where I got my degree. See any Excel courses in there?

http://www.spu.edu/acad/UGCatalog/20...CSC&path=MAJCS

Originally Posted by tw

A TV show "Uncover Boss" demonstrates the problem.

It's a bad sign, TW, when you start quoting reality tv for your resources.

Originally Posted by tw

Many IT bosses have little grasp of how the system works.

How long have you worked in IT, TW? Do you have anything to base this on?

I've got 30 years in the field. Some bosses have been great and some bosses have been clueless. It's just the way life is.

[Griff]

This thread is floating around in my head today. I really liked what ph45 said.

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

My two cents would not to try to push your kids into a specific field (to certain extent) but to try to be top tier in whatever field they pick.

#1 is in college doing learning industrial design which she loves and appears to have a lot of directions she could go. I think she should be self employed and find her niche. #2 I worry about because she has a lot of me in her but fortunately smarter. She has time.

My administrator approached me today about a couple opportunities she wants me to consider. The first is starting a behavior focused classroom which county is desperate for and I basically asked for in a letter last month. The second is getting that administration certificate and starting to take the reins. Anyway I have the degrees as union cards and the certificate would be another even if they didn't play out smoothly when I first got them. I've said a lot of things in the past about "if I ran these classrooms" because I know what bad educational systems look like, anyway it may be put up or shut up time. Thing about these opportunities is with all the education, for the immediate future, I'll still be making 1/2 of what Pete does in a field far removed from her Fine Arts degree. College degrees are weird, they're both important and unimportant, its just a matter of how it plays out on the personal level. I'd prolly be better off a wood butcher.

[xoxoxoBruce]

In many (most?) corporate structures some dude in an office far away, decides which positions will require a degree in order for you to apply. But then likely as not the job doesn't relate to the degree, they often don't even specify degree in what. They don't care because they're going to train you to do the job the way they want it done. But they want to be able to brag how many degreed people they have

Boeing did a big push about 10 years ago where they pushed people out of jobs they'd been doing for 15 or 20 years, and replaced them with new college graduates. Well OK, fresh blood, new ideas, more gooder, right? No, they had the people being bumped out, train the new blood to do it exactly the same way, and warned the newbies not to deviate from what they were shown, as much of the methods/systems were specified by government contract. I heard a rumor that using degreed people allowed them to charge the government more for the same work, but couldn't substantiate that.

A friend just got forced out of one of Florida's biggest health care providers. He wrote and administered the programs that kept the pharmacies in seven hospitals supplied, and running smoothly. He even had an office with a door and window... but no degree. They decided to outsource his job to contractors, so they gave him three months to train them and buh bye.

[ZenGum]

The temptation to subtly mistrain your replacements must be very strong.

A degree is a good sign, in that it shows you have been able to stick at a project for three (or more) years and complete it, and jump through all the highly specified and often pointless hoops they make you jump through.

And - especially for the nerds and Asbergerish techie types - all that "having fun and drinking beer" is the development of "soft skills" like actually being able to communicate effectively with people. And maybe to recognise that moment when you've had enough.

[Clodfobble]

Nobody checks up on the things you put in your resume anyway.* Just falsify it. The only moral question is, can you do the job appropriately, safely, and successfully? If so, the degree question is a harmless white lie.


*Except the government. I've been a personal reference for two people getting FBI clearance, and those guys do their homework.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Both Westinghouse and Boeing showed me the transcripts they obtained, and that was for a nobody job. I see in the news, frequently, someone in corporate or government being fired for lying on there resume. But that only came to light after they'd been in the job for some time, often years, and had pissed people off enough to start looking for a way to get rid of them.

[Clodfobble]

And it's not like they could take back those years of salary, or give them any worse punishment than firing them. Take away the job they never would have had if they didn't lie? Not so bad.