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I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

25 pointsby GlennCSmithover 10 years ago

16 comments

kylloover 10 years ago
<i>&quot;Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?&quot;</i><p>Maybe it&#x27;s a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it&#x27;s just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for the academic field of computer science if the undergraduate curriculum focused on how to use current tools like Eclipse or Ruby on Rails or Angular.js. Universities are designed to give you a firm grounding in the fundamental concepts, which should give you the ability to understand whatever tools are in fashion in the industry with relative ease. Besides, if you&#x27;re not doing any hacking in your free time outside of class anyway, you&#x27;re probably not cut out for this career.
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throwaway283719over 10 years ago
You might get the impression that the author studied engineering (&quot;<i>I studied engineering, not English...</i>&quot;) or perhaps computer science (&quot;<i>...graduated at the top of my class in computer science...</i>&quot;) whereas a quick look at his LinkedIn profile shows that he studied Management Information Systems[0] which, as far as I can tell, is a non-degree along the same lines as &quot;Marketing&quot; or &quot;Media and Journalism&quot; i.e. light on technical skills and heavy on jargon and buzzwords.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.smeal.psu.edu/scis/mis-undergrad" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smeal.psu.edu&#x2F;scis&#x2F;mis-undergrad</a>
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magiceover 10 years ago
Yet-another-whining-about-college-education. Frankly, this is the most appropriate place to scream, &quot;get a job, man.&quot;<p>I never understanding these complains about how bad college education is. We talking about America here, the land of individualism, of self-interest, of self-discovery. It seems like everyone expects 5-year-old kids to pace their studies. Yet, funnily, if it&#x27;s college, the professors have to decide what the students need for &quot;real world.&quot; What gives? So elementary pupils know what they need to learn, but college students (aka 18+) do not?<p>On a closely related note: half of all technology workers have no formal education, the article said. Wait, if those workers can learn by themselves, can&#x27;t our precious, innocent, poorly taught college students get off their behinds and study those, too? Rather than whining about how their professors are not familiar with, you know, &quot;real-world&quot; experience, why not focus on what they are familiar with? Can you go out to a real world and expect those to know the greatest and latest algorithms and languages and formal definitions, their pros and cons and applications? Or how, says, Windows applications and AJAX applications are similar and different. Or a thousands of those long-term researches that businesses just can&#x27;t afford to do. No. That&#x27;s why we need professors and researchers.<p>Geez. Get a job, will ya?
cowsandmilkover 10 years ago
Author claims to have studied engineering, but seems to be absolutely unaware of co-op programs which almost all engineering schools have. Some, like Northeastern University, even require you to do a co-op[1]. I&#x27;ve worked with Northeastern students at pharma companies and they dive into the belly of the beast when they they spend six months at a company. Often, they become so integral, they get hired after they graduate to keep doing what they did during their co-op.<p>Or an alternative model, going back to 1916, is MIT&#x27;s Practice school[2], where graduate students go into factories and apply their training on specific projects.<p>This reads largely like someone who is ignorant of the opportunities that were probably present at Penn State, assuming that a degree would just get him a job.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.northeastern.edu/coop/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.northeastern.edu&#x2F;coop&#x2F;</a> [2] <a href="http://web.mit.edu/cheme/academics/practice/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.mit.edu&#x2F;cheme&#x2F;academics&#x2F;practice&#x2F;</a>
felipellrochaover 10 years ago
&quot;To find real work, I had to teach myself new technologies and skills outside of class, and it wasn’t easy.&quot;<p>What the hell was this guy expecting? &quot;Hey, guys! I just graduated! Let the money river flow!&quot;?
GlennCSmithover 10 years ago
Reading the article raised tangential questions for me: How comfortable is it for someone who&#x27;s not a programmer by temperament or interest to get a computer science degree in college? Or, alternately, what percentage of computer science grads simply aren&#x27;t programmers? I&#x27;ve never really thought about this but now I&#x27;m wondering!
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buckbovaover 10 years ago
I finished my bachelors in CS at a state school while working in an unrelated field. I couldn&#x27;t get a job programming a VCR out of school. My school was not prestigious. I had no idea how to interview. This was over a decade ago now.<p>I got a job working telephone tech support for a networking company, hardly worth my time. Nearly two years later i got a job as a data analyst through a friend of a friend, working in SQL server and writing VB6 apps.<p>I should have spent some time researching and contacting companies while I was a junior and senior in college. I figured, like the OP, champagne would rain down from the heavens when I left school. It did not.<p>But there is hope. Keep plodding forward. What I learned in college has helped me through the years and it does still look good on the resume.
Glyptodonover 10 years ago
Idiot MIS major is &#x27;CEO&#x27; of his own company but can&#x27;t find a job... And then writes an article where he pretends to be an Engineering&#x2F;CS major.<p>I feel like the Washington Post ought to be embarrassed to have printed this.
j_sover 10 years ago
It is unfortunate that this article gets featured when the author is obviously blowing smoke; it would be great to hear from someone actually in this boat.<p>The comments there pointed out another article by the same author last year, explaining how he turned down multiple jobs to start his own web design company: <a href="http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2013/09/heres_why_why_more_and_more_college_grads_are_tossing_aside_their_resumes_and_embracing_entrepreneur.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pennlive.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;heres_why_why_more_a...</a>
Balgairover 10 years ago
&quot;...a 2006 study of college professors in STEM fields showed that a whopping 59.8 percent hadn’t had any job experience in their industry. That means that a large portion of the professors tasked with teaching college grads how to become marketers, managers and salespeople have never marketed anything, managed anyone or sold anything at all.&quot;<p>Come on HN, you guys missed this cherry? I do like that you dug through the 22 year old&#x27;s Linkedin profile to get his real degree, but yall missed a pretty big logical flaw there.<p>That said, there is a lot to analyze about the poor kid. First, he thinks that spending a year unemployed is abnormal. Granted the guy was in State College for a long time, and that is a pocket universe filled with football, cheap beer and cheaper dates. He&#x27;s been sheltered with the Penn State pride and now is finally realizing that you gotta kiss a lot more ass than what he is used to in order to make it through an interview.<p>Second, he&#x27;s at least misleading readers to his actual degree (as yall sought out online) and he thinks thats ok to do on a national level. A simple google search is going to ruin this guy. But as a voting, draft-eligible citizen, he&#x27;s allowed to pave his own path.<p>Third, he&#x27;s naive at best, ignorant at worst. Honestly, he seems harmless, and that is not going to cut it for the guy now that he dug this grave. He&#x27;s got to get some beating in here before he realizes that he is the only one that will straighten his own back.<p>Best wishes to the poor guy. As John Wayne said: Life is hard, but its a lot harder when you&#x27;re stupid.
katorover 10 years ago
&gt; 47 percent of the technology jobs in New York City no longer require any college education at all.<p>I&#x27;ve done a lot of hiring over the years and recently in NYC. I can say in general I&#x27;ve always hired for Attitude and Aptitude. I can teach you anything if you have the right Attitude. I can&#x27;t teach you to have a good Attitude and I can&#x27;t make you have a better Aptitude.<p>One very real challenge in NYC is that big players are soaking up most of tech talent and there is a ground war between financial technology companies and other start-ups. That pressure has caused companies to go back to the drawing board on how they qualify candidates. For a while recruiters wouldn’t even look at a person without seeing some lofty education background in a resume. Now they’re looking for the scrappy problem solver that might be savvy based on their recent work experience.<p>I find this interesting because when I started in technology 30 years ago I had a hard time hiring for my companies and developed this “Attitude+Aptitude” concept with my teams. Over time it seemed like it was getting harder for people to get into technology jobs because it became accepted principle that you had to hire people with CS degrees to ensure success. Of course that was BS when it happened and I’ve always fought against it over the years. One of the best things for me about hiring in NYC was being able to tell the recruiting team what I was looking for and to tell them to stop looking for just CS degrees.<p>Recently I took a position as CTO in a San Francisco HQ’d start-up. I’ve been talking to my engineering team on how we filter candidates, again I’m preaching A+A but its clear they’ve been taught to look for CS degrees and Math majors. I’m working with them to broaden their thinking. I think this is an example that in general people are lazy about hiring and they’ll use anything they can as an excuse to not invest in finding out if a candidate is the right person. It’s tough, we’re all busy and have yet another meeting to run to or another customer call to deal with. It’s easy to think hiring is a pain and distraction from what you’re doing today. But, let’s be clear, the single most important thing you can do is scale your teams and if you don’t hire they’ll never scale and you’ll fail. To me the most important thing you can do in a company is hire well. The second most important thing is fire well, let people go if they’re not working out. You’re not doing them any favors and in the end their life will be better if they can find a place they fit in and can be successful and your world will be more successful if you focus on building a team that is a well oiled machine that smashes through problems like a hot knife through butter.
comrhover 10 years ago
I studied English and not engineering and had no problem finding a job in NYC as a programmer.
tom_scraceover 10 years ago
He says he studied engineering. But he didn&#x27;t. He studied computer science. And therein lies the root of his confusion.
notjustanymikeover 10 years ago
Maybe he should have picked a better major. No one takes an MIS degree seriously.
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squidmccactusover 10 years ago
Silly engineer, English is just another name for &quot;Pre-Law&quot;.
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dontbeabitchover 10 years ago
go flip burgers