patrick.net

I wonder why people are still loading up on debt and get college degrees. Sounds like a bad investment to me.

Perhaps erudition should replace education?

Peter P says

I wonder why people are still loading up on debt and get college degrees. Sounds like a bad investment to me.

Perhaps erudition should replace education?

Well, here's London Univ's distance program for a low tuition:

(http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/lse/bsc-economics)

It is possible to work internships and do a UK program, like above, and then, fulfill the HR requirements, when you switch jobs.

Rin says

Well, these are the English programs at those schools, basically designed to make 'em more International and attract UK and Commonwealth students. And yes, you do need to spend more time there, since there are a couple of added years, to learn some of the local language, for the clinical rotations. But the costs, even with the added time, is still less than $70K overall.

Can't you work and go to school there, to help defray the costs?

zzyzzx says

Can't you work and go to school there, to help defray the costs?

I can't see how that would be possible, without a type of telecommuting gig back at home.

Rin says

I can't see how that would be possible, without a type of telecommuting gig back at home.

OK, so if one goes to one of these schools, it not possible to get a job locally because unemployment is so high?

tts says

Is a college degree necessary for work that was done by OJT's for decades just fine? Not really no. However if the employer decides that it suddenly is necessary, then that no gets changed to yes. Which is exactly what has been happening for years now but has particularly become prevalent recently, the Great Recession has drastically accelerated the credentialism trends.

But at the same point if that's what the market wants...

Competition still exists for employees. OJT means time, money and energy and frankly not all employers want to do that. An organization could have a standardized test to weed some weak applicants out but that would cost money and time as well. So a degree is the baseline standard (undergrad usually).

Let's say one company decides it wants better employees. So it hikes requirements and hikes salaries. People from other companies leave to go to it. Eventually the heat is felt by others who do the same. Repeat for a few decades.

Meanwhile you have other checks that creeped in since the 80's. By the 90's most did drug tests. Now they have criminal background. Pepsi got in trouble for not considering those that were arrested...not tried but just arrested even on a bad charge. Soon it will be credit checks if you work in finance or even to be a cashier.CaptainShuddup says

I laugh at your chart that suggests that Computer Science jobs start at 34K. Photoshop novice make more than that, designing Facebook pages.

Huh? Ever hear of elance.com Computers are world wide and so is the internet. Offshoring pretty much eliminated much of the IT sector starting a decade or so ago. What specifically can be said about code made in the USA vs that of India, South Africa, Russia or Brazil? It is non physical work and as such does not require it to be performed in the USA. You can get programming work for probably 66% less than what you see in the USA. And there is no social security, medicare, health insurance, 401k etc.

zzyzzx says

Rin says

I can't see how that would be possible, without a type of telecommuting gig back at home.

OK, so if one goes to one of these schools, it not possible to get a job locally because unemployment is so high?

I think it goes a bit beyond that. For the most part, our collective experiences are designed to move from let's say Rochester NY to Houston TX, and find some equivalent types of jobs, given a location change within the US or Canada. The other aspect is the color of the local industries; Rochester is a part of the upstate NY 'rust belt', whereas Houston is the up and coming energy town, and thus, relevant experiences at let's say Eastman, may result in a major pay hike, upon getting hired by Exxon-Mobil in TX. That's a huge boost for one's career in petrochemicals. The USA still has this type of career mobility, if you're adventurous.

In much of Europe, however, one generally needs a contact on the inside to get hired. The place typically frowns upon newcomers, at least in terms of the whole white collar hiring space. Now, this isn't saying that US based multinational corps may not hire you, but if your focus is medical school, I can't imagine how one could fit together an ex-pat job with that of a demanding full time program.

mdovell says

What specifically can be said about code made in the USA vs that of India, South Africa, Russia or Brazil?

Wrong, that sentiment was so 2001, America tried that. The problem with off shoring IT work is the programmer that actually knows about the project is at home sleeping off the full day's work of coding he did while we were sleeping in the US. The folks available for QA and support in their Wee hours which are our prime office and meeting hours. Are not the on top of their game.
The result is the useless auto check out cashier machines that make you take every thing out of the bagging area and start over. And ultimately a live cashier physically scanning your order anyway.

Foreign developers don't worry me, American business men are now willing to pay more to have their developers in the same country if not the same building. So at any moments notice, they can have that person present to defend, fix or enlighten them on the project at hand.

They want results NOW.

I spent a year out of work, while corporate America figured out they can't have their domain schema developed in India. Software that you intend to package yes that works. But not for software than runs the enterprise and manages jobs and data tasks.

B-b-but, what about the 1 Billion customers and the "High Tech Jobs of the Future?"

Do you mean the Politicians and Corporations that pushed for NAFTA, WTO, and Offshoring and Lowest Tariff Rates in History lied to us? They only wanted to move abroad for cheap labor to sell back to the US, not to sell US goods abroad?

Seems to me salaries have stagnated for more than a decade while benefits got slashed, work hours grew longer, and jobs became more scarce.

Looks like the policy ain't working for the general welfare. But it is working for the top 1%, and that makes the Republicans and Democrats very happy.

BTW. Apple only employs 80,000 worldwide, and how many of them are working at the Genius Bar or are working the mail room below middle class income levels?

Compare that to any auto maker, today or back then, in number of jobs and median wage.

Manufacturing is wealth. Porn, Donuts, Financial Fraud, and Copyrighted Animated Characters can not support 310M people.

CaptainShuddup says

, that sentiment was so 2001, America tried that. The problem with off shoring IT work is the programmer that actually knows about the project is at home sleeping off the full day's work of coding he did while we were sleeping in the US. The folks available for QA and support in their Wee hours which are our prime office and meeting hours. Are not the on top of their game.

Captain, the reason why that 1st round of IT offshoring failed was that corporate America, like a herd of lemmings, did exactly the same thing w/o considering the risks. They all poured their collective capitals into turning Bangalore-India Inc, into the next South Korea or Taiwan, but for software instead of firmware. Well, that was a joke as India, being a former commodities player for the British Empire, was never an end-to-end solutions provider. Instead, it was a body shop and that aspect of their business culture hadn't changed since Queen Victoria's time. Naturally, software is a value added service, code by itself, is not a *silk or dye* business and thus, it was destined to fail, circa 2006-2009, just as quickly as it had taken off before then.

Today, other Asian players have woken up and realized that in order to win the big global contracts, they need value-added services, not cheap labor. For instance, recent Filipino call centers have not only been taking calls but have been using bulletin boards and chat rooms to categorize problem tickets, gathering more data from alternate sources, and providing more complete follow-up solutions to customers, using text messages, etc, to add greater value to the customers' business concerns.

So I don't exactly see this trend ending anytime soon as the former India Inc will be replaced by other nations which want to cross the digital divide.

thunderlips11 says

Apple only employs 80,000 worldwide, and how many of them are working at the Genius Bar or are working the mail room below middle class income levels?

And how many of them are working in sweatshops? How many of them committed suicide on the job?

thunderlips11 says

Manufacturing is wealth. Porn, Donuts, Financial Fraud, and Copyrighted Animated Characters can not support 310M people.

AMEN.

I nominate the above for "quote of the week."

Of course, manufacturing is also pollution. When the Democrats abandoned the working class in the late 60's and embraced environmentalism, it was the beginning of the end of manufacturing in America.

wthrfrk80 says

Agree 100%. But how can that happen when those same people own our politicians?

unions. you can't outsource everything. if the on site network engineers and the systems administrators and the desktop support specialists unionized and went on strike when outsourcing increased there would be no more outsourcing.

omgbacon says

unions. you can't outsource everything. if the on site network engineers and the systems administrators and the desktop support specialists unionized and went on strike when outsourcing increased there would be no more outsourcing.

But the Democrat party no longer represents unions or average working people. It represents urban pseudointellectuals, environmentalists, feminists, gays, and Chicano Studies professors. It's been that way since 1968.

And we wonder why the country has been steadily getting worse (economically) since then.

and tech workers don't want unions for some reason.

but all their complaints about 80 hour weeks, working weekends, understaffed 24x7 coverage and so on could easily be solved by unions.

as long as you're at-will you're at-mercy. doesn't matter how much you're paid or whether or not your company gives you free sodas.

programming jobs can be done from anywhere, at any time, and they usually are. just because the programmer is local doesn't mean he's ever actually in the office working 9 - 5. they don't do time in the office, despise meetings, like their independence and then they wonder why their job gets moved 12 time zones away to be performed by someone who also works odd hours (compared to the hours kept by everyone else in PST) and also communicates poorly through email. yeah there can be a quality issue, but those quality issues become very easily rationalized when you look at the cost savings on salary and benefits.

but the rest of the IT world can't easily be outsourced. if those on-shore network engineers and systems admins stopped plugging in cables and racking and stacking systems guess what happens?

Ever heard of IaaS?

CaptainShuddup says

Let's just say, companies that don't have your traditional HR departments, live a different reality than that of those that do.

Perhaps but this sounds like a corner case. Most companies, even small ones have a HR of some sort. Even if they don't they still often do what every one else does, instead the manager or owner just does it directly instead of having a HR stooge do it for them.

CaptainShuddup says

And aren't the companies you describe, the ones posting quarterly losses, since 2007, and keep adding States Warn notices around the country?

No, they're doing quite well actually.

CaptainShuddup says

Hey man come on, you haven't provided any data you've shown pictures, graphics in an article to support the authors assertions. Data is what I do. Good data is most always presented as is,

This amounts to, "its not data unless I say it is" which is ridiculous. Whether in paragraph form or a Excel spread sheet or a pie graph data is data. I choose to often post charts because they make complex issues easily understandable, there are ways to be deceptive when doing this but you haven't demonstrated that I'm doing so at all, you're just making the claim wholesale.

Never no mind that I didn't generate those charts, I found them, and that many times the source data is often posted on the charts themselves along with the chart author's name.

CaptainShuddup says

I laugh at your chart that suggests that Computer Science jobs start at 34K. Photoshop novice make more than that, designing Facebook pages.

Apparently not, going by the chart which is relevant since you haven't actually discredited it in any way.

Even if you want to ignore that chart the other charts noting college grad. income in older age groups and worker income since the 70's clearly show large drops in progress and that is from 2 different sources. You haven't even tried to show differently at all, just made claims.

CaptainShuddup says

We're all too fat, lazy and stupid and no one is qualified to the jobs, because they are so low wage, no one would want them anyway.

Oh wait a minute, wages are now so low for most jobs no one would want them but its laughable for CS jobs to start at 34K?

CaptainShuddup says

You can do anything in this county besides Practice medicine or law, by just cracking books, and Googling the subject.

This is essentially "BOOTSTRAPS" all over again. That clearly can't work in a rigged job market or economy which is what we have.

and yes, entry level comp sci jobs start pretty low these days.

What is a computer science job anyway? Does it require formal methods on computational theories? Or just plugging cables around?

it's doing science with a computer, duh. you know, where you copy answers off the internet and use wikipedia as an authoritative source.

ha ha ha ha.

no, really it's where they teach you how to gamify things.

Huh?

my guess is that any job that involves any kind of programming or system administration is categorized as a computer science job.

CaptainShuddup says

Wrong, that sentiment was so 2001, America tried that. The problem with off shoring IT work is the programmer that actually knows about the project is at home sleeping off the full day's work of coding he did while we were sleeping in the US. The folks available for QA and support in their Wee hours which are our prime office and meeting hours. Are not the on top of their game.
The result is the useless auto check out cashier machines that make you take every thing out of the bagging area and start over. And ultimately a live cashier physically scanning your order anyway.

Foreign developers don't worry me, American business men are now willing to pay more to have their developers in the same country if not the same building. So at any moments notice, they can have that person present to defend, fix or enlighten them on the project at hand.

Ever hear of elance.com ? Your argument is a bit weak as not all jobs have a 8-5 schedule. Many companies are national and have to deal with time zones. I had a job on the east coast and often times it would be slow until the pacific coast woke up. Furthermore there are plenty of places without a time zone difference that are cheaper. It isn't that hard to get online access these days.
Most of South America is three hours or less of a time difference relative to the USA (at least the east coast). Going from CA to eastern Brazil is only a five hour difference.

So why is JC Penny getting rid of cashiers?
http://ktar.com/22/1560630/JC-Penny-opting-for-selfcheckout-over-cashiers

Why are box stores scared @%$&less out of amazon.

Here's a little thing to think about. You know those debates about sales taxes online? Basically in that online companies don't have to pay and some in the physical world do so they complain. Well Amazon basically is giving up on the sales taxes. Now why would a company worth tens of billions of dollars WANT to pay more in taxes? Because the argument is weak now. The reason why taxes weren't collected is because amazon didn't have a physical entity. Ok fine so you want us to pay taxes...we'll open up warehouses all over the country
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/small_business/2012/07/amazon_same_day_delivery_how_the_e_commerce_giant_will_destroy_local_retail_.html

The one in CA is going to have 10,000 employees. There's one targeting the NYC market. If a online company can get same day delivery then I know plenty of people that will just shop online. It was never really about a measly sales tax. It was about product selection, price and service.

As for unions in IT there are some in Vermont that work for IBM but I think that's about it. Maybe one could consider the phone company unions as IT as well. The last verizon one didn't even last a month for a strike. Unions don't exactly work. If you have a closed environment with a specific skill set that no one else knows then it can work. But when everything is open...heck high school students are learning programming these days if not middle school..I remember hashing out a few lines of basic code during 5th grade.

Ever see Pawn Stars? The logic of value breaks down to this
Either

1) Something is so common that the value is nil. Everyone has it everyone can do it etc

or

2) Something is so rare that it makes it impossible to price it. Maybe someone that can code assembly in their sleep. But it makes demand so little that it again is pointless.

When it comes down to it we see less and less work to go around because frankly there is just less to do. Automation freed up more time for people to do what they want and that created more inventions. Now we have marginal gains because frankly it isn't that big of a deal for the internet to be 20% faster. If a song takes 20 seconds to download instead of 30 who really cares? Much of what the modern western world buys is disposable and bought with disposable income. That can be fine to a point but we aren't seeing major gains here. Who doesn't have a cell phone at this point? I've personally met people that live in public housing that gets wifi and even they have high speed internet. Who doesn't have some mode of transportation? If you live in a city you can walk, take a bus, cab or rail. If you cannot afford a car there are zipcars and other sharing sites. That brings this to another issue is that people are sharing goods rather than hoarding them. This brings down demand further.

If you examine bubbles in the past usually there is a liquidation of assets and "something" sparks demand. But since we know on this board about the shadow inventory we know that isn't the case.

CaptainShuddup says

The idea is to take what was behind the current door, and use that experience to guide you through the next open door, and have the knowledge to know how to utilize what you find there.

Good in theory, but not applicable in the real world. "Paying your dues" does not get you anywhere. Companies today look at tech workers as day laborers. They want a PHP guy, a JQuery guy, and a .NET guy for three months. Then they want to cut payroll.

Companies do not long term employee tech workers, so they don't care how many times you've payed your dues taking low wages for experience. And experience that is over five years old is nearly worthless anyway. Over ten and it's completely worthless.

In tech, you have to prove yourself at every job and that's just to keep a short-term contract 6 months to 3 years. So you better be getting a high rate.

omgbacon says

my guess is that any job that involves any kind of programming or system administration is categorized as a computer science job.

A Computer Science job is one where you are paid to create lol-cats:

a computer science job is a job in which you do technical things at the direction of a non-technical person and have to constantly attempt to find an excuse for why you weren't able to do the impossible in an unreasonable amount of time.

Two words..

Employment agencies.

I see them springing up all over the place.

Dan8267 says

Good in theory, but not applicable in the real world. "Paying your dues" does not get you anywhere.

Oh it's not theory.

If you're looking for rewards for the fruits of your labor, then you're missing the whole point of the effort.

Experience is cumbersome collective junk, you're never sure why have it, until you use it.

CaptainShuddup says

Oh it's not theory.

If you're looking for rewards for the fruits of your labor, then you're missing the whole point of the effort.

Experience is cumbersome collective junk, you're never sure why have it, until you use it.

I've got a shitload of experience that tells me the Boomers, who are now withering old senile coots- think the whole country should shape their economic policy around their sense of self-entitlement and accomplishment.

My EXPERIENCE also tells me that your golden years are likely to be completely miserable.

omgbacon says

a computer science job is a job in which you do technical things at the direction of a non-technical person and have to constantly attempt to find an excuse for why you weren't able to do the impossible in an unreasonable amount of time.

It's gotten so bad I had to drop out of the field.

They EXPECT this kind of attitude these days.

Software is mostly about soft skills. A trained ape can almost take over the coding part nowadays. :-)

well well well, if it isn't Peter P himself.

'Soft Skills' = bullshit artist and yet another sign that our economy is in a self-destruction phase. It's become part of the culture of California.

MershedPerturders says

well well well, if it isn't Peter P himself.

'Soft Skills' = bullshit artist and yet another sign that our economy is in a self-destruction phase. It's become part of the culture of California.

"Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff." -Frank Zappa

I do not dispute that. Self-destruction may be a little strong, but it is becoming increasingly zero-sum or negative-sum.

MershedPerturders says

'Soft Skills' = bullshit artist

Classic! +1.

I.T is like any other skilled job. Never needed a seepskin.
Hardware nowadays is throwaway after the warranty expires. Code is written where the best deal is made.

Rin says

So I don't exactly see this trend ending anytime soon as the former India Inc will be replaced by other nations which want to cross the digital divide.

Pretty much. That reminds me of a theory that major economies have boomed and flatted going from east to west. France, UK, USA..even USA domestically as industry moved to the west, Japan, China, India...if it wasn't for sanctions I'd argue that Iran would boom..probably will once they are taken off.Dan8267 says

Good in theory, but not applicable in the real world. "Paying your dues" does not get you anywhere. Companies today look at tech workers as day laborers. They want a PHP guy, a JQuery guy, and a .NET guy for three months. Then they want to cut payroll.

Years ago I had a class for some certificate thing but it turned out to be a sham school. The professor (I don't think he had a license let alone a degree) argued the opposite in that you could pretty much work for a few hours and act like it was a full days work..that was right before the dot com bubble burst though.

It used to be that part time jobs were more lower ended skills. Now it's everywhere. I just saw an ad looking for a degree and experience but it's only 19 hours a week for a one year term. I have also see jobs described as salary for 25 hours a week...so anything beyond that 25 hours they get for free. Heck reminds me also of a friend of my father who can weld stainless steel. He makes $75/hr...but the place would only need him for four hours a week!

It used to be that a 40 hour week was expected. Now with efficiencies that is no longer the case.Dan8267 says

Companies do not long term employee tech workers, so they don't care how many times you've payed your dues taking low wages for experience. And experience that is over five years old is nearly worthless anyway. Over ten and it's completely worthless.

Maybe. I think it is more marginal than anything else. I would say if a job as little variance then the worse experience looks. If it's totally open then it is more valued. In other words lets say a job asks for 10 years experience or more. You have three applying. One has nine, one has ten and one has eleven. On the surface who has 11 should be picked. But how much more is that extra year really worth? On the other side how much less is the one with nine years really worth?

A metric should be established as to why the standards are what they are. Otherwise it throws it all in the air. It could be a degree, level of experience, a certificate etc. I once worked in an office where my coworkers were hired because they had office experience. The company MEANT MS Office or any other office suite. They (mid 60's and older) thought it was just general office experience. These women went back to the workforce after a few decades when their husbands lost their jobs. So they knew how to type and that's about it. I tried to train them but after three months of trying to show cut, copy, paste, drag (basic GUI functions) I had to cut them off. One was fired for doing half the work of others. The other two finally learned.

Of course there is also the opposite of this. I applied once to a company that has their own programming language. Somewhat like C but not that much. Unlike MIcrosoft with C# this is REALLY closed. There are no programming books for anyone to buy, no guides online and you cannot buy it to use it at home. So by asking for experience with it that assures them it is mostly just internal employees. The company is known for paying really low rates (30-40k) for programmers. The benefits are sky high though and that kinda traps people especially if they decide to have children. You cannot afford to leave and yet you probably have the best healthcare plan in the state for free for you and your family.

CaptainShuddup says

If you're looking for rewards for the fruits of your labor, then you're missing the whole point of the effort.

That is the whole point of working FYI for most everyone, they're looking for "rewards" in the form of better pay, and that isn't an unreasonable request at all.

We don't have a society or economy where learning/doing stuff for free is really practical or sensible for most of the population unfortunately, so they cannot afford to settle for some hand-wavy form of "satisfaction" either.

Most children would be better off getting they butts in which ever arm of the military that will take them and not just for the GI Bill. I was a damn mess afore I joined up. Cutting tile during the days and whoring and drinking Rodrigo Rum by the gallon jug. EVery night!! It was A stint as Bosun's mate what knocked my dumbass into shape. It still is the best education out there I think.

All nine of my boys avoided military service and a few went to school and even though I love them they are all candy asses. One boy I know actually uses hand lotion!! None of them knows how to hustle like old dad.

JodyChunder says

One boy I know actually uses hand lotion!

Obligatory:

This nation hires more Chinese, Indians, and Mexicans than Americans. Who would hire an American when there is cheap labor everywhere?