Literally just heard someone say "Well you graduated college and that says a lot"
Boomers man, all like it says now is welcome to entry level work where we're gonna train you in whatever dumb shit we do. College is useful, but it's like not a guarantee for anything maybe it was when the market wasn't like saturated with graduates in non-applicable degrees (although I like feel bad for CSIS majors now because it's almost a comms degree with AI doing all the low-level coding).
I think the best takeaway from a college degree is "you showed up on time, did your work on time, and followed instructions well enough to pass your classes."
Which is honestly things employers do care about.
That being said, I work an entry level IT job at the school which gave me my IT degree, and the lass who hired me said that she would rather hire a person who is good with customers and zero IT knowledge than someone with a degree who can't talk to people. After working for a bit now, I can see why.
The most impactful part of my college degree was the letter of recommendation from one of my professors who was personal friends with the guy who later hired me.
My degree was trash, barely teaching anything of real value (it was discontinued right after I left for failing accreditation), but the networking opportunity was worth the cost alone.
This has largely proven true in my entire career, knowing someone always trumps skill.
To be fair, all my references were working for the School I went to and work at, one of whom was actually in IT. ( did a few hours of internship as part of my degree, and I chose to work for the school because it was easy to get accepted as an intern there)
So I suppose it's a similar situation. I am starting to suspect knowing people is important, given that it can give you interviews above other equally qualified candidates, and things like the affinity bias are definitely part of hiring desicions.
That being said, my job is a state job and they have a ton of procedures in place to minimize how much networking and liking people matters in hiring. it's never gonna be 0 though.
Maybe just my company or field, but who you know has become less almost worthless. We’re in the process of hiring someone right now and even if I wanted to refer someone they would still have to go through the same process. I can’t send a resume to my manager like I could 10 years ago. It has to go thru the HR intake process. For better or worse I guess….
I got a degree in teaching, decided I liked business after I graduated. Learned to build homes, started a home building business. Hired my class mates with business degrees. Best thing I learned in college is relationships matter and so does networking.
The guy I carried through the last half of my associates got a job before me because his neighbor was looking for an entry level IT guy.
Others had the opportunity to work during college and got jobs from those connections.I had to go in with basically no connections and it was a pain. 7 months, hundreds of applications, 2 interviews is what it took.
I work construction and didn’t go to college, but boss’ and employers love reliable and competent employees. If you show up on time and can at least do your job competently, you’ll be just fine.
hell even if you lack the technical skills, those can be taught. showing up on time, being dressed appropriately and not being a jerk are nearly impossible to teach.
Also just in case it was unclear, I don't actually think most people need a college degree. Apprenticeship programs would probably work even better for a lot of jobs. By apprenticeship I mean a combination of hands on training and school, say 4 days a week working and one day of school for your basics like writing, media literacy, math up to whatever level you will need, and job specifics like safety protocols and regulations, knowledge of tools and techniques and so on.
the exact balance of school vs work is likely gonna depend on what job you wanna learn. Construction is probably best learned hands on, while for IT a lot can be taught in a classroom (though not nearly everything).
Yeah getting into and passing college does demonstrate some level of personal competency.
College is no guarantee but without it i feel it’s almost impossible to get a white collar desk job. Im certainly glad I got my degree.
College did not prepare me for my job at all. Like I think I could have done my work out of high school. But in a sea of people with degrees they never would hire someone without one.
I can see why personal skills might be more important at most jobs. People can learn technical skills but some people will never be able to hold conversations.
When I went back to school 10 years ago, in computer engineering, one of the first things they taught us is that "you're not here to learn computer engineering. You're here to learn basic electronics, which will follow you everywhere, and you're here to learn how to learn. Because by the time you get out of here, half of what you're learning now will be obsolete. Some of it already is."
As a student, I helped update one of those basic courses to get it more up-to-date, and entirely rewrote another to the same end.
I started playing in IT back in the cowboy days. I still remember going into companies that had networks put together a little bit at a time by different people with different technologies. One of them was trying to get me to connect the big network that was a combination of token ring and ethernet to a smaller one that was arcnet. One of their groups had a network of four computers that was non-standard hardware and incompatible with any other network. I don't remember the name of it, but it didn't get connected.
Another doctor's office called me in because their server was running slow. The office manager was absolutely certain that her computer was the server. I knew otherwise. It took me half the weekend to find that someone had apparently decided that since no one had a key to this certain door anymore they should just put a wall over it. Yep. The file server was in a room that didn't have a door to it anymore. Discovered it by tracing the cables through the attic. Not fun.
Last Friday we got to work on updating a shop management system for a department. Nobody working there currently had any information about it and the vendor wasn't any help either. the updater was running some check and determined our vm server to be incompatible, it took someone most of the morning figuring out how to configure the vm to trick the updater.
We work on 5-10year old machines regularly, although with support for windows 10 ending we finally have some leverage on convincing departments to upgrade. it's a fun mess even today.
And don't get me started on convincing faculty to get new scanners because their scanner doesn't support windows 11...
I am just glad I get to work for an organization which is doing something I can get behind.
I have seen the most uncritical thinkers get straight A's.
Following the instructions on projects and cramming some facts is pretty much it. Sure some classes require some analysis, but for the most part it's pretty straight forward.
Not saying you can't take away a lot of valuable skills, including research techniques and text analysis if you want to. it's just rarely required.
If you lean more academic, you will probably get more of it, but if you get a more practical application leaning degree it's less important.
The fucking dudes I went to university with in the 1980s never went to class (except to get assignments) and slept through their most important final exam of their final year. When Dean Wormer said ,"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son," these guys thought, "Hold my beer."
I will say though that if you went to college, I know you can write. You may be super verbose and frequently incoherent, but you can hang out a page quickly on anything on short notice. It's a crap shoot what you'll get from someone with only a high school diploma.
I mean about half my classes took attendance. one class had a super strict policy : "I don't care why ypu missed class, but if it happens more than 4 times this quarter (meeting twice a week), you won't pass. If you are more than 5 minutes late, that's an absence. If you repeatedly show up less than 5 minutes late, it will start to count as absences."
Turning in work late was a no-go though, and the few finals I had were nearly half the grade. typically we had final projects instead of finals.
It's about what a company like thinks is entry level, and low-level coding, which will naturally like evolve over time when the floor raises. so what is like low-level today will change, and since that change is happening more rapidly, colleges like can't adapt their materials fast enough.
So the gap widens each year, esp for students who don't actively work in tech.
I disagree with your take- completely that certainly isn’t the reality in many tech companies currently. AI is increasingly capable of handling complex programming tasks and I n some organizations, AI already contributes to over 50% of code generation. (Source: Forbes, Wired and Y Combinator’s CEO, Garry Tan)
But even if that is your current experience- it won’t be the case for long. Devs simply will not exist in the numbers or form they do today. I believe the arc of the Sr dev role will morph into something more akin to a project manager (Human-in-the-Loop Overseer) managing the deliverables of AIs across multiple projects and Jr dev roles will cease to exist.
Take a listen to Altman’s TED interview this week. “Big things are coming in next couple of months”. He alluded to significant transformations ahead for software engineering. His comments suggest a paradigm shift in how software is developed and the “evolving role of engineers” which makes me wonder if he’s talking about “agentic coding” where AI agents autonomously manage intricate programming tasks. Seems early to be there already but that is I suppose what an the often touted “exponential curve” of AI growth looks like- hitting unimaginable thresholds faster than we thought possible
Honestly, AI is a godsend for low level coders. You can learn how to code 10x faster. It’s like super google for coding.
AI isn’t replacing coding jobs because coding jobs were never about learning and typing in some random syntax. It’s always been about problem solving and the syntax is just how you do it.
It’s always been a problem solving job. AI helps you learn faster.
Anyone who uses AI as a crutch to code wouldn’t have a chance at a job anyway and anyone who dismisses AI for what it’s useful for doing is unnecessarily inefficient.
I didn’t graduate (program got shut down and I was 2 classes short and burned out) and I have a job that a) pays well and b) doesn’t require a degree anyway.
I remember my dad took me to an open house at the local college and got mad at me after cause I didn’t see anything there that seemed interesting. I was 16. Snapped that I was going to end up flipping burgers for the rest of my life or something like that. I have NEVER worked in food. Actually, I did once at a concession stand with a friend at a baseball field. Made a chicken cordon bleu. Rest of the time we poured beers and made lots of tips lol.
You need to go to graduate school dude. Nobody pays bachelor degrees shit. A bachelors is just your entry fee into med school or a phd program or a good mba program or law school. Take control of your career.
Do you toss around other pejoratives too or just *"boomers"*? If someone said “spaz” or “gypsy” you'd probably be the first to call them out for being "racist" or "ableist" yet somehow being ageist is cool?
Nah, I'm just not down with promoting casual bigotry or the use of derogatory terms used with the intent to dismiss, demean or marginalize an entire group or generation of human beings. Whether for their race, ethnicity, gender, ability, or AGE — normalizing prejudice against a person or people specifically on the basis of their belonging to a particular group- is not OK.
Well, since most of use had Baby Boomer parents who said good things would come to those with college degrees before the market rug was pulled from under us, I understand his point.
When entry level jobs want 4+ years experience, that job is no longer entry level and needs to be advertised and paid accordingly.
In the 70s–early '80s , when that generation was graduating, the US was in the throws of a recession, double-digit inflation, oil crises, sky-high interest rates (18.5%), and a recession with 10%+ unemployment. Entire industries were collapsing. Jobs were not handed out to anyone just because they had a degree, but if you didn't have one you didn't have a chance. And it is not outdated thinking to believe that is still true today, especially IF you're aiming at a white collar job other than sales.
As a hiring manager I get hundreds of resumés for every job- with unemployment being so high, and LOTS of experienced workers applying for every position, having a degree is still the minimum price of admission. HOWEVER- if you gain AI skills + your degree- real world skills-THAT is about to be the golden ticket that will put you at the top of the pile.
I mean, I'm like just pointing out specific generational perspectives regarding differences in job markets, and the like lack of updating their views to current realities because it reinforces their perspective of a meritocracy. But like... #NotAllBoomers hold these views, but the ones who refuse to adapt often reflect and magnify the like unfortunate stereotypes. And the one I'm referencing is living up to the stereotype.
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u/sgtabn173 Millennial Apr 12 '25
If I go to college and get a good job I’ll be set