will we ever stop requiring a college degree in order to work the majority of good jobs?

[RDCanecutter 26472]

I find that if a Gentleman can ride, fence, and shoot, then excessive education is not required.

[0xdeadbeef 1652]

5 hours ago, aggie08 said:

Is this the thread where we propagate the myth that most college students are getting degrees in humanities, art history, or basket weaving?

From https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cta/undergrad-degree-fields

 

• 150K Social Sciences and History Majors per year is a lot of folks asking if I "want fries with that?".
• The number of Psychology Majors surprised me enough to google why.  Seems Psychology is the generic 'I-need-a-college-degree-but-I-don't-know-what-I-want-to-do-and-I-don't-want-Business' degree of choice for a lot of females. (79%).  Nothing wrong with that; it's much more employable than gender studies. 
• Really surprised that the # of Engineering degrees isn't higher.  

 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Would they be smart enough to keep Cloak Room shit in the Cloak Room?  Or nah?

Ahhh there is that pussy Johnny sack. We were broken up that we thought we had lost you. I’ll let you have your safe space back snowflake.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

I remember one of you assholes, at the Wimberley flood cleanup, told my daughter that if she was going to get an engineering degree that the thing that would really set her apart would be to be able to write clearly and persuasively.  
That was some excellent advice, and she mentioned it to me several times while she was in school. 

That’s great.

She will likely end up in management since she can communicate.

[Beau Vine 54428]

7 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

I find that if a Gentleman can ride, fence, and shoot, then excessive education is not required.

I read this in Ron Swanson's voice.

[Brisketexan 105334]

9 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

I find that if a Gentleman can ride, fence, and shoot, then excessive education is not required.

Also, the 40,000 acre estate that often comes with such skillset is quite helpful for one's prospects for success, good sir.  It really is the ideal accoutrement for a man of letters.

[sidis 9832]

5 hours ago, Js1 said:

Actually the most important thing my liberal arts degree taught me was critical and creative writing because I have to explain very abstract and nebulous concepts to people who are so technically minded (engineers, scientists, doctors), they’re borderline regarded outside of their field and don’t understand much else 

 

[RDCanecutter 26472]

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Also, the 40,000 acre estate that often comes with such skillset is quite helpful for one's prospects for success, good sir.  It really is the ideal accoutrement for a man of letters.

Is that how many acres there are? I'm sure I had no idea.

[shadow_operative 15932]

8 hours ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

“It’s 1AM on a Monday night. I’m lying in bed thinking about Rick Barnes.”

[RDCanecutter 26472]

13 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Johnny sack. 

What happened to Joãozinho Saco? Did I miss drama?

[Samson's Wig 3194]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, you assume that the bar really tests skills an attorney needs.  I'm not so sure of that, frankly.  It does test knowledge of Texas law and an ability to deal with a fairly immense amount of information at once.  But as for the skills to make a career out of it  . . . .

I'm always amazed at how distorted most folks' notions are regarding the practice of law.  The bar exam is a joke, and serves little more than a barrier to entry for those unwilling to spend a bit of time studying.  It has nothing to do with practicing law and certainly doesn't indicate who will or won't be a good attorney .  Wrote memorization of the law just has nothing to do with much of anything, but the layperson has been taught to believe this by television (or perhaps outdated stories of former political leaders).

A legal education, in my opinion, holds as much or more value as any other form of education you can get.  In the U.S., of course, it is a terminal degree and rightfully so.  At a good law school, you will experience boot camp for the brain - being taken down to the studs and rebuilding the very way you approach problems and the world in general.  That someone would assume this is a waste of time so long as you can pass a bar exam is laughable, and completely backwards. As you know, many with law degrees never practice law at all, but take that education and apply it elsewhere to great effect.

The handful of states that will let you sit for the bar exam without a degree still require an apprenticeship, and unless your goal is to be a low stakes litigator it's difficult to see why anyone would take this route.  You could become a passable GP without a medical degree about as easily as you could become a low rent litigator, but why would anyone willingly do either?  Those are places you end up, typically, not roles many aspire to.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

What happened to Joãozinho Saco? Did I miss drama?

Not that I am aware of. But it seems to be a pattern with most of our resident right wingers. Either get banned or quit the site only to create a new screen name. They try to play it cool for awhile, but sooner or later their true colors show. It would be interesting to see how many different screen names Johnny, hamster, immortal and a few others have. I would say they average 3 different screen names each.

[Brisketexan 105334]

1 minute ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Not that I am aware of. But it seems to be a pattern with most of our resident right wingers. Either get banned or quit the site only to create a new screen name. They try to play it cool for awhile, but sooner or later their true colors show. It would be interesting to see how many different screen names Johnny, hamster, immortal and a few others have. I would say they average 3 different screen names each.

Whereas I only have two screen names.

Well, "Jimmy Handsome" is more of a stage name, but still.....

[52-80 19246]

15 minutes ago, 0xdeadbeef said:

From https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cta/undergrad-degree-fields

 

A couple of weird, unsolicited comments about liberal arts degrees. 

Study whatever you want. Nobody cares. Its your life. But if those people complain afterwards about the labor market and their poor job prospects….well, a mountain of longitudinal data out front should’ve told them. 

I’m curious how what fraction of that graph is terminal vs going onto more marketable graduate studies (law, business, etc)

[52-80 19246]

9 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

What happened to Joãozinho Saco? Did I miss drama?

He turned Italian. He’s now Gianni Sacco. 

[MissingInAction 25183]

There's nothing more useless and annoying as a MBA fresh out of grad school. They insist upon themselves.

 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Maybe it had been mentioned already, but most of the time networking is much more important than a degree. It seems very rare in my industry for folks to get jobs by simply applying. It happens, no doubt, but most of my jobs and people I know had an inside connection at a company to get the resume to the right person.

There is a cost controller in my group that never finished her degree. She has close to 10 years in the industry. Proof that the degree isn’t necessary and even some employers will look past it (I work for a mid major oil company). But that is rare. Typically they at least want a degree (doesn’t need to be engineering or construction management).

[Dnaguy 12059]

33 minutes ago, 0xdeadbeef said:

 

• Really surprised that the # of Engineering degrees isn't higher.  

 

That’s because engineering is hard.

The degree work load is demanding and the content is difficult.

Stupid people struggle with that.

Civil and the environmental engineering is the easiest.

It’s not question why the aggs pump them out.

 

 

Ok. This probably isn’t fair. The real issue is that it’s super demanding from a time management perspective.

It’s hard to juggle a job, have fun, get messed up, and get your shit done in an engineering program.

Second that with the fact that you’ve to to intern every summer / co-op during school and you can see why ppl don’t flock to it.

Math is hard for lots of people as well. Lots of math in STEM.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Dnaguy

[Brisketexan 105334]

1 minute ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Maybe it had been mentioned already, but most of the time networking is much more important than a degree. It seems very rare in my industry for folks to get jobs by simply applying. It happens, no doubt, but most of my jobs and people I know had an inside connection at a company to get the resume to the right person.

Also cannot be understated.  And the children of educated parents who run in educated, professional circles have a big advantage over kids who don't have those things.  That's the way it is.  College, however, helps level that a good bit.  Now, you've spent 4 years among other people who are (by and large) "going places."  At college, you drank beer with the dude who is now the CFO of Amalgamated Monkey Products, Inc.  When they have an opening for Chief of Banana QC, you can just call your buddy, laugh about the time he pissed off the balcony of his girlfriend's apartment onto the rent-a-cop below, and waltz right in for an interview.  The kid who just graduated college....not many of his network of peers end up as CFOs.

We are already emphasizing the hell out of this to the boy, who is starting to get it.  His uncle (we vacation together every year) is one of the foremost American foreign policy experts of his generation....and he knows most of the rest of those experts.  When the boy had to do a high school project where he talked to someone in his currently preferred career (foreign relations), he called his uncle, who put him in contact with someone who made time for him, had long conversations with the boy, and remains in touch....and was one of the first people interviewed on many news channels when Russia invaded Ukraine.  The boy has an advantage there because of the circles his family runs in.  He didn't make it happen, but he'd be dumb not to follow the paths that are there for him.  And for those kids who weren't born into that, college is a pretty fair proxy to create such relationships.

College gives you a shitload more than a degree.

[BabaYaga 15320]

1 hour ago, Deej said:

They just end up in law school.

To them spend countless hours posting on Surly

[RDCanecutter 26472]

I wonder if civilian life is mirroring the military. In peacetime, Officers need degrees.* When bodies start dropping, if you've proven you can lead, you "get the job" on the spot, degree or not.

As for state governments dropping the degree requirement, I wonder how that will work out in real life. To again compare to the Army, I remember Sergeants telling us to get more education even if we wanted to stay enlisted, because the promotion process up through the Sergeant ranks is a vicious competition for limited slots, and a Sergeant with a degree beats one with 2 years college beats one with HS. So to get that Gov job, maybe it won't hurt to study up.

 

*When I was in, 2nd Lieutenants could get commissioned with two years college, but were expected to get a Bachelors asap.

[Samson's Wig 3194]

4 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

That’s because engineering is hard.

The degree work load is demanding and the content is difficult.

Stupid people struggle with that.

Civil and the environmental engineering is the easiest.

It’s not question why the aggs pump them out.

 

 

Ok. This probably isn’t fair. The real issue is that it’s super demanding from a time management perspective.

It’s hard to juggle a job, have fun, get messed up, and get your shit done in an engineering program.

Second that with the fact that you’ve to to intern every summer / co-op during school and you can see why ppl don’t flock to it.

Math is hard for lots of people as well. Lots of math in STEM.

 

A wife asks her husband, an engineer, for a favor.

"Darling, can you please go to the store to buy one gallon of milk?  And if they have eggs, get a dozen!"

Off he goes to the store, and half an hour later he returns with 12 gallons of milk.

His wife stares at him and asks, "Why on earth did you get 12 gallons of milk?"

"Well . . . they had eggs," he replied.

[Dnaguy 12059]

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Also cannot be understated.  And the children of educated parents who run in educated, professional circles have a big advantage over kids who don't have those things.  That's the way it is.  College, however, helps level that a good bit.  Now, you've spent 4 years among other people who are (by and large) "going places."  At college, you drank beer with the dude who is now the CFO of Amalgamated Monkey Products, Inc.  When they have an opening for Chief of Banana QC, you can just call your buddy, laugh about the time he pissed off the balcony of his girlfriend's apartment onto the rent-a-cop below, and waltz right in for an interview.  The kid who just graduated college....not many of his network of peers end up as CFOs.

We are already emphasizing the hell out of this to the boy, who is starting to get it.  His uncle (we vacation together every year) is one of the foremost American foreign policy experts of his generation....and he knows most of the rest of those experts.  When the boy had to do a high school project where he talked to someone in his currently preferred career (foreign relations), he called his uncle, who put him in contact with someone who made time for him, had long conversations with the boy, and remains in touch....and was one of the first people interviewed on many news channels when Russia invaded Ukraine.  The boy has an advantage there because of the circles his family runs in.  He didn't make it happen, but he'd be dumb not to follow the paths that are there for him.  And for those kids who weren't born into that, college is a pretty fair proxy to create such relationships.

College gives you a shitload more than a degree.

 

I think about this as well.

I chose engineering b/c friends of parents were engineers and they made some good scratch. And I was from Houston. Shit ton of engineers hanging around.

But my friends from school and through roommates and now further friends through highly successful Jewish network (marriage also a huge drive in social ladder climbing that’s another topic all together), I can open my kids up to all kinds of networks. Doctors / healthcare? Check. DC circles? Check. Real estate? Construction? Law? Finance? YEp.

This isn’t a humble brag. It’s really the American dream. 

My grandparents leveled up b/c of WW2 and the GI bill. My parents were lucky boomers who got to go to college for free (Thanks California!).  College was expected for me, but still reasonably affordable thanks to state school and scholarships and co-ops.

What I haven’t been able to crack is Ivy. 

That’s the next step in me ensuring the success of my offspring / genes.

But I had girls.

By the time tey’re in college, the Ivy League is going to be 90% girls. 

Oh well.

[Js1 85573]

20 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

Math is hard for lots of people as well. Lots of math in STEM.

Omg no way 

[Samson's Wig 3194]

36 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

I'm always amazed at how distorted most folks' notions are regarding the practice of law.  The bar exam is a joke, and serves little more than a barrier to entry for those unwilling to spend a bit of time studying.  It has nothing to do with practicing law and certainly doesn't indicate who will or won't be a good attorney .  Wrote memorization of the law just has nothing to do with much of anything, but the layperson has been taught to believe this by television (or perhaps outdated stories of former political leaders).

A legal education, in my opinion, holds as much or more value as any other form of education you can get.  In the U.S., of course, it is a terminal degree and rightfully so.  At a good law school, you will experience boot camp for the brain - being taken down to the studs and rebuilding the very way you approach problems and the world in general.  That someone would assume this is a waste of time so long as you can pass a bar exam is laughable, and completely backwards. As you know, many with law degrees never practice law at all, but take that education and apply it elsewhere to great effect.

The handful of states that will let you sit for the bar exam without a degree still require an apprenticeship, and unless your goal is to be a low stakes litigator it's difficult to see why anyone would take this route.  You could become a passable GP without a medical degree about as easily as you could become a low rent litigator, but why would anyone willingly do either?  Those are places you end up, typically, not roles many aspire to.

I see the glaring typo, and it's too late to fix it.  I won't sleep tonight. 

[DalTxHornFan 3117]

21 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

College gives you a shitload more than a degree.

For sure, this.  Up the thread, I talked about learning how to party in college -- it was way more than that.  I went the frat route at Texas -- don't hate me.  But that experience taught me a shit load of how to interact socially with all kinds of people in many settings.  Mixers, dinners, parties and such that all had the upper classmen riding herd on you to keeping you from being a total dumbfuck with manners and social skills.

Fast forward to being in an international professional services firm.  Very early in my career I demonstrated that I was good at hanging socially with Senior Partners and important clients.  I may not have been the smartest guy or most senior guy in my class at the firm, but I got way ahead of others on the partner track due to the social stuff I learned in college.  

Edited January 31, 2023 by DalTxHornFan

[HamsterHookah 112]

5 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

I see the glaring typo, and it's too late to fix it.  I won't sleep tonight. 

I was going to let it slide.

[HamsterHookah 112]

5 minutes ago, DalTxHornFan said:

For sure, this.  Up the thread, I talked about learning how to party in college -- it was way more than that.  I went the frat route at Texas -- don't hate me.  But that experience taught me a shit load of how to interact socially with all kinds of people in many settings.  Mixers, dinners, parties and such that all had the upper classmen riding herd on you to keeping you from being a total dumbfuck with manners and social skills.

Fast forward to being in an international professional services firm.  Very early in my career I was good at hanging socially with Senior Partners and important clients.  I may not have been the smartest guy or most senior guy in my class at the firm, but I got way ahead of others on the partner track due to the social stuff I learned in college.  

Brother?

Being able to be customer facing and learn social polish and executive presence is pretty easy for social people, and social people are invariably the rainmakers for most firms.

You don't need a degree to be social of course, but college acts as a finishing school in that way and fraternities back in the day were instructional (e.g. mandatory shirt and tie and constant reminders of how to dress appropriately to behave and represent yourself and your institution in a successful light, etc. I understand fraternities went away from a lot of that and became a party/abusive place, but that's another discussion).

[Brisketexan 105334]

10 minutes ago, DalTxHornFan said:

Very early in my career I was good at hanging socially with Senior Partners and important clients.  I may not have been the smartest guy or most senior guy in my class at the firm, but I got way ahead of others on the partner track due to the social stuff I learned in college.  

Cool, man.   Want me to grab you an Alabama Slammer?

 

I keed in fun -- I followed a similar path.  Also included private school for high school.  Blah blah blah, learned a lot socially and about networking, which was a step up for a kid whose family life was mostly oilfield trash (good people, but perhaps not as....sophisticated or well-to-do as my classmates).

[52-80 19246]

21 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

By the time tey’re in college, the Ivy League is going to be 90% girls. 

Oh well.

I remember reading about the growing gender gap in higher education, that females are outnumbering males in university. 

Females do outnumber males fairly significantly, but the gap has been flat for decades.

The top universities domestic and globally all tilt towards men though.

[South Austin 52602]

41 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

To them spend countless hours posting on Surly

I'll have you know, sir, that those hours can and are indeed counted.

[Frank Drebin 5654]

1 hour ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Ahhh there is that pussy Johnny sack. We were broken up that we thought we had lost you. I’ll let you have your safe space back snowflake.

Are you drunk?

[YGIFS 19452]

1 hour ago, 0xdeadbeef said:

From https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cta/undergrad-degree-fields

 

• 150K Social Sciences and History Majors per year is a lot of folks asking if I "want fries with that?".
• The number of Psychology Majors surprised me enough to google why.  Seems Psychology is the generic 'I-need-a-college-degree-but-I-don't-know-what-I-want-to-do-and-I-don't-want-Business' degree of choice for a lot of females. (79%).  Nothing wrong with that; it's much more employable than gender studies. 
• Really surprised that the # of Engineering degrees isn't higher.  

 

This is helpful and a few things stood out and a few things are gravely missing.  Surprised that Psychology still kicks out so many graduates.  I wonder where "communications" fits on that graph.  I don't know how most colleges break their CSU's out, but Moody at UT is the third largest college now on Campus and the fastest growing.  

But here's the magical missing breakout:  Post-graduate.  A massive, massive percentage of that 150K "you want fries with that crowd" you labeled.  They're Poli-Sci & History & English majors going to law school.   They're economics graduates going to get an MBA.  At worst, they're going to get a master's or PhD in something, and at least can go teach and earn a decent living.  Of the hundreds of lawyers I know and work with, I could tell you where they went to school.  But I couldn't tell you what any of them majored in except that 95% of the time, it was something in liberal arts/humanities.  Shit, I bet a huge chunk of 'em majored in Spanish.  

I'd say the "women's studies/basket weaving/humanities" degree holders whom are scoffed at, who sling coffee or cocktails.  Number 50-75k, at most.  And yet that little sliver of graduates is abused as anecdote.  About how we need to overhaul the higher education institutions of our state and country entirely because a tiny percentage of them graduate with degrees we roll our eyes at.

4 million bachelor degrees conferred each year, but we need to stop making well-rounded critical thinkers because ~2% of them have majors and recent-grad jobs y'all think are worthless.  And you wonder why we wonder about the state of critical thinking in the state of Texas.   

Edited January 31, 2023 by YGIFS

[Beau Vine 54428]

19 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

I wonder where "communications" fits on that graph.  I don't know how most colleges break their CSU's out, but Moody at UT is the third largest college now on Campus and the fastest growing. 

I used to teach a class in the business minors program at McCombs.  I would always run across students so stupid that I couldn't fathom how they got into UT, let alone made it to their senior year.  They were almost always Comm majors.

[CHIEF 5095]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

I'm not sure it would really help.  It was an emphasis while I was in undergrad.  Some are just so "left-brained" they can't help it.  I'm speaking in terms of written communication on any subject.  Verbal communication on technical subjects they're passable at.

Which is odd, because most of my classmates in ME were articulate, interesting people.  I can't speak for their written abilities, but they weren't the kind of geekazoids you often find in industry.  And a whole lot of them aren't engineers anymore.

CHIEF Jr. graduates in May with an ME degree. We are close to Lockheed, one of his mentors works there. He told him that the ME degree will get him an interview, but his six years as a boat mechanic will get him hired. Shit has to be designed, so you can work on it. Especially warplanes. He said 95% of engineers being turned out have no practical experience working on projects that require ongoing maintenance, or replacement of a component that has been damaged, or destroyed. They have no idea that they need to add clearance for wrenches, sockets, and screwdrivers. Military equipment needs to be fixed in hours and days, not months. Apparently they turn over about 60% of their first year engineering hires. 

A degree is mandatory for the pay grade, and title. But his continued employment will probably hinge on being able to turn a wrench, or design components to be replaced, or maintained. Things he actually learned as a mechanic.

He has great communication skills, and not really the personality of most engineers I know. He just happens to be good at math, physics, calculus, and programming.

CHIEF

[YGIFS 19452]

Yeah, my dumbest roommate (by far) was a Comms major.  But the school is headed in a different trajectory thanks to their new toys, new-ish Dean, new faculty, and hundreds of millions from the Moodys.  

But I think about one of the longest running jokes on Surly is how many lawyers we have on here.  Hundreds.  And almost 95% of them were liberal arts/humanities majors.  Once you take into account how many of those "soft" degrees go on to get professional advanced degrees, the absolutely moronic discussion about revamping the higher education system that stands as the envy of the world becomes even more idiotic.  It's 2% that get a "soft" degree and go on to nothing with it but accrue debt.  But as per usual in Texas, we gotta fuck over the state because of what a handful of people are doing that are none of our fucking business.  

[Brisketexan 105334]

32 minutes ago, CHIEF said:

CHIEF Jr. graduates in May with an ME degree. We are close to Lockheed, one of his mentors works there. He told him that the ME degree will get him an interview, but his six years as a boat mechanic will get him hired. Shit has to be designed, so you can work on it. Especially warplanes. He said 95% of engineers being turned out have no practical experience working on projects that require ongoing maintenance, or replacement of a component that has been damaged, or destroyed. They have no idea that they need to add clearance for wrenches, sockets, and screwdrivers. Military equipment needs to be fixed in hours and days, not months. Apparently they turn over about 60% of their first year engineering hires. 

A degree is mandatory for the pay grade, and title. But his continued employment will probably hinge on being able to turn a wrench, or design components to be replaced, or maintained. Things he actually learned as a mechanic.

He has great communication skills, and not really the personality of most engineers I know. He just happens to be good at math, physics, calculus, and programming.

CHIEF

Chief Jr. is also one practical, get-it-done motherfucker.  He's going to succeed starting the moment he gets in the door.  He's not just a problem-solver, he's a problem-anticipator, which means he solves shit before it BECOMES a problem.  His only challenge will be making sure the braindead higher-ups see the real value he brings, instead of doing something like saying "well, Dipshit McGee turned in 12 problem solution sheets last month, Chief Jr. only turned in one," not realizing that's because Dipshit McGee helped create all 12 problems that he "solved," whereas Chief Jr. didn't have to solve much because he kept shit from becoming problems.  I don't know how he is at the politicking part of things, but that's where he's going to have to make things work -- the rest of it is going to come easy to him.

[Mole 4333]

2 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

 Wrote memorization of the law…

A legal education, in my opinion, holds as much or more value as any other form of education you can get.  In the U.S., of course, it is a terminal degree and rightfully so.  At a good law school, you will experience boot camp for the brain - being taken down to the studs and rebuilding the very way you approach problems and the world in general.

 

1 hour ago, Samson's Wig said:

I see the glaring typo, and it's too late to fix it.  I won't sleep tonight. 

The most valuable form of education, you say. Boot camp for the brain, you say. Must be Marine Corps boot camp.

Also, I always though business school was for people with no discernible skills.

[Superhero 8842]

3 hours ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Engineers really should be required to take a few classes on communication. Christ, most of them are just so awful at it.

1. I write in bullet points.

2. Actually I prefer numbers over bullets.

3. Using bullets drives me crazy.

4. If I hear “go to bullet point…” I will flip out  

5. Am I being clear?

6. No? Then get out because you’re a wasting my time.

[Brisketexan 105334]

1 minute ago, Superhero said:

1. I write in bullet points.

2. Actually I prefer numbers over bullets.

3. Using bullets drives me crazy.

4. If I hear “go to bullet point…” I will flip out  

5. Am I being clear?

6. No? Then get out because you’re a wasting my time.

The correct format is:

1. Use bullet points

• unless numbers make more sense

c. go ahead and mix stuff up

4. and do it in Comic Sans

[naija 2869]

14 hours ago, UTGrad98 said:

You will be seeing Dr Derka today for your stomach pain. On Tuesdays, he does taxes.

God, this website kills.

[Jkwellborn 6739]

I mean, why do we even need jobs?

Because your mom ain’t giving pussy away for free.

[Guest]

I'm in sales, so while degrees are 'preferred' it still comes down to who can influence customers and fill the coffers with the lowest expenses. Can you get others to run through walls for you?   I enjoy that we are extremely results driven in our evaluation and pay.

My oldest son has CS degree from West Point and Masters in CS from Georgia Tech.  There's no fucking way someone is just walking in and doing his job on personality and charm.

Edited February 1, 2023 by slorch

[Hermanator 7170]

3 minutes ago, slorch said:

I'm in sales

What do you sell? White Ford duallys? Nazi flags?

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

What do you sell? White Ford duallys? Nazi flags?

I've never really been insulted on Shag/ Surly until today.

a fucking car salesman?  Just shoot me...

[Jkwellborn 6739]

To a lay person, it’s still considered interesting and prestigious, simply on the basis of scarcity at 50,000 jobs.
On that basis, it’ll remain so, because the decade-ahead growth is projected by the BLS at only +5%. And there’s still countless people vying for those jobs. 
Just as a comparison there are 2M+ commercial truck drivers. 

There’s a big time shortage of drivers too. In the past, your company had drivers they qualified as trainers and they’d take new drivers under their wing.

Now they have to go to some type of accredited driving school in order to even attempt to gain a CHL.

[YGIFS 19452]

It's funny because he didn't mention the flag part   

How has somebody not monetized this current "lifestyle" into a brand of sunglasses, weathered hat, never-been-off-road truck with stickers up the ass, gun owning thing?  Like Salt Life but for fat people who can't swim?  Like Ed Hardy for the uneducated asshole on the go?  There's got to be a lifestyle brand in there somewhere.  Right now it's an amalgamation of a dozen different brands, but one brand to conquer them all?  Anybody here have a useless marketing degree that can help me figure this out?  Shit, I'll take a humanities major at this point.

[Brisketexan 105334]

1 hour ago, YGIFS said:

It's funny because he didn't mention the flag part   

How has somebody not monetized this current "lifestyle" into a brand of sunglasses, weathered hat, never-been-off-road truck with stickers up the ass, gun owning thing?  Like Salt Life but for fat people who can't swim?  Like Ed Hardy for the uneducated asshole on the go?  There's got to be a lifestyle brand in there somewhere.  Right now it's an amalgamation of a dozen different brands, but one brand to conquer them all?  Anybody here have a useless marketing degree that can help me figure this out?  Shit, I'll take a humanities major at this point.

Oh, God, the humanities!

[RDCanecutter 26472]

2 hours ago, YGIFS said:

It's funny because he didn't mention the flag part   

How has somebody not monetized this current "lifestyle" into a brand of sunglasses, weathered hat, never-been-off-road truck with stickers up the ass, gun owning thing?  Like Salt Life but for fat people who can't swim?  Like Ed Hardy for the uneducated asshole on the go?  There's got to be a lifestyle brand in there somewhere.  Right now it's an amalgamation of a dozen different brands, but one brand to conquer them all?  Anybody here have a useless marketing degree that can help me figure this out?  Shit, I'll take a humanities major at this point.

I think the sunglasses, hat, truck, and stickers people pretty much monetized that already.

2 hours ago, slorch said:

I'm in sales, so while degrees are 'preferred' it still comes down to who can influence customers and fill the coffers with the lowest expenses.

Sales. Tough racket.

[TwiceHorn 31536]

7 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

I'm not sure it would really help.  It was an emphasis while I was in undergrad.  Some are just so "left-brained" they can't help it.  I'm speaking in terms of written communication on any subject.  Verbal communication on technical subjects they're passable at.

Which is odd, because most of my classmates in ME were articulate, interesting people.  I can't speak for their written abilities, but they weren't the kind of geekazoids you often find in industry.  And a whole lot of them aren't engineers anymore.

I guess the other thing going on here with engineers is that writing, I think, is a very much use it or lose it skill.  I was above-average in high school, good enough to get me all A's in non-engineering classes except history of rock and roll, goddammit.

But when I hit law school, I was behind the curve just because I hadn't written very much in undergrad.  And a lot of what I did write was "lab report" type things, which all inherently require passive voice.  We had linguistics TAs give us a composition grade on most of our reports and they were uniformly bad, always "Passive Voice."  But we never got to talk to them about how to re-write "The accelerometer was secured to the swingarm and its output recorded by an oscilloscope  . . . . " without using first person.

So a lot of the engineers you see probably didn't have a very solid base in writing and it has atrophied ever since graduating high school.  And, I think a lot of the really technical ones are just bad at it and never would be good at it.

Edited February 1, 2023 by TwiceHorn