Ask HN: Are irrelevant degrees at all useful?

I double majored in the two most irrelevant degrees, philosophy and mathematics. The main skill this has imparted upon me is superhuman-like bullshit detection. While useful, this has proven to be rather depressing, as bullshit is in no short supply.

If I could do it over again, I would have majored in music.

I would think it depends a lot on what you want to do after obtaining your degree. If you want to work for the Government, go for it. Federal, State and Local governments do not care what kind of degree you have, as long as you have one.

If you want to work in the private sector, I would suppose that all depends on your target company. Some HR people see a degree as an accomplishment and do not worry themselves much about the specifics of your degree. Some, however, feel that you simply must have a relevant degree to understand your job even though you will learn almost all of your job duties on-site.

I am 31 and started college about 2 months ago. I work for the state Board of Education and a degree = pay raise. I administer several large Windows domains, do basic hardware/software tech, and plan/integrate networks. The state does not care if I have a degree in computers or gymnastics. I get the same pay raise regardless. They don't care if it is Ivy league or University of Phoenix (which I am doing by the way.)

Music is a good major. You get exercise in creativity, abstract thinking, and problem-solving. Music requires discipline and practice, the latter in particular being something that programmers and IT people sometimes forget about. The actual act of performing and its associated pressures are generally not encountered in Csci and Math.

But music is definitely NOT a replacement for either. After discrete math, linear algebra, and algorithms, advanced music theory felt like elementary arithmetic. I've never taken any music theory class that was as mentally demanding as compiler design (although with music there is a lot of room to seek greater challenges on your own).

I don't know about business or marketing. But if you do go music I would definitely try and cherry-pick some good classes from those other majors.

study what you like, not what anonymous recruiters and employers will have presumably wanted you to study. i have a degree in CS (which is what i wanted to study) but do wish i had a music minor or at least had some time to take some real music courses in college.

when looking at hundreds of resumes for prospective hires, i don't think i once looked at the school or degree somebody had. i barely looked at the resume at all; past experience is nice to thumb through but conversation with the candidate was the only real way to tell if they know what they're doing.

as for getting past anonymous HR resume scans, don't worry about it. nobody can really get past those anyway. your best bet is and always will be inside referrals.

All there is to do in heaven is write hymns.

I'm a drummer and God's not very fond and it sucks competing with angels. God liked Abel's offering more than Cain and Cain killed him. Think about that.

Here's some songs by show-off angels, bootlegs from Heaven.

http://www.losethos.com/hymns.html

I have a computer systems engineering degree (embedded systems) and a electrical engineering masters (control systems) from ASU. Not very useful in eternity. Yeah, God's got awesome computers which have no problem predicting all the timings of my machine so a mouse click can land on an exact nanosecond.