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Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

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Re: Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

#141

Post by lsc »

throwawayjava wrote: post #77
munin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teaching high school I looked into this in my state. Getting your foot in the door as a teacher in a public school would require someone with a PhD in say, mathematics, physics or computer science, to go back to grad school for a masters in education. Not sure that's an option, and is also ridiculous considering I just spent six years in grad school. You could do TFA as a backdoor, in many states, but that is proba…

Many states have backdoors that are regularly used to hire exceptional non-traditional candidates such as practicing Lawyers, experienced Engineers, and science/engineering PhDs (even PhDs in the humanities if the PhD is from a prestigious name). But you need to get your resume in front of the right people -- namely, folks in the central office (or maybe principals) who view your area as a strategic/difficult hiring…

>Also check out private schools.

My understanding is that private (k-12) schools pay dramatically less than (unionized) public schools. I've had family and friends who taught even at very expensive secular private schools, who then moved over to public school because the pay, pension and benefits were dramatically better.

I don't have hard numbers, but my impression from talking with family and friends is that you are much better off as an adjunct at a public college than as a k-12 teacher at even a prestigious private school or non-union charter school, though a union teaching job at a public k-12 school pays better and is much more stable than both.

Re: Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

#142

Post by okaram »

netphobe wrote: post #91
autotune wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm like you except I skipped college and went straight into the working world. It's entirely possible to do without an education but you have to get creative with how you acquire that initial experience, in my case through volunteering to do basic IT work before landing the first job and then some minor open source contributions to move into the devops space. Sure I'm probably not making $300K/year at the Big 4 any…

How old are you, if you don't mind breaking some OPSEC? Making it quick, I'm a 20 year old native who's having a troubling time keeping optimistic and feeling 'locked out' from the job market around here. I've only been doing front-end engineering for a non profit for a few years now since High School, but everything still feels so far away and impossible to me, especially because I didn't go straight to college, so…

A few questions ... are you applying to places ? or just feeling locked out ? Are you in the USA ? In a techie area ? sometimes moving might help I'm assuming the front-end engineering is paid ? Think portfolio, not resume; why don't you have a nice portfolio ?

Re: Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

#143

Post by spamizbad »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #116
oflannabhra wrote: post #83

My state has a network of community and technical colleges. There is a program that allows one to get their Associates degree through community colleges, then transfer to a state school and continue paying community college tuition. 10 years ago, this allowed for earning an engineering degree for $2k a year, or $8-10k. In my experience, community colleges were very much viewed as remedial. I’d guess that many of the…

Having a "top 5" school grad (even at the bachelors level) teaching at a community college is extremely rare. Your case was not common.

If we're talking "top 5" in the context of graduate programs for a given discipline it's likely not as rare as you'd think.

I can see the PhD glut and general awfulness of academia (do postdocs and adjunct until a tenure-track opens up) pushing people from even high ranking programs into teaching at a CC.

This is especially true if they're married or have an SO: It's hard to convince your partner to uproot their lives so you can work at some tenure track position at some no-name college in the middle of nowhere... or forgo tenure and get paid slightly less and have the option to actually live near family/friends/partner's career.

Re: Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

#144

Post by alaxsxaq »

themodelplumber wrote: post #40
toomuchtodo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don’t ask, but many places throw your resume without a bachelors into the trash at the first step in the hiring process. Ask me how I know. I'm very understanding of this sentiment. I have suggested to people to get around this by simply lying about having a bachelors degree on their resume. If the employer verifies, you're out nothing. If they don't, you have a job you otherwise wouldn't have had. You have to…

Don't do this. I have a client who did this, and he now wonders how many interviews he _missed out on_ over a 3-year period because the employer was interested but the college screening came up lie-positive. Many, many employers public & private do verify. And some people will start rumors if you are in a small community, or if they know someone you know. And if the employer later finds out that you lied, the lie wil…

There are services which verify education - for instance, the National Student Clearinghouse (US) provides degree verification through affiliated schools for $15 plus a varying school surcharge.

For non-US schools, there are services that will provide an evaluation of foreign academic credentials. I know someone who was reviewing a candidate from Poland for a position requiring specific credentials and used a service to find that the listed education did not meet US standards for the position credentials.

Best not to lie. When I hire, education is last on my list of criteria, but if I select a candidate and the HR background check turns up an outright lie, it is out of my hands.

Re: Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

#145

Post by alaxsxaq »

swimfar wrote: post #112
moab wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think university experiences are bi-modal. If you're going to an essentially unranked university with very poor professors/a non-existent graduate program, you'd probably be better off going to community college and saving an order of magnitude in tuition. On the other hand if you're going to a, say, top-25 school, the price tag is probably worth it and opens the door to graduate schools and research mentorship tha…

But if you do two years at a community college and then two years at one of your top-25 schools you get the same benefits. It's also generally easier to transfer into a university than it is to get accepted right out of high school.

I would be quite surprised if you found a top-25 school that would accept community college credits 1:1. I am familiar with one of the top liberal arts schools in the US and credit transfers are most often at the discretion of the department of your declared major - a professor at an "elite" liberal arts school is very unlikely to assign much value to community college credits.

Of course, the ability to transfer of credits will vary immensely depending on the university and the community college - some of which are highly regarded. If you are planning this route and know the educational institutions you want to attend, it would be prudent to verify at the outset.

Re: Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

#146

Post by sonabinu »

Was inspired to take up programming by a community college teacher. I attended his lectures 8 years back. He kept insisting we learn how to program our TI calculators and said programming was a vital skill. I was scared of breaking my laptop if I downloaded software. Downloaded R as a result of the confidence I felt from the success with the TI. Went on to do a second masters focusing on data. From a math class for kicks to a career change! All thanks to the inspiration from a community college teacher.

Re: Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

#147

Post by RandallBrown »

alaxsxaq wrote: post #145
swimfar wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you do two years at a community college and then two years at one of your top-25 schools you get the same benefits. It's also generally easier to transfer into a university than it is to get accepted right out of high school.

I would be quite surprised if you found a top-25 school that would accept community college credits 1:1. I am familiar with one of the top liberal arts schools in the US and credit transfers are most often at the discretion of the department of your declared major - a professor at an "elite" liberal arts school is very unlikely to assign much value to community college credits. Of course, the ability to transfer of c…

The University of Michigan accepts community college credits. I transferred some math credits and had several friends do their first 2 years at a community college before transferring there.

Not sure if you'd consider the University of Michigan a top 25 school, but at least one website has. http://www.businessinsider.com/best-colleges-in-the-us-infog...

Re: Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

#148

Post by henriquemaia »

analognoise wrote: post #126

Silicon Valley needs to get ahead of the curve: high school incubators! Then some bright spark will come along and beat them to the punch: Jr High incubators! We'll eventually have a system where you're born right into a desk, and a machine is hooked up to your head to suck all the originality, youth and zeal straight from the nape of your neck and provide it in pill form to people who have lost touch with reality, a…

Isn't that kind of what they do in sports? I know that they do a softer version of that, hooking very young kids to the coffee clubs' training schools and facilities, in order to change guarantee a constant supply of raw talent.

Re: Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

#149

Post by rhino369 »

cbanek wrote: post #122
oflannabhra wrote: post #83

My state has a network of community and technical colleges. There is a program that allows one to get their Associates degree through community colleges, then transfer to a state school and continue paying community college tuition. 10 years ago, this allowed for earning an engineering degree for $2k a year, or $8-10k. In my experience, community colleges were very much viewed as remedial. I’d guess that many of the…

I had this same experience. I went to UIUC for Computer Engineering (I think it was #3 at the time), but my differential equations class was taught by someone with such a thick german accent it was impossible to understand. At least 100 people in the class, and no TAs that I can remember. Failed that course. Took it over the summer at the local community college for much cheaper, and it was so much easier, smaller cl…

I had the professor too. I couldn’t understand him either. Somehow scraped by with a D+. I probably should have retaken it.

Re: Big Tech’s Hot New Talent Incubator: Community College

#150

Post by dredmorbius »

MoBattah wrote: post #106
ransom1538 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I took a course for fun at a local community college: physics. There was nothing more fascinating learning physics from someone that did accident reconstructions for 30 years. It is a different feel than being lectured to by someone that hasn't finished their graduate program. Then for fun I tried again: Oracle. My teacher? A former executive at WellsFargo and Oracle. He was extremely wealthy, and taught for fu…

Where was this?

I'm going to make a stab in the dark and suggest it's an SF Peninsula CC; College of San Mateo, Foothill College, DeAnza, or Mountain View.

Places one is likely to have wealthy ex- Wells/Oracle execs lieabout.

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