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Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

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Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#141

Post by johnrogers0 »

coldtea wrote: post #111
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make very good points above. I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes. That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? If you were a 22 yr old who studied from zero-level computing knowledge for 12 months and got the AWS Solutions Architect Pro cert (somewhat possible assuming 2 hours / day) I can already guarantee you’d receive a written…

> That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? Well, colleges used to be for the elites (either rich or very talented) to learn science and to do research. It wasn't meant for vocational training for the general salaried worker. Now it's mostly that.

This

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#142

Post by sudosteph »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #79
moorhosj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes.== I think this highlights the true question. Do colleges exist to promote education and intellectual curiosity or to train workers? According to PEW, Americans believe colleges are for work training: "Americans are split on the main purpose of college, with 47% saying it is to teach work-related skills and 39% saying it is to help a student grow personal…

Well, the plebes can't afford to take classes to further ones academic horizons. When a class at a community college (read:too poor to go to a proper uni) is $900 and 30 students and no equipment needed, that class had better have strong income assurances. Else its a waste of money and further burdening of student loans. And taking classes also means giving up time wise something else. Opportunity cost is also a thin…

What community college is charging $900 for a single class? That really is highway robbery. I just looked up costs at the community college classes I took, and its $76 per credit hour for in-state tuition.

Also your characterization of community colleges only being for those too poor to attend a 4 year school is totally out of touch and frankly a little stigmatizing towards an important pieces of public education.

I know many people who graduated with 4 year degrees after getting an AS at community college, which requires the exact same core liberal arts + math and science course requirements that state schools require. These people didn't do it because they were poor, they went because their high school GPA didn't let them get admitted to the schools they wanted right away. The fact that they got to save a ton of money, pick schedules conducive to part time work, amd get a real credential after 2 years (I know many employers who prefer an AS degree holder to someone who dropped out of a 4 year degree 2 or 3 years in) is just icing on the cake. And it didn't hurt long term prospects for career or education either, one of them even has a graduate degree from a school that is extremely respected in the field he studied.

Community colleges are awesome things, both for people studying specific trades and careers and for eventual 4 year school attendees. The more we can destigmatize them, invest in them, and keep them affordable and accessible to working people - the more we'll all share in the benefits.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#143

Post by johnrogers0 »

rjf72 wrote: post #126
CydeWeys wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The over-arching point I believe the parent comment is making is that the kinds of people who didn't get college degrees back then because they weren't needed are getting college degrees now, because they are needed as qualifications for jobs. They weren't incapable of it back then, it just wasn't necessary nor widespread. Now it is. So it's the same kinds of people doing police work then as now, with the same aptitu…

I think you phrase the grandparent's comment much better than he did. That is much more clear. Appreciated. But on housing, there's a major issue you're not considering. This [1] is a list of US city populations in 1950. This [2] is the list for 1960. So we're looking at the sweet spot of the housing boom and a period where the population also dramatically grew increasing by about 30 million (~20%) in those 10 years.…

I’d also argue it has to do with such availability of previously undesirable areas in coastal regions which are also close enough to large commerce centers. Everyone wants to live on coastline. It’s the reason why amazon can’t just relocate to North Dakota and start a second Silicon Valley there

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#144

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

Retric wrote: post #129
rlabrecque wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with that first part. At least in software engineering. Remember when you just had software engineers? Eventually we got things like game programmers and web developers. Now every game has at the very least an audio programmer, gameplay programmers, network programmers, graphics programmers, platform engineers, etc. Web Developers are even more specialized, walk into any web development shop and you can fi…

That's an outgrowth of the same rise in general competency. Inside a company programmers such as my self have been assigned to work on React without ever having seen it before with the expectation they will pick it up. It's only when looking for new employees that these differences have much weight. PS: I have been told to pick up low level network programming, frameworks such as React, new langues, even jumped into…

Programming is a specialized, incredibly dynamic, role. Do you think it's fair to assume that all positions in a company act like that?

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#145

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #71
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make very good points above. I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes. That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? If you were a 22 yr old who studied from zero-level computing knowledge for 12 months and got the AWS Solutions Architect Pro cert (somewhat possible assuming 2 hours / day) I can already guarantee you’d receive a written…

The more I learn about Texas, the more it seems like they're doing everything right.

Hear hear. I found the “Draw Mohammed Contest” particularly amusing.

Edit: I see we have some touchy SJW-types in the house this evening :)

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#146

Post by danmaz74 »

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #19
netcan wrote: post #10

" middle-class life to those without a college degree " Anytime you start delving into what has changed for a subset of people, over decades, the most important piece of the puzzle is decided ding who qualifies for the subset. I mean concepts like "middle class" or "without a college degree." A lot more people get degrees, in 2018. Does the graduates/nongraduates segment still represent a comparable group of people?…

You make very good points above. I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes. That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? If you were a 22 yr old who studied from zero-level computing knowledge for 12 months and got the AWS Solutions Architect Pro cert (somewhat possible assuming 2 hours / day) I can already guarantee you’d receive a written…

I really wouldn't compare learning a very specific technology with college. The idea with college level education is that you get the foundations of what you study and a learning method, so that you can adapt to changes (eg new technologies) faster and better.

Of course you can learn the foundations without college and not learn them with college, but on average it's much easier to do so with that.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#147

Post by zanny »

Eridrus wrote: post #55
zanny wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So five years later you build more housing . We as a species are capable of building absurdly dense cities that are probably per-capita the cheapest place a person can live (since you cram so many into every skyscraper). We choose not to because "property values" and "my view from my window" and "I don't want those people living here".

I agree that you need to keep building housing, but I also think it's important to not concede the point that it will have no effect on housing prices. The GP is flat out wrong in their assessment that prices will just return to what they were. Even if you build more housing, and then stop, the prices will be lower than if you hadn't built anything at all.

The per-unit costs will be lower. The value of redeveloped land only goes up when its bought out to build density. If you currently live a mile out of the urban core in some sprawl mcmansion your house is probably worth 5 million right now in a lot of cities. If the city proper dropped zoning requirements and let density happen the price of your house will vary between the "loss in desirability" from being closer to an expanding urban core and the potential value of redeveloping your house. Your lot could end up being worth an order of magnitude more if the demand is there to put a high rise on it.

Some will win huge as major contractors want to replace your quarter acre sprawl development or row house with 10+ story urban and are offering absurd amounts of money for all the lots. Some will lose if nobody has the capital to redevelop their area and density goes up around it. But if you get the ball rolling there is so much pent up demand for urban migration and sustainable living that we could probably go decades of continuous development in most cities without the money drying up. Its an untapped gold mine of economic growth.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#148

Post by njarboe »

logfromblammo wrote: post #114
rafiki6 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the commenter is saying that having completed a degree in chemical engineering serves as a signal to your productivity. It does not in fact determine how productive you actually are.

Observation: college graduates are more productive laborers in the work force. Hypothesis A: college coursework actually increases a student's future work productivity. Hypothesis B: the least productive laborers are unable to be admitted to a college, or unable to graduate. The admissions and graduation filters thus raise the productivity average in the pool of graduates. Hypothesis C: businesses with the most produ…

Almost everything interesting that is above chemistry[1] in the science hierarchy has complex causes. It would be a good thing if people in those fields would get over their physics envy and try to communicate this fact to the public better. The number of "this flawed study suggests that some small minority of people might be a bit more healthy if they restricted their sodium chloride intake" becomes in the general population "eating less salt is good for you". And foods can somehow be labeled "low salt" when the manufacturers lower the sodium and jack up the potassium (both are salts) level to keep the taste close to the same.

[1]https://xkcd.com/435/

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#149

Post by deboflo »

eropple wrote: post #108
deboflo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More employers than you would think. The professional certs are legit. Also, 50% of some cloud native DevOps and infrastructure engineering roles are covered by the pro certs.

Covered pretty poorly. I've let my AWS certs lapse because they're not worth the time to keep them up. The hard parts of my job have very little to do with "these AWS services exist", which is the extent of what I've gotten out of AWS certs. (Nobody cares about SWF.)

Yeah, a serverless certification would be great. These certs are more foundational in scope.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#150

Post by athenot »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #113
wonderwonder wrote: post #12

The top 1% of American's own more wealth than the bottom 90% and this concentration is only increasing. Soon no cities regardless of size will deliver for low skilled workers as there will simply not be enough of the proverbial pie to go around. As wealth is concentrated and rents and property values rise the vast majority of this country will (does?) live paycheck to paycheck. This is unsustainable and will either n…

I don't disagree, but the wealth disparity is different than the income disparity. On the one hand, a wealth disparity can be directly passed down, and repealing the estate tax will only deepen this trend. On the other hand, reducing income inequality may help with the here-and-now, helping families to BUILD wealth while not also living paycheck to paycheck. So, IMO, we should tackle both income inequality via progre…

> we can also say consumers need to be much smarter and more modest if they want to build wealth and improve their station.

Ture. But this is an interesting point. It becomes a "fool's game" like a casino, where everyone knows that the odds are stacked against them. So when they loose, they can internalize their fault. Yet there's an abundance of "shiny" going around so that people's choice becomes emotional and hope-based, instead of rational.

Therefore there's no incentive to change the system because it's so easy to blame those who lose out: "see they made poor choices"—nevermind how we bombard those people with a ton of fine-tuned marketing. Taking the massively spec'd truck as an example, consider what the car manufacturer is selling: the feeling of power. Now watch a popular game on TV and get that message drilled into you about 30 times each week, while living a life that is otherwise very constrained in terms of finances and opportunities... many give in.

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