Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job

#21

Post by michaelchisari » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 7:38 PM UTC

yuvadam wrote: post #14

justin_vanw wrote: post #8

Who wants to make a wager, that he has a serious substance abuse or mental health problem? The other issue is that he refuses to leave Cleveland. There are no jobs for an electrical/acoustical engineer in Cleveland, and there probably won't be for a very very long time, if ever, and the effect of race in a city like Cleveland is far more likely to come up than in a less racist area. I also get very suspicious when so…

Geez. I know America is nowhere close to being a socialist country, but one cannot be so oblivious to the fact that something here is rotten from the foundation. Have we lost all solidarity? Hell, even basic decency? Yes, maybe this specific person is not a good example. Maybe he has suffered mental health issues or substance abuse (though I find the accusation appalling). Maybe he does suffer a severe lack of skills…

Maybe he has suffered mental health issues or substance abuse

Given the severe lack of social services in the US for mental health or addiction, I wouldn't fault him for either of those.

Re: Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job

#22

Post by Mz » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 7:40 PM UTC

dave_sullivan wrote: post #20

barik wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One trick to avoid this gap is to re-enroll in school, at least until you can secure work again. You may have to take loans in the short term, but depending on the loan the interest may be 0% or near 0% while you are out of work. You might even learn topics that will make you even more attractive as an employee, and refresh your memory on topics that you've forgotten about while being out of work (for some reason, th…

I really hate the go back to school argument. It sounds to me like this: Hey, you know that degree that is doing absolutely nothing for you right now even though you loaded yourself with debt to get it in the first place? Well, the problem is that degree, which you're still paying for, that's the old model. What you need to do is upgrade to a better degree by taking on more debt. Then you'll really be able to get a j…

Not arguing for or against, but you remind me that my inspiration for dropping out of college at age 20 was two men I knew who both had college degrees and delivered newspapers for a living. One was a couple of quarters shy of a Master's and in default on his mountain of loans (he later suckered a woman into marrying him and paying them off -- that was his big accomplishment in life) and the other went back to school for a second bachelor's, which never got finished for some reason. He lived with his mom until she died and he inherited the house. The last I heard, he was still delivering newspapers. I decided I could deliver newspapers without a mountain of student loans and would be better off doing so without the debts.

Re: Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job

#23

Post by burgerbrain » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 7:41 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #19

justin_vanw wrote: post #8

Who wants to make a wager, that he has a serious substance abuse or mental health problem? The other issue is that he refuses to leave Cleveland. There are no jobs for an electrical/acoustical engineer in Cleveland, and there probably won't be for a very very long time, if ever, and the effect of race in a city like Cleveland is far more likely to come up than in a less racist area. I also get very suspicious when so…

Do you have something against folks who double major in their bachelor's then?

In cases where they complement each other, no.

Now if they were earned at different times, perhaps even different universities, and don't seem to complement each other, I agree that I find something off about it.

An exception to this (this is a very loose sense of "off", there are many factors going into it) could be someone who's first degree is a liberal arts degree and their second is something more useful for getting jobs like an engineering degree.

Re: Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job

#24

Post by dwc » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 7:43 PM UTC

Three degrees. That could mean he's industrious, curious and driven. Or it could mean he had money enough to delay entry into doing something meaningful in life, and too little drive to do anything but. I know both kinds. Would anyone hazard a guess about which group has a better employment outlook?

I don't mean to belittle the very real problems in both the job market and our education system. I do mean to quibble when journalists try to find extreme examples where commonplace examples abound.

Re: Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job

#25

Post by Anechoic » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 7:45 PM UTC

He has a Masters in Electrical Engineering and Acoustics from Purdue University (a very good acoustics school) and he can't find a job in the Boston area (home of a dozen or so acoustical consulting companies, another dozen or so loudspeaker manufacturing companies including Bose, Boston Acoustics & Loud Technologies), several active audio & acoustical engineering associations (including Bosotn chapters of the ASA, AES, SMPTE and IEEE), and several schools with strong audio, acoustical and/or media programs (MIT Media Lab, BU, Northeastern, Berklee)?

Something does not compute. I highly doubt it's racism (I'm black and very active in the acoustics community in Boston and have witnessed basically no intentional racism). Everyone I know out that way is very busy and a lot of firms have hired recently so it's not a matter of employers not willing to hire.

There's either more to the story here or people are missing out on a potentially fantastic hire.

edit: I've put out some feelers to see if any knows or might be interested in speaking with this guy.

Re: Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job

#26

Post by hypersphere » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 7:45 PM UTC

sudont wrote: post #6

Jarred wrote: post #4

This might make me sound inconsiderate, but in his position I would take nearly any job I could just to make some money. He can't afford to be picky about what he gets if he's living on the streets.

It does. I was unemployed for a year and a half, and even Wal-Mart wouldn't hire me.

I can see why a hiring manager at a place like that wouldn't want to hire someone highly over-qualified, someone who would be likely to leave at the first viable opportunity of something better (and an opportunity they'd actively be seeking).

Re: Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job

#27

Post by barik » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 7:46 PM UTC

dave_sullivan wrote: post #20

barik wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One trick to avoid this gap is to re-enroll in school, at least until you can secure work again. You may have to take loans in the short term, but depending on the loan the interest may be 0% or near 0% while you are out of work. You might even learn topics that will make you even more attractive as an employee, and refresh your memory on topics that you've forgotten about while being out of work (for some reason, th…

I really hate the go back to school argument. It sounds to me like this: Hey, you know that degree that is doing absolutely nothing for you right now even though you loaded yourself with debt to get it in the first place? Well, the problem is that degree, which you're still paying for, that's the old model. What you need to do is upgrade to a better degree by taking on more debt. Then you'll really be able to get a j…

"Start with the library, that's free"

The library doesn't reset your resume. This does. You don't actually need to finish the degree, find a job while in school.

Re: Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job

#28

Post by burgerbrain » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 7:46 PM UTC

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #16

sudont wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does. I was unemployed for a year and a half, and even Wal-Mart wouldn't hire me.

Yeah, that's what I don't get. Everyone says "hey, all these unemployed could work at McDonald's". The last time they had that massive hiring event millions showed up to fill 50000 positions. No one wants to admit that nearly every business except tech is sitting on cash and just working their existing employees to the bone because they can (and because it's more profitable). The real hiring is overseas, as it should…

If you are able bodied and hard working, you can almost always find jobs in construction or demo (one or the other is almost certain to be doing well in any particular economic situation). These are not good jobs, but they are jobs. At the very least it is generally quite easy to get under the table work with these sorts of gigs.

If you are able bodied, hard working, and reasonably bright, then contact local apprenticeship programs. They are almost always desperate for new people these days. These sorts of jobs cannot be outsourced and are in high demand since the society in America these days so highly encourages everyone to seek university education.

Food service jobs are actually quite difficult for most people to land compared to most jobs. The reason people use it as an example of where unemployed people could work is because lots of teenagers can get those jobs meaning that people who say that are remembering back to when they or their buddies got those jobs.

EDIT: I'm not pulling this out of my ass here, I say this from personal experience. For about 5 years before I got into uni I worked a few jobs in demo (gutting, nothing specialized, just swinging a sledgehammer) and as a migrant farmhand (most of that work as general labour at various processing plants down the coast). Most of my friends from that time went on to get apprenticeships in various trades. I don't care to think about how many pounds of asbestos I probably inhaled, but it was work.

Re: Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job

#29

Post by Locke1689 » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 7:52 PM UTC

Anechoic wrote: post #25

He has a Masters in Electrical Engineering and Acoustics from Purdue University (a very good acoustics school) and he can't find a job in the Boston area (home of a dozen or so acoustical consulting companies, another dozen or so loudspeaker manufacturing companies including Bose, Boston Acoustics & Loud Technologies), several active audio & acoustical engineering associations (including Bosotn chapters of the ASA, A…

Fundamentally, I think it's bad to make sweeping judgements or generalizations from one example, especially one which is incomplete. The main issue that I see is that we can't just rule out statistics here. If there's a one in a million chance that, of any given person in the United States, they will be eminently qualified for a job and still unable to find one (probably due to a series of unlikely random incidents), we should actually statistically expect about 200 people in the United States to be in this situation. This doesn't actually say whether or not the system is broken -- this statistic could be both true and, say, Pareto optimal for society.

Basically, analyzing large, complex systems (especially economic and social systems) is hard and we should try to do it with an element of formality.

Re: Homeless Man Has Three Degrees and Can't Find a Job

#30

Post by Anechoic » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 7:59 PM UTC

Locke1689 wrote: post #29

Anechoic wrote: post #25

He has a Masters in Electrical Engineering and Acoustics from Purdue University (a very good acoustics school) and he can't find a job in the Boston area (home of a dozen or so acoustical consulting companies, another dozen or so loudspeaker manufacturing companies including Bose, Boston Acoustics & Loud Technologies), several active audio & acoustical engineering associations (including Bosotn chapters of the ASA, A…

Fundamentally, I think it's bad to make sweeping judgements or generalizations from one example, especially one which is incomplete. The main issue that I see is that we can't just rule out statistics here. If there's a one in a million chance that, of any given person in the United States, they will be eminently qualified for a job and still unable to find one (probably due to a series of unlikely random incidents),…

Maybe. The thing is, it's very unusual these days to find someone who has actual training in acoustics. Usually firms find folks with formal training in related disciplines (mechanical engineering, electrical engineer, physics, etc) and then teach them acoustics on the job.

Whenever someone comes along with actual acoustics training and/or experience, companies are usually falling over themselves to hire the applicant since the hire can be effective from day one.

Perhaps Mr. Johnson doesn't want to do acoustics and hasn't applied for an acoustic position. Or it could be transportation problems or something logistical. But I have a hard time believing that he applied in the field and no one in the Boston area would hire him.