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

The best employee I've ever had wasn't a Computer Science or MIS major (I believe he switched later). It was an accident that I even got his resume (coincidentally, a staffing intern at my company mixed it up. It was due for the bin [HR and staffing are for another rant, I'll leave it alone this time]). He was a brilliant guy. He interned for the half of the summer. In a few weeks he went from zero experience with databases and directX, to developing a solution using both technologies (he wasn't a magician, the end-product was good, but required some reworking of code due to his applying knowledge from one language to another, but it was done, usable and with a bit of work supportable). We offered him a full time position on the spot and he declined (he wanted to be in academia at the time, but ended up in industry a few years later).

Degrees are important. Experience is important. Intelligence is important, but being intelligent and having degrees doesn't equate to success or the deserving of success. I used to work with a guy who was the sort of guy you wanted to go out to lunch with (if you're a geek). Very intelligent, had all sorts of ideas, could talk about anything related to his field (networking) and would challenge you to think about things differently. Unfortunately, he could talk all around theory, but he couldn't execute. It was a strange sort of inability to choose between several equally good approaches to solving a problem. Every project he worked on got about 3/4 to completion and then fell flat into failure.

And of course, the story of my two coworkers is certainly not a rigorous statistical understanding of the world. It's my observation mixed with bias. But it's worked so far in finding good, terribly unqualified individuals that can produce far more than they take away from me in time-spend.

I know people with the opposite experiences. I know people who are just gutting, cleaning, sledgehammering and etc that are constantly looking for more work, taking it where they can find it, and living paycheck to paycheck. There is a work drought. We're talking people without high school educations who have worked jobs like this for years but have been having a harder time now than ever.

On a higher level, I also happen to know the owners of a construction firm. They make solid money (don't know how much for sure but over $150K/yr) who have complained about how they are dipping into savings, investing more than ever in advertising, and still having problems finding projects to do.

I think there is reason to be suspect about the guy in this article, but that doesn't mean times aren't really tough all over.

I've seen all types of changes and there is no reason a person should be stuck in a path they are not happy with just because they picked a different major when they were in college. Some ex: Comp Sci to med school, Neurosci Phd dropout who works in animation, chemical engineer who decided to get a MFA, there are countless examples.

I took the article to say "look at this person, he can't find a job for 14 years, despite all these amazing qualifications".

I have a suspicion that there is more to the story, because I find it implausible that a hardworking competent person would could go that long without finding any work. Add to that the description of him as 'homeless and living at a shelter'. So he can't even find work that he is overqualified for? An office 'tech guy' will get somewhere around $50k in Boston, to install printers and do basic desktop support. People just out of highschool get that job all the time.

So, how did he end up homeless? There is obviously much more to the story that the article completely omits. And that is my criticism, it's misleading to only mention all his good points and use his story as a vehicle to indict our whole economic system.

I don't feel avarice for this gentleman, but I don't feel appalled that he can't find a job, because I believe the story is making several lies of omission.

He's 55 years old now. He was 33 in 1990, when he stopped working (according to him). The idea that an electrical engineer and physicist with tons of programming experience to boot, and with references from Lockheed as a Senior Research Engineer, could not get a job from 1990 to 2007, is just not plausible, even if he took a lot of time off to care for his parents. The story is not reasonable, and there are parts of it we're not hearing and parts that have been distorted (I doubt he really got to Dartmouth at age 16).

People pass this along as two things: a) a sad personal story, and b) a commentary on the sad state of the country. The fact is that it fails as both. As a personal story, it is implausible and clearly incomplete. I feel like I am being pulled around by the nose. I feel like I am hearing only one source, and that source is less than totally truthful. The real story is probably still sad, but it's probably different and less pithy. Right now, I just feel like I am being manipulated.

And it clearly has nothing to do with the state of America in 2011, since this man's problems existed decades before, and in an excellent economy.