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I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

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Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#41

Post by collyw »

mordocai wrote: post #34
jerf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers." Maybe it's a crazy idea, but they are equally not intended to be places where you go and learn nothing of value to anybody. I mean, I get the whole academic focus thing too, but the described education wasn't focused on academic computer science either. It was simply useless. Moreover, the idea that academics…

The problem is, you are thinking Computer Science == Computer Programming. You are wrong. Computer Science is more math than programming, if you want to learn marketable skills get a different computer degree. Most colleges offer a more practically oriented degree.

Computer science / real world programming work is a mish mash of concepts and practice, and everything in between. Most of the hot research these days seems to be coming from places like Google rather than universities. Certainly the stuff I her about.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#42

Post by buckbova »

I finished my bachelors in CS at a state school while working in an unrelated field. I couldn't get a job programming a VCR out of school. My school was not prestigious. I had no idea how to interview. This was over a decade ago now.

I got a job working telephone tech support for a networking company, hardly worth my time. Nearly two years later i got a job as a data analyst through a friend of a friend, working in SQL server and writing VB6 apps.

I should have spent some time researching and contacting companies while I was a junior and senior in college. I figured, like the OP, champagne would rain down from the heavens when I left school. It did not.

But there is hope. Keep plodding forward. What I learned in college has helped me through the years and it does still look good on the resume.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#43

Post by Phlarp »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #30
throwaway283719 wrote: post #4

You might get the impression that the author studied engineering (" I studied engineering, not English... ") or perhaps computer science (" ...graduated at the top of my class in computer science... ") whereas a quick look at his LinkedIn profile shows that he studied Management Information Systems[0] which, as far as I can tell, is a non-degree along the same lines as "Marketing" or "Media and Journalism" i.e. light…

According to his LinkedIn[0] he doesn't even list any of the tell tale indicators of being a programmer/engineer/etc. No GitHub/BitBucket/etc, no descriptions of code projects worked on, etc. But hey, he does have "Direct Mail" as a skill! [0] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/casey-ark/23/194/668

Top Skills: Breathing (2 endorsements)

And they wonder why linkedin isn't taken seriously anymore.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#44

Post by Tarrosion »

ducklobster wrote: post #35
kyllo wrote: post #5

"Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for t…

"Besides, if you're not doing any hacking in your free time outside of class anyway, you're probably not cut out for this career." I really dislike this mentality and it unfortunately seems to be the expressed by a lot of engineers (at least ones that have an internet presence). Just because you don't spend all of your time hacking away doesn't mean you aren't cut out for this career nor does it mean you can't be a g…

Can you imagine "if you are studying accounting and want a job as an accountant, you'd better be doing your friends' taxes pro bono in your free time. Otherwise you're just not cut out for this career."

I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea that if you want to be a developer, it's helpful for programming to be an area of passion. But it's not at all obvious to me why that passion must be expressed in a certain way.

I really like math and computer science, and once I finish grad school, the plan is to have a job in applied math or statistics. Maybe even software. But in college, I didn't spend my free time programming, nor doing regressions just for kicks. In four years of university I did one personal project and two hackathons...total time invested, maybe 3 weekends? But let us not assume this means I'm not passionate about CS and math: I was a double major, I was a teaching assistant for 8 courses, I worked through the school as a private tutor for struggling students, I did research with professors, I published...and on my own time, I relaxed.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#45

Post by ChuckMcM »

kyllo wrote: post #5

"Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for t…

Well said, the interesting thing for me is that we have too many young people who aren't actually learning they are ticking off objectives like some giant RPG quest engine. Go to school, check, go to college check, get job, uhh where?

When treated as an objective rather than a place to learn, college becomes something to get "through" rather than some place to develop life skills.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#46

Post by dstaley »

mcmancini wrote: post #18
throwaway283719 wrote: post #4

You might get the impression that the author studied engineering (" I studied engineering, not English... ") or perhaps computer science (" ...graduated at the top of my class in computer science... ") whereas a quick look at his LinkedIn profile shows that he studied Management Information Systems[0] which, as far as I can tell, is a non-degree along the same lines as "Marketing" or "Media and Journalism" i.e. light…

Nice catch. Someone in the comments section pointed out that the WaPo actually listed MIS as one of their "most unemployable majors." (Is that irony on some level?) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/26/t...

None of the "10 Most Unemployable Majors" are even remotely related to MIS (well maybe graphic design, but I'm sure that number is inflated by a lot of unemployed art majors).

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#47

Post by collyw »

nmjohn wrote: post #17
kyllo wrote: post #5

"Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for t…

You articulated perfectly exactly what I was thinking. I realize it is a popular idea among society - that college is a career training center - but that is patently false. It is an unfortunate idea too, because it leads to lots of people wasting thousands of dollars on an education they won't ever use in their career just for the sake of having the piece of paper they get at the end. > Besides, if you're not doing a…

Look at how many job ads, especially in software that require a degree in CS. To be fair, there are more technology related courses which are more vocational and not pure CS compared to 20 years ago, but its still seems to be the most common name for a university course teaching computer concepts.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#48

Post by watwut »

pgeorgi wrote: post #31
eddieroger wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be really interesting to go back and see when people started to shift towards colleges being a training ground and not the typical apprenticeship path that was the real training for generations. The way you learned to be an electrician was by being someone's apprentice, then working your way up the ranks, and this went for nearly all trade industries that I can think of. This statement has come to sound incredib…

Germany is still strong on the apprentice model, but even here there's a shift towards universities. Now companies face an apprentice-shortage and they started actively recruiting university drop-outs to fill the ranks. At least it's not an expensive experiment for those kids, given that tuition costs max out at about 1000 EUR/year.

Although German universities were meant to teach things that are going to be useful later on. They were not intended to give "well rounded experience" people these days talk about without being useful to chosen career.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#49

Post by KrisAndrew »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #16
kyllo wrote: post #5

"Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for t…

The problem highlighted by the article seems to be that companies are no longer so interested in hiring raw material and then providing training in angular.js or whatever but expect to hire people who already have those skills. Anecdotally, I'd say that of my CS class maybe only 5% did any serious programming work outside of class.

All of programming can be self-taught. The problem with finding people who have "skills" already is that they might only be able to use libraries and frameworks to build things, but they can't really solve problems. Can they figure out the solution to a memory management problem when throwing hardware at it isn't an option? Writing an application that doesn't fall down is par for the course these days. So knowing how to use some tools doesn't cut it. The companies hiring these candidates are digging themselves a hole, or they are just satisfied with having shallow technical requirements.

(I've rarely programmed outside of class/work since college. I've never had a problem getting a job. I just don't like sitting in front of a computer all the time.)

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#50

Post by shubb »

pessimizer wrote: post #15
throwaway283719 wrote: post #4

You might get the impression that the author studied engineering (" I studied engineering, not English... ") or perhaps computer science (" ...graduated at the top of my class in computer science... ") whereas a quick look at his LinkedIn profile shows that he studied Management Information Systems[0] which, as far as I can tell, is a non-degree along the same lines as "Marketing" or "Media and Journalism" i.e. light…

That's a big difference. I wondered what possible computer languages that he could have studied recently in school that he couldn't get work in today, and why he was talking about the industry software he learned in school. He seems a little young to have done a pascal or scheme CS program. The only applications I learned in CS/EE school were POSIX, the Microchip assembler IDE, and EAGLE. For every other one, I was o…

He might be complaining about C++ or Java. If you read Hacker News, you might think those were dead.
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