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A generation of American men give up on college

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Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#301

Post by notesinthefield »

hattmall wrote: post #69
throwcommonsns wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this unfortunately prevailing attitude that you aren't successful in America if you aren't living in New York or San Francisco. It's absolutely bonkers. There are many other great places in this country besides those two cities.

Those aren't even that great of places so I think it's pretty regional on thinking that. But definitely there's an attitude of needing to be in a major city to be successful and it's not entirely false. The big difference is major urban area vs not. Sure, NYC/SF are super expensive, but almost every urban area is when compared to other smaller cities or rural areas. The issue is that for a lot of people they can only…

Before I left Toledo (grew up there), I made about $18 driving busses with a lot of of overtime. Its not a terribly difficult place to make a living right up to the state median but almost everyone with potential leaves or works out of the city, simply because professional industry is incredibly lackluster.

This is beside your point but HN is such a coastal bubble that I always feel the need to chime in with perspective when someone mentions my hometown.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#302

Post by notesinthefield »

trainsplanes wrote: post #108
Arete314159 wrote: post #42

One guy they profiled is making $20 an hour in Toledo, Ohio. If he's working full time, that's 40k a year. Zillow has a number of houses for sale in Toledo for under $40k. Like, they need some work, but a real house, under 40k. I think that guy is doing fine, he should just keep doing exactly what he's doing.

Are the houses in safe neighborhoods? If there are cheap houses in a city and nobody's buying, there's a good reason for that. Carefully taken pictures online may look okay, but people in many cities know to steer clear of specific areas. And regarding repairs, I've been to houses that have decent photos online, but upon entering, they're clearly rotting out. It'd be cheaper to knock the house down and start again.

The houses OP pointed out are not. In fact im certain the first one they saw is actually a block away from a spot where regular shootings happen.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#303

Post by imtringued »

ogwh wrote: post #202
trzy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers with ~5 years of experience (and probably less) can earn $300k-$400k annually in the Bay Area or New York if working for a large tech company.

This is a tiny fraction of software engineers. The vast majority in the wider Western world earn less than an average tradesman. The higher end of salaries in the UK is £40-50k, most earning substantially less than that. The much higher salaries paid by the major US companies are so anomalous that they may as well be discarded in any comparisons.

No it is the international investor effect. People do not invest locally. The money goes to a few proven places rather than circulating throughout the entire country.

You can call the investors kings and the workers are chasing the kings money.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#304

Post by burntoutfire »

throwcommonsns wrote: post #50
Arete314159 wrote: post #42

One guy they profiled is making $20 an hour in Toledo, Ohio. If he's working full time, that's 40k a year. Zillow has a number of houses for sale in Toledo for under $40k. Like, they need some work, but a real house, under 40k. I think that guy is doing fine, he should just keep doing exactly what he's doing.

There's this unfortunately prevailing attitude that you aren't successful in America if you aren't living in New York or San Francisco. It's absolutely bonkers. There are many other great places in this country besides those two cities.

> There's this unfortunately prevailing attitude that you aren't successful in America if you aren't living in New York or San Francisco.

Even more unfortunate is the widespread acceptance of the idea that you need to be successful to be happy/fulfilled.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#305

Post by version_five »

WalterBright wrote: post #138
smitty1e wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother in law is an electrician. I had enough EE in college to change a light switch without burning the house down. However, that book-learnin' fell apart when confronted with troubleshooting a strangely wired room, and I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictme…

EE programs tend to focus on electronics, not electrical systems. But learning how house wiring works is a simple book away. But be careful - unlike electronics, house electrics can kill you. On the other hand, electricians have weird gaps in their knowledge. If I ask them to do something slightly out of the ordinary, this becomes apparent. For example, none of them understand inductive coupling, or even know what it…

Your observation about gaps in knowledge is true for all trades, and is at least conceptually what separates trades or job skills training university education.

A good university program teaches very few hard skills, but you learn to reason about your field essentially from first principles. On the other hand, to do a mechanical job, you really need just the job skills, and the connection to cause and effect is almost irrelevant.

This is typically why university education is held up as a better key to long term career prospects, because of the adaptability rather than rote memorization.

In real life I realize it's a lot more messy.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#306

Post by exporectomy »

happythen wrote: post #298
icare_1er wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the number of "affirmative-action" initiatives that I see all over the US, in many tech-companies (I don't know about other fields), I'd say that being a women, or black, is definitely a huge plus to get your foot through the door, with many recruitment programs blatantly saying they are only for minorities, which sounds to me like pretty much segregation in reverse, but that indeed seems to be the agenda of…

> foot through the door Yea, but we got no problem getting to that door. Minorities might get pulled over and get a knee on the neck. Women might get assaulted on their way. Being a white dude, I'll get a taxi there, no problem. So if I have to try harder to get the position, pretty understandable, since I got the head start. Not saying life is easy for anyone, saying it's so much easier being a white dude with a nic…

> a knee on the neck. Women might get assaulted

You've been reading too much news. That doesn't happen to normal people in real life. Blacks have a huge disadvantage of poor upbringing by their own family and community and women have a huge "disadvantage" of not wanting to be a computer programmer.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#307

Post by paulcole »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #135
smt88 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why spend $5,000 a semester to watch a Zoom lecture from an average professor when you can open YouTube a new tab and see a world-class professor share the same information for free? It makes no rational sense. Because there is much more possible value in college than just the education. Socializing is a huge part of it. College is a good place to learn how to make friends, date, network, etc. It's also nearly free…

I am talking specifically about COVID and Zoom. I didn’t say anything about on-campus learning.

> I didn’t say anything about on-campus learning

You should have.

It’s not “world class professors” on YouTube that people are watching instead of their own university’s zoom classes. They’re not paying for zoom classes because they want to learn on campus.

They still want to go to college, they just don’t want to learn online.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#308

Post by dotancohen »

geomark wrote: post #265
WalterBright wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shocking, isn't it!

My kid accused me of that. I grounded him. Edit: Ah, come on! That's one of my best jokes and I got downvoted?!

Maybe the downvoters were not convinced that insulating your kid was a good idea.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#309

Post by RickJWagner »

throwtheworld wrote: post #99
baron816 wrote: post #63

A lot of this is driven by narratives—A narrative that college isn’t worth it anymore. A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. And a narrative that those men aren’t wanted by society any more. I’m not convinced that all those men need to go to college, but they clearly need something. They need to feel like they’re part of society. Nothing good can come of an entire gener…

> A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. This is very perspective dependent. I’m a black college student now and every conversation with friends back home includes some mention of dropping out because it’s not for us as well. When you see people with equivalent resumes already coasting by in the job market because they could get their last names and LinkedIn photos past…

Please reconsider.

As far as I can tell, Big Tech has terrible numbers for diversity and they are tripping over themselves trying to bring the numbers up. I really, truly believe that non-white, non-male candidates are not going to suffer if they can get the resume on the table.

Stay the course. Good things await.

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