

What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers. - crocus
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i46/46b01001.htm

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mynameishere
Far too many people go to college. Most of you went to decent schools, so
you're probably not aware that US state schools are literally inundated by
federally-subsidized mouth-breathers, who are doomed to drop out and work at
Burger King, or get communications degrees and work at Burger King.

A high school graduate in the 1960s could earn a middle class income through
unskilled labor. This was an historical anomaly, and there's no reason to
compare wage data today with that of the past. As soon as non-Western
manufacturing labor entered the market, the price was driven down. Anomaly
over.

~~~
glomek
> Far too many people go to college.

I am convinced that many people go to college only to become employable, not
because they have any academic interest to pursue.

If a high school diploma actually meant that you could read and write and
multiply and divide, then maybe there wouldn't be as many jobs out there
requiring college degrees when all they really need are the skills you should
have learned in high school.

~~~
helveticaman
>I am convinced that many people go to college only to become employable, not
because they have any academic interest to pursue.

I know this is true of business schools. B-schools don't really teach
anything; they're actually a way to signal to potential employers that you
could come up with the 100k and 2 years necessary to go through school, the
smarts to get through admissions, the persistence to get through it, and the
willingness to absorb bullshit management-speak (meaning you'll be obedient).

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pchristensen
Actually, the article _actively refutes_ the idea that computers explain the
wage gap. The thesis is that it's all due to supply and demand in the labor
force, and that it has been going on since electrification in the early 1900s.

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silentbicycle
After the second world war, the GI Bill heavily subsidized tuition for many
American veterans.* This led to a _huge_ surge in college enrollment, which
persisted through the decade. Greater exposure to higher education led to more
interest among the general population. Furthermore, students could avoid being
drafted for the Vietnam war.

The long-term increase in enrollment raised the bar for expected education in
potential employees, and that has in turn perpetuated itself. The
employability gap between the college-educated and those with high school
diplomas or less has continued to widen, and may now be escalating to a split
in the college-educated.

* These benefits were realistically only accessible to _white_ veterans, though. Most universities were still segregated.

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noelchurchill
Occasionally someone posts to HN stating they want want to drop out of high
school or go straight from high school to working full time. Maybe they should
read this first.

~~~
lsc
eh, I didn't go to college. of course, when I graduated highschool it was
1997, and I had 2 years of paid experience as a sysadmin, so I was able to
jump right into a .com job, and I'm a UNIX SysAdmin- a computer janitor.
SysAdmins often have less formal education than Developers, so some of this
was just that I 'got lucky' - but I do know many others who have done ok
without formal education.

Yeah, if I had stuck it out, I'd probably be earning another 20%-30%, (just
looking at what my co-workers make) but I'm still comfortably into the six
figure range.

Granted, that's not great for the bay area, average nerd salary around here is
north of $140K, and I don't rate that unless I'm contracting, but it's
certainly an OK salary for someone who hasn't hit 30 yet.

The key to making decent money without college is to get jobs that count
(really, this is good advice regardless of your other educational plans. Most
places a year of experience is worth a little less than a year of education.
If you can get both, you are golden.) If you want to be a computer guy, don't
take a summer job tending a till- if you can't find an internship, pester
local offices to see if they need a windows reboot monkey, or see if you can
get the local web-design place to give you minimum wage to do basic stuff. Or
repair computers for your parent's friends. Charge $5 or $10/hr if you have
to... it's experience and reccomendations you are after at that stage.

My first job was at a mom and pop computer repair place... I was paid less
than minimum wage, but it was an awesome experience, and it paid off
handsomly. Remember that if you don't have education, you need experience.
Without education or experience, nobody is going to hire you for a 'real job'
(at least for 'real pay') Find someone willing to let you do a 'real job' for
next to no pay for a period of time. Remember that at these jobs a good
reccomendation from the boss is worth many times over what they are paying
you.

Certifications are nice, but with the exception of perhaps, the ccie, none of
them can touch a few years experience doing the job you are trying to get.

I wouldn't want to discurage people from getting educated- I think college can
be very valuable (look at my grammar.) but not going to college doesn't
condemn you to poverity.

~~~
bootload
_"... SysAdmins often have less formal education than Developers, so some of
this was just that I 'got lucky' - but I do know many others who have done ok
without formal education. ..."_

You could argue SysAdmins with _"a bit"_ of training make high quality
developers. Of the best developers I know a lot are from the SysAdmin tree.
The one downside of back room work though is it is just ripe for outsourcing.
Narrow focus has it's own evolutionary disadvantages and it is "our" doing.
This is one thing Phil Greenspun mentioned in JL's "Founders" and another
reason startups kick-ass - outsource the management not the engineering.

~~~
lsc
Yeah. I know some very good developers who were first SysAdmins. Even I have
written a patch here and there to various system programs. To 'level up' as a
sysadmin, even if you don't want to be a dev, you do need to know some
programming. I don't know if I have the attention span to sit down and write a
large app from end to end, but many times I've had to hack up the programs a
client was using. I once patched courier-imap so my employer could continue to
use the same UIDLs

Ugh. nearly all customers were using pop3 like IMAP- 'leave mail on server'
the problem was that UIDLS needed to stay the same, (the UIDL value is an
identifier of a pop3 message- the pop3 client uses it keep track of what
messages are new in the pathalogical 'leave messages on server' scheme. If we
changed the UIDLs, all messages would be 'new' to the mail client and
customers would scream.) and qpopper UIDLs contain characters that can't be in
filenames, while courier-imap's pop3 daemon uses the UIDL for the filename...
so I hacked it so that if the filename started with 0x, it treated the
filename as a hex-encoded UIDL. (otherwise it acted as normal... that way next
time they upgrade the courier server, they probably don't need to include my
patch... most of the old 0x mails will be gone in a number of months.) A
simple change, but it allowed us to move to maildir (which isn't always
faster, but in this case was massively faster) without disturbing the
customers. But yeah. as a more senior SysAdmin, you are expected to
occasionally deal with that sort of thing. Being able to kindof read debugger
output also really helps.

Oh, also the 'got lucky' comment was more about coming of age during the .com
boom than about becoming a SysAdmin. The .com boom (and my timing) was luck.
Becoming a SysAdmin, well, that was more the 'path of least resistance' at
least once I got started down this path.

~~~
bootload
_"... Ugh. nearly all customers were using pop3 like IMAP- 'leave mail on
server' the problem was that UIDLS needed to stay the same, (the UIDL value is
an identifier of a pop3 message- the pop3 client uses it keep track of what
messages are new in the pathalogical 'leave messages on server' scheme. If we
changed the UIDLs, all messages would be 'new' to the mail client and
customers would scream.) and qpopper UIDLs contain characters that can't be in
filenames, while courier-imap's pop3 daemon uses the UIDL for the filename...
..."_

Not write a whole system app but the tools (like "duplo") so other devs can
use them without shooting themselves in the foot having to learn or experiment
in very specific niches.

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lupin_sansei
Why is inequality considered a bad thing? What matters is whether the median
wage is falling or not. Better to allow some people to earn massive amounts
and have a rising median wage than to focus on inequality and have a stagnant
or falling median wage.

It's plainly obvious that people have differing skills, and the whole
communist experiment showed that you couldn't motivate people without
rewarding them monetarily for their skills, risk and hard work (startups being
a good example here).

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klahnako
"Europeans would look at our education system and be appalled by two things.
One was that we were educating so many, which they considered to be highly
wasteful. The other was that we were educating girls as much as boys."

I would have thought it was another two things: One, US high school education
is poor; US graduates are one or two years behind the European graduate.
Second, the US does not pay for college and university; preventing able
individuals from getting a full education.

Maybe Goldin was confusing Europeans with the Church.

~~~
tomjen
As a European, I am not appalled by the fact that you educate as many girls as
boys.

What makes me wonder is why you Bachelor is 4 years, will ours is only 3.

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clumma
The gap is explained by the constant growth of human knowledge and the
constant stasis (or even retrograde motion) of high school curricula. Thus,
one must go to college to make a contribution to society.

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rw
I've often thought that subsidizing higher education would lubricate the U.S.
economy.

~~~
lsc
higher education in the US is heavily subsidised. The meagre fees that the
lower colleges charge are waived if you are poor, and at that point all you
need to cover is food/books/rent.

~~~
rw
I mean more subsidization, so that changing careers is a real option for most
people.

~~~
icey
I don't think that the problem with changing careers has to do so much with
paying for college as it does with paying your bills while you change careers.

~~~
rw
Can be construed as the same thing.

