

Jobs fight: Haves vs. the have-nots - johnnygleeson
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/business/story/2012/09/16/jobs-fight-haves-vs-the-have-nots/57778406/1

======
davidecarrion
Why do people hate on arts students? I graduated at a college with many arts
students. Admittedly, a top tier college (Merton, Oxford), but they were still
doing these arts degrees which people hate on so much.

I got a great job after I graduated, at Google, but it's nothing compared to
what many of my arts student peers did after they graduated.

My roommate studied classics. HN would laugh at that - what an idiot! He's now
leading a team in a private intelligence agency that provides intelligence to
companies working in places like Africa or China. He's done amazing stuff. He
worked on the ground in Somalia, he's lived in Russia, France, China.

Another friend of mine studied Ancient English. What a moron, hey! He's now a
Captain in the British Army. He's served in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's
currently on secondment to the Pentagon.

Another friend did French Literature. Didn't he know he'd never get a job?
Actually he's a top investment banker in London. He earns six times what I do
at Google. What an idiot hey!

Another guy, didn't know him really but he was in my college, is now an MP -
equivalent of the US house of representatives. He studied History. Didn't he
know it would't lead anywhere.

I feel like an idiot for doing CS. Many of those companies wouldn't have hired
me as I look like a geek with no social skills. Now I'm at a top job for my
field at Google, and I learn less than most of my peers who did arts.

People who get STEM degrees become workers. Some of them found great
companies, but not many. My arts students peers became leaders, politicians,
managers at the top of massively important companies and agencies.

~~~
ExpiredLink
Liberal arts graduates got something that 'STEM' graduates will be missing
their whole lives: education. Education not in the sense of training in a
specialized technical domain but in cultivation, in deeper understanding of
their own cultural, historical, social, economical and political context. It
is not surprising that the zeitgeist disregards those fields of study.

~~~
ollysb
> will be missing their whole lives

it seems rather pessimistic to presume that your education is limited to the
classes you chose to study at university.

~~~
ExpiredLink
Not limited but based on your study at university. Most people never again get
the chance to learn so much from educated people. I didn't realize and
appreciate that when I was a student.

~~~
biesnecker
> Most people never again get the chance to learn so much from educated
> people.

This. I didn't realize it either, and I wish I had. I have a decent number of
interactions with educated, intelligent people now, but not with the sort of
frequency and intensity with which I had them at university.

I don't know that I ever want to be a proper student again, but I do miss
that.

------
greghinch
> Big companies are not going to take care of you

This is the best takeaway IMHO. I think the way he characterizes liberal arts
isn't quite hitting the mark, however. My experience is that there's less
wrong with liberal arts schools/degrees as there is with the legions of young
people who wander into university with no real plan, and expect to get a job
when they graduate with and English degree (which they decided on in their
third year).

Gone are the days where everyone should try and go to college after high
school, even if they don't know what they want from it. It's too expensive
now, and a BA doesn't serve you well if you have no plan for how to use it.
Many would be better just starting working and see where that takes them;
college can come later. Many more would do better to just take up a trade, go
to a school for that. We'll need plumbers, electricians, and other service-
oriented specialists for a long time to come. But so many "office jobs" that
required no real skill have been and are being replaced by computers; there
isn't the previous cushion for the aimless recent BA graduate to fall on any
more.

~~~
muzz
It's a strawman argument.

Big companies should never be viewed as "taking care" of you. Your labor is
only worth what the market will bear, and thats changes for better or for
worse.

~~~
greghinch
Not any more, but in years past that was the exact reason to go work for a
large corporate.

------
bennyg
Monetarily, the statistics pan out and STEM graduates earn more than liberal
arts majors. But is that everything? There's a lot to be said for curiosity as
a motivator for work - a lot of us here dive in to side-projects with zero
care for monetary reward after. It's just to scratch an itch. Everybody has
different itches to tend to.

Personally, I am an Art graduate (with a minor in Advertising). I graduated in
May 2012 and have a 40hr/week job doing iOS development, getting paid more
than I ever have (still not satisfied haha). Some of my peers on the
Advertising side are really struggling for work, scrambling together
portfolios to land an unpaid internship at one of the top agencies. I saw that
landscape when I was still a student and diversified my skills - I started
making apps, sans-CS (which is rather freeing once you get past some initial
hurdles). I'd like to believe I'm a fairly competent iOS developer, coder and
problem solver in general. Math was always my best subject throughout school,
but the engineering school failed to scratch my itch. So did the business
school, and the psychology curriculum, and really the advertising curriculum
as well (but I had to get the degree sometime). I love art though. Learning
about the importance of craftsmanship and really pouring my energy into
creating something of aesthetic value is what I learned from my art degree.
That was monetarily invaluable to me, despite paying tuition for those
lessons.

I'm now on a STEM-ish career path with a liberal arts degree, albeit a little
behind someone with a pure engineering background, but I'm a sponge when it
comes to the new material - and it's all learnable.

Now that I'm at the end of my rant, I think the point of what I was trying to
say is that Liberal Arts aren't a thing of the past, and can be very valuable.
It's a little intellectually dishonest to believe that only CS based education
is good.

~~~
nhangen
I think you missed the point of the article. You are the exception, not the
rule because you became an iOS developer. I inferred that the article was
referencing art majors that don't teach themselves how to code.

~~~
bennyg
I guess I thought that Andreessen made a correct abstraction, in that
"superior creative talent or exceptional brain power will be essential" to
succeed in the workplace (in 2042, and really every year before and after
because nothing has changed). But his advice to only study STEM feels a tad
biased - he's a STEM graduate. I'm saying that, from my perspective so far,
STEM level education is entirely possible through the internet with self-
motivation, and that had I done things entirely flipped (CS or equivalent
Engineering degree) I wouldn't be happy from a creative perspective.

A lot of my art major friends may not be sitting with a fat check every month,
but they're adding beautiful things to humanity and culture. To me that's a
little more inspiring than a slightly bigger number in my bank account. But
maybe I'm still young and naive.

------
willholloway
It is really tiring when the answer to emergent large scale economic
insecurity in developed nations is "be the best" or "be in one particular
field". Not everyone is cut out to be an engineer, and there is a tipping
point for economic insecurity where civil unrest threatens the established
order. The best and the brightest can't exist in isolation, harvesting the
rewards of a larger than ever economy while the middle and lower classes slide
into destitution. At some point they will simply revolt and demand
redistribution of the automated, capital intensive economy.

~~~
muzz
> The best and the brightest can't exist in isolation, harvesting the rewards
> of a larger than ever economy while the middle and lower classes slide into
> destitution

Exactly, they won't exist in isolation.

Articles like this may appeal us as engineers who stand to gain from
automation, or those afraid of "the computer" who stand to lose from
automation. But these combined do not characterize all the jobs that exist.
Those that work as doctors, lawyers, etc. have no fear of "the computer"
replacing their jobs. Even most blue-collar workers (construction, etc) would
not need to have that fear.

------
gmkoliver
I have a liberal arts degree, and I've been a residential carpenter for the
last 13 years. I guess the money I earn puts me in the middle class. Looking
back on that time it's fair to say I've left a lot of money on the table by
not seeking a higher-paying job.

I don't think it's arguable that a Google engineer will not make more money
than a carpenter on my crew. The thing that bothers me about articles like
this is the sense that technocrats like Andreesen assume their needs are
everyone else's.

~~~
greghinch
I didn't see this as the takeaway from the article. If anything, I think his
point was that you shouldn't get a liberal arts degree with no real plan and
expect to find a job out of school. Certainly with additional work and effort,
as I'm sure you did, you'll find a job; but just like you, it'll involve an
employable skill rather than a sheet of paper that says "bachelor of arts" on
it.

I think his point with tech degrees is that you _can_ get one of those, have
no real plan, and still get a job straight out of school.

------
greenyoda
An article that contains this sentence doesn't inspire confidence:
"Programmers write in binary math, all zeroes and ones."

~~~
muzz
It reads like it came straight from the 1970s. Beware of "the computer"

------
ilaksh
I actually believe if you are thinking 20 or 30 years down the line your are
actually going to need to have the AI merged into your own brain just to stay
relevant, nevermind a job. The unaugmented humans will be, relatively
speaking, mentally challenged.

~~~
monochromatic
20-30 years?? Ok, Mr. Kurzweil.

~~~
meaty
I think we'll still be being beaten up in French McDonald's in 20-30 years for
wearing AR equipment.

Humanity can lose a lot more than it can gain if the singularity did occur.

Yes I've read kurzweils book: thoroughly regrettable waste of time.

