
I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job - GlennCSmith
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/27/i-studied-engineering-not-english-i-still-cant-find-a-job/
======
kyllo
_" 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
the academic field of computer science if the undergraduate curriculum focused
on how to use current tools like Eclipse or Ruby on Rails or Angular.js.
Universities are designed to give you a firm grounding in the fundamental
concepts, which should give you the ability to understand whatever tools are
in fashion in the industry with relative ease. 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.

~~~
nmjohn
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 any hacking in your free time outside of class
> anyway, you're probably not cut out for this career.

Bingo.

~~~
eddieroger
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 incredibly pompous (and I genuinely don't mean for
it to), but college isn't for everyone, and it shouldn't be the only road to a
successful life and career.

~~~
pgeorgi
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.

~~~
watwut
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.

------
throwaway283719
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 on technical skills and heavy
on jargon and buzzwords.

[0] [http://www.smeal.psu.edu/scis/mis-
undergrad](http://www.smeal.psu.edu/scis/mis-undergrad)

~~~
mcmancini
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...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/26/the-
college-majors-most-and-least-likely-to-lead-to-underemployment/?hpid=z5)

~~~
dstaley
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).

~~~
mcmancini
Business management & administration

------
magice
Yet-another-whining-about-college-education. Frankly, this is the most
appropriate place to scream, "get a job, man."

I never understanding these complains about how bad college education is. We
talking about America here, the land of individualism, of self-interest, of
self-discovery. It seems like everyone expects 5-year-old kids to pace their
studies. Yet, funnily, if it's college, the professors have to decide what the
students need for "real world." What gives? So elementary pupils know what
they need to learn, but college students (aka 18+) do not?

On a closely related note: half of all technology workers have no formal
education, the article said. Wait, if those workers can learn by themselves,
can't our precious, innocent, poorly taught college students get off their
behinds and study those, too? Rather than whining about how their professors
are not familiar with, you know, "real-world" experience, why not focus on
what they are familiar with? Can you go out to a real world and expect those
to know the greatest and latest algorithms and languages and formal
definitions, their pros and cons and applications? Or how, says, Windows
applications and AJAX applications are similar and different. Or a thousands
of those long-term researches that businesses just can't afford to do. No.
That's why we need professors and researchers.

Geez. Get a job, will ya?

------
cowsandmilk
Author claims to have studied engineering, but seems to be absolutely unaware
of co-op programs which almost all engineering schools have. Some, like
Northeastern University, even require you to do a co-op[1]. I've worked with
Northeastern students at pharma companies and they dive into the belly of the
beast when they they spend six months at a company. Often, they become so
integral, they get hired after they graduate to keep doing what they did
during their co-op.

Or an alternative model, going back to 1916, is MIT's Practice school[2],
where graduate students go into factories and apply their training on specific
projects.

This reads largely like someone who is ignorant of the opportunities that were
probably present at Penn State, assuming that a degree would just get him a
job.

[1] [http://www.northeastern.edu/coop/](http://www.northeastern.edu/coop/) [2]
[http://web.mit.edu/cheme/academics/practice/](http://web.mit.edu/cheme/academics/practice/)

------
felipellrocha
"To find real work, I had to teach myself new technologies and skills outside
of class, and it wasn’t easy."

What the hell was this guy expecting? "Hey, guys! I just graduated! Let the
money river flow!"?

------
GlennCSmith
Reading the article raised tangential questions for me: How comfortable is it
for someone who's not a programmer by temperament or interest to get a
computer science degree in college? Or, alternately, what percentage of
computer science grads simply aren't programmers? I've never really thought
about this but now I'm wondering!

~~~
jiggy2011
To pass any decent CS course you need to at least be able to program, but
outside of maybe a few group projects the programs that you write won't be
very large so you don't have to be an expert in TDD, version control or any
frameworks.

In the UK at least once you get into the 2nd/3rd year of the degree you get to
select a larger number of the modules that you study. So it's possible to
choose modules with lower programming content which might be focused on theory
or on business type subjects.

Most universities here offer a sister degree to CS which is focused on
business computing/project management and has substantially less programming.

------
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.

------
Glyptodon
Idiot MIS major is 'CEO' of his own company but can't find a job... And then
writes an article where he pretends to be an Engineering/CS major.

I feel like the Washington Post ought to be embarrassed to have printed this.

------
j_s
It is unfortunate that this article gets featured when the author is obviously
blowing smoke; it would be great to hear from someone actually in this boat.

The comments there pointed out another article by the same author last year,
explaining how he turned down multiple jobs to start his own web design
company:
[http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2013/09/heres_why_why_more_a...](http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2013/09/heres_why_why_more_and_more_college_grads_are_tossing_aside_their_resumes_and_embracing_entrepreneur.html)

------
Balgair
"...a 2006 study of college professors in STEM fields showed that a whopping
59.8 percent hadn’t had any job experience in their industry. That means that
a large portion of the professors tasked with teaching college grads how to
become marketers, managers and salespeople have never marketed anything,
managed anyone or sold anything at all."

Come on HN, you guys missed this cherry? I do like that you dug through the 22
year old's Linkedin profile to get his real degree, but yall missed a pretty
big logical flaw there.

That said, there is a lot to analyze about the poor kid. First, he thinks that
spending a year unemployed is abnormal. Granted the guy was in State College
for a long time, and that is a pocket universe filled with football, cheap
beer and cheaper dates. He's been sheltered with the Penn State pride and now
is finally realizing that you gotta kiss a lot more ass than what he is used
to in order to make it through an interview.

Second, he's at least misleading readers to his actual degree (as yall sought
out online) and he thinks thats ok to do on a national level. A simple google
search is going to ruin this guy. But as a voting, draft-eligible citizen,
he's allowed to pave his own path.

Third, he's naive at best, ignorant at worst. Honestly, he seems harmless, and
that is not going to cut it for the guy now that he dug this grave. He's got
to get some beating in here before he realizes that he is the only one that
will straighten his own back.

Best wishes to the poor guy. As John Wayne said: Life is hard, but its a lot
harder when you're stupid.

------
kator
> 47 percent of the technology jobs in New York City no longer require any
> college education at all.

I've done a lot of hiring over the years and recently in NYC. I can say in
general I've always hired for Attitude and Aptitude. I can teach you anything
if you have the right Attitude. I can't teach you to have a good Attitude and
I can't make you have a better Aptitude.

One very real challenge in NYC is that big players are soaking up most of tech
talent and there is a ground war between financial technology companies and
other start-ups. That pressure has caused companies to go back to the drawing
board on how they qualify candidates. For a while recruiters wouldn’t even
look at a person without seeing some lofty education background in a resume.
Now they’re looking for the scrappy problem solver that might be savvy based
on their recent work experience.

I find this interesting because when I started in technology 30 years ago I
had a hard time hiring for my companies and developed this “Attitude+Aptitude”
concept with my teams. Over time it seemed like it was getting harder for
people to get into technology jobs because it became accepted principle that
you had to hire people with CS degrees to ensure success. Of course that was
BS when it happened and I’ve always fought against it over the years. One of
the best things for me about hiring in NYC was being able to tell the
recruiting team what I was looking for and to tell them to stop looking for
just CS degrees.

Recently I took a position as CTO in a San Francisco HQ’d start-up. I’ve been
talking to my engineering team on how we filter candidates, again I’m
preaching A+A but its clear they’ve been taught to look for CS degrees and
Math majors. I’m working with them to broaden their thinking. I think this is
an example that in general people are lazy about hiring and they’ll use
anything they can as an excuse to not invest in finding out if a candidate is
the right person. It’s tough, we’re all busy and have yet another meeting to
run to or another customer call to deal with. It’s easy to think hiring is a
pain and distraction from what you’re doing today. But, let’s be clear, the
single most important thing you can do is scale your teams and if you don’t
hire they’ll never scale and you’ll fail. To me the most important thing you
can do in a company is hire well. The second most important thing is fire
well, let people go if they’re not working out. You’re not doing them any
favors and in the end their life will be better if they can find a place they
fit in and can be successful and your world will be more successful if you
focus on building a team that is a well oiled machine that smashes through
problems like a hot knife through butter.

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comrh
I studied English and not engineering and had no problem finding a job in NYC
as a programmer.

------
tom_scrace
He says he studied engineering. But he didn't. He studied computer science.
And therein lies the root of his confusion.

------
notjustanymike
Maybe he should have picked a better major. No one takes an MIS degree
seriously.

~~~
taternuts
I don't think that's true. Obviously the person with a CS degree will be hired
over the person with the MIS degree all other things being equal, but it's up
to the candidate to spend time to create a portfolio or something that shows
they know what they are doing and can code. If you're too lazy to do the CS
route and plan to go MIS then get a programming job, then you have to be un-
lazy in your free time to make up for it.

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squidmccactus
Silly engineer, English is just another name for "Pre-Law".

------
dontbeabitch
go flip burgers

