
Show HN: Careers for people not going to college, built with Meteor - sdybskiy
https://raiseyourflag.com/
======
zig
For people nearing the end of high-school, please go to college.

I don't have a degree and have been extremely lucky; I managed to get into
middle-management and have been successful.

The problem is that I'm not as "portable" as I would be with a degree - in
other words, a layoff or termination could put my lifestyle in jeopardy. As
such, I am going back to school at 29.

Get it over with :)

~~~
antidamage
I'm 37. At my age a degree is completely irrelevant if you have the skill set.
In fact, ten years ago I was approached by a university to start my Master's
degree, with the missing Bachelor's degree being credited through time spent
working in my industry at the time.

The reality of education in America is that it's an expensive tickbox. It
verges on being a racket. While you don't want to be the lone rebel being
crushed under the wheels of the machine, if you can avoid becoming indentured
to the government with a student loan then do yourself a favour and choose not
to waste money on education you can just teach yourself.

~~~
dtparr
> At my age a degree is completely irrelevant if you have the skill set.

This is a dangerous thing to say without any qualifiers. It depends on the
industry, economic conditions in your area, type/size of company you want to
work for, etc.

I've known a couple individuals who had the skills and 20+ years of experience
who lost jobs at floundering companies and weren't able to find anything
relevant due to a lack of a degree. In both cases, they had a few interviews
that were basically "Wow, you're a great fit experience-wise and it like
you've worked with the same technologies/processes we use here and some we're
hoping to go to. Oh, except we can't hire you for an engineering role unless
you have at least a BS. Would you be interested in an hourly maintenance job?"

~~~
nsxwolf
But that's madness! You'd be great for this job but we can't hire you because
you don't have a piece of paper? How long can these self inflicted meaningless
restrictions continue?

~~~
IkmoIkmo
I agree.

Although sometimes there are legal requirements. Like a lawyer in a law firm,
don't know how it is in the US (probably the same) but here there's no way you
can practice law and represent someone in a court without a master's legal
degree. And starting your own firm requires a degree above that. Although you
can start a legal advisory firm without it.

I appreciate you may still think that legal requirement is madness but I can
imagine there are some jobs where you want a government to accredit a
university's degree, as a form of consumer protection and regulation. For
example say a doctor, or a financial advisor, you may want to have 'audited'
and given some level of quality assurance, which is essentially what
government-accredited degrees aim to prove.

What would be madness is if that same government did not try to accommodate
for people with degree-equivalent experience to get their experiences
accredited with a formal degree at no-cost or low-cost. For example if you're
a self-taught engineer who, due to work experience, could actually finish
engineering courses without going to any classes because of self-education,
then you ought to be able to (after demonstrating said experience) pay for the
mere administrative cost of examination (i.e. $50 per exam) and take all
examinations in a year for less than $1k and get your degree. Without spending
years, going to classes, and paying tens of thousands for teaching you don't
need and won't make use of.

This isn't always easy but separating examination from teaching in schools is
something I think we haven't explored enough. You can do a GED or GMAT without
enrolling in any classes, and just taking exams, and if self-taught or skilled
by experience somehow, then the test is just an accreditation of your skills.
Yet we don't have equivalents for advanced degrees. It's not easy to set this
up of course, but I think we ought to try more. Although for legal professions
it exist, the bar exam afaik doesn't require you to ever have gone to law
school, if you happen to be able to take it due to e.g. working in a legal
office and somehow picking up everything in an assistant role.

------
joshmn
I went to school and dropped out twice — Caltech and Georgetown. I think I
maybe have 20 credit hours under my belt? I don't even know.

I'm now 24. I've done quite okay for myself. On paper, I'm not that appealing
— non-violent/non-drug related felonies, dropped out of two very highly-
regarded schools ("there must be something wrong here"), and some baggage from
when I was a child ("mommy/daddy issues") that still sneak up on me every now
and then, which have just as occasionally impacted my professional life.

But I made it. I'm a rare breed and I'm thankful. If I would have added a
college degree to my life's work, it would be one less strike against me. A
strike that I wouldn't have to prove myself for or against.

My advice: Anyone who is at or nearing the end of their high school career,
please go to college. Two years at a community college, and then two years
wherever you want to go. ~$70k and you're done.

While you're on HN, you're in a social circle of where it's not abnormal for
people to be successful without a college degree. In the real world, however,
this number is much slimmer than it's made out to be here.

That said, don't think that all you need is education either. A diploma is a
piece of paper that shows you followed a curriculum, bought someone a new
Mercedes, and slaved away for countless hours on end. Your battle doesn't end
there — experience in the real world goes a lot further than you think it
does.

~~~
lsc
If you have an opportunity to go to a really top-end school, sure, take it.
That's really valuable. But remember, that's not an opportunity most people
have.

Don't pretend that a degree from the school you see advertised on daytime TV
is the same sort of product.

This, I think, is the "big lie" about college. The idea that a poor person
with a degree from a shitty college is going to have even just the
opportunities that I had[1]... is a lie. There's really no other way to put
it. Sure, if you can get into a really good college and make sure you work
your way into a peer group of successful people? It can be a great leg up.
Hell, if I thought I could get into Stanford, I'd take four years off right
now[2]. But going to the sort of college your average poor person is going to
go to, and being around other people in that same situation isn't going to get
you the opportunities I got for just being born.

[1]to be clear, My parents were pretty solidly middle class, not rich. So am
I. I'm a competent but not great sysadmin/programmer; I didn't go to college,
but I had all of the advantages that your average kid who goes to a mid-level
college would have.

[2]But the sort of mid-level school that would accept a mid-level middle-class
mid-achieving guy like me? Maybe a nice UC? Yeah, four years at your average
mid-level school isn't going to increase my salary any more than four years of
changing my job to focus on the more in-demand bits of my industry. Probably a
lot less, in fact. I mean, it sounds like a lot of fun, but I don't know if
it's half a million bucks in fun.

~~~
joshmn
Incredibly well said.

My parents — probably like yours — are very traditional. And in so, they are
convinced that having that piece of paper means you're +$30k a year from the
start <at least AND no matter what other circumstances _> (_ except outliers).

I STILL hear this all the time... "when I was your age..."

I reply, "yeah well when Barack Obama was your age, he was the first black
President of the United States of America."

When my parents were my age, they could go to school full-time at the
University of Minnesota, have a minimum wage job, and at 16 hours a week they
would be able to afford their education and living expenses.

Those were the days where it made sense to have an education because it was
such a great value at a very affordable price.

BUT. Now, because it's so much easier to get <nearly free money> (a la student
loans), Universities saw this as money in their pocket: Since students are
getting money easier, that means it's easier for them to get an education; now
that there's more money available, let's make more money for ourselves!

It's a terrible fucking system.

------
grardb
I really like this. It reminds me of Mr. Money Mustache's "50 Jobs over
$50,000 - Without a Degree":

[Part 1] [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/07/25/50-jobs-
over-50000...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/07/25/50-jobs-
over-50000-without-a-degree-part-1/)

[Part 2] [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/08/05/50-jobs-
over-50000...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/08/05/50-jobs-
over-50000-without-a-degree-part-2/)

Quick question: How did you get pagination working? I haven't built anything
big in Meteor, but I did go through the Discover Meteor book, and it said that
Meteor doesn't lend itself well to pagination, so that you should use infinite
scrolling. Does pagination break if the database is updated, or is it not
reactive, or am I missing something?

~~~
sdybskiy
I am using Flow Router [https://github.com/kadirahq/flow-
router](https://github.com/kadirahq/flow-router) to route the app. And this is
the package I'm using for pagination
[https://atmospherejs.com/miguelalarcos/flow-router-
paginatio...](https://atmospherejs.com/miguelalarcos/flow-router-pagination).
So far it hasn't let me down (there are a few bugs with the subscriptions on
each individual page) but if you play around with the work style filter you'll
see the collection reactivity and how it's reflected on the subscription and
pagination. Thanks for your feedback! Waiting for Meteor to support pagination
natively.

~~~
grardb
Thanks for the tip! I actually wanted to build something in Meteor a while
ago, but couldn't figure out how to set up pagination (and infinite scrolling
just seemed awkward in that specific case). It's nice to see that there are
ways to get it working.

~~~
sdybskiy
Yeah the speed that Meteor is accelerating at as a framework is amazing to
see, soon enough it will be playing with the big dogs no problem :)

------
ErikRogneby
My quick 2 minute clicking around critique:

1\. No search? A plumber is one one the best paid impossible-to-outsource-
overseas jobs you can get without a college degree. Coming to the site I
immediately wanted to search for it and have that be my point of entry to
discovering how the site works. A known reference point. I had no desire to
fiddle with those sliders.

2\. Union jobs, a.k.a. "the trades". Not college but they have a clear
progression and pay is fairly well documented. (a filter for union?)

3\. pay is regional. Union jobs for example pay different depending on
location. (see #2)

4\. on the career path view make the breadcrumb dots clickable.
[https://raiseyourflag.com/career-path/virtual-
assistant/virt...](https://raiseyourflag.com/career-path/virtual-
assistant/virtual-assistant) \- text is clickable, so should be the dots on
the line above.

~~~
chinpunkanpun
Founder or Raise Your Flag here. Thanks for the feedback. (#1-3) Completely
agree. Trades are missing from the site and are much needed. One reason we
started with the paths that we started with is simply because there was no
blueprint for those paths. Trades are understood and (at least here in Canada)
get a ton of support from the government and push within the school system. We
will be adding them very soon.

#4. Agreed. This will be fixed ASAP. Thanks!

------
multiplegeorges
Nice looking site.

What did doing this in Meteor get you? Why did you go with a framework that
focuses primarily on real-time interactions/data streaming?

It seems to me this could easily be a Rails app with some simple Angular
components for the Filter Career Paths bit. But, perhaps this betrays my
ignorance of the versatility of Meteor...

~~~
sdybskiy
Thanks for the feedback! Me being a 21 year old developer who didn't have his
hands in the mud when all the big guys were in play (Rails, Django, etc), I
went for a new framework like Meteor to see where my self-learning abilities
can benefit me. So far it's been great in terms of the speed we can develop at
and the transparency between front end and back-end (no missed import calls
anywhere to crash the app). Meteor, to early adopters, and people who haven't
played around with it too much, who also have a rich background in other
frameworks, might seem like not the go-to but for us it's been great so far.

~~~
multiplegeorges
Cool, thanks for the background. Good luck with the site.

------
valgaze
Sidestepping the merits of the go/no-go college discussion-- there are a lot
of nice touches.

Check out the translate button: English -> French:
[http://imgur.com/a/N4U9t](http://imgur.com/a/N4U9t)

At first I wondered why there was French but then I saw Toronto =)

------
neovive
Very nice! Coincidently, I've been researching Meteor this past week for a new
website as an alternative to my current Laravel stack. Meteor is very exciting
and I'm drawn to the Isomorphic JS concept. However, I decided to hold off for
now after learning more about the issues with search engine crawling, large
initial downloads and difficulty in deployment. Most of these concerns are on
the Meteor roadmap, so I am eagerly awaiting future updates.

Meteor is definitely enticing, with it's upcoming Galaxy deployment tool and
React/Angular support. It's a very exciting, albeit, fast-faced time for
webdev.

------
hitekker
One of those ideas, which if not executed well, could be misleading and/or
condescending. I was pleasantly surprised.

Also very happy to see that it was not filled with Software based jobs.

------
markdown
I had to close the tab as i couldn't scroll. Fuck new tech that doesn't work.

------
trymas
TL;DR: university gave to me (and to my friends who have degrees) wider
interest field, with skills to absorb information about new topics. In my own
experience usually drop-outs and people who've did not attend college, have
shallower and narrower interest fields.

IMHO, college/university degree is worth it (coming from Europe where
education is way cheaper than in US), in regards you will also broaden your
skill-set while attending school. Though, if you seek academical career 'real
life' skill-set is somewhat less important.

Maybe it's just me and my social circles, but usually I can find out if
someone has attended college or not (or just skimmed through classes), just by
talking with them.

For reference, I had few colleagues who did their job well, though where
completely clueless out of their job requirements range. They have not
attended college, or dropped out very early. They had narrower and way
shallower interest fields than people I know with degrees.

I want to stress that it's experience from my own social circles and I am not
talking about exceptional cases (there are geniuses drop outs and geniuses
with PhDs)

~~~
joshmn
> For reference, I had few colleagues who did their job well, though where
> completely clueless out of their job requirements range. They have not
> attended college, or dropped out very early. They had narrower and way
> shallower interest fields than people I know with degrees.

Were they engineers? :)

------
thegreatpeter
It's not working right now but I think it's a fantastic idea. I don't think a
college education will matter as much as it used to in the computing world. I
know several successful people without a CS degree (myself included) or a
degree period and they are doing fine.

------
animefan
My undergraduate degree was math. Looking back, I find it really hard to
imagine how I could have learnt all that without going to college. I just
don't think it's possible to recreate that combination of extrinsic motivation
and interactive learning. _maybe_ moocs can do this but I suspect they fall
short on both accounts.

Now I'm able to learn more independently (e.g. type theory and HoTT) but it's
still very difficult and I don't think I could do it without my undergraduate
and higher degrees.

I see a lot of posts on hn asking the lines of "how can I learn X on my own".
Without at least some formal education in college math or cs, I suspect the
answer may be "it's not possible "

------
Pharaoh2
Is the scrolling lag because of MeteorJS or is that the dev's fault?

~~~
skylark
The scroll lag is primarily caused by the top navigation bar's fade-on-scroll
effect and the large background image. Remove both of those and the scroll lag
disappears.

~~~
sdybskiy
Thanks for the feedback. Background image is now at ~300kb. is it still
occurring if you refresh?

------
YogeeKnows
I'm working on my meteor app too. Where are you hosting it? Can you provide
more details on the deployment and how much monthly this costs you to keep it
running?

~~~
sdybskiy
We are hosting on Modulus. When you sign up, you get a $15 credit which can
last you the first month but it all depends on how many servos you need to
scale your app. Other great places to host is Heroku. Modulus was a lot easier
to set up since it supports Meteor apps out of the box.

------
luisivan
Amazing, I love these kind of initiatives. It was the missing step to fix some
insecurities when taking your own way and not getting a diploma

------
midniteslayr
As a self-taught developer who has had serious success without a college
degree, I'm curious. But, why are there only Canadian companies?

~~~
cryptojuice
Also a self-taught developer here. I'm not sure how old you are, but do you
worry about how not having a degree might affect your chances of finding work
later in your career?

~~~
profinger
I always assumed that experience outweighed degrees at a certain point. At
say, 40, what would a degree from 15 years ago matter?

~~~
hueving
Checkbox matching in HR processes.

------
colemorrison
Aside from the usual flame of whether or not to go to college, this is HIGHLY
impressive in design and function. It's also an amazing idea.

Good job OP!

------
stephen-mw
From time to time I think about university apart from academics. I went to a
state school and left w/ around $15k in student loan debt, but made some of
the best memories of my life.

Those are the kinds of experiences money can never buy you again. No sports
car later in life will ever bring you that kind of fulfillment.

------
TYPE_FASTER
One of the careers listed is Boat Captain. I used to have my captain's
license. You can totally do it, and travel the world driving wealthy people
around, without a degree.

Another way to get into that profession is to go to a university with a top
ranked racing team, and be a professional skipper after you graduate.

------
gregjwild
IMO, just do whatever is right for you. Nobody should be held back from
pursuing academic interests. Just like nobody should be held back from
learning on the job.

The only thing that we should warn people away from is doing _nothing_. You've
got one life, just live it!

------
alex_g
Why limit it to careers for people not going to college? What is the benefit
of that over, say, having all type of careers whether a degree is necessary or
not? It seems like a really well organized product you have, but you are
limiting its potential.

------
ghughes
This is excellent. I'd love to see something like this for college degrees
too.

------
srehnborg
Great interface! Very clean and I like the career path aspect to it.

------
Asparagirl
Beautiful design. Clean, friendly colors, easy to read. Nice job!

------
sebkomianos
I like the filtering approach - quite unique criteria, compared to what
"similar" job-catalogue websites are offering.

Well done, overall! :)

------
mkoryak
why is "lead android developer" the only software related career path?

what happened to just "software engineer" ?

~~~
imslavko
I think a lot of career paths on the site are showing the ultimate goal, and
then a "path" to it, the career ladder.

------
obblekk
where do people get that kind of styling for buttons? i certainly can't find
it in bootstrap

~~~
sdybskiy
I used some custom css for those

~~~
obblekk
well done. looks really slick.

------
_djhrtmn
I clicked through a few careers, tried to get back to HN, back button didn't
work.

------
superuser2
If ever there was a headline designed for HN, this is it.

------
vehementi
App borken?

~~~
sdybskiy
Nope, might have been pushing updates. Check now!

------
sbuttgereit
I'm seeing huge amounts of commentary about going to college or not. Here's my
take and experience for what it's worth, as well as a general response to some
of the comments I'm seeing.

1) There is no one size fits all answer to the question is college worth it.
Depending on what career you intend to pursue it could be required (i.e. try
being a medical doctor without a degree) or silly (music composition degree
for a non-academic role).

2) Most HR recruiters and certain 'this-is-what-all-the-other-managers-do'
hiring manager types do care about the degree. Without it you will not be
likely to get in the door. However, consider if these are the kinds of people
you want to work for/with. The other type of hiring professional where the
degree matters is the manager that wants 'only people from Stanford (Columbia,
Harvard, etc)' or 'only Ivy League'... then the degree only matters if it's
from one of those (obviously).

3) Be honest with yourself. We are not equal all equal and facing reality will
help you better make choices. If you are brighter, more intelligent, better
skilled, more highly productive, and better with self-promotion than the
majority of people you know/encounter the college degree (and expense thereof)
will often times not be worth it. There are other more effective ways to prove
your worth. If you are much more average compared to your competitors, or less
interested in proving your worth in terms of career, then the degree will open
options that aren't readily open to your more marketable peers; however you
will also be competing with a greater number of people in the same boat. Being
average or not career driven doesn't make you bad, it's just a consideration.

4) Any job you get you will be competing with others. That competition will be
more important than the degree once you're inside. A degree can get you in
some doors, but once you're in it will be all about performance. If it's not,
you may want to question organizational effectiveness in the business. As your
career progresses, the degree will matter less and less and
experience/achievement more and more.

5) A good job is one that you enjoy doing and that pays for your desired
lifestyle. It's not what your parents wanted you to do or society for that
matter. And not all of them require degrees. Not all of them are behind a
keyboard or a suitable for telecommuting. raiseyourflag.com looks young, but
has some interesting ideas in regard to careers. But there are others touting
([http://profoundlydisconnected.com/](http://profoundlydisconnected.com/))
that there are good jobs with good pay that society (stupidly) tends to look
down on. Don't let the opinion of others determine your course of action.

As for me... I have no degree. Despite that, I've managed to be in fairly
senior information technology management positions throughout much of my
career. I've been a consultant in the professional services group of business
systems company and for the past several years I've run my own tiny boutique
consultancy with clients ranging from M&A/Finance to frozen meat distribution
to mobile app start-ups. More recently I've been doing much more hands-on
software development work and enjoying the change. I tend to make as much or
more money than the majority of my fully credentialed peers. I'm mid-40s and,
true, I do have some college (music composition focused), but the lack of a
degree has not stopped me from achieving what I want in career. Anyway, my two
bits.

