When I had to hire people, I was much more interested in seeing a portfolio than a degree.
It depends on what the job is though. I definitely want my doctor to have a degree
School of hard knocks
Submitted 22 hours ago by Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net to [deleted]
https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/2471c247-f74a-4280-b08b-96885922d84c.jpeg
Comments
percent@infosec.pub 7 hours ago
sudoer777@lemmy.ml 3 hours ago
I just finished my CS Bachelors and overall most of it felt like a massive fucking waste of time, especially since I suck at learning from lectures and also the content was like 15 years out of date. For the few classes that actually seemed worthwhile and interesting, I’m trying to figure out who the fuck is hiring for these skills that’s not military-adjacent.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
You can generally use CS as a springboard into most tech related fields. Where its most helpful is probably research and academia.
If programming is even remotely interesting for you, getting a low paying junior dev job will probably teach you more and you can use that as a springboard into more software dev, data, AI, cybersecurity, networking. As long as you are willing to learn on the job and push yourself forward.
smuuthbrane@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
Havings skills and a degree are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In my experience the degree was the gateway to gaining skills, not the method of doing so.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
I think the degree is really more like evidence that you can get things done on your own. Parental involvement in the day to day is near zero for most people getting a degree. They also learn valuable social skills. But a degree isn’t the only way to get that. So it shouldn’t be a requirement. Yet attempting to determine if someone without a degree has that is costly and time consuming. Companies just want to take the easy path.
sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
Also, I’d push back against the subtext that work experience gives skills. Plenty of people work a job for 10 years without having the adjacent job skills to be able to progress in that career or jump to another.
Critical thinking skills are the most important thing, and it’s possible to get a 4-year degree without actually picking them up or strengthening your skill sets in that area. But it’s also possible to work for 5 years without developing critical thinking skills, either.
In the end, no matter what you do with your time, only a small percentage of your effort is going into improving yourself. The people at work are trying to get stuff done for their employer, and the people at school are trying to get through the curriculum. It’s possible to do the work while the employer/school or even yourself cheats you out of the real long term benefits of actually learning during that time frame.
0x0@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
It seems to me that, at least in IT, a degree matters for your first job, and even that is very slowly fading.
After the first job experience is what matters.yabbadabaddon@lemmy.zip 25 minutes ago
Saying it is slowly fading is wrong and misleading. A degree proves you can commit to learning something. It gives a basis for me, an engineer, to talk to you, an engineer. It tells me we have a common knowledge ground.
The era of bootcamps is over. For one person getting a job without a degree a hundred get rejected.
Iceman@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
You don’t need a formal education to be great in your field, but it will help ypu grow immensely.
CrowAirbrush@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
It depends per case, my friend kept studying while I dropped out (due to private circumstances).
My friend ended up at the same employer for the same pay only years later, he wasn’t a good fit for his field.
A few years later I jumped ship to try and develop myself into a better paid job, I am now an actual crane operator with a beefy wage. My friend is still there making the same low wage.
But he got lucky on a different matter, due to him living at home until 33 he did manage to buy a house with massive savings. I haven’t yet.
This is life, there aren’t any given certainties. Only people who claim their experience will be the same for you.
yabbadabaddon@lemmy.zip 22 minutes ago
Who the fuck studies until he’s 33 and earn less than a crane operator
Treczoks@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Kinda shit a PhD writes who can’t find a job with his or her exotic qualifications…
turdburglar@piefed.social 7 hours ago
well i grow actual carrots and what you actually get is both
Hylactor@sopuli.xyz 21 hours ago
I’ve gutted out 3 careers in “skilled labor” (a term I find problematic), eacj time working from the bottom entry level guy, to the guy in charge. In all three I’ve worked side by side with people who actually got degrees in that field.
I have also regretted not getting a degree for my entire adult life.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
My buddy is an accomplished self taught violin maker. He won an award and was talking to another renowned violin maker who asked him where he was taught. He was slightly embarrassed to say he was self taught but she was quite impressed and said “Ahh! The slow way!”
maimas@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
Holy shit, that’s probably the job I would expect for there to be the fewest self-taught people. It’s such an unbelievably precise job, your friend must be unbelievably skilled.
esc@piefed.social 20 hours ago
Experience matters a lot in practice, but having a degree gives you opportunity to learn fundamentals and to have a broader knowledge base in general. Met a few people without formal education with insane knowledge and skills but absolutely helpless outside of their area of expertise.
Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 12 hours ago
Meh, I got my bachelor’s, worked, and then got my graduate degree, and still had to work my way up from nothing as well.
I see degrees as a way of improving your cap on the position you can hold.
OttoVonNoob@lemmy.ca 19 hours ago
As someone who spent the better part of a decade in recruitment. You honestly never know what you get. So you have to take into count as many factors as you can. Education is a commitment, it means you had to go to school, study and prove your knowledge to graduate. Experience is also great, as its more proven skill. Unfortunately both have pit falls in their own ways. The example that pops to mind is i hired two people;one with alot of experience and one with alot of education. The educated one lacked critical problem solving and when a curve ball hit or something that was outside of normalcy she stumbled. The experienced one, always knee what to do on a practical level but lacked detailed workmanship, as she had done jobs so similar for so long instead of following protocol or contacting her supervisor. She would do what she thought was right and stumbled. Experience and education compliment eachother and neither should be undervalued.
alyth@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Education is a commitment, it means you had to go to school, study and prove your knowledge to graduate.
While it’s the exception, some of the people I’ve met in the field really make me put that into question. I feel like there are institutions that will wave you through provided you pay enough money.
SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Tell me you’re a boomer, without telling me you’re a boomer.
No matter what the Wall St. Journal says, social science says level of education is still the second most important determinant of quality of life. First of course is the socioeconomic status of your parents. I, personally, wouldn’t trade my master’s degree for a plumbing certificate.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 17 hours ago
I on the other hand wouldn’t trade my 7 years of software development experience for a master’s degree in the same field. I’d be unemployable in the current market.
Paddzr@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Trick is not to do fucking nothing while you get that master’s…if you do? Then that’s on you. I did programing jobs while studying, it’s how i paid for my degree.
If you can’t get something going? Maybe the field isn’t going to work for you to begin with… there’s no silver bullet. Different fields will do different things, but if you do spend 7 years and you truly come out of uni with nothing? You failed or you got ripped off but equally failed to notice for 7 years.
Life is tough. too many go to uni before they’re ready.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
I don’t see the post as disagreeing with you.
The graphic alone is pointing out what you are saying. Skills alone doesn’t get noticed. So you need a degree to be seen, which gets you a job, which reduces stress, which makes you happy.
But it is sad that it is true. I favor getting a degree, not for the education, but for the 4 years of experience living on ones own and having to handle life that it gives most people. It is also often an important social education. But I don’t like the idea of excluding those who don’t have a degree just because they don’t.
5oap10116@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Most jobs that require degrees rarely require skills/knowledge learned in college/uni aside from sci/tech/engineering because the benefit there is that colleges have millions of dollars of instruments/equipment to fuck around with …
What I see as the value of a degree is that it’s a piece of paper that says that youre likely able to learn and play whatever game a job entails, communicate formally and effectively, be self sufficient, understand/accomplish specified goals with deadlines, and work effectively in a team.
Can someone without a degree have those skills? Totally. Does someone with a degree have all those skills? Not specifically, but they’ve likely been through the ringer for ~4 years and seen a lot of shit they had to face on their own and be accountable for it.
Can someone cheat their way through and be useless, sure, but they frequently found out…or just become managers unfortunately.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
Is say “learning how to learn, and communicate effectively” especially in a specific domain, are pretty huge skills, honestly.
superweeniehutjrs@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I understand both sides here. I’m a technician who worked as an engineer in the past. Working on getting my degree. The plant’s electrical engineer wanted nothing to do with our 24VDC power supply problems. Isn’t that her JOB. Us three technicians have probably 100 years of experience, combined. We figured it out
gaiussabinus@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Conflict on the model? Add a bit where the contractor is responsible for resolving issues and then draw the tray overlapping with the pipes AND the vents. On walkdown complain that its not built as drawn.
SillyDude@lemmy.zip 19 hours ago
I had to do install drawings/instructions at my last job. The number of times I just wanted to put “install according to all local codes”. I’m looking at 15 year old architectural drawings, never seen the building, don’t know shit about where anything actually is. They’re big boys and will figure it out. I was in aerospace before that and was like we did less documentation. I hate MEP.
hansolo@lemmy.today 18 hours ago
Should have a third, normal looking carrot with “having skills and a degree.”
LordKitsuna@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
It’s pretty funny reading the comments because honestly I would generally agree with the meme. But I’m coming at this from the perspective of a systems administrator and when it comes to dealing with networking and security most of the people I see coming out of college with degrees don’t know a goddamn thing. Their courses are like 10 years out of date and not even remotely relevant to the real world but because they spent so much money on getting it they are very inflexible about changing how they were taught.
Meanwhile when I find somebody out on the street who just has had a passion for computers since they were like five they tend to be extremely on top of current security and networking needs and more than willing to be flexible and change how things are done when the situation calls for it.
yabbadabaddon@lemmy.zip 6 minutes ago
Idk where you are but my experience but my lectures were always about the last trends and updated every summer. My experience is the opposite : you learn the latest tech doing your degree learning git-ops workflow and containerisation to work on VMs and Jenkins
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
I kinda agree, but mostly because western universities are being run like businesses first and educational institutions a distant second or third, and this is the inevitable outcome. Idk if other cultures have the same problem with their universities.
It’s more lucrative to sell degrees as status symbols and career checkboxes, than to sell education. This changes both their target market demographics, and their funding priorities.
flamingleg@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
elites love to paywall access to the upper middle class
Formfiller@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Reminds me of what the guys in construction driving around in lifted trucks with blue lives matter and we the people stickers who’s dads got them a six figure job right out of high school in a union that is run like a white supremisist gang would say
daannii@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I have only recently became aware of how shitty a lot of construction /plumbing/ electric/ etc union members are as people.
As they all promoted a giant data center in my city that will pollute and harm everyone (even them).
But they think 5 years of work on it is worth selling out their entire community and future generations for.
They spoke at our town hall meeting.
“Me me me, I want I need I deserve”.
What a bunch of tools.
I told another friend of mine about the experience, he’s a mechanic and shares my general values but he deals with a lot of those types due to his occupation.
He said that’s how they all are. They’ve always been like that.
I was surprised because I thought union people understand why there are unions.
Surely they would be against “the man”.
But they are not. And seem incredibly gullible and selfish. If they turn a profit, fuck everyone else.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
They always present them as mutually exclusive, instead of related or reinforcing.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Skills = Makes a better soup
Degree = Makes more green
unitedwithme@lemmy.today 21 hours ago
I once had a fortune cookie that read something like this, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want”.
And let me tell you, I have a lot of experience! That cookie made me OK with learning the “hard” way.
thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Although this is stupid you wouldn’t believe the amount of people I work with who are “highly educated” who just have the worst work process / ideas / work ethic.
The past two years of my life working in corporate has dramatically changed my overall views on average human intelligence.
Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
The classic “education sucks and college teachers are antifa agent” trope. Please don’t get educated is usually coming from right wing figures whose parents bought them a degree from a prestigious university.
mika_mika@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I think you underestimate how poor and brainwashed small town United States is. They are more than willing to double down on their ignorance with pride without the influence of the financial elite.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Not the point but I still work at an amazon warehouse while getting my degree and people assuming it’s just like highschool seem a bit privileged/naive to me.
Azrael@reddthat.com 18 hours ago
I actually agree with this one and i’m saying that as someone who has a degree.
There are different kinds of intelligence and not all of them are necessarily going to get you a job. You could have multiple degrees and still be an idiot
FosterMolasses@leminal.space 17 hours ago
Yeah, but also never discount the amount of unqualified idiots who have those high-paying jobs in the first place because daddy donated an east wing.
Degrees don’t guarantee anything, yet they’re also the only meaningful way to get a foot in the door.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Forget “because daddy donated…”. The degree isn’t about being smart or not, it’s about being able to play in the system. The schools are for profit businesses. They know they can graduate a certain % of idiots and not hurt thier profit line. So they do. And the number is disturbingly high. You don’t need to donate money to get a degree as an idiot.
solidheron@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
It all comes down to acquiring and using knowledge and initiative. Probably gonna spend a few years on basic just to get intermediate level stuff.
mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 17 hours ago
would be nice if it worked like that.
rabber@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
On my team of sysadmins, the best ones never had any formal education haha
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
On the flip side, I’m a former sysadmin and I only stick around for 5 years because I had the educational credentials to move onto another field (and then another field). I’m glad I did the IT thing in my 20’s, and still like to tinker with homelab stuff 20 years later, but in the end it was a stepping stone towards something else (that does require formal schooling). The degree is a tool that can be used to control on a few more things in your life, in the hopes that you can go where you want to end up.
stupidcasey@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
The college kids carrots are growers not showers?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
My wife once tried to grow potatoes and got what felt like a mile of potato greens while the slips barely grew at all.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 16 hours ago
Why didn’t she just sue the potatoes?
FenrirIII@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Maybe she’s a hesi-tater
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
She did. Took them for all they were worth
can@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
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