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US Tech Firms Recruiting High Schoolers (And Younger)
ShaunC writes: Is there a glut of qualified American tech workers, or isn't there? Some companies like Facebook and Airbnb are now actively courting and recruiting high school students as young as 13 with promises of huge stipends and salaries. As one student put it, "It's kind of insane that you can make more than the U.S. average income in a summer." Another who attended a Facebook-sponsored trip said he'd "forego college for a full-time job" if it were offered. Is Silicon Valley taking advantage of naive young workers?
Mark Zuckerberg got into Harvard, he recruits heavily from people who got into Ivy League schools. Why? Because IQ tests are banned for employment purposes, and he has to use the proxy of SAT scores which allowed people to get into competitive schools. Any actual benefit of attending said schools is purely secondary. Here he's found another way to find the smart kids, and they don't have to spend $30,000 a year to prove they are smart kids. It's a win, win.
Doesn't everyone? They are cheap and willing to work long hours. That's all that matters anymore.
Answer : yes
Next question : Is Silicon Valley taking advantage of naive parents? Coze they have to decide what's best for their kids, right?
Short term. But when he tried to change jobs, he'd find a lot of opportunities closed to him because just about every company wants a degree. I've known a number of non-degreed programmers who have gone back to get one for that reason.
Quitting school to found a startup might make sense; at least it's honest gambling. Quitting school to take a regular job doesn't; the job or one like it will still be there when you graduate.
If the only reason you went to college was for a paycheck then you don't understand education at all.
If you want to "go max" with cheap & long, get E. Indian highschoolers who are dirt poor; they work for peanuts, literally.
Table-ized A.I.
Some companies only look for people with MSc's or a PhD, but then there are those companies which only consider those with higher qualifications for non-programming jobs. So it's something to think about if you consider doing a MSc as as "refresher" to learn new skills when the job market is tight.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
why not nerds?
For every 1999 there's a 2001. Jobs like that tend to get either very competitive or just abandoned when the market contracts. Or they just replace you with some other youngin', since that seems to be the way that job segment is working.
Calculus + coding = Job for life, it's a combo that works really well and it's a market where age adds, rather than subtracts, value.
In 1999, my company offered an 18 year old summer intern a programming job. He turned us down to attend college. Spending 4 years doing calculus and reading The Count of Monte Cristo was not going to improve his earnings potential. Spending 4 years in a real office doing real programming would have improved his earnings potential.
Keep telling yourself that.
An 18 year old is not going to enjoy spending his entire day with fat middle-aged office drones. He would rather go to college, party, make friends and score with other 18 year old girls.
He can always go back to a programming job anytime he wants.
Oh yes, definitely, very not new...
During the Industrial Revolution, factory owners were declaring that it was a waste of time for children to be going to school when they could better be spent making money mining for coal or scrubbing pots in factories. Why waste their time learning when clearly a child's life is better spent earning profits?
So...
It may not have changed his earning potential, but it greatly improves his opportunities if your company lays him off, goes bust, or just sucks. Having a degree on your resume is often needed just to get past the HR filter. I've met several folks who did very well despite their lack of degrees, and all want their kids to get one. You have to really sell yourself and rely on luck much more to get that next good job if you do not have a degree.
Children used to have a childhood. If they're not busting their guts for standardized testing, they're being recruited for technology companies. Parents can do only so much about standardized testing, but they can push back against recruiters storming the school gate for future employees. If technology companies want these kids so badly, they can wait until the senior year of high school to host job fairs and scholarships.
Out of curiosity, what drove you to try going back to school, after successfully starting a career?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
What, did you think Google was putting tens of millions into IT education for philanthropic purposes?
Aaaahahahahaha! Hahahahaha!
ahh
sigh
Haaaaaaahahahaha! ...yeah they're planning to strip mine up and coming generations.
But equivalent work experience is a lot longer. I might believe that someone with no degree and a decade plus of experience is as good as someone with a degree and 3-4 years, but he'd have to prove it. I find almost nobody without at least 3 years of college has a decent grasp of the fundamentals of computer science- data structures, algorithms, critical thinking and design. The people without degrees tend to just know how to google for answers and copy the results, and god forbid you change frameworks or languages on them- they're hopeless. Its to the point that no degree and less than 6 or 7 years of experience isn't going to get an interview over a guy right out of college because the odds favor the college grad having a higher ceiling.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
nothing wrong with that, most the population finds good jobs are very hard to come by. The real unemployment rate in the USA (using system bls used in the 1980s is almost 25%, Depression level. A corporate droid job is better than no job
Most companies want degrees OR equivalent work experience. I went back to school as a 23 year old and quit soon after because I got tired of professors telling me things that I had taught myself years earlier as part of my job.
Varies with the discipline. I returned to school to study history after some years of political organizing and found value in professors' teaching of historiography that I never would have gained from years of reading history. After ten years of working as a software engineer I started a masters in computer science and found professors were woefully behind the industry. YMMV.
Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein - Rio Reiser
It is amazing what companies will do to not pay higher wages. I mean holy fuck.
I might've done the same. You only get to be young, dumb, and full of cum once (and mean it). Life is more than "earnings potential," you know.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Actually, some supported schools quite a bit. Schools trained their employees. Factories had a problem with farm kids just wondering off and doing other things like they would on the farm. This was a big set back for industrialization so schools were opened in order to teach the children how to pay attention, follow direction, add and subtract and so on to be ready for the factories.
Perhaps after they were "trained", they decried their further education but initially, it was for their benefit for the most part.
http://www.geopolitics.us/why-...
Some companies only look for people with MSc's or a PhD...
I love companies like that! They give me a lot of consulting work when the ivory tower hits the real world.
You can always go back to school, and the upside is that you can do it with the money you already earned rather than getting out and starting off in the hole while having a little more maturity and perspective on what you want to learn.
Not to mention the older dudes get the girls. If you're 22 as a Freshman, you're gonna have a pretty decent time. Especially if you've got 100k in the bank unlike most college kids who show up broke, stay broke and have to get a job to pay for beer and pizza.
More likely "education" doesn't understand reality.
That being said, a good degree from a good course/school will teach you a lot of fundamentals that a job won't. That'll give you decades of work rather than the quick-dirty-burnout single job from no education.
Oh get fucked asshole, this isn't about playing fair and providing jobs, its about corporate profits: http://pando.com/2014/03/22/re...
For IT jobs HS + on the job and or with an trade / tech / CC is all that should be needed.
When I was 20 and 21, I worked with adults in an office all day. Then on weekends I would drive down to the big college where all my friends went and partied my ass off. I spent thousands buying alcohol for all of my broke college friends, and I would do it all again.
college does not tech the right skills needed to do jobs now days. We need to have alts that take less time and give people skills that they need.
I moved and couldn't find a good job in the new town, so I went back to school because it seemed like a good idea.
Well when you cannot poach employees, you need to get to them first.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You think education can only be gained by paying $20,000+ per year to a university?
"You dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library"
-Will Hunting
http://articles.chicagotribune...
if they want to set a min level without the high cost of college and then they can take people from the teach / trades / learn on there own.
"they work for peanuts, literally"
By 'E. Indian' did you mean 'Elephants (Indian)'?
but after 20+ years competing head on with cheaper Indian, Malaysian and Chinese tech workers it's more like BS + on the job + maybe a few years working for free at an internship and your dad knows a guy...
Don't like it? Form a Union and get organized or get another line of work.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
education also has to much theory and non coding jobs really don't need years of CS with big skill gaps.
Grow up, nothing is fair in this world. Of course employers make a profit if they are to survive. People work for money, the employer makes a profit on their work. that's how making a living works. that's how businesss works.
My last corporate droid job ended with the Fortune 500 CEO giving himself a 66% raise and laid off 10% of the workforce for having a lousy fiscal year. I guess he needed a new yacht more than I needed to pay my more mundane bills. Eight months and 60+ job interviews later, I'm working for the federal government. Oy!
Replacing hamsters with mutant squirrels on the server farms?! Oh, my.
I guess I don't agree. School is for the young and unattached, it is not an easy thing to go back to at some later date. I'm not saying that no one can do so, I'm saying that no one I know has done so, but continue to either wish they had, or try to make it work but can't find the time between a day job to keep the mortgage paid and kids fed, and the vicious hours studying and doing homework.
I would make the opposite argument: there are always jobs and they always pay money. Unless you're talking about an opportunity with such a high compensation that you can afford to not work for 5 years and pay for school, it's a bad decision for most people. There are cases where it does make sense, but they seem to be the exception. Taking a wage slave job at FB versus going to school seems like a really bad gamble.
Employers used to train people now they want schools that are not setup to do that kind of learning to teach skills that should be in a tech / trade school. But they don't like them to much and they can't use the people loaded with skill gaps coming out of some non tech schools.
Google and the internet in general is fantastic resource and denigrating those who take advantage of those resources is silly. And college may be heavy on the theory behind computer science concepts it does not put much effort into teaching the intricacies and pros and cons of the various frameworks floating around today. It is also pretty easy to tailor interview questions to get a good understanding of the applicants skillset and knowledge. Judging someone's programming skills is a lot easier than gauging someone's accounting skills or general business administration skills. The tricky part falls on the interviewer to make the questions and topics relevant and fair for both beginners and experts depending on the position. I have found that introducing a general concept and letting the applicant explain their understanding of the concept is better than asking direct questions about things such as language syntax or esoteric discussions on compiler directives. I could probably come up with 5 legitimate questions about C++ or any other related technical area that even a hardcore veteran would be hard pressed to answer correctly. I have conducted technical interviews on and off for almost 20 years and I can't remember a single time where a candidates college degree ever factored prominently in evaluating an applicant. And get real. I will take someone with 10 years of experience over a college graduate with 3 or 4 years every day of the week. Don't get me wrong a college degree is a definite plus but it is not a very good indicator of how well the person will perform on the job.
I worked at a Fortune 500 company that refused to train to workers because they would get certified and make more money at a competitor. Never mind that most people got frustrated from the lack of training, trained themselves and got certified on their own time, and made more money at a competitor. Corporate dysfunction at its best.
We need some kind of badges system for education that can fit into stuff that the older education is a poor fit for.
Out site of the USA the cost of university is much lower and then have alt's for people who are a better fit in trades like learning
Definitely a bad trend. I have a MSc degree, multiple certifications, project management experience and a proven track record. Yet the last three companies I interviewed with all asked the "illegal" questions - How old are you, are you married, do you have kids. My lawyer said "you can sue them, but you'd better win enough so both of us can retire because a lawsuit like that gets you on the hidden blacklist."
So with the companies hiring high school kids pretty soon the companies will start getting rid of those ancient 26 year olds because they can get cheaper kids who are "up to date" with all the latest social media fads...
On the upside, it's hard to get an H1b visa if you're in high school. Maybe it's an avenue for a few Americans to actually get a job and keep if for a few years. At least until the companies figure out another way to recruit near-slave labor.
Yea, I'm cynical. Two years of looking for work when all I hear is "you're over qualified" and "all we're hiring are entry-level people".
Tech / IT needs an apprenticeship system that can tech real skills, have on the job / hands on learning / and at least some oversight.
I do not call effective communication (language skills), logic and deductive reasoning, civics, history (theory and application, not fact memorization), etc. a matter for employers, trade schools or universities. I call them necessary, foundational skills and knowledge that should be developed in every child regardless of future vocation. I consider the abject failure of most public schools systems to do so criminal.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Not all tech guys want to be in management and there are people who not cut out for it and end up being peters.
Good jobs are available to those that can offer themselves as good employees. You're not owed good job you merit one.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Most colleges and universities also don't provide a good education. What is your point?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The biggest issue with these 30-somethings isn't what they "used to do" it's what they can do right here, right now. The "kids" get the jobs not because they have lots of experience, but because they cost less to employ making it financially reasonable to train them. Many 30-somethings expect high compensation but never bothered to keep themselves relevant and thus are uneconomic to train by prospective employers.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I find almost nobody without at least 3 years of college has a decent grasp of the fundamentals of computer science- data structures, algorithms, critical thinking and design.
I find that most people who went to college don't understand such things, either.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And comparing self-education done wrong with formal education done right is just silly.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
History in general doesn't change quite as quickly as computer science - only recent history does.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I wasn't ecstatic about all the non-major courses I had to take when my primary worry was getting a programming job after I got my degree, and I might have taken an $100K out if it was available. But now 10-15 years later I'm glad I that my formal education included a psychology class, a statistics class, a history class, and others. Maybe I would have picked all that up on my own, or maybe I'd have a giant black hole in my world view.
There's a training side to education and there's a wisdom side to education, and they're both important in the long run. Telling young people to get jobs right out of high school because being well-rounded isn't necessary for "smart" people just means it's going to be a crap shoot as to whether their decisions repeat history or learn from it.
The Supreme Court of the United States disagrees with you.
No it isn't:
The Supreme Court ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, if such tests disparately impact ethnic minority groups, businesses must demonstrate that such tests are "reasonably related" to the job for which the test is required.
You can test people as long as it is "reasonably related" to the job and isn't done in a way that artificially discriminates against a protected class. Difficult, but not a ban.
it's as if they found a way to create American H1-B's...
The job or one like it may still be there when you graduate, but the pay may well stagnate (or decrease) in that 4+ years, the position may have become a contract position with no benefits, and you may not be able to get an interview by then, because they are only targeting people just starting school, (since kids will work more hours for less). Oh, and in 4 years you may have student loans to pay back, so what seems like a lot of money now will now barely provide you any disposable income by then, with which to take ongoing training, since the company isn't training contractors. Welcome to the IT industry!
Or
The job or one like it is no longer there when you graduate, because the miracle of technology allowed all businesses to pay someone with a fraction of your cost of living to perform that business function for a fraction of the pay, even though the hidden cost to the company is much greater.
Or
The entire process has been farmed out as "piece work" on Amazon Mechanical Turk. You can still do the job, as long as you don't mind re-negotiating your terms every week or two.
That's my sarcastic post for the quarter. I feel better now. :)
--something witty
What the really smart nerd will do today is find a paid internship, while still attending school, doing something that builds hireable skills.
--something witty
I did not say just HS.
I said HS + mix of community college classes / tech schools / trade school / learning skills on the job.
For some people the full college setting is to much up front and or loaded with skill gaps.
but the issues with some of the college system is that the time tables do not fit in that well with working pros. The tech schools / trade schools / community colleges do fit in better.
if they're paying highschool kids the average yearly income in a summer then the kids are taking advantage of facebook quite frankly.
I saw this stuff happening with Nokia back in the later half of the '90s. they would hire _everyone_. literally everyone off from the yearly roster at technical university. they would literally hire highschool students for summer gigs for coding.
then they had too much people a few years afterwards and spent over a decade of getting rid of the people while being consumed by internal power struggles which greatly affected product quality.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
If you want somebody to follow standard operating procedures, sure, put them in a cube, give them a job and forget about them. If you want someone capable of writing new procedures you need to either train or apprentice them yourself or get someone else, like a university, to do it for you.
It's the technician versus engineer argument. You only actually need an engineer (or a very experienced technician with a wide range) when you want to change things, such as solve a problem or do something new. So in the short term sticking a kid in a cube with a clipboard of "how we do things here" makes sense for the company and the kid.
In the long term they could both do better.
Where I am the current vocational approach to programming means there's no "real" programmers in the place, since too tight a focus means we have no chance explaining the mathematics to them in under a couple of years. So we have scientists who "spent 4 years doing calculus", and even if their code is crap they at least can estimate and work out when their code is spitting out noise instead of answers. Following the list on the clipboard is not for everyone. You need at least a few people capable of thinking up that list.
Having dropped out of a five year EE program after 4 years to work for my brother over twenty years ago I can't say it made much of a difference in my career. I started working as a computer programmer while I was still in high school. I went to college for the same reason everyone does, to meet girls and have fun. I seriously can barely remember any programming classes, although I took enough to equal my universities' CS requirements. When I spoke to the administrators about changing to the CS major and letting me graduate, they said that I had to retake my CS101 course because I had taken it at a junior college when I was a sophomore in high school. Apparently they thought that it being six years before and from a community college that it shouldn't count. I suggested that they consider the four years of part time work I had programming, which they also couldn't accept. It seemed so ridiculous that I left in my senior year without a degree. After about five more years my university decided that although they didn't give me a degree that I might give them more money. I receive two letters a year from them asking me to donate. Why can't I remember the programming classes? Most of the programming classes had a lab and tests administered at a testing center. I would write the labs in the first two weeks of class, pass them off and take the tests, I usually lost interest in the lectures after about the third week and I would pick up more hours working. I do remember a silly humanities class where we looked at pictures of Grecian urns. So do I recommend college, of course, I still have the wife I met there and I still have fun.
the federal government does even worse things than that fortune 500 company. and they have their massive layoffs too.
but federal government job better than no job. world isnt good and it's not fair
Umm, Einstein wasn't bad at math. Apparently you're bad at history though.
http://content.time.com/time/s...
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
A good example on this site was a programmer asserting that "single bit operations are faster" presumably due to him bypassing all the boring stuff about hardware and clock cycles that many others here learnt in high school.
To get down to it, while it is possible few people when leaving high school have the self-discipline to learn a lot of difficult subjects just by going through textbooks or other resources. If nobody is talking to us about it we don't know where to get started - so University or similar provides that start.
Which is just as well because who uses Modula-2 today? How about the godawful VB of 15 years ago? Both apparently looked like winners instead of the weird Java thing and that antiquated C.
I've been doing technical interviews for 15 years. And any day of the week I'd take someone with a degree over someone with 5 or 6 years more experience without one. Oh, I'll miss a few good hires that way, but I'll miss out on more bad ones. And that's what far more important- its better to miss making a good hire than make a bad one. In those 15 years I have seen perhaps 4 people without a degree have even a basic knowledge of the fundamentals of the craft-- and 2 of those I'm thinking of dropped out their senior year of college for medical or family reasons. The rest have all been language of the week cruft who I wouldn't hire to write webpages. I won't even interview them anymore- too many have failed, the small percentage of useful hires you'd find aren't worth the time.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I am taking piano and jazz theory lessons for $50/hour. It's entirely tailored to my learning wants, time budget, and abilities, costs a fraction of the equivalent in credit hours. So what if I don't get "a degree"? I already know more about what I want to know than most BAs, and I work with my teacher to be certain we're rounding out the overall curriculum so I'm not too deep and narrow. 6 years, estimate about 45 half hour lessons/year, $25/lesson, I'm at about $6750 in lesson fees. That would have been spent in two or three semesters.
Only plenty of facebook like companies will be more than happy to fund the kid's education while he works for them, so if the kid wants the degree, it's kind of a win win.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I mean it's obviously foolish to not get some proper education, and at companies you typically only learn how not to do it. A formal education can bring you the inspiration and time to become a decent programmer.
However, currently there is the rare chance of a second ".com"-bubble. Companies are hiring just about anybody and paying them insane amounts of money. It's like in that old documentary I've seen about Netscape where they all thought they'd be great... but if you look at the actual product you'll find that it's unacceptably bad, by any standard except for 1990s commercial software standards.
So, if you manage to keep your standard of living low, you can milk a company for the money. Then when it'll collapse in 1 or 2 years you can get some proper education.
Most companies want degrees OR equivalent work experience.
Most, maybe. But there are a substantial number that do demand a degree, and the non-degreed will always have at least a small handicap, because given two otherwise equivalent candidates, the one with the degree is likely to get the job, and after 10 years or so the extra four years of experience aren't going to mean as much as the formal education.
In addition, if at some point in your career you want to move into another career track the degree may well become even more important -- though the choice of major may become much less important.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
During High school I was courted by a department in a major tech company, I started working for them full time on my 18th birthday. My advice for anyone that may consider an offer, would be to make sure that the company will give a guarantee to let them attend college (and clear the time) and find out for how long. You should also be prepared to be discriminated against when you hit 20 and are better then the others a lot older then you (yes it does happen and continued to happen until I was 22.)
The big stumbling block that a lot of these teens will face is being able to move up in the company. Managers will change, HR will evolve, and the more churn there is, the more you will be forgotten about, and the more resistance you will face in trying to advance. In addition a lot of these teens have not matured enough to start working full time in a tech environment, and attending college while working will help out in that.
And once the kids are old enough to no longer fall under their parent's health insurance plan, then start demanding more money so that they can move out of the parent's house, you can fire them! Hurray, 18 year olds as high school freshmen!
Bullshit. A college degree gives you improved lifetime earnings. Not having that degree will cause someone to hit the ceiling hard. Sure, maybe your company wanted that person, but that's not typical. 4 years of calculus already puts that person far ahead of the average dumb programmer.
And maybe that student didn't want to be a programmer? Maybe he didn't want to work for your company? Maybe he actually still had dreams about the future.
What companies and what jobs? Are you talking IT support desk drone, or actual engineers designing top end software (not web pages) on top end hardware, able to read schematics and understand the physics or mechanics of the products they're building?
I have known several people with great work experience and great skills and great work ethic who hit the wall because they didn't have the degree.
I suspect too many programmers these days don't really do much programming, instead they just know how to use the libraries and frameworks without having even the first clue about how to write their own libraries and frameworks (or compilers or operating systems or drivers or even an algorithm that doesn't suck). Most programmers basically just treat the job as a job with no passion for it. I see these people in job interviews and they stand out for having a resume with lots of experience but flailing during the interview even when you ask them about something on the resume (don't even bother going off script or they'll implode).
First, quite a lot of colleges and universities DO provide a good education, and even a bad college gives a good education if the student works for it.
Second, that degree gives you a huge leg up on people without a degree. Even someone with an English degree doing computer programming will probably earn more money over a lifetime than the person without a degree doing computer programming. Maybe it's not fair but that's how it works in real life. Eventually someone notices the person has no degree and decides not to nominate them for being a team lead or manager, or stops taking them seriously, starts treating them like the junior team member, etc.
The theory lasts for a lifetime, the framework only lasts until the next fad comes out. I've found over time that those who are self taught often have the most trouble adapting to the changing job requirements whereas those with the education (even if it's not in CS) are more adaptable. The biggest problem with most of the self taught people I've met is that they avoid learning the boring stuff.
Granted, college plus experience is great, but experience without college is a handicap. Now that doesn't mean someone can not overcome that handicap, because a lot of people do manage it. Often people have a very good reason why there's no college and you can't fault them for it. However I find it amazing that someone would _voluntarily_ inflict themselves with that sort of handicap.
Ya, but .NET is a job for life! It's different this time!
Yes, you can easily spot the difference between someone who skipped college for economic, health, or family reasons versus the person who skipped college because they felt it wasted their time.
For one thing, if someone's got a solid work ethic, likes to buckle down and get the job done, takes pride in their work, then how does that coexist with the attitude that college isn't worth the effort? If they think college is stupid, does that mean they secretly think their current job is stupid?
The theory is important. I use the skills I learned while learning theory on the job. Sometimes I even use it on the job. Lots of stuff clumped together with theory ends up in use on the job. Try writing your own networking mac/phy layer without knowing the theory, or working on embedded systems without understand concurrency, and if you don't know number theory you may hit some speedbumps with floating point number format someday. If you don't know algorithm theory you may have some of the worst performance code in the team. Try understanding modern computer security without knowing cryptography theory.
All that boring stuff, the stuff that only eggheads bother to learn, there are many companies that do that stuff as their daily job!
Coding + something else = a huge boost over coding alone. That something else can be math, physics, EE, business, whatever.
Oh yes, definitely, very not new...
During the Industrial Revolution, factory owners were declaring that it was a waste of time for children to be going to school when they could better be spent making money mining for coal or scrubbing pots in factories. Why waste their time learning when clearly a child's life is better spent earning profits?
So...
Unfortunately there is a reality to this. During the industrial revolution, children worked all week and the the factories complained that they were not available at 7am for work on Sundays. Parish leaders said that this is when they were to attend church, so the factories suggested that the church services be conducted at 4am so that the children were still available for work at 7am.
The second is the reality of why unions were formed. Child workers were preferred over adult workers because their small bodies allowed them access areas to maintain the large machines to keep them running. If the child got caught in the machinery there was no need to stop the machines because the child's bones were soft enough to not interfere with the operations of the machine, unlike an adult whose bones would jam the machines causing production to stop.
We are in technological vs industrial revolution, preparing to repeat history by chewing up children with a new technology. Having said that, and before the usual union bashing starts, I started my IT career while I was still at school and did the very thing these teens are doing, during the 80's. Not doing a degree early in life was only a setback to getting to interesting work later on in life when a degree was mandatory. I doubt this will change. I doubt the children will work an 8 hour day, I doubt their friends are invited to facebook as well.
The difference here is young programmers have plenty of good ideas however their code is generally pretty ordinary, working longer hours instead of smarter hours - which is ok for companies that either don't understand or can mitigate technical debt. The problem is that they are using that energy learning how to be good employees instead of learning how to be good entrepreneurs, creating good businesses.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I highly doubt most employers think that way. Otherwise why "overqualification" still exists? By your logic someone with CS master degree with 1-2 years of experience should trump a fresh college grad. In the real world that is most likely NOT the case.
New Economic Perspectives
Simple. By the time they graduate highschool, they're tired of proving they can write book reports, handle 4 function math, and write code. Another 4 years of that shit at 50k of debt? fuck that. I suppose a degree matters if your requirements include some pretty obscure or complex mathematics, but otherwise, if the applicant shows his resume of well written code to you, why would you give a shit about whether he went to college or not?
Pretty easy to do when college costs 50k.
That's because of the false assumption that a degree automatically makes your skills more applicable. College today is papermill bullshit.
Some of my best programming was very early on. Scientific concepts are really appealing at an early age and once imbibed stay for a lifetime. Congrats to those making this transition! With knowledge as readily available as it is today, this is truly a welcome change!
I suspect it's more complicated than your sanctimonious sermon implies.
Yeah, that's why today's software is so well designed...oh wait. Cheaper is not always better.
They don't trump the fresh college grad, however over time they pull ahead with salary and position. I had an MS and 3 years experience, but since I did not go straight from MS degree into work force (I tried to get PhD first) I had to start over from scratch essentially. But after a few years it caught up.
So I'd better update my statement to make things more clear.
Raising your score in a single type of test is easy - just do a lot of that sort of test as practice. Raising your actual intelligence is a lot harder.
The sort of things used by lazy fad driven HR idiots are until you tell them to either do their job or get out of the way.
I'm no pychologist, but I'm been told by some that at least in the field of education IQ tests are pointless and can vary widely with the same child over several years. It was described to me in the 1980s as being nothing but a measure of how good people are at doing that sort of test and translating poorly to other situations. It's still an artifact of that time that only remains due to management fads.
College is no more expensive, taking inflation into account, than it was 30 years ago. You can get the education cheaper than that; use a state college or university, get a part time job instead of all debt, get used books or borrow a friend's, etc.
Well written code is fine for entry level job. Well written code doesn't go far if the job requirements want more than that, can the person read the schematics, can they do the math, can they understand what everyone else is talking about, can they lead the team, can they work independently if needed or with a team if needed, and so on. Actually I worried once about one of the smartest programmers I knew in college, because he was utterly inept at working in a team and full of arrogance about the right way to do everything and resistant to learning new things.
So ya, being in college isn't a guarantee of being the better employee. But in reality the employers WILL discriminate against the people without the degree. I'm not saying it's fair or that I approve of that, but it will happen.
Actually, experience with managing the system itself gives insight into how it could be managed better. Managerial types use a lot of verbose garbage to cover up their histrionic narcissism, like you've done here, to justify that feelings and consensus matter more than the facts and the truth. It's ok to defend group work and such, but when the ideology becomes more important than reality, you end up with a chernobyl.
...that as the Western World has campaigned against children working long hours in underdeveloped nations, here we are encouraging our kids to work insanely long hours tethered to a keyboard grinding out code.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
You can learn many of the same things by self-educating that you can learn in colleges/universities. I've heard some specialized information is difficult to get, though.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
First, quite a lot of colleges and universities DO provide a good education, and even a bad college gives a good education if the student works for it.
Very few colleges and universities give a good education.
Second, that degree gives you a huge leg up on people without a degree.
That's due to blatant discrimination. Furthermore, you should not be going to college/university for money.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Furthermore, if you're going to put in all that effort at a bad college, then just self-educate. By going to college for the money, you're letting the status quo control you.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's also self-fulfilling in that those that go to college tend to be the self educated after college.
Most people, including those who went to college, do not self-educate properly, or at all.
Most of this stuff is fairly boring but necessary to full understand how to do the fun big picture stuff.
Colleges and universities are far from the only sources of information, especially in the information age.
Sure, I've met plenty of unimpressive people with advanced technical education but I meet tons more unimpressive under trained folks.
I meet about the same amount of both, once you eliminate people who blatantly made no attempt to properly self-educate.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
get used books or borrow a friend's
Sadly, sometimes this can't be done. Scummy colleges/universities and publishers will sometimes give you a code along with the book that can be used to access some website, and it can only be used once. In the situations I'm talking about, the website will be required for the course. That doesn't make the book itself useless, but it does make it difficult for people in those courses to buy used books.
I'm not saying it's fair or that I approve of that, but it will happen.
If everyone goes to college in search of a job, colleges and universities will strive to become little more than poor imitations of trade schools, to satisfy all these people and get their money. We're already starting to see this. The 'Everybody's gotta go to college!' mentality is poisonous for education.
They should go seeking an education that will improve their understanding of the universe. The employers who uselessly require degrees, the students who buy into it and go to college/university just so they can get a job, and our society which doesn't understand education are at fault.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The theory lasts for a lifetime, the framework only lasts until the next fad comes out.
Who says they're not learning the theory?
I've found over time that those who are self taught often have the most trouble adapting to the changing job requirements whereas those with the education (even if it's not in CS) are more adaptable.
This is exactly as true for a grand majority of college graduates that I've met.
However I find it amazing that someone would _voluntarily_ inflict themselves with that sort of handicap.
Maybe someone believes that they shouldn't have to go into massive debt to get an education. Maybe someone doesn't want to be controlled by the system that demands they go to college/university for an education. Not everyone is a drone that will fit right in a formal education environment.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Pretty naive logic. Do you really want to hire someone who stuck at a degree even though they strongly believed it was a unproductive use of their time because of the fear of failure, sheer pigheadiness or irrational risk avoidance? Does that mean they won't challenge poor decisions or provide valueable insights in your company?
I've got a degree and I'm glad I went to university; which doesn't stop me from knowing that judging someone for dropping out without further information is a dumb idea.
Tech companies want to make sure the Zuckerbergs make a gazillion dollars, but tech wages get driven down. 501(C) organization like FWD.us are all about getting "immigration reform" which includes a lot more H1B, which means you distort the intellectual capital market by bringing in more workers and thus driving down pay. Why pay money to an american with school loans when you can lobby government to get someone who can work for less as an H1B serf.
Paying kids is a new twist on this game. So, why even pay people who have careers, lets pay our employees even less by hiring children?
It is a race to the bottom, and make no mistake, it is so the rich can get richer. I don't want to sound like an "occupy wall street" loony, but don't workers deserve reward for their work just as much as industrialists. 40 years ago, CEOs only made a few hundred times more than their average employee, and that was scandalous.
These guys complain about the "economy," but that facts are clear, the U.S. economy was better when we had more wealth distribution, stronger unions, and a growing middle class. They want us to be China, and unless we figure out how to stop it, we will be.
Tech skills are in high demand so it makes sense that large tech companies will begin targeting high schoolers. Having a college degree is not necessary, however it would prove incredibly useful in the long run.... especially as one tries to advance their career or move to a different company. The solution for these large companies is to come up with a work/study program so that these young tech workers have the opportunity to attain a college degree while working at the company. This works out advantageous to both the company and the employee; the company gets a skilled college-educated worker and the employee gets a college education. Furthermore, if the company pays for the program then the young employee doesn't need to take out any loans to pay for the exorbitant cost of college... making it a win/win! A little background on myself; I attained my Bachelors degree as a full-time student and when I entered the job market I was able to negotiate into my hiring contract that my employer would cover my Masters degree as I continue my education part-time. This worked out great as I am currently taking my final course and will have my Masters at the end of August.
Sounds more like a modern take on the traditional apprenticeship system than "taking advantage" of students. Why should these kids have to go to college to get a bit of paper proving they have skills they can already demonstrate?
I dropped out of school during the dot-com boom for a programming job. I was 18 (skipped a grade so I was a sophmore) and it was great fun. I made bundles of money, and spent it as quickly as I made it, convinced I was king of the world in the new economy. (I remember getting a consulting contract in Toronto where they flew me in, paid $2k for me to install red hat on a couple boxes in a colo, and then going out for a wild night on the town in Toronto).
Unfortunately, after the bubble burst, I had no college to attend, got 0 job interviews because everyone was looking for people with degrees in the few jobs that were left, and had quite a difficult time getting back into school. It took a while and I ended up needing to wash dishes at Friendly's (a cross between McDonalds and a diner) to support myself until I got back on my feet.
Believe me when I say your 18 year old made the right choice.
Bullshit. College has become an investment in your future earning potential; it's all about the money. Whether it's a good investment or not depends on a large number of factors, such as your chosen career path and the bullshit "reputation" that your chosen school has. It's become far too expensive to go to college for a "well rounded" education, or for a good general basis for further study without actually doing that further study (masters, doctorate, etc). Nobody gives a fuck if you did well in Rocks for Jocks or waxed eloquent in your Comp Lit class; they care that you spent a lot of money on your education so that they can treat you like crap without your quitting, due to your enormous student loan payments.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
"At least" 26, as long as they don't get insurance via some other method or get married. According to my new insurance info, they now support your children perpetually, so long as they stay in college or if they get stuck in Active Duty of the military while they're covered. Once you're past 26 and lose coverage, you can never get it back though.
It's also nice that they got rid of some stuff like life time limits.
Colleges and universities are far from the only sources of information, especially in the information age.
There is a lot of bad information out there when it comes to programming or examples. Quite a bit in high profile open source projects. The most important thing I learned at my Uni was how to use critical thinking to help identify bad information. Uni classes involved a lot of analysis and you'd get to hear other people's ideas.
At least in my experience, going to a Uni was a very unique way to sharpen my ability to analyze information presented to me, primarily by learning from other people who are different than me, how they think.
Without being in the same room and having a moderator(teacher in this case), I don't see how anyone could get this same experience. You need to surround your self with people who are NOT like you and you need to have discussion on topics that you are NOT familiar with. Situations most people rarely willingly place themselves in.
Not really, not anymore. The in-state cost (not tuition, that's a very small part of the actual cost) of my state's public university exceeds $20,000 per year. While that is less than the $40,000 that "elite" private institutions get, I wouldn't describe it as "cheap". Plus, that degree from that "aggie"/"safety" school is waaaaay less marketable than the equivalent degree from Harvard etc., even though the quality of the actual education from the state institution is reasonably equivalent.
Let's do the math on that one. Say you can find a part-time job that pays you $12 an hour (not bloody likely). If you were to work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, you'd make about $25k before statutory deductions, so let's say you take home $20k. That'd pay for a years' bills at an in-state university; however, since you're actually going to school, you can work probably 20 hours a week when classes are in session if you work your ass off. At my school, classes were in session for all but 16 weeks out of the year. So, 16 * 40 * $12 = $7680, and 36 * 20 * $12 = $8640. That's $16320 before deductions, so probably about $13k take-home. That won't pay your way through any four-year college that I know, and that number is likely the high limit of a reasonable probable range. You could go to community college for that much; just don't get your degree from there, it's a waste of money. No matter which way you look at it, you're talking probably close to $10,000 a year in loans to make up the gap under ideal circumstances (I'm counting incidental expenses as well, like books and meals the cafeteria plan doesn't cover.)
Used books aren't cheap either. It's changing with pirated PDF versions of the texts, which are free, but if you want the actual book, even a used copy will set you back $100 or so depending on subject. And that's if you can get a used copy of the specified text; they love to put out new "editions" every year that eliminate any used books from the market. This is especially bad with professors that make you buy the book they wrote, you're a captive audience and they want that cheddar.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Uni is nothing like High School. Very little homework, lots of discussions. Heavily emphasizes critical thinking. Few quizzes and what tests you have, they tend to be mostly written and focus on understanding. For me, it was the complete opposite of High School. At $1,500/sem, free book rental, and a 20 year 100% post graduate hiring rate, it was hard to turn down. It took me a whole 3 months to find a local job in my profession during the recession. I was getting spammed with offers from quite high paying jobs and full benefits from all over the country.
The average starting wage for my major withing 6 months of graduation was $80k+benefits, and that's with a 100% hiring rate within those 6 months. That's really hard to turn down when it only costs you 4 years and $3k/year.
Bullshit. College has become an investment in your future earning potential; it's all about the money.
That's the way it is. I don't deny that. But that's not the way it should be. This awful situation is thanks to greedy, foolish employers, people who have a complete misunderstanding of what real education is about, and the government for letting too many people take on loans and grants who frankly shouldn't be there to begin with.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There is a lot of bad information out there when it comes to programming or examples.
That's true of everything, including universities and colleges. I don't trust much of anything, and I use those fabled critical thinking skills (which, of course, also can only be acquired in university, and no one ever has them before that) you later mention to try to figure out which sources of information are the most accurate.
Quite a bit in high profile open source projects.
Why mention open source projects specifically? What about the countless failures of proprietary software, and the countless more that haven't even been noticed or fixed thanks to most people not being able to read or modify the source?
The most important thing I learned at my Uni was how to use critical thinking to help identify bad information.
Again, information doesn't only exist in universities, and nor do critical thinking skills.
At least in my experience, going to a Uni was a very unique way to sharpen my ability to analyze information presented to me, primarily by learning from other people who are different than me, how they think.
Once again...
Without being in the same room and having a moderator(teacher in this case), I don't see how anyone could get this same experience.
That's because you lack the imagination to see how anyone could be different from yourself. Not everyone learns in the same way. Not everyone fits into the formal education environment; most don't. And you certainly don't need formal education to learn anything or gain critical thinking skills; not usually, anyway.
About the only way you might encounter a problem is when information is locked down. I've heard of some knowledge that only universities and such have access to, while everything else is out of date. People tend to assume that Wikipedia is up to date on everything, or can at least point you in the right direction, but that's not necessarily true at times.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Quitting school to found a startup might make sense; at least it's honest gambling.
Bill Gates agrees with you...
http://www.wamda.com/application/rapyd/assets/mfm_012/upload/investing_employees_med.jpg
Enough said... ;-)
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who understand binary and those who don't.
Do you really want to hire someone who stuck at a degree even though they strongly believed it was a unproductive use of their time
Absolutely. Most people view a good chunk of their jobs as "unproductive wastes of their time"- they still have to do it. Have you ever met a programmer that didn't think at least 75% of what they had to do was a waste of time?
History in general doesn't change quite as quickly as computer science - only recent history does.
I think that is called current events.
Time to offend someone
And the brilliance of an AC poster failing to shine at all yet again.
I've met a lot of people with degrees that "felt" they were good programmers, admins, whatever. For straightforward work they were good, but for poop-hit-the-propeller situations or ones that required imagination they actually performed rather poorly.
On the other hand, those with "life experience" were good in high-stress situations and worked well as creative thinkers, but were often fairly horrible at stuff like code structure, documentation, and time management of multiple tasks.
In many cases, schooling doesn't teach you to be a good worker. People who can read books and pass tests may be good for drone-work but not for many real-life situations. Alternately, there are critical skills learned in school which often make those people work better in an environment where they interact with others.
Most of the real rockstars/aces I've met aren't formally trained. They're highly skilled, driven, but often also cowboys who don't work so well with others (or produce work that can be read by others). Who you hire depends on what you need: formal structure, team player, or quick get-it-done ACE. In larger groups, usually having one of the aces is good for when unexpected stuff crops up, but having the formally trained guys/gals is also important for building a structure where you'll get less of the "oh sh*t" moments.
I'm a self taught no-degree 25+ year embedded guy. Sure, maybe I'm one of the 'good ones'... Don't know, don't really care. My point in replying is that in my 25+ years, i've encountered more degree-holding high-functioning idiots who interview well and can spew knowledge like the best of them; but ultimately they can't really code their way out of a paper bag... I'm thinking of a few recent examples who created code of disastrous proportions and eventually got moved to middle management... Of all the senior developer types I work with, (about 10 in my current position), only 2 have CS or EE degrees... The rest are either self-taught, or have degrees in other unrelated disciplines (chemistry, history, physics)... They're the ones churning out the long lasting product code that is reused in future projects; is highly maintainable, and portable. The degree isn't the key here, it's the self-teaching we've all done along the way.
I believe you're filtering on the wrong attributes... Maybe you're one of those degree-holding coders that got moved to middle management; out of harms way...
Just saying...
I'm not going to say you're wrong, but everything I've read, as well as my brief search indicated that you're cut off at 26...college or not. Do you have any reference indicating otherwise?
Just another day in Paradise
Yes, you can. But, you should make sure you're covering all the bases. Often people fall into this without understanding what's really necessary..."you don't know, what you don't know". Not that it takes a lot of research, but people tend to be lazy.
Just another day in Paradise
Furthermore, if you're going to put in all that effort at a bad college, then just self-educate. By going to college for the money, you're letting the status quo control you.
While I'd like to agree with you, as someone who's hired a lot of engineers, I'll say that there is definite discrimination against those w/o degrees. Unless you're an extremely rare case, you'll never catch up to your peers in regard to earnings. And, you'll have a much more difficult time getting through the HR wickets in the hiring process. Don't care about earnings, or "letting the status quo control you"?...go for it.
Just another day in Paradise
I recently ran into a former co-worker while interviewing for a job. He still has the same job and making the same amount of money when we worked together nine years ago. Meanwhile, these damn Fortune 500 tech companies keep laying me off every so often. I had multiple jobs at very different companies and make 80% more money than him.
It's much easier to get an education at a good university than on your own. You're guided by people who know a lot more about the whole field than you do, and know what's important to know. You get introduced to it at a reasonable pace, and there's plenty of people to ask questions of. The structure is very useful to many people, who would otherwise procrastinate on the stuff they didn't like.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I don't think college is massive debt. Studies have shown that when accounting for inflation, college is not more expensive now than it was a few decades ago. Yes, the news media currently has a lot of horror stories but those tend to be outlier cases and not typical cases. Skip the ivy league schools, go to the subsidized state schools, get a part time job instead of paying for it 100% with debt, etc.
Okay, then that just means it's the same debt as always. Not much has changed.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Self educating is good, everyone should be doing that. However it is very hard to find someone who was self educated that also learned the boring stuff, or stuff that they personally considered useless. Ie, no theory, no advanced maths, no long nights spent struggling through physics problems, etc. At one point _every_ programmer was self taught, but most of those people also came from an academic background or had degrees in other fields (usually mathematics or EE). That's different from skipping college altogether, or worse as this article is about, skipping high school.
Guess I'm lucky in California then, tuition and fees about $13,000 for UC. For California State colleges it's half of that. Room and board is more than tuition for most state schools, and that can be reduced if there's a nearby college and you live at home. Those prices are well within the range of most middle class families. Even if you can't pay the full thing then at least part can be paid from family and the rest from loans, grants, jobs. Financial aid packages are very decent, and pay a much larger chunk if your family is poorer. Every bit that reduces the debt is a win.
When I was a kid, people started socking away money for education when the kids were in kindergarten. It was considered a major life expense, and yet people managed to do that. Today's cost is not higher when accounting for inflation.
However it is very hard to find someone who was self educated that also learned the boring stuff, or stuff that they personally considered useless. Ie, no theory, no advanced maths, no long nights spent struggling through physics problems, etc.
I find it's very hard to find people like that at all, including among college and university graduates. They do the work because they want a job, but they often don't truly understand any of it or have a passion for it.
That's different from skipping college altogether, or worse as this article is about, skipping high school.
Worse!? High schools are absolute garbage 99% of the time and have very little to offer. You're definitely better off self-educating in those cases.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Worse!? High schools are absolute garbage 99% of the time and have very little to offer.
In fact, I would say they're just one-size-fits-all rote memorization facilities.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Unless they force you to live in the dorms, like mine did.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I'm just listing what my insurance does. Prior to this change, they covered your children until a hard cut off of 27. Once the Obama change came out, they changed it to 26, but will continue to cover as long as they stay in college or active duty. I assumed it was part of Obama Care to continuously cover your children, but I guess not?
But you are thinking logically, not like a PHB.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh please, that's an obvious falsehood.
Little is black and white. Most common, is a spectrum of gray. But since the discussion was simplified binary to terms of good job vs. bad job, so too I simplified my answer to good employee vs worthless employee. You can complicate it if you want but the principle still carries most of the weight. If your skills are as common as dust, or as needed as a heat lamp in the Sahara at mid-day you will not be a good employee, you should not expect a good job.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
A mechanic whose spent his life working on cars from the 1960's and 70's never bothering to retrain, will be hopelessly lost under the hood of the modern car. Certain things are familiar, certain principles remain the same but at the same time too much has changed for the mechanic to perform all but the most basic of tasks successfully. If a person wants to make a long term career out of software development, they absolutely have to maintain a practice of continual learning.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
What's often left off of these reports is amount that student aid has also grown over time. Few people pay the full sticker price.
The college board trends does have a chart of this, but unfortunately it wasn't adjusted for inflation.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10...
For example, at University of California, half of the students pay no tuition at all. Of, over the years room and board is consistently more expensive than tuition and fees as the college board figures show.
The College Board charts are adjusted for inflation. Even with student aid increases, net college costs have increased over time. They are much higher than they were 30 years ago. And if your family makes more than median income, at public institutions that student aid increase doesn't amount to much.
Why would you take a person with a college degree and no experience over a person with 5-6 years of experience if all other factors were equal? A college degree can show a persons general aptitude, work ethic, and show a solid grounding in the basics but they have never worked in a professional programming environment. Like I mentioned before you can easily gauge a persons programming and related technical skills just by asking the right questions and questions about their college degree are at the bottom of the list to be asked if you have not exceeded the interview time limit. I have a 1989 CS degree and a 2008 IT MS degree and when I got my first job that CS degree really didn't help all that much. However, the job experience I accrued rapidly diminished the importance of the college degree to where it just became resume fluff.