Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hermitian909 | Hacker News Reader

This is disingenuous, data you either don't know exists or lack the tools to parse is useless.

Even if a young person does know it exists and can parse it, it is often the case that every authority figure in a young person's life is giving bad information. Often times your teachers, guidance counselor, school administrators, and parents are pressuring you to go to some middling 4 year institution. We spend 18 years training kids to treat the adults in their life as authority figures, expecting them to make their own decision against the desires of these authority figures is naive.

View on HN

> This is disingenuous, data you either don't know exists or lack the tools to parse is useless.

If what you say is true, then we are failing our students far far earlier that when they are making decisions related to college and it's futile to address this problem before we address why they lack these tools by ages 17 to 18.

The problem is who we have as authority figures. Teachers and school administrators are people who took easier coursework than say a biologist or a computer scientist and then got a government job. That pathway isn't like most of employment and frankly most of the teachers I had wouldn't be able to hack it in a private company.

All throughout high school I was told that I would be unable to become a software dev without college. I dropped out of high school, work as a software dev and make more per year than any of the people who said I wouldn't be able to do that. They simply aren't the kind of people to ask if you are planning a career that isn't in unionized government work, most of them have never done anything else.

The same thing happens with IT security. A common question that comes from high school or college students is how to get started in the field. When the question is answered by people in IT security its pretty common to see college isn't required and be given paths to getting into IT security that don't require a degree. When its answered by people outside the field, go to college and get a degree is the answer.

The reality is a degree isn't required its only one path of many someone can take. And often those with degrees eventually follow the same path those without went. The difference is they are four years behind in career progression and thousands in debt.

> data you either don't know exists

It's quite easy to come across it with a Google search.

> lack the tools to parse

The only "tool" you need is the ability to read.

> bad information

Which is not "zero information" anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com