Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture | Hacker News Reader

Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture

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86 pointszwieback63 comments

An interesting statement I've seen in a couple of books about IQ testing as an employment qualification is that at ALL levels of ability it is advantageous to seek a college degree if that degree makes the difference between being classified as an "engineer" rather than being classified as a "technician." Some technicians plainly are very smart and very economically useful to the organizations that employ them. Both technicians and engineers can be found at a variety of levels of ability. But for the individual job-seeker, whatever the level of ability, the expedient thing to do (in that category of occupations) is seek the college degree and become an engineer. Apparently, the job market treats even a lousy engineer who is barely able to do engineering work better than a technician who is matched by ability proxy (IQ score) before the degree was sought.

I offer no firm conclusion about why this is so. Perhaps engineering programs in colleges impart skills that are valued by the job market enough to boost an engineer's earnings over the long term. Or perhaps hiring and promotion procedures in many companies favor the social signal given by possessing a college degree. Or perhaps there is a lurking variable other than IQ that distinguishes persons who seek engineering degrees from persons who do not seek engineering degrees for technical occupations. It would take more data to tease out the causation of this phenomenon reported in the literature on job-candidate testing for employment, but meanwhile I would advise people near and dear to me who have such career aspirations to seek an engineering degree if at all possible, as that appears to offer positive economic returns for a person with a typical lifespan and labor force participation.

I have no comment on the usefulness of degrees in other subjects, which may vary quite a lot.

CYA plays a large role. HR departments can always justify hiring an engineer. If the company takes a chance on a smart person without a degree and they screw up the company looks bad. OTOH if an supposedly educated engineer screws up the company had "no way of knowing".

The difference between a technician and an engineer is not a college degree; it is the nature of the job description, the importance and centrality of the role, and level of responsibility. Many engineers working for Google, for example, do not have college degrees and are self-taught. To point this out is not to denigrate education, nor ignore your other points-- just one of the premises.

This is true in some organizations, but in other places the difference between "technician" and "engineer" literally is an engineering degree. I currently work at such an organization: you can't have the title "engineer" unless you have an engineering degree, technicians cannot rise above a certain level in the organization (which effectively puts a ceiling on their pay, as well), and technicians cannot be placed in positions of authority over engineers. A lot of this is stupid and makes no sense: I know "technicians" who are doing the same work as "engineers," better than many of the engineers they work with, but they are paid less and work under less experienced team leads, all because they lack a degree. Unfortunately, I'm sure there are plenty of other places that do things the same way.

Makes it sound like an engineering degree is a good investment at your workplace.

Thinking about some of the people I've known who have worked in these roles, I wonder if the dichotomy between engineer and technician can be better described as theoretical vs. practical and design vs. maintenance.

Also, some engineers only have 2 year degrees, the same as many technicians. But the content of the education is different: very broadly speaking, breaking along theoretical vs. practical lines, with some crossover.

I've worked as an engineer at HP for many years and have had the pleasure to work with some extraordinarily smart and talented technicians. Many of them got their degrees while employed and moved up to engineering positions here or elsewhere. However, many technicians prefer not to become engineers, even if they are fully aware of the fact that they are smarter and more productive than some of the engineers (a not-uncommon situation).

I think one of the reasons is that in a technician role your role and responsibilities are more clearly defined as a tech and project failure is generally blamed on the engineers. Also, there's less clerical overhead and more hands-on work when working as a tech.

I got to talking with a power line crew as we waited for the utility to give the go-ahead to fix downed lines in our neighborhood.

They felt the utility engineering personnel had very little comprehension of how the field work was actually done, and complained they got direction that made little or no sense. And they made a lot more than the engineers, though they had to travel the country and work long hours to do so. These guys were licensed and came through a certification program, but had little or no college.

They allowed that the engineers had much better theoretical knowledge, but were so divorced from the realities of the work as to be basically useless in disaster recovery.

Power line crews are often very well paid to compensate for the fact that there is a real risk of serious injury or death.

Engineers usually work under more controlled conditions, but I know electrical engineers who consider the power line guys insane for the risks they take and wouldn't trade with them.

I may be mistaken, but I believe a lot of engineers who work on physical projects like bridges must have an engineering degree and pass other tests to work legally. That would put the degree in higher demand.

Rather create scarcity

I'm pretty sure it does both, create demand (on the job side) and create scarcity on the (needs a degree to work) side.
I think it is funny that some people down voted my own correction for my own comment. People hit the down vote button so fast they don't even think about it.
(someone below said you could edit your comment, and that is true, but it is hard on the phone).

You can edit your comment instead of replying to your own comment.

We have a service tech here who has been prototyping a pretty slick Android app that will be integrated into engineering. From my brief experience working with him, my estimation is he has a natural talent for this stuff that eclipses even the majority of our senior engineering staff. In his spare time he does robotics competitions.
Had another guy like that I worked with 6-7 years ago. No degree, learned everything on the job, then got a CS degree from night school over a couple years so he could be promoted to an actual engineer. Left after his first review, got a job as a sr. engineer at another startup, then was promoted to a director before he turned 30, leading a team of 12. The best engineer I ever worked with.
Now my experience is quite different from a good deal of folks on HN, but I went to a decent school (UCSD) and worked at 4 startups and 1 bigco here in San Diego, in agreggate about 100 engineers over the years.

Even in good times architecture is a crappy major (in the U.S.) from an economic standpoint - at least five years of university level education followed by at least three years of on the job training (misnamed as "internship" since there is no monitoring of employer behavior). There is also a series of comprehensive exams required after graduation and before licensure.
These days, the average newly licensed architect is more than ten years out of college - i.e. in her mid-thirties. Since in the U.S. a person cannot practice architecture without a license, a person without a license is not recognized as a professional and cannot work for themselves in general (small projects are exempt in most states, and state laws vary).
Matt Arnold's research on architectural licensure may be read here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/51132717/Concerning-Licensure
The high rate of unemployment for current graduates is hardly unusual because the industry is so cyclical. The S&L crisis of the late 1980's sent a large portion of that generation of graduates from the industry creating what is currently a succession gap in many firms due to a lack of mid-forties ownership track candidates to buy out retiring baby boomers.
Incidentally, many of that generation went into the newly emerging field of web-design.

I'm typically a very skeptical person but I have to admit I'm becoming somewhat bearish on the current cycle within our field. There are definitely some home runs out there but I always ask myself who are using all of these web services and apps. Honestly I feel like our field is becoming a lot more hits based almost like the music industry - a small minority hit it out of the park while the rest toil in obscurity. (I include myself in the toiling in obscurity group.)
Now Ill be the first to admit there are a lot of things that could be done better through the application of computing but sometimes I feel like everybody is trying to jump into the same boats when we should maybe be taking a broader view of the landscape. Sorry I know this a dreary comment but just my 2 cents.

Your analogy between the startup and music industries draws true. Not everything will be successful, but it's important that those involved can have a reasonable chance to be rewarded. Both of the above sectors are centered around firms designed to manage risk - VCs for startups, and labels for artists. VCs are generally fulfilling their purpose much better than music labels are.

I've seen some culturally literate Architecture grads move to Shanghai from the US after the completion of an Architecture program. This may change as the economic growth slows there over the coming years, but there are so many building projects being undertaken that it is far easier to have a bigger role in bigger projects at a younger age there.

What does it mean to be "culturally literate" here exactly? Able to speak Chinese?

I mean people who have learned Chinese, spent time in China, or who have connectons there.

I think the other huge benefit of college and something that is often not talked about is the social and networking aspect of being at a top-tier university.
The most meaningful things I got out of my 4 years as an undergrad and 2 as a grad student were meeting people that could truly help me in my career.
While I was in college I met people that:
1. Helped me land multiple book deals with O'Reilly 2. Got me to conferences I would not usually have been able to go to. 3. Got me a great job doing design/development for the University. 4. Introduced me to the founders of Slashdot--one of whom sat on my thesis committee. 5. Allowed me to make connections with faculty and staff that have led to business contracts and even an adjunct faculty position at MSU.
I would be nowhere if it wasn't for my college degree--but you have to do more than go to class--that's the easy part. Network and meet people, there will never be higher concentration of fucking brilliant and well-connected individuals as there are a major universities.

> there will never be higher concentration of fucking brilliant and well-connected individuals as there are a major universities.
The concentration is far greater on the internet. You have virtually everyone on the planet within arms reach. It is interesting how we've failed to really utilize the medium.
You and I have now made a connection. I could be the most important connection you ever make. You pobably don't care. (That goes both ways, of course)

This is true--and I have many meaningful relationships online as well (networking is pretty much the key to success in any area--you have to know people). My connections in college seem to be a bit more meaningful though--there are the people that helped me grow and develop into the businessperson and designer I am today.
Also, I do care about the connections I make here and elsewhere on the web--I'll start:
I'm Jeff Siarto--I live and work in East Lansing, MI and run a small research company with my wife and college friend. I'm also the author of Head First Web Design and I enjoy building RC airplanes and amateur UAVs.
I'm also a leap-year baby.

This is interesting, but it doesn't prove college is "worth it". We know that at least 40% of the wage premium of attending college (and possibly considerably more) are due to ability bias - smarter people get paid more and smarter people go to college.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/01/correcting_for.h...
(I do suspect there is some individual benefit to college, from some mix of beneficial skill increases and socially harmful signalling. But the data in this article doesn't begin to address this question.)

Absolutely, correlation between college degree and employment does not show any causation between the two. Not only is intelligence a factor in going to school and getting a job, but so is parental income, responsibility, upbringing, etc. If only more journalists had taken a statistics class while they were at college we might not see these same fallacies repeated over and over in the media.

Separating the college group to reflect marks could be a little more interesting, compare under achieving but passing college students to those who didn't attend. Of course there will still be bias but it gives a little better picture on how much smarts plays into it and how much just having the piece of paper plays into it.

When I was a freshman in college the degree they warned us against pursuing turned out to be the hottest job market four years later.
My major where they predicted four jobs for every grad turned out to be four grads for every job.
So by contrarian thinking architecture is probably the best degree you could pursue.

Ding-ding-ding! Correct answer. Now lets see where are we in the cycle... technology boom ... oh yeah, real estate must be up next

Technology should always be "booming", right? Until the ubiquity of computers, technology was the move from writing to typing, or from manual labor to machines. Then computers came around and allowed for yet another level of automation. Since software is currently the best industry for lowering business costs, we should continue to see a strong market until something supplants computing. None of that speaks about financial bubbles and busts because software is a real industry that provides real value, unlike the recent real estate financial bust which was based on speculation.

What are your thoughts on the amount of speculation in the software/tech market right now? Also real estate is very much a real industry that provides real value (like a roof over one's head)

Technology is always booming, but individual technologies aren't necessarily. The startups that Hacker News promotes tend to be largely SaaS productivity apps. I would be surprised if there isn't a bubble in that area. I recently noted that a startup with the sole purpose of providing other startups with "coming soon" pages has $800k of funding. How on earth can they expect to become profitable after sinking 800k into a very niche service. There can't be that many startups in need of a "Coming soon" page, can there?
In the victorian times, the technology booming was railways. There was always a market for railways (until the car came along, but that wasn't really for another seventy years), but the real issue was the number which they built. There was passengers, but not enough to support the frantic investment that people were making (it was, after all, the next big thing!). This is where I see the VC backed SaaS startup investment market going. Frankly, there cannot really be a market for every SaaS app we see traipse through here with $10m of backing. The real question is, how long until the failure rate becomes high enough that people panic?
YCombinator has the right idea. Start with a small seed, build a good app and perhaps only once you have something launched, start looking for more investment. A website can generally lead to profitability either by being loss making but really, really popular, or by having revenue from day one. What worries me is the websites that have very little revenue from the beginning, and yet are attracting multi million dollar investments. That cannot last.
As an aside, we're thankful for those rail investments now - the UK not only has a very large railway network, we also have a very large bicycle path network built on ex-railway lines!

Can you mention what the two degrees were? Maybe you've implied something but I'm not seeing it.

Engineering is what they warned us to avoid. This was right after the great aerospace layoffs of 1970.
Journalism is the 'hot' major they encouraged. Personally I think college career advice is similar to relying on 14 day weather forecasts here in Michigan.
I had no interest in computer science because I had no desire to wear a white coat in a frigid data center and find hanging chads in punchcards. Yet a few years after graduating I bought one of the first IBM PC's and was using Compuserve and coding in dBase within a year.
Most people graduating from college today are going to have four separate careers during their working life. You need to keep the habit of lifetime learning because the world will change in many interesting ways.

I seem to remember a lot of media coverage in the early 90s when I was younger about how almost all software engineering would be outsourced. Definitely played into my thought process years later when I majored in architecture ;-)

Contrarian thinking isn't a substitute for research. Here is the AIA's 2005 compensation report:
http://www.daapspace.daap.uc.edu/~stedmabn/profprac-base/hot...
The 2008 synopsis is here: http://www.areforum.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=5...
Keep in mind that this was during the boom, and the average department head made less than $100k a year - that would typically be someone with at least 10-15 years of specialized experience and willing to take on personal liability for architectural designs under their seal until the statute of repose (varies by state from seven years to forever).

I graduate with a B.Architecture in June but will likely be going into a mix web design/tech entrepreneurship. While the economy is relatively lousy at the moment I think the high unemployment rate is a mixture of both a decrease in jobs and the stubbornness/pride of architectural graduates. Many other professions you'd be glad to take most jobs in your field that offer a good pay, but I know of many firms I'd turn down on principal even if I was offered an attractive wage. Unfortunately the average pay for recent arch grads after 5 years tends to rest in the 35-45k/year range, so going into a different field where I could make more in less time is hard to turn down.

The pay for architecture grads is awful given how much in debt you'll be after going through architecture school. And it's even worse once you factor in the ridiculous hours and realize that if you calculate your hourly pay, it actually works out to less than minimum wage.

I was an architecture undergrad myself and immediately moved to the web upon graduating a few years ago. Thing is, I would still highly recommend it is as a major (...at least, the program I was in -- definitely varies school to school). My experience was of four years of mixed media problem solving through models, mylar, computer animation (Flash/Actionscript/Maya), etc. Definitely shaped how I think/approach everything I work on.
If I had a startup that was looking to hire innovative UX/design people right now, ex-Archs would be towards the top of my list.

I find it ironic (and a bit annoying) that the logic used in the article's title is the same logic that led to the high unemployment rate for architects: If a profession is in high demand today, it will still be in high demand four years from now. And conversely, if a profession is in low demand now, then it will remain so for the next four years (hence the title of the article).

I've recently had the same worry for the current explosion in need for web front end engineers and designers.
In the next 5 years, perhaps we will see a great increase in the number of such skilled individuals coming out of colleges across the country. But what's going to happen to them if the current high times of the web industry suddenly takes a turn for the worse? The situation may be similar to what "architecture majors" are facing right now.

This happened with programming/IT a few years ago. Many people entered into college in 1998-2002 with the impression that they would practically have to fight off the job offers. Of course, it didn't quite turn out that way. However, the impression remained and students continued enrolling in CS programs because there was money in programming. A consequence of this was an excess of employees and a relative dearth of jobs (or again that was the impression) so they flooded grad schools instead. Many schools saw record enrollment levels in the 2005-2008 time frame.
This cycle is not new, nor will it cease to occur. People generally follow the trends which means they are typically late to the party.
EDIT: To add another situation. The early 2000s were a great time for the housing market so many builders began ramping up construction projects with the anticipation of sales and no actual sales. The consequence of this is decent housing developments with <150k$ homes that would easily have pushed 200k$ a few years earlier, assuming the builders didn't abandon the projects altogether. Now no one wants to buy (or can't if they've become unemployed or been hit with paycuts/furloughs) and these cheap homes remain on the market.

I was through the rough market in 2002, when it was rumored that all software would be written in India by 2012. If I recall, enrollment in CS, engineering math and the sciences dropped dramatically.
The thing is, I don't think enrollment has gone back up, in spite of it now seeming "cool" to be involved in a software startup again. I've seen articles on HN and elsewhere on how hard it is to get people involved in CS or other math and science related majors recently.
I guess that's a good thing for me, the middle-aged programmer, as it means less competition for my job, but I'm not sure it's good for any country (I'm in the US) in the long term.

Yes, CS enrollment dropped and kept dropping until 2007. Since then it's been growing, but very slowly; 2010 CS degree program enrollment was only 14% higher than it was in 2007. Grad program enrollment was up something like 2% over 2009.

Or the dotcom bubble?

It will not be similar because unlike architecture (in the US), there are no legal barriers to web development.
In the US, architects are licensed state by state. All states require at least three years of structured experience and a series of tests to demonstrate minimum competency for licensure - one cannot practice without a license.
Most states require an accredited professional degree of at least five years (Bachelor of Architecture) those which do not typically require additional experience beyond three years depending on degree type.

If your are implying that an rise/spike in enrollment in architecture programs was because the students were counting on having a job (because of a building boom of some kind) after the end of the program, I beg to differ. (MArch here.)
Architecture is one of those passion fields that you enter knowing full well that the barrier to entry to becoming established is very high. It is also not a meritocratic field (like software). Everyone in my school (Columbia/GSAP) knew that at the end of the program, we were looking at n years of slavery for some big name architect (if lucky) and it was all together hugely competitive. After all, we had the example of our instructors (some of them highly regarded talents) who were mostly "paper architects" and pamphleteers.
Many of us elected not to go that route and branched out to computer graphics, modeling, and some like me ended up being software engineers, instead of spending the next few years drawing bathroom details for some commodity architectural firm, hoping for future glory. (Yes, ego is a big driver for architects, and possibly a job requirement.)
So regarding the current unemployed numbers, I would be curious to know what percentage are electing to remain unemployed due to perfectly reasonable reluctance to do banal work after having spent anywhere from 4 to 7 years pursuing their passion for excellence in design.

Interesting to note that computer/math degree holders don't fare far better than recent humanities and liberal arts graduates. Journalism majors perform even better.
For all the jokes about us English majors, we don't seem to be doing that badly

There are a lot of humanities/liberal arts developers in the world - more than you might think.

I wonder if this could be related to the job expectations of the different groups. CS majors (my experience, anecdotal) tend to have a few set ideas on the sorts of jobs they'll take or that are out there. Employers also seem to make assumptions about what roles they'll hire them into or that they can perform effectively. However, I've seen liberal arts majors in a much wider array of jobs: management, sales, HR, various sorts of assistants, PR, all in one enterprise setting.

>Interesting to note that computer/math degree holders don't fare far better than recent humanities and liberal arts graduates. Journalism majors perform even better.
...if you only look at the unemployment numbers. Scroll down and look at the earnings numbers and you will see a very different picture.
I would be very interested to see the standard deviations on these unemployment and earnings numbers. I'd be willing to bet that they are much larger for humanities/liberal arts/journalism majors than for the engineering/computer science/math majors.
A liberal arts degree is very much what you make of it: if you are smart, motivated, and disciplined, you can get an incredible education and emerge with a much sharper mind. On the other hand, if you are lazy, stupid, and/or unmotivated, you can carefully pick classes and profs that require minimal effort to get by, and graduate without developing yourself in any meaningful way. I went through college with both types of people. I knew one guy who chose English as his major because he thought it would be the easiest major. He was right, mostly because he made it true: every semester when it was time to sign up for classes in the next semester, he would build a matrix of all of the books on the reading lists of all of the available classes, and then figure out which combination of classes had the greatest amount of overlap. This saved him a lot of money on books, a lot of time on reading, and probably some effort on writing. At the end of four years he had a degree and a job, and that's all he really cared about. If he had put half as much effort into work as he put into avoiding work, he could have had himself a hell of an education.
A technical degree, on the other hand, doesn't allow for such a wide range of effort inputs: if you put in minimal effort you won't just waste your time, you will fail. I saw this happen as well. More commonly, I saw people realize, "Holy shit, this stuff is serious, I can't just cruise!" and switch majors to something where they could get away with minimal effort.
As Jtsummers pointed out, humanities/liberal arts majors seem to enter into a wider range of employment fields, including (as ghurlman pointed out) software. As yummyfajitas pointed out, ability bias accounts for a large portion of the college wage premium. However, over the last few decades the percent of people going to college has increased dramatically. Some of those new people most likely have suitable levels of ability to attend college, but a lot of them almost certainly do not. Those who do not either fail out or gravitate to programs that will allow them to graduate despite the fact that they are not getting a true college education, like the English major I mentioned above. I think that these people are pulling down the numbers for such majors. If you were somehow able to sort out the "serious" liberal arts graduates from the "slackers," I think that you would find that those individuals who put in the effort to truly benefit fromt their liberal arts educations have unemployment and earnings numbers at least comperable to people with technical degrees.

Can anyone find a source for the unemployment rate of high school graduates? 22.9% is astoundingly high, if true.
I couldn't find a source (beyond tons of articles echoing the study), and found several contrarian sources, including http://www.wiredacademic.com/2012/01/unemployment-data-most-...

> Can anyone find a source for the unemployment rate of high school graduates? 22.9% is astoundingly high, if true.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is always a great place to look.
Employment status of the civilian population 25 years and over by educational attainment: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm
According to this (last updated Dec 02, 2011) the not-seasonally adjusted aggregate unemployment for anyone who holds a HS diploma (regardless of higher level education) is 20%.
Edit: I didn't mean to cause any confusion by aggregating the "non-hs-dropout" stats, so let me make it clearer:
Level of Education : Unemployment Rate High School Dropout: 12.7% High School Diploma: 8.4% Some College/AA Deg: 7.4% Bachelors or Higher: 4.2%

I must be reading it wrong, because I see 8.4% unadjusted for high school graduates in Nov 2011. How are you calculating aggregate regardless of higher level education? I don't understand how you can just add the high school, some college, and bachelors to get 20%.

> I don't understand how you can just add the high school, some college, and bachelors to get 20%.
That is exactly what I did. In my original response, I wrote aggregate unemployment for anyone who holds a HS diploma (regardless of higher level education) is 20%. I wasn't trying to be misleading, I just thought it was interesting to see that the aggregate for all non-high school dropouts.
Anyway, after looking at the article again, the author claims the unemployment stats come from 2009-2010 US Census and a study done at the Georgetown Center on Education and Workforce, broken down by age group. The BLS scope is obviously much larger and current.

Why would you add together averages?
The aggregate unemployment rate for those groups together is 7.4%, not 20%.

I don't know where you are seeing that. According to the data you linked to, the highest unadjusted unemployment rate in November 2011 (in any category) is 12.7% for "Less than a high school diploma".

When you are browsing the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it is important to look at the several metrics they measure for unemployment. BLS reports U-3 as "The Unemployment Rate", but many people feel that U-6 is a better measure of unemployment.

The primary problem with the argument of "is college worth it", or one component of it that I find more interesting, completely misses the potential opportunity cost of college. Someone who goes to high school and immediately joins the workforce with a high-school level job will often not continue to put forth school-level mental effort in that job or at home. Is that a school problem or a workplace problem? A more fair (or rather helpful and telling) comparison would be if the student undertook an effort that can rival the purpose of the university.

I would really like to see specifically Computer Science majors versus the rest of these majors, mostly because Math is not nearly as employable in comparison and is probably dragging down the numbers.
I'd like to see this because of how disparate my experience was when applying for jobs as compared to anyone in any other field, I being a recent CS graduate.
Basically, I can apply for 4 jobs and get 3 interviews and 2 offers. I can turn around from unemployed to gainfully working in an easy month. It's crazy, and I feel like there should be some numbers somewhere that show that.

Are these employment rates based on actually being employed in their field of study, or are we including arts majors who work full-time as baristas as "employed" people?

Wouldn't that be a really hard line to draw? The barista example is solid, but isn't the spectrum so broad that it'd be impossible to really say what is and is not their field of study [for many people/cases]?
I'd sure like to see such numbers, though.

Wow, a study conducted by a college finds that going to college leads to a more successful life? Shocking.

This totally ignores the fact that people who go to college are more likely to be ambitious and career oriented / smarter. It totally skews all of these results..

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