Comment by ByersReason | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ByersReason | Hacker News Reader

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I teach part time at the university level (I am not going to say where).

I would love to give you my perspective on this as I see a lot of non-neurotypical students. Some of these students do well in an academic environment; some don't - and to generalize this across schools; some schools have a more regularized population and select for this. Similarly, others accommodate more for these types of things versus schools that do less.

Additionally, it is well recognized that academic success is not necessarily an indicator of how well people "do in life". What academic success is, however, is a door opener for other opportunities. There are other door openers, like being a really good coder.

What you need to do is to figure out what your "superpower" is. It might be coding; it might be math, or something like being able to relate longitudinally to a task over a long period.

Everyone has a superpower, it's just some people are not aware of what it is. Go at figuring that out, and don't let people tell you something about yourself that you do not believe. My sister puts this another, simpler, way "Don't let the turkeys get you down".

Good luck!

I would say just be a little bit cautious of the "what's your superpower" thing because it can imply effortless success if not delivered carefully.

I've seen many people try something to a very superficial degree "oh that's clearly not for me".

This is particularly frustrating dealing with people who haven't yet found their path but clearly have potential. They keep looking for something they can somehow do naturally thinking that's the way success happens. Even the best artists, programmers, mathematicians had to actually work at it before they became good.

I appreciate you bringing this up. I myself suffered from this type of thinking: "if I am struggling with something, that must mean I am not good at it, and shouldn't waste time on it". The idea that you need to struggle a bit, get better at things little by little, look at how much progress you've making over time and then decide whether it's for you or not I think is much healthier thinking

> There are other door openers, like being a really good coder.

This may have been true at one point, but if it was ever true, it no longer is.

To get well-paying jobs (above the poverty line), you either need a degree or you need a certification. The certifications run into the exact same component issues of academia. Its optimizing for a specific type and limiting everyone else, and importantly its not primarily based upon knowing the material.

Certifications are the only alternative to a degree, and they get deprecated regularly and have no due process. Deprecations are as if you never had the certificate. If there is an issue, at best the single (only) company doing the testing will refund you for one certification, and then not allow you to try again (barring you from receiving a certificate). This is only in the case where you can prove they have done fraud/deceptive and unfair business practices, but can't get a court to nullify the NDA to provide standing for future litigation. If you can't, prove malfeasance they'll just keep your money; and their default practices try to limit any evidence they might provide. Accountability SOPs in a normal functioning business are often completely absent.

Employers will bring you in for interviews, and low ball you because they'll say "I see you don't have a degree, or applicable certificate. We can't pay you what we would pay a qualified person... How does ... <lowball or just above minimum wage> sound?" (for skilled work normally paying 70-100k for the IT position). They count on you being desperate enough to take the pay cut after they have wasted as much time as possible.

Additionally business insurance can sometimes dictate that certain positions hold a comparable indicator of proficiency, where experience is not counted.

This same conversation occurs regularly even when you have a decade of direct experience doing the exact same job. I know because its happened to me during many interviews, and I've compared notes and every other person who has followed a similar path that I've met has had it happen regularly as well. I do well because I'm a miracle worker, but I always have to prove myself at every step, because I am significantly more than I am on paper.

For many people who have the education and skill to do the jobs, qualifications are just another means to limit future opportunity, keep wages low, and reduce income mobility.

In my opinion your advice is harmful because it misleads about reality, and the experience required to find out otherwise necessitates needless suffering.

I've been in IT for over a decade and in almost all companies, with the people that hire these types, before the hiring manager or person who makes the decisions even see the resumes for any position; HR throws out everyone without a degree; if they are desperate they hold onto the certificates in another pile. Not a choice, no say, it happens, unilaterally just about everywhere.

Don't like what I said?, tough, this is the harsh reality of IT and really any job today. Its the cult of qualification. Who decides who is qualified is a corrupt process when that criteria is not based solely upon knowledge and skill... as education and certifications are based on other criteria with the mentioned criteria being secondary today. Its another form of tweedism by adding a filter at an earlier stage so you only get certain candidates later. Lawrence Lessig can explain it to you.

Those stories of getting hired into IT are unicorn stories that are almost always the exception than anything else. You might get one opportunity in a 30 year period if you are lucky, if at all.

I would have appreciated someone not giving me the same advice you gave, 30 years ago. It resulted in two decades of wasted effort and financial loss, it was deceitful and limiting. It is the former because the person giving the advice should have had constructive knowledge of knowing better based upon their position and authority.

Ignoring what I'm saying or downranking to make my post invisible to go on with happy thoughts just means you are volunteering or misleading others into a struggle session that won't ever end, until they re-exam what you said and ultimately discard it. They won't thank you for that when all is said and done, and doing something like that is one of the more evil things a person can do. This is why when giving advice its important to know from what you speak, to have and show credibility.

These are hard truths, its better to actually educate and give people a chance than mislead them into self-limiting cycles of suffering without warning for potentially decades.

"Just be yourself and find your superpower" is rubbish when you are trying to find a job to feed yourself and progress to financial independence. Coding at this point will likely be eliminated by a Chat-GPT based derivative in a few months or worse case a few years, and you'll be only a halfway decent programmer by then and likely completely dependent on social nets for food thereafter while somehow bearing the cost to go back to school to re-educate.

> HR throws out everyone without a degree; if they are desperate they hold onto the certificates in another pile. Not a choice, no say, it happens, unilaterally just about everywhere.

What we need is a class-action lawsuit, with discovery. Throwing out certifications should be a blatant violation of Griggs v. Duke Power. And anyone downgraded in salary should get equity increases along with however many years of back pay.

I don't think that would work.

The question goes to, how do you prove or meet any kind of burden of proof needed for discovery, where they've done it when you aren't even an employee. No lawyer will take that job just on your say so unless you are bankrolling it.

There is simply no way for you as a candidate to know short of you being in or near the room where it happens when it happens. Certificates or education level are also not a protected class. Discrimination based off race would be a blatant violation, but certificates vs degrees; I'm not so sure (and I'm not a lawyer).

> The question goes to, how do you prove or meet any kind of burden of proof needed for discovery

You need a whistleblower from HR, or a person who used to work in an HR department.

I think the big problem is that this would bite all companies in the butt, including law companies. They are disincentivized to even try going after this.

> Certificates or education level are also not a protected class.

Degrees and certificates are disproportionately distributed among protected classes. And the Griggs ruling is more general than protected class in general.

I, too, am not a lawyer.

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