Comment by mjevans | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjevans | Hacker News Reader

Skimmed TFA. This might be an accurate summary:

Less kids are enrolling in college due to several factors. A decline in birthrates (right around the 2008 recession), a decline in those who calculate that college provides a real return on investment and the cost of lost opportunity, and also a third strike in the form of federal funding cuts.

There's a bunch of example case sob story, a lot of emotional focus. Yet I didn't see much (obvious) about any positive paths forward.

It's far too late at this stage to prop up schools that are surplus relative to population. Re-purposing them for other educational tasks or possibly businesses (rather than just a shooting range complex) might be happening elsewhere.

College could be made less of a rat-race hassle. The core aspects of an education and experience in college probably should be more fool-proof (all the classes delivered as a scheduled package that works, threaded for multiple years with a couple slack openings for retakes). With some slack time built in for making up a dropped class or three (not entirely skipped semesters!). Also social mixer and electives courses. Though crack down on the crazy party stuff, moderation is key, and as a tea toter, I'd like to suggest a very strong look at banning all mind altering drugs (including alcohol, other than limited quantities for cooking) during the educational years.

As far as the question of if college is worth it? That might differ from person to person. Trades / Vocational work can also be fulfilling and maybe some people might enjoy that. We all need mechanics, electricians, and construction workers. Though those jobs might seriously benefit from some augmentation / automation / tech to prevent worker burn out and body damage.

Burn out and body damage from trades is not really factually based, especially not compared to something like software. You can actually quantify this. For instance the median age of a construction worker is 42. [1] In some states it's pushing near 50.

By contrast in software there is extreme defacto age discrimination. I don't think it's usually real age discrimination but simply companies don't really value experience in software much, and so somebody with many years years of experience is often seen as less desirable than somebody with little to no experience, but who you can pay a far lesser wage to. Whatever the reason, the point is that software is, for most, going to be a relatively short-lived career.

I can't find a good source for the data on the age of developers, though there are a million blog style or Q/A posts bemoaning the increasing difficultly finding a job as developers age. The Stack Overflow survey [2] is probably not representative, but matches observation at least, with a median age in the younger side of the 25-34 bracket. And that brief window of time you have in software is after you [typically] spend 4 years in college, and then spend however many years paying off your college debt before you finally get to enjoy your full salary.

And obviously I am speaking big picture here. There are people who have a catastrophic injury in the trades and live the rest of their life on disability from age 22. And there are software developers still coding at 50. But these are rare exceptions, and not the rule in either case.

[1] - https://www.nahb.org/blog/2023/06/age-of-construction-workfo...

[2] - https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/developer-profile#demog...

Body damage math isn’t even close. BLS puts non-fatal injuries in construction at 2.3 cases per 100 FTEs. For computer systems design it’s 0.1 – that’s a 23× gap.whole job takes a toll over time.

The median age of 42 just means a lot of sore 40-somethings can’t afford to quit yet. Age alone doesn’t tell you how their knees and backs feel after 20 years of rebar.

Not sure how many people you know in the industry but most architects, managers, etc... are 40+ years old. Not even remotely difficult to get hired as a senior engineer, way more in demand than 20 years old devs

Sitting in a chair is also pretty terrible for your health. :)

The difference is one can then workout or take breaks, stand, or a variety of things to offset the sitting/sedentary time.

The trades can really destroy your body and there isn't really a way around this besides changing the working conditions.

The problems aren't in the regular physical work. Our bodies were made to work and get stronger and more resilient with exertion. An average tradesman without some secondary issue like alcoholism is going to be in far better shape than your average programmer. The issue is that in the trades, and any physical work, there's always a chance of some freak accident. Fortunately these are extremely rare, and getting ever rarer over time, but they do exist. By contrast in software the worst somebody's going to have is falling out of their chair or slipping on the floor.

Here's the full table. [1] 2.3 is an extremely low rate for any job where you use your body in any way whatsoever. For instance it's the same rate as e.g. working in retail at a furniture store, and substantially less than the 3.6 rate for those working in retail at hobby/toy/game stores.

And yeah obviously software has plenty of room to transition into management and other late career roles. The same is true of the trades where common later stage transitions involve starting your own shop (with a career of connections/clients made it's not the big undertaking it might sound) or moving onto teaching. But it's the same problem in both cases, a small minority of people will achieve such transitions.

[1] - https://www.bls.gov/iif/nonfatal-injuries-and-illnesses-tabl...

> Burn out and body damage from trades is not really factually based, especially not compared to something like software.

Your assertion isn't factually based - it's just another baseless claim on the Internet.

I don't know the factual basis about the harm labor does - it's one of those things that generally don't need it for most people - but basic knowledge and reasoning is that hard, and repetitive, physical labor daily for decades is going to cause some real physical problems. Most white-collar workers I know over 40 have bad backs. I know college kids who didn't last a summer on a worksite.

And as much better evidence, we have generations of reporting on it from the people who do physical labor. Those people have also long said they worked so their kids to do something different. I've never heard one who agreed with you - I've never heard anyone who agreed with you.

If it's so great, do you think many developers in SV would take construction jobs if they paid more? Managers? Other white-collar workers? Out in the cold and rain? No remote working for those jobs. :)

> There are people who have a catastrophic injury in the trades and live the rest of their life on disability from age 22.

There are many other injuries - losing fingers and toes, serious traumatic injuries to every part of the body. I knew a painter who fell off a ladder, fell three stories and landed in the splits. But they had a family and they were back at it as soon as they healed; it wasn't without pain. If you do it every day for decades, how do you never fall from the ladder?

> the median age of a construction worker is 42. [1] In some states it's pushing near 50.

Many have no choice.

There's also been the 20+ years of STEM dogma driving students away from liberal arts colleges teaching a classical curriculum.

True - but my alma mater (midwest liberal arts school) has had a CS program since the 1970s and added programs like data science over the past decade, plus always had a 3+2 engineering partnership with another school. In the small PNW town where I now live, the liberal arts college added a CS program a few years ago plus also had a 3+2 engineering partnership for decades. So my point is - even for those students who wanted to do something STEM related, these liberal arts schools started augmenting their programs a long time ago.

Most drugs are already banned. Lots of people do them anyways, especially college students.

We all need mechanics, electricians, and construction workers.

I know people whose kids skipped university and went to vocational school to become electricians or plumbers. Almost all of them have failed to land jobs, and every job they apply for they're competing with dozens of applicants. The one that got a job was forced to move halfway across the country to some rural town in the middle of nowhere to get that job.

We may all need mechanics and electricians but no one seems to want to hire an inexperienced mechanic or electrician.

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