http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2012/03/01/m...
60% can't find a job in their field isn't a "motivational problem" or a "I picked the wrong degree problem". It is a general, widespread economic problem.
If your assumptions require more than 10% of people to be incompetent, your assumptions are wrong.
I have coached a number of folks who seemed to feel strangely disempowered, which is to say that the world had to change (job opening appears, company moves to their area, etc) in order for them to make progress on their goals.
I've had some success at simplifying the question using the common trick of assuming solutions to the presumptive problems. So for example starting with "Ok lets stipulate that there is a million dollars in a bank vault that is paying you $1,200 a month in 'free' money. And you're living in an area where that pays all your food, rent, and gas. Now, what do you want to do with your time?"
That gets us past blaming "the economy" and taking ownership of what they want to do. It is a different way of thinking, but it gets out of the rut of 'answer' based thinking.
Life is like riding a train that you know is on a track with a bridge out over a 1000' chasm. When the train gets there, it will fall into the chasm, and everyone on board will die. Given that every train you could take from a station has this same "feature" what train do you pick? Who do you pick to ride with you? What places does the train need to go through before it gets to the missing bridge?
Sometimes it isn't as complicated as what do you want to do with your life, it is simply what can you do today that is fulfilling to you?
A) Demand
B) Access to Capital
If you can't find an employer, there is likely insufficient demand.
As someone who "created his job" initially, I was badly underpaid for the first 18 months and got sick of dealing with it even once my income grew to a "normal rate".
I think you are looking at this from the perspective of someone who is going to be in the top 50% of a large field and be successful, no matter the economic situation. I think most people aren't in that top 50%.
"As someone who 'created his job' initially, I was badly underpaid for the first 18 months and got sick of dealing with it even once my income grew to a 'normal rate'."
I think it is awesome that you went from 'no job in your area of expertise' to 'normal income' in 18 months. I have a huge amount of respect for that, I am looking for clarity on the 'got sick of dealing with it' part. What were you sick of?
I have never commissioned a survey on it but my experience from undergraduate to career was that there was a 100% correlation between passion for something and top 50% of people who do that thing. Every student I met at USC that was passionate about electrical engineering was in the top 50% of their graduating class, every clerk, salesperson, engineer, gardner, taxi driver, artist, and writer I've ever met who was passionate about what they were doing, did it better than most. That observation has been pretty foundational in my thinking about life and happiness. I would be intrigued to find a counter example.
I'm pretty sure my outcome so far is 50%+ luck and I don't know if I'll be able to sustain it forever.
> I am looking for clarity on the 'got sick of dealing with it' part. What were you sick of?
Consulting/Contracting work [my only option with $0 in capital] requires soft skills in dealing with people. The majority of my personal failings all relate to soft skills.
1) I've got a tendency to provide too much information rather than too little.
2) I tend to have poor communication with non-technical people [aka clients]. While I could blame it on them, the fact remains it was vital to my income on that course and therefore truly on me.
3) I'm a bit of an odd duck socially, even by programmer standards.
4) I don't have a poker face when annoyed/irritated/etc. I also have poor control over my tone in such situations. Coupled with #1 & #2 this tends to lead to a much higher client turnover than most consultants/contractors experience [I could be wrong, but I don't think so].
5) I was able to get a "normal job" and I prefer it. However, there is still one older engineer who needles me about #2. ;)
> I have never commissioned a survey on it but my experience from undergraduate to career was that there was a 100% correlation between passion for something and top 50% of people who do that thing. Every student I met at USC that was passionate about electrical engineering was in the top 50% of their graduating class, every clerk, salesperson, engineer, gardner, taxi driver, artist, and writer I've ever met who was passionate about what they were doing, did it better than most. That observation has been pretty foundational in my thinking about life and happiness. I would be intrigued to find a counter example.
You may be right. I don't think I'm in the top 50% of software developers, I am probably in the top 65%.
EDIT:
A perfect example of #2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7921042
I wasn't sufficiently clear about what I meant by "market rates" which leads to him launching into an explanation that [I think] he realized was not needed when he basically agreed with another poster about the $ figure quoted in the article.
This is due to the fact I didn't explicitly define "market rates" as the amount the person received on offer in the article.
You seem remarkably self aware in your analysis of your strengths and weaknesses. The skills you feel weak in, communicating with the clients and keeping them engaged, have you looked into partnering with someone who has those skills but lacks your technical expertise? The observation is that finding someone who was a 'people person' to be your interface to the clients might go a long way to creating a more effective enterprise, and some folks are really passionate about customer service and understanding the clients requirements.
The trick here is understanding how much that person brings to the total equation. I've known folks who hired an 'admin' for minimum wage and didn't recognize how much better the overall system worked, until the admin (who did see it, quit). But being aware of the 'before' situation and being able to appreciate the 'after' situation, you would be in a much better place to compensate that person in a much better ratio metric way. For example, if you find you double your revenue with that person on board, sharing half of it with them is not ridiculous even if they write no code at all, and all they do is pamper the clients.
The danger sometimes is that the 'brains' of the organization rationalizes away the increased revenue as something that would have happened anyway. It doesn't sound like that is your issue though. An acquaintance of mine who founded a very successful company once claimed they owed their success to hiring people who did the things they hated doing.
Thanks again for the follow-up.
That is another flaw, I am a trace of a worrier. :P
I did try that for a year [straight partnership, the project I was working on required more than just a developer]. It went poorly, mainly due to my poor judgement in the partner combined with the fact I ignored my instinct about the client.
He actually made slightly more than me on that particular deal.
That was actually what finally convinced me to switch to being an employee for awhile.
I think I just need more time to figure out other people before I try that sort of thing again [hence hanging out on HN].
I would argue this point. Many people I know or worked at my college jobs just plain chose the wrong path. Creative writing degrees, Drama degrees, or even one poor girl with over 100K in debt from an Opera degree.
Working as a waiter I even encountered people how made more money waiting tables then with their social work or teaching degrees. Its crazy they still work their college job paying off student debt they never needed.
These people are not at all incompetent they were just told to follow their dreams when they were 17 18 and choose a degree to cater towards their dream, passion, or what have you.
Any degree.
Communication, Psychology, English, anything.
Now, all that it would take for her to break through is to have some experience in general HR. After that, nobody would even look at the degree. However, there's a ceiling there.
I look at many of my friends who have humanities and Social Science degrees and their real careers didn't take off until their late 20s or early 30s. Does that mean that my friends with Communications degrees ended up in Radio? No. But they would have never ended up where they are without that "any" degree.
IT is a different world entirely.
Please find me 60% in a single class of major in that table for me?
How about we write off two entire categories. Say Humanities and "Other" degrees!
That is only 41% of that 60%.
It just doesn't get you there to blame "those people". Sorry.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/20/o...
And if you think the 60% number is high, this one pegs it at 73%!
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_318.20.as...
The main issues are that, since the 70s, a handful of things have happened that students (as a massive whole) haven't reacted appropriately to:
1) There are simply fewer job openings in many of these fields than there once were. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm (you'll have to step back through these reports over time, but note that the increasing industries tend to be the lowest wage industries)
2) The massive rise in the cost of education, coupled with the fact that almost any of the few good-paying jobs requires a bachelor's degree or higher. Supply of workers > demand for workers depresses wages. https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tabl...
3) Private sector jobs in a good many fields have been outsourced, with low wage service jobs on the increase. http://online.wsj.com/news/interactive/MULTINATL0419
4) Public sector jobs have become increasingly rarer. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/sep/16/census-shows-big...
5) Home prices have dramatically increased over this period (which may actually be a good thing, since the workforce is now more mobile than ever before) http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/02/us-hous...
6) Unions, for all their problems real and perceived, were once actually pretty good at holding the line on wages, but have seen ever-decreasing membership. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
7) An increasing portion of the workforce is contingent (temporary and/or seasonal). http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/reports/dunlop/section5.htm
Does any of this mean they didn't pick the "right" degree? Maybe part of the problem can be found here. However, the problem is so large among millennials, I'm not sure choice of degree accounts for all that much of why recent college grads have boomeranged. My point is that while students with degrees in various fields hasn't changed much, the rest of the world around them has changed quite a bit. Most of it can't simply be solved with a different degree or more passion.
The other majors have a better chance of teaching something real, which is a good start. I certainly prefer working with a "writer type" when producing documentation, otherwise I end up doing it myself.
Unfortunately, reality disagrees with you. And it's reality where we have things such as serviceable debt, credit ratings, employment security and obligations.
Not necessarily. If there have ever only been 2,000 positions for marine biologists opening up every year and 20,000 graduate, that's not a widespread economic problem so much as a mismatch between what people want to do and the availability of jobs in that field.
Part of the problem is too many people are getting advanced degrees. It seems to be dogma these days that society will become wealthier if we graduate more people with specialized skills. But that's putting the cart before the horse - producing a whole bunch of experts in fields with no demand for those experts results in a bunch of people who've wasted a decade of their lives.
People need to be realistic about the implications of their field of study.
A) You believe you are smarter than 60% of people with degrees and are accurately capable of predicting supply/demand.
B) You believe an external factor is at fault.
Even I, who have met many people I think are idiots with college degrees, would not presume A.
From your comment, I think you are really trying to sell A. I'm not buying. Particularly: > People need to be realistic about the implications of their field of study.
If I misunderstood, please explain.
> A) You believe you are smarter than 60% of people with degrees and are accurately capable of predicting supply/demand.
You don't have to be exactly 3 SD out to be smarter than 60% of a group of people, so I likely am. On top of that, these are people who've never had a real job and are choosing a major at age 18 or so.
But that's not the point. The point is many of these people just assumed the job would be there when they graduated without doing any research at all. They didn't even look.
There's two really terrible common pieces of advice parents give to their children: 1) "Just be yourself" when dating and 2) "When choosing a major do what you love".
> B) You believe an external factor is at fault.
Well, yes, an external factor is partially at fault. That external factor is the higher education establishment, which is corrupt as hell. They lobby the government for ever increasing amounts of loans for students and then award themselves $400k salaries. Don't let anyone tell you there's such a thing as a nonprofit institution.
The idea that 60% of people couldn't find work in their field of study isn't surprising to me at all.
Perhaps off topic (at least vaguely relevant to these boomerangs), but what's wrong with this "truth in advertising" advice?
I say this from a position of ignorance, that's what I did (sans explicit parental advice, but I suppose it was implicit), and it worked for me.