5 ms·

For what it's worth, maybe the U.S. would have better employment among young men if the "IT is in demand and steady work" meme found a place here.

calvinbhai 10y ago
Americans have many better options than IT to make a good living. Many of those options though, are slowly getting eaten up by tech (Amazon, Walmart - Jet) In India, IT sector escaped the clutches of red tape, and thrived. So it became a very good option to make a living.
- X86BSD 10y ago
  Seconded. In fact I am in full agreement with mike row from the tv show "dirty jobs". There are plenty of jobs in the trades that pay damn good money. Americans just aren't doing them. Plumbers, carpenters, hvac, electrician, etc. Somehow Americans have evolved to see these jobs as beneath them or jobs that people don't respect. But the fact is trade skills are in high demand and if you've ever needed trade skill labor you know they make a damn good living. America needs to give up on this nonsense that only white collar STEM jobs are what kids should be training for. America needs to BUILD things again. Boys and girls need trade skills. /soapbox
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    My brother is an electrician and makes worse money than I've seen administrative assistants make in tech shops. Partly, many of those trades have ceilings. Your salary doesn't always scale with skill and ambition like it can in IT.
    - X86BSD 10y ago
      I don't see how that is possible unless you work for someone else perhaps. If you are a licensed, bonded electrician and work for yourself (which a sizable portion of trade workers do) your earning potential is only limited by the amount of work you are willing to do. Stay busy and you make a lot, work one day a week and you starve. YMMV.
      - humanrebar 10y ago
        > The middle 50 percent of Electricians earn between $17.00 and $29.88 per hour, for an average annual income ranging between $35,360 and $62,150.20. ...that's a living, but it's not "damn good money" or "only limited by the amount of work you are willing to do". It's not even very competitive with entry-level salaries for IT jobs. It's competitive with "support" roles in those organizations. Like admins, entry-level HR jobs, etc. That being said, I have a lot of respect for people with "dirty jobs" (my family and I have had them myself), and likewise, I have a lot of respect for Mike Rowe and his message. I'd be very happy if there were a newfound respect for those roles. ...but the money, work conditions, and career advancement prospects are certainly better for STEM degrees.
- jackgolding 10y ago
  For those who don't have the equity required to invest in a medical or legal education - what are those options? I'd imagine banking is largely based on what school you attend.
  - virmundi 10y ago
    You might not need the equity to invest in a medical degree, aside from cost of living and some pre-med catchup. Many states offer free medical education if you are willing to serve an underprivileged population for 5 years. I researched for a bit. Parts of Indianapolis, a fairly metropolitan city, count as under served. I don't think you get cost of living, but you might be able to find a similar grant that pairs with the free schooling.
dukeluke 10y ago
As a young man in America, I would only recommend this if you both live in a tech city and hold a degree. I have neither, and so despite my ability to develop software, I am not taken seriously by employers.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  i started out in tech as a teenager doing data entry and software installs. if you haven't done a similar job yet for at least a year or two, re-evaluate your expectations.
  - dukeluke 10y ago
    I have been doing tech support for nearly two years now. I've gotten plenty of certs, am mostly through college, and always ask to do more. It doesn't seem to matter in this area.
    - krinchan 10y ago
      > am mostly through college Lack of a degree and a code camp certificate only works in tech cities where it's hard to find coders who are gullible enough to work for free...I mean get paid in equity in a startup that's really only there to suck at the tit of an angel investor for a few funding rounds.
      - dukeluke 10y ago
        Right. That was exactly my point with my first post. The only way you can get a job in this industry without being in a tech city is to have a degree. I don't understand why I'm being downvoted for pointing that out.
        beachstartup 10y ago
        because it's untrue. you just aren't skilled or experienced enough to get a good job. "the only way..." usually is a made-up fact designed to fit a circumstance.
sidlls 10y ago
For the last several years "learn to code" has been a meme (President Obama spoke to this on multiple occasions), and the "T" in "STEM" is "Technology." I don't think the "meme" is the problem. Also, while I definitely am much more well paid as an engineer than I ever would have been as an academic, the quality of employment the field (in terms of opportunities available, working conditions, peers, and other factors) is a bit underwhelming, in my opinion. Without some pretty big changes in some of these I'm not sure we should blindly encourage "everyone" to seek an IT career.
- OpenDrapery 10y ago
  Agreed on the quality of employment. It's quite eye opening when you realize that a company will pay you $100k salary, basically to "own" you. Show up for work at the designated time, sit in your assigned seat. Sometimes you will get interesting work. Most times you will get menial tasks. Sometimes you won't get any work at all. After the first month, you're thinking, "Uh, I was here about the software developer position? Are we going to be building any software?" le sigh
  - jackgolding 10y ago
    Curious as to which fields you think have it better? (i.e. quality of employment is far greater than the effort to become employable)
LordKano 10y ago
Many of us who went to college in the 1990s saw this. There were so many people who thought that getting a CS, CIS or CIT degree was going to lead to them becoming dotcom millionaires that it was sad. We had an abundance of IT people with little actual knowledge and even less interest around the time of the dotcom bust. I used to work with a guy who was like that. He was a decent programmer but his limitations made themselves readily apparent when the performance of his code was observed. I guess this is my long-winded way of saying to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  I also want companies to either pursue vanilla tech stacks or aggressively retrain almost-qualified people for their special-snowflake systems. I think just shoving people into tech is short-sighted. That's not what I want. That being said, much of American youth sees "business", law, medicine, and even entertainment (including sports) as a great way to succeed. We would do well to put engineering, especially IT, on that list.

calvinbhai 10y ago

Americans have many better options than IT to make a good living. Many of those options though, are slowly getting eaten up by tech (Amazon, Walmart - Jet) In India, IT sector escaped the clutches of red tape, and thrived. So it became a very good option to make a living.

X86BSD 10y ago
Seconded. In fact I am in full agreement with mike row from the tv show "dirty jobs". There are plenty of jobs in the trades that pay damn good money. Americans just aren't doing them. Plumbers, carpenters, hvac, electrician, etc. Somehow Americans have evolved to see these jobs as beneath them or jobs that people don't respect. But the fact is trade skills are in high demand and if you've ever needed trade skill labor you know they make a damn good living. America needs to give up on this nonsense that only white collar STEM jobs are what kids should be training for. America needs to BUILD things again. Boys and girls need trade skills. /soapbox
- humanrebar 10y ago
  My brother is an electrician and makes worse money than I've seen administrative assistants make in tech shops. Partly, many of those trades have ceilings. Your salary doesn't always scale with skill and ambition like it can in IT.
  - X86BSD 10y ago
    I don't see how that is possible unless you work for someone else perhaps. If you are a licensed, bonded electrician and work for yourself (which a sizable portion of trade workers do) your earning potential is only limited by the amount of work you are willing to do. Stay busy and you make a lot, work one day a week and you starve. YMMV.
    - humanrebar 10y ago
      > The middle 50 percent of Electricians earn between $17.00 and $29.88 per hour, for an average annual income ranging between $35,360 and $62,150.20. ...that's a living, but it's not "damn good money" or "only limited by the amount of work you are willing to do". It's not even very competitive with entry-level salaries for IT jobs. It's competitive with "support" roles in those organizations. Like admins, entry-level HR jobs, etc. That being said, I have a lot of respect for people with "dirty jobs" (my family and I have had them myself), and likewise, I have a lot of respect for Mike Rowe and his message. I'd be very happy if there were a newfound respect for those roles. ...but the money, work conditions, and career advancement prospects are certainly better for STEM degrees.
jackgolding 10y ago
For those who don't have the equity required to invest in a medical or legal education - what are those options? I'd imagine banking is largely based on what school you attend.
- virmundi 10y ago
  You might not need the equity to invest in a medical degree, aside from cost of living and some pre-med catchup. Many states offer free medical education if you are willing to serve an underprivileged population for 5 years. I researched for a bit. Parts of Indianapolis, a fairly metropolitan city, count as under served. I don't think you get cost of living, but you might be able to find a similar grant that pairs with the free schooling.

dukeluke 10y ago

As a young man in America, I would only recommend this if you both live in a tech city and hold a degree. I have neither, and so despite my ability to develop software, I am not taken seriously by employers.

beachstartup 10y ago
i started out in tech as a teenager doing data entry and software installs. if you haven't done a similar job yet for at least a year or two, re-evaluate your expectations.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  I have been doing tech support for nearly two years now. I've gotten plenty of certs, am mostly through college, and always ask to do more. It doesn't seem to matter in this area.
  - krinchan 10y ago
    > am mostly through college Lack of a degree and a code camp certificate only works in tech cities where it's hard to find coders who are gullible enough to work for free...I mean get paid in equity in a startup that's really only there to suck at the tit of an angel investor for a few funding rounds.
    - dukeluke 10y ago
      Right. That was exactly my point with my first post. The only way you can get a job in this industry without being in a tech city is to have a degree. I don't understand why I'm being downvoted for pointing that out.
      - beachstartup 10y ago
        because it's untrue. you just aren't skilled or experienced enough to get a good job. "the only way..." usually is a made-up fact designed to fit a circumstance.

sidlls 10y ago

For the last several years "learn to code" has been a meme (President Obama spoke to this on multiple occasions), and the "T" in "STEM" is "Technology." I don't think the "meme" is the problem. Also, while I definitely am much more well paid as an engineer than I ever would have been as an academic, the quality of employment the field (in terms of opportunities available, working conditions, peers, and other factors) is a bit underwhelming, in my opinion. Without some pretty big changes in some of these I'm not sure we should blindly encourage "everyone" to seek an IT career.

OpenDrapery 10y ago
Agreed on the quality of employment. It's quite eye opening when you realize that a company will pay you $100k salary, basically to "own" you. Show up for work at the designated time, sit in your assigned seat. Sometimes you will get interesting work. Most times you will get menial tasks. Sometimes you won't get any work at all. After the first month, you're thinking, "Uh, I was here about the software developer position? Are we going to be building any software?" le sigh
- jackgolding 10y ago
  Curious as to which fields you think have it better? (i.e. quality of employment is far greater than the effort to become employable)

LordKano 10y ago

Many of us who went to college in the 1990s saw this. There were so many people who thought that getting a CS, CIS or CIT degree was going to lead to them becoming dotcom millionaires that it was sad. We had an abundance of IT people with little actual knowledge and even less interest around the time of the dotcom bust. I used to work with a guy who was like that. He was a decent programmer but his limitations made themselves readily apparent when the performance of his code was observed. I guess this is my long-winded way of saying to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.

humanrebar 10y ago
I also want companies to either pursue vanilla tech stacks or aggressively retrain almost-qualified people for their special-snowflake systems. I think just shoving people into tech is short-sighted. That's not what I want. That being said, much of American youth sees "business", law, medicine, and even entertainment (including sports) as a great way to succeed. We would do well to put engineering, especially IT, on that list.