5 ms·

A better title would be "college grads with useless majors like sociology can't get jobs, but feel manual labor is beneath them".

by fmajid 8y ago

achillesheels 8y ago
To be fair, many vocational employers may be skittish hiring someone who appears on paper to be aiming for a white collar job. I know there’s the possibility of dropping the diploma off a resume, but then what explains those 4 years doing nothing since high school?
- yellowapple 8y ago
  Given that for quite a big chunk of today's workforce those four years coincided with a recession and resulting spike in unemployment, a gap is probably not all that unusual and could easily be explained away.
beatpanda 8y ago
Wild how after years of scandal involving tech companies not thinking through the impact of their products on society, people are still saying sociology is a useless major.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  In your opinion what could be contributed by a sociology major to realistically avoid any of those scandals?
  - beatpanda 8y ago
    By working with a product team to develop worst-case scenarios for non-technical abuse of a tool, like trolling, harassment, manipulation via misinformation, blackmail, and so on. Especially as it concerns a tool developed by people mostly embedded in one culture and releasing it to an audience embedded in another. Soliciting feedback from people who study society and social problems, to understand how a tool might be used by people who are not like the people who are building it, might have helped to avoid a lot of problems.
    - pm90 8y ago
      I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. I know sociology was meant to be a placeholder for any one of seemingly worthless degrees, but the commenter has made a convincing case for how sociological analysis could have helped silicon valley social media firms (at the very least) recognize the kind of impact they have on society and be more responsive those impacts.
      - masonic 8y ago
        In my experience, Sociology majors are no less prone to "trolling, harassment, manipulation via misinformation, blackmail, and so on" than the general population. More so, in fact.
    - olcor 8y ago
      +1. Sociology is an extremely important area to learn, not just in tech. How people work, play and live within different types of social constructs (and how these constructs are built and maintained in the first place) is valuable info to anyone who wants to get things done properly.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Unfortunately, things like psychology and sociology are rife with inherent problems as areas of formal study. Hard sciences have serious challenges in, for example, replicating studies. More "social" degrees tend to be vastly worse. I participated in at least one seriously flawed psych study being done so someone could get a degree. I was not impressed. I find the social stuff really fascinating. I seem to have an innate knack for it and I've taken college classes pertinent to that interest. But I tend to seek out other types of information when trying to further my interest in understanding how people work. For example, negotiating, parenting and marketing are all areas that require you to understand how people work and are results oriented. You either get results or you don't. A good test for how solid your hypothesis is: how well does it predict results? This is a general rubric. We know that Einstein's Theory of Relativity is superior to Newtonian gravity because it more accurately predicts planetary positions in the future. Ability to predict outcomes accurately is fairly strongly tied to performance. So, to my mind, social things that are performance oriented set a higher bar than those that are generally descriptive in nature instead. Psychology's ability to genuinely reform people with serious mental health issues is notoriously poor. This suggests it probably isn't on especially firm footing. In addition to the above areas of interest, I also find some harder sciences, such as neurological studies, much more generally useful for understanding social phenomenon than most psych or sociology things I've seen. I've also found books written by primatologists very good. A person I knew with a psych degree told me once that psych majors are mostly people who don't really understand people and are hoping to get a clue. Sadly, this hit a nerve for me. Some psych majors I've personally known fit that description all too well. Maybe someday these areas of study will be better than they are currently. But their current state leaves much to be desired.
dentemple 8y ago
This is not at all what the article is saying. Uneducated workers are seemingly getting priced out of these counties, making the entire cohort seem like they're better employed (due to the success of the survivors).
dang 8y ago
This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." If you could review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
- sdinsn 8y ago
  How is his comment a shallow dismissal?
  - dang 8y ago
    It was more snarky and supercilious than informative.
    - sdinsn 8y ago
      The other comment about the title straight up said "Terrible headline" instead of being more friendly and constructive by saying "a better title would be..."
  - shawn 8y ago
    college grads with useless majors like sociology can't get jobs, but feel manual labor is beneath them It's the opposite of a deep, thoughtful critique, which is what HN optimizes for.

A better title would be "college grads with useless majors like sociology can't get jobs, but feel manual labor is beneath them".

by fmajid 8y ago

A better title would be "college grads with useless majors like sociology can't get jobs, but feel manual labor is beneath them".

achillesheels 8y ago

To be fair, many vocational employers may be skittish hiring someone who appears on paper to be aiming for a white collar job. I know there’s the possibility of dropping the diploma off a resume, but then what explains those 4 years doing nothing since high school?

yellowapple 8y ago
Given that for quite a big chunk of today's workforce those four years coincided with a recession and resulting spike in unemployment, a gap is probably not all that unusual and could easily be explained away.

beatpanda 8y ago

Wild how after years of scandal involving tech companies not thinking through the impact of their products on society, people are still saying sociology is a useless major.

geezerjay 8y ago
In your opinion what could be contributed by a sociology major to realistically avoid any of those scandals?
- beatpanda 8y ago
  By working with a product team to develop worst-case scenarios for non-technical abuse of a tool, like trolling, harassment, manipulation via misinformation, blackmail, and so on. Especially as it concerns a tool developed by people mostly embedded in one culture and releasing it to an audience embedded in another. Soliciting feedback from people who study society and social problems, to understand how a tool might be used by people who are not like the people who are building it, might have helped to avoid a lot of problems.
  - pm90 8y ago
    I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. I know sociology was meant to be a placeholder for any one of seemingly worthless degrees, but the commenter has made a convincing case for how sociological analysis could have helped silicon valley social media firms (at the very least) recognize the kind of impact they have on society and be more responsive those impacts.
    - masonic 8y ago
      In my experience, Sociology majors are no less prone to "trolling, harassment, manipulation via misinformation, blackmail, and so on" than the general population. More so, in fact.
  - olcor 8y ago
    +1. Sociology is an extremely important area to learn, not just in tech. How people work, play and live within different types of social constructs (and how these constructs are built and maintained in the first place) is valuable info to anyone who wants to get things done properly.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Unfortunately, things like psychology and sociology are rife with inherent problems as areas of formal study. Hard sciences have serious challenges in, for example, replicating studies. More "social" degrees tend to be vastly worse. I participated in at least one seriously flawed psych study being done so someone could get a degree. I was not impressed. I find the social stuff really fascinating. I seem to have an innate knack for it and I've taken college classes pertinent to that interest. But I tend to seek out other types of information when trying to further my interest in understanding how people work. For example, negotiating, parenting and marketing are all areas that require you to understand how people work and are results oriented. You either get results or you don't. A good test for how solid your hypothesis is: how well does it predict results? This is a general rubric. We know that Einstein's Theory of Relativity is superior to Newtonian gravity because it more accurately predicts planetary positions in the future. Ability to predict outcomes accurately is fairly strongly tied to performance. So, to my mind, social things that are performance oriented set a higher bar than those that are generally descriptive in nature instead. Psychology's ability to genuinely reform people with serious mental health issues is notoriously poor. This suggests it probably isn't on especially firm footing. In addition to the above areas of interest, I also find some harder sciences, such as neurological studies, much more generally useful for understanding social phenomenon than most psych or sociology things I've seen. I've also found books written by primatologists very good. A person I knew with a psych degree told me once that psych majors are mostly people who don't really understand people and are hoping to get a clue. Sadly, this hit a nerve for me. Some psych majors I've personally known fit that description all too well. Maybe someday these areas of study will be better than they are currently. But their current state leaves much to be desired.

dentemple 8y ago

This is not at all what the article is saying. Uneducated workers are seemingly getting priced out of these counties, making the entire cohort seem like they're better employed (due to the success of the survivors).

dang 8y ago

This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." If you could review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

sdinsn 8y ago
How is his comment a shallow dismissal?
- dang 8y ago
  It was more snarky and supercilious than informative.
  - sdinsn 8y ago
    The other comment about the title straight up said "Terrible headline" instead of being more friendly and constructive by saying "a better title would be..."
- shawn 8y ago
  college grads with useless majors like sociology can't get jobs, but feel manual labor is beneath them It's the opposite of a deep, thoughtful critique, which is what HN optimizes for.