4 ms·

Would it be a substantively different talk if Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Larry Elison, Mark Zuckerberg, etc, etc had said something similar?

by rjf72 8y ago

WilliamEdward 8y ago
Never understood the "Bill gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Gabe Newell being a college dropout" argument. They dropped out specifically to start working. It's clearly not the same thing as dropping out because you were failing the classes.
rchaud 8y ago
It really wouldn't. At the end of the day it's a bunch of 1 percent-ers spewing platitudes when meeting with government; they have no idea what recruiting for non-executive jobs looks like these days. While I feel that the cost of college is totally out of line with the salaries most people make, I know that I wouldn't have been hired without a degree. Although I'm far from a Thiel fan, he at least offered an alternative approach using his own money (not a lot, mind you, but still).
- AchieveLife 8y ago
  wait wait wait. You're proposing that the executives don't know what recruiting practices their company is employing to sustain talent for their operations? Cmon, that's ridiculous. They would be terrible executives if this were true. Most people I meet agree that recruiting is broken. A huge part of this is regulation. The education system is integrated into the backbone of society which is maintained through regulation. If you were hired for only a degree then I would be wary of Price's law. https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/ https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/
  - rchaud 8y ago
    No, I wasn't hired "because of my degree"; there wouldn't be any college-educated Starbucks baristas if that were the case. What I said was that without my degree, I would not have been hired, as I wouldn't even have passed the initial ATS screen. I think we can both agree that is a state of affairs that needs to change.
    - AchieveLife 8y ago
      Yes, we can. I apologize for the extreme edge case. In a way, the applicant is still hired because of a degree rather than skill if that's what's used for initial filtering. Everything after that is derivative reasoning.
- rjf72 8y ago
  Elison and Dell were nowhere near 1% types. Dell started Dell with money he earned selling newspapers and dropped out once it was making 6 figures while still operating from his dorm room. Ellison came from a messed up family situation, dropped out to work odd jobs, and ended up teaching himself programming dropped out and worked odd jobs before teaching himself to code. Of course the environment changes over time. And so trying to create a business selling computers from your dorm room or moving to California planning to teach yourself to code and then [something] is probably not likely to work out so well. But I think the moral of these stories is often one of creativity and drive. Now teaching oneself programming is trite. When Ellison did so in the 70s, it was something extremely uncommon to do which meant it had vastly more value. --- In reality, I think our opinions are going to be driven by our experiences. In contrast to your experience, I've only ever even mentioned my degree for exactly one job. And that job very much did not require a degree. Since then I've found endless opportunity in spite of the fact I'm pretty much the embodiment of anti-networking: dumb phone, no social media, etc. But I enjoy development. Create one product that's impressive and useful, and it's like the world just opens up to you. A lesson I rather wished I'd learned about 15 years ago. But hey, something I can pass on to my kids - perhaps not so different than one William Gates who enlisted in the army right at school, served in WW2, went to college on the GI bill, and eventually had a somewhat more well known William. In any case, it's always made me question the value of the degree. I came from a very poor family which means that sheet of paper had quite the price attached to it. And that was before prices really went into lala land.
  - rchaud 8y ago
    What difference does that make? They aren't being asked for their opinions about the job market in the '80s. They're giving their opinion of this stuff as it exists today. But they also haven't had to look for a job in a quarter of a century and don't personally vet hires unless they're at the senior mgmt level.
    - rjf72 8y ago
      I had assumed you were framing things as them being out of context with 'real life' when you characterized them as "1% types." As for recruiting - that's what I was getting at. Different life experiences lead us to radically different views here. Your experience of finding your degree absolutely necessary is not necessarily indicative of people at large (depending on your field), though I'd fully grant neither is mine. It's just anecdata. In either case, I'd fully agree with you though that a degree makes things much easier for most people. However, I think that is rapidly changing. Most of the big tech employers are now dropping college degree requirements and I expect we'll gradually see the same in ever more fields. A degree used to say a good deal about a person, and all positive. Now that's changing, and so the market is adjusting in response.

Would it be a substantively different talk if Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Larry Elison, Mark Zuckerberg, etc, etc had said something similar?

by rjf72 8y ago

Would it be a substantively different talk if Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Larry Elison, Mark Zuckerberg, etc, etc had said something similar?

WilliamEdward 8y ago

Never understood the "Bill gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Gabe Newell being a college dropout" argument. They dropped out specifically to start working. It's clearly not the same thing as dropping out because you were failing the classes.

rchaud 8y ago

It really wouldn't. At the end of the day it's a bunch of 1 percent-ers spewing platitudes when meeting with government; they have no idea what recruiting for non-executive jobs looks like these days. While I feel that the cost of college is totally out of line with the salaries most people make, I know that I wouldn't have been hired without a degree. Although I'm far from a Thiel fan, he at least offered an alternative approach using his own money (not a lot, mind you, but still).

AchieveLife 8y ago
wait wait wait. You're proposing that the executives don't know what recruiting practices their company is employing to sustain talent for their operations? Cmon, that's ridiculous. They would be terrible executives if this were true. Most people I meet agree that recruiting is broken. A huge part of this is regulation. The education system is integrated into the backbone of society which is maintained through regulation. If you were hired for only a degree then I would be wary of Price's law. https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/ https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/
- rchaud 8y ago
  No, I wasn't hired "because of my degree"; there wouldn't be any college-educated Starbucks baristas if that were the case. What I said was that without my degree, I would not have been hired, as I wouldn't even have passed the initial ATS screen. I think we can both agree that is a state of affairs that needs to change.
  - AchieveLife 8y ago
    Yes, we can. I apologize for the extreme edge case. In a way, the applicant is still hired because of a degree rather than skill if that's what's used for initial filtering. Everything after that is derivative reasoning.
rjf72 8y ago
Elison and Dell were nowhere near 1% types. Dell started Dell with money he earned selling newspapers and dropped out once it was making 6 figures while still operating from his dorm room. Ellison came from a messed up family situation, dropped out to work odd jobs, and ended up teaching himself programming dropped out and worked odd jobs before teaching himself to code. Of course the environment changes over time. And so trying to create a business selling computers from your dorm room or moving to California planning to teach yourself to code and then [something] is probably not likely to work out so well. But I think the moral of these stories is often one of creativity and drive. Now teaching oneself programming is trite. When Ellison did so in the 70s, it was something extremely uncommon to do which meant it had vastly more value. --- In reality, I think our opinions are going to be driven by our experiences. In contrast to your experience, I've only ever even mentioned my degree for exactly one job. And that job very much did not require a degree. Since then I've found endless opportunity in spite of the fact I'm pretty much the embodiment of anti-networking: dumb phone, no social media, etc. But I enjoy development. Create one product that's impressive and useful, and it's like the world just opens up to you. A lesson I rather wished I'd learned about 15 years ago. But hey, something I can pass on to my kids - perhaps not so different than one William Gates who enlisted in the army right at school, served in WW2, went to college on the GI bill, and eventually had a somewhat more well known William. In any case, it's always made me question the value of the degree. I came from a very poor family which means that sheet of paper had quite the price attached to it. And that was before prices really went into lala land.
- rchaud 8y ago
  What difference does that make? They aren't being asked for their opinions about the job market in the '80s. They're giving their opinion of this stuff as it exists today. But they also haven't had to look for a job in a quarter of a century and don't personally vet hires unless they're at the senior mgmt level.
  - rjf72 8y ago
    I had assumed you were framing things as them being out of context with 'real life' when you characterized them as "1% types." As for recruiting - that's what I was getting at. Different life experiences lead us to radically different views here. Your experience of finding your degree absolutely necessary is not necessarily indicative of people at large (depending on your field), though I'd fully grant neither is mine. It's just anecdata. In either case, I'd fully agree with you though that a degree makes things much easier for most people. However, I think that is rapidly changing. Most of the big tech employers are now dropping college degree requirements and I expect we'll gradually see the same in ever more fields. A degree used to say a good deal about a person, and all positive. Now that's changing, and so the market is adjusting in response.