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Where the Good Jobs Are

142 points by mhb 8y ago

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
TL;DR if you don't have a college degree (or have one that does not get you a foothold in a lucrative industry) stay out of all the cities that are a clusterf*ck of white collar professionals driving up prices on everything.
- indigochill 8y ago
  That holds up even if you do have a degree. You can save money on cost of living regardless of credentials.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    Yeah but then you can also make use of the benefit your degree has created for you (and because of what you paid for it).
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    Depends. If you're a programmer, you can save a ton of money in absolute terms working in the bay area or Seattle or NYC. If you're then willing to move later, suddenly that money is worth a lot more.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  The tradesmen I hire are making very good money in the largest US cities, well above $100k. No one wants to be a plumber/electrician/welder/carpenter though if they can help it. And their pay is rising faster than all the other people I hire.
  - shigawire 8y ago
    Because your back/body will be shot by age 55 unless you transition to management or entrepreneurship. My buddies who did trades (the smart ones at least) all have plans to get other income sources or save the majority of their money for the inevitable outcome of a career of physical labor.
    - lotsofpulp 8y ago
      I agree, and I think they deserve more pay in exchange for sacrificing their body.
    - planteen 8y ago
      This. In my experience, I have seen parents who were in tradesmen encourage their children to get white collar jobs. A career that is physically strenuous and outdoors is no joke.
      - geomark 8y ago
        My dad was a carpenter. He always said "Make money with your brain, not your back." He knew.
      - cylinder 8y ago
        That doesn't really mean anything. Most people outside of white collar professions glorify it; they haven't done it before.
nikomen 8y ago
As a white-collar professional and a software developer, what's something that we can do to lessen our effect on this phenomenon? I don't current live in a large city, but I've considered moving to one if I need to find work in the future. I've been lucky to work remote for most of my career, so living in a metro area with fewer tech jobs hasn't been an issue. However, if I were to move to one of the big tech cities, obviously I would be contributing to the pricing problems that already exist.
- KeenFox 8y ago
  Systemic issues require systemic solutions. The only thing an individual can do is advocate and vote. Even that might not be enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    How exactly should we vote supply and demand out of existence? You propose a left-ish solution but the same left-ish people that would enact it also support housing regulation, and due to supply and demand, your goal simply can't be met. This is not a systemic issue in most places where the program exists, it's an issue of current regulation (and the people that created it).
    - nikomen 8y ago
      I assume this would mean trying to vote for politicians that would remove the artificial supply and demand in somewhere like San Francisco where, if stories are correct, the local population doesn't allow for dense development. I'm not sure what you do in locales like New York where development is already dense in many areas.
      - TulliusCicero 8y ago
        NYC has some similar problems, albeit not as severe. IIRC much of the existing housing in NYC is 'illegal' in the sense that current zoning would prevent it from being built today due to density restrictions. For a counter example, you can look at Tokyo as a place that's more of a free for all, and indeed while it's still fairly expensive, it's much less so than the bay area or NYC.
blakesterz 8y ago
>> Mr. Wardrip, Mr. Fee and Ms. Nelson define a “good job” in simple terms: It has to pay more than the national median wage, $37,690 in 2017, adjusted for the cost of living in the area. I'm not usually one to be pedantic, but it seems like there's many MANY "terrible jobs" that pay $37k or more. I assume they had to keep it simple for their definition, and much of what makes a job actually good is subjective, but I was hoping this would have a little more nuance. It seems obvious to say pay is only part of what makes a good job good.
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  To perform a statistical analysis, you want an objective measure, and money is a great proxy for value. You can pay people to be frustrated and stressed. The interesting thing about this definition, to me, is the Lake Wobegon-esque effect that statistically half of all jobs are "good" because they're above the median. A poverty level or inflation-adjusted absolute metric might be more useful; you could measure the effect of policies based on the reduction of or increase in the number of good jobs.
- Rapzid 8y ago
  It also makes me wonder if those are all entry level jobs or require a lot of experience. If they are available to somebody just starting out, that's one thing. But that's not "good job" money 10 years in if you are trying to live a life and work towards some semblance of financial security/independence.
mothsonasloth 8y ago
In the UK there was a drive by the Labour government to push everyone into higher education. Not to blame them for this but it has effectively made it worse for some people who took any degree and at the same time has made it hard to fill trades and apprenticeship schemes (at least in Scotland). There is a kind of snobbery to working jobs which I think is wrong. My pal who is now a leccie (Electrician) can charge crazy money and is laughing all the way to the bank. Maybe I will quit my dev job and become his apprentice :)
- heavenlyblue 8y ago
  >> My pal who is now a leccie (Electrician) can charge crazy money and is laughing all the way to the bank. Can he scale his business to more than a single employee? Does he get many connections that allow him to move on - e.g. become a senior engineer at a nuclear facility? What happens to him when we move on to some other "smart" electricity scheme which outdates all of his practical skills?
  - reallymental 8y ago
    How far away is that? 20 years? That's 20 years worth of "laughing all the way to the bank" for that guy. Also, does every business need to scale more than 1 employee? Even if it's 2, 3 people max, that level of "freedom from worry" would make that duo/trio very happy indeed. AFAIK smart electricity for scheme for even a block level is notoriously hard with today's tech, the number of edge cases must be enormous.
  - hinoki 8y ago
    GP already talked about taking on apprentices, with the implication being the the friend is already scaling their business past a single employee. The practical skills are unlikely to become outdated quickly, since they are mainly about standards compliance and electrical safety. Even if something as large as the shift from gas lighting to electricity >100 years ago happened today, there would probably still be need for electricians, just as we still have gas engineers now.
  - swarnie_ 8y ago
katzgrau 8y ago
I've hired people with both some college and an actual degree. I honestly haven't seen a big difference in ability. In fact, the ones with only some college (especially those with a family) seem to be more reliable and willing to do the occasional boring things that those with a degree tend try to avoid doing. That's probably my own experience and it involves a low sample size, but as a small business owner, Id argue that you can really benefit by dropping the degree barrier and looking for other indicators of maturity and reliability.
- Wheaties466 8y ago
  as someone that falls into the category described in this article I may be able to shed some light into my personal way of thinking. I've always been very grateful and always been willing to do any work I can or go out of my way when I can to get the job done. This stems from the fact that I am grateful for my boss for "taking a chance on me". I know hiring doesn't always work out and I do what I can to be the shining star of people they look for, in the future to hire. It was very rewarding when in fact my direct manager said to me in conversation " How do we find more people like you?" Probably the best compliment I could have received. Before anyone else chimes in, I am not underpaid. I work for a great company and am probably paid above market average.
- fatnoah 8y ago
  >Id argue that you can really benefit by dropping the degree barrier and looking for other indicators of maturity and reliability. I've hired dozens of Software Engineers and could only tell you the degrees and/or schools of a couple of them. I don't even look at that. Can you demonstrates proficiency in what I'm asking you to do? Do you seem intelligent and willing & able to learn? Do you fill a gap on the team? Those are the things I want to know.
  - twodave 8y ago
    I think the barrier specifically for software engineering is probably a bit lower now than in the past. Information was tougher to get at 10-15 years ago than it is today, and many of the candidates who in past times would not have gotten the necessary structure from a university can now go to a few bootcamps and be pretty much on par with people who completed a 4-year degree. Software engineering is a trade skill, after all.
LeanderK 8y ago
>> The median wage for workers with some college education but no four-year degree is $835 per week, about 10 percent less than it was at the turn of the century, after inflation This is a crazy sentence if you think about it. For a significant part of society wages did not only stagnate, they dropped. I don't think the trend will reverse any time soon. If the wages of another profecion rose 10 percent and were equal before, we would see a 22 percent difference (which is a lot!). Since this is the trend for all workers with some college education but without a four year degree, i think it's a dire situation for those people. There's no easy way out (the article suggesst moving!). The suggestion in the article may be smart on an individual level, but it could lead to a further segregation between sucessfull and not sucessfull regions.
- thrower123 8y ago
  On the other hand, $835 a week is over $20/hour, which to my blue-collar redneck-steeped brain, seems like pretty damned good for somebody with no education - and a partial college education is not worth a flying fuck, because the way things are structured, it's typically all core high school++ courses for the first year or two, before going into actually field-specific training.
  - moate 8y ago
    You sound delightful. Also, there's plenty of associate degrees out there which represent a college education, non-4-year degree. Many of those represent trade/union type jobs (mechanics and many other types of technicians) with good pay rates
    - dang 8y ago
      Please don't cross into personal attack on HN. "Be kind. Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - lallysingh 8y ago
    My first year was programming and vector calculus. Second year was operations systems internals and differential equations. And this wasn't even a top tier school.
loblollyboy 8y ago
Without really doing research myself. If there is 1 factory left in Youngstown, and it’s hiring for 3 welders or something, and 1 accountant. And those are the only 4 jobs in Youngstown, then Youngstown’s “share” of good shit jobs is pretty high and there is still absolutely no reason to move there. My bro makes a lot more than me in DC without a college degree (or skills) bc he’s good at talking and handsome. I had to leave DC b/c I just am not good enough to get a good job there, and if you don’t make a lot there, then you have to move. So I get that if you’re a loser in capitalism move to a cheap city, but this share metric I think makes cheap cities look like good cities. The shares are likely high b/c there are NO educated jobs, and the cities are probably harder places to earn in (there are more nurse jobs in DC than Toledo, and my brother would not be able to do whatever the hell he does in Toledo, there is still more sense there than money).
- suff 8y ago
  I think the main drive of the article is "just don't even try to move here" which is very anti-competitive. Sounds to me like writers in NY have a hard profession, and do not want more people competing with them for lower wages.
strict9 8y ago
Weird how all of these think pieces pondering places and lifestyles available without a degrees only focus on healthcare and manufacturing. I've met numerous people in my 10+ years of software development without a degree. I don't have one either. As I heard from one candidate in an interview, “software development is one of very few career paths left to have a middle class lifestyle without a degree.“ My biased opinion is that devs without a degree hustle a little more and are more willing to tackle brownfield projects and nasty refactoring/conversion efforts.
- AlexB138 8y ago
  > As I heard from one candidate in an interview, “software development is one of very few career paths left to have a middle class lifestyle without a degree.“ That's very true, and it's because technology is more of a meritocracy than most other professions. Your compiler doesn't care about your credentials, or who your family is, emotional pleas, or any of the other myriad factors that get people into jobs they're not capable of. The culture of meritocracy is pretty heavily under assault, but I'm confident it will survive for a while yet.
- flybrand 8y ago
  In manufacturing - any position will interact with software for most of the day, and it is definitely part of the promotion path.
- kyoob 8y ago
  I agree with this. I think their methodology of scouring requirements in job ads might have something to do with it. I don't know if I've ever seen a listing in software development that didn't mention requiring a degree. I don't have a degree, and it's never stopped me from applying, but it is usually in there.
- sparkpy724 8y ago
  I'd argue that the number of non degree holders that are capable of being good Software Engineers is very small.
j7ake 8y ago
$835/week is $43000 a year, which is approximately what postdocs (people who hold PhD degrees) receive.
- snarf21 8y ago
  And soon we'll have nationwide $15/hour minimum wage (~$30K/year) for people who take your coffee order or put fries in a bag.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    45k/yr if you work 60hr/wk (which isn't all that bad if you're doing something that isn't stressful).
  - milquetoastaf 8y ago
    Because god forbid those people who do these things for you on a daily basis should have enough money to live
  - chachachoney 8y ago
    Sounds like you have a problem with people getting paid a living wage. Care to articulate your reasoning?
  - objectivetruth 8y ago
    Yes, since those people deserve housing, education, and healthcare, the costs of all of which have grown dramatically faster than the minimum wage.
- asdff 8y ago
  A postdoc is a training position, most people are postdocs for 3-5 years before moving on to faculty track or staff scientist (where you finally get compensated appropriately).
moorhosj 8y ago
==To figure out how many of these jobs are open to people without degrees, the economists scoured nearly 30 million local job ads across 121 metropolitan areas to determine their minimum educational requirements. They called them “opportunity jobs.”== I would be interested to know what percentage of these jobs are actually filled by people without degrees. It could be that these markets have less degree holders so they change the requirements to increase applications. What matters is who ultimately gets hired.
frankosaurus 8y ago
The article ranks cities by their percent share of "good jobs" rather than total count. If you calculate totals, the "superstar" cities do better, thanks to their larger overall populations. For example: The lowest scoring city, Washington, has 452,600 good jobs. The highest scoring city, Toledo, has only 100,980 such jobs.
- notfromhere 8y ago
  and by CoL you're gonna get screwed in one of these "good jobs" in superstar cities
  - frankosaurus 8y ago
    The article's definition of "good job" is cost-of-living adjusted: """ It has to pay more than the national median wage, $37,690 in 2017, adjusted for the cost of living in the area. """
    - notfromhere 8y ago
      It put a good job at San Jose as one making over 47k a year. You're not going to live comfortably in San Jose on 47k a year.
    - deathanatos 8y ago
      I question their CoL adjustments. The median US rent is ~$1k/month[1], whereas in SJ it's ~$2.7k[2]. That's ~$20k more per year, twice what they adjusted for. ($37k → $47k, or $10k additional CoL expenses.) That's not accounting for any other CoL, such as higher gas prices and CA's higher state tax. [1]: https://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us https://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us [2]: https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/santa-clara-county/san-jose/ https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/sa...
dalbasal 8y ago
Who cares if nursing or carpentry don't require college. They require specialized qualifications in nursing or carpentry, regardless of how we categorize the certificate or lack thereof. I don't see how any of this relates to "opportunity," in the sense that they're going for in this article. These jobs aren't any more accessible than college-required jobs.
hharnisch 8y ago
Having worked in Cedar Rapids there's really only 1 employer that makes up the "good job" pool - used to be called Rockwell Collins. I'd guess there's a similar situation in most of towns on this list, which would mean living there is a huge risk unless you plan on working at the one or two companies in town for life.
- threwawasy1228 8y ago
  I feel like there is an implicit assumption in the article that people without a college degree won't want to switch jobs as often because they have less upward mobility as a whole.
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
Putting "Registered Nurses" at the top of the list of occupations that are available without a bachelor's degree seems kind of misleading. Yes, it is technically possible to become one without a bachelor's degree, but it does require a minimum of three-quarters of a bachelor's degree and it is becoming more and more common for new RNs to be required to go ahead and get a bachelor's.
- analog31 8y ago
  Indeed, the criterion for requiring a degree is a regulatory one, involving licensing. But a degree may be a practical requirement if you're competing with people who all have degrees. One reason for a nurse to stay in school for another year is to open up future jobs or education opportunities, e.g., grad school.
- threwawasy1228 8y ago
  This was my first thought as well, a lot of the other 'uneducated' jobs they list are also pretty specialized and require some other form of long term certification accumulation.
mfer 8y ago
Anyone else notice the publish date for this piece is May 2. It's in the future. I wonder if this is a presentation bug or it was accidentally published early
- mhb 8y ago
  What is the date where you are?
  - mfer 8y ago
    That isn't going to matter is it. The date in some regions goes up to Friday May 1 but not on to Saturday May 2. At least not at the point in time I'm writing this. The URL has 5/2 in it which appears to be a date.
    - gipp 8y ago
      I think you may just be mistaken about the date, friend... The last TZ hit may 2 several hours ago.
- asdff 8y ago
  It's May 2 here, am I in the future?
suff 8y ago
And by 'good jobs' they mean 'anything near a decent wage'... for dropouts. This is one of the most patronizing, anti-competitive articles I've seen in a long time. If you want evidence of coastal elitism, read this article as exhibit A. As a dropout who learns faster on youtube than in a classroom, and making more than my state senator's entire family, let me give everyone reading this advice: Don't be scared away by elites protecting their jobs in large cities. Come in at 70% of the price, excellent work ethic, and give them a run for their money. Most Americans live in a country that values cost efficiency over credentials. We hold meritocracy above bureaucracy, and it should be celebrated not discouraged.
- humbleMouse 8y ago
  Agreed. Today's gatekeepers are trying harder than ever to gaurd the gates, but the tide is turning and the gatekeepers are loosing.
  - maceurt 8y ago
    Especially when the barrier to entry for a good college is getting lower and lower, and community colleges are getting better and better. The only thing holding up a lot of colleges now, is their low acceptance rate and their past prestige.
    - suff 8y ago
      And their endowments... and tax payer subsidized student debt programs... and rich people paying $10m to skip the line... not sure I would characterize that as clinging to life support. I would say though, that it's a giant waste of money and an efficient market gives ZFs about how much money you wasted.
      - maceurt 8y ago
        It will be an exponential decline once people start realizing that they are not as good as their prestige holds them to be. Once that happens their tax subsidies, student applications, bribes from wealthy families, etc will all go with it. What is the core product that an Ivy League level school is offering that makes people come there? Prestige, and I don't care what business your in, you will decline immensely once you lose what made you the best. ExpertsExchange and Netscape Navigator are just two examples (albeit wildly different market) of rapid decline when their bread and butter was not as good relative to their competition. I promise you, unless these prestigious schools are able to vastly change their business model, they are going to decline heavily.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
lacker 8y ago
This article title is ridiculous. These aren't the "good jobs" at all. These are the "best jobs available assuming you have no particular skills and no college degree".
- squish78 8y ago
  What is your definition of a good job?
Balgair 8y ago
A very good related article also out from the Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/01/magazine/lordstown-general-motors-plant.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/01/magazine/lord... "The last Cruze remained inside the plant, awaiting a final inspection. By then, it had already come to be much more than a car. It was a token of the most coveted working-class possession: a secure, well-paying job with health insurance and a pension." I mean, guys, it's not much folks are asking for here.

142 points by mhb 8y ago

TL;DR if you don't have a college degree (or have one that does not get you a foothold in a lucrative industry) stay out of all the cities that are a clusterf*ck of white collar professionals driving up prices on everything.

indigochill 8y ago
That holds up even if you do have a degree. You can save money on cost of living regardless of credentials.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Yeah but then you can also make use of the benefit your degree has created for you (and because of what you paid for it).
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Depends. If you're a programmer, you can save a ton of money in absolute terms working in the bay area or Seattle or NYC. If you're then willing to move later, suddenly that money is worth a lot more.
lotsofpulp 8y ago
The tradesmen I hire are making very good money in the largest US cities, well above $100k. No one wants to be a plumber/electrician/welder/carpenter though if they can help it. And their pay is rising faster than all the other people I hire.
- shigawire 8y ago
  Because your back/body will be shot by age 55 unless you transition to management or entrepreneurship. My buddies who did trades (the smart ones at least) all have plans to get other income sources or save the majority of their money for the inevitable outcome of a career of physical labor.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    I agree, and I think they deserve more pay in exchange for sacrificing their body.
  - planteen 8y ago
    This. In my experience, I have seen parents who were in tradesmen encourage their children to get white collar jobs. A career that is physically strenuous and outdoors is no joke.
    - geomark 8y ago
      My dad was a carpenter. He always said "Make money with your brain, not your back." He knew.
    - cylinder 8y ago
      That doesn't really mean anything. Most people outside of white collar professions glorify it; they haven't done it before.

nikomen 8y ago

As a white-collar professional and a software developer, what's something that we can do to lessen our effect on this phenomenon? I don't current live in a large city, but I've considered moving to one if I need to find work in the future. I've been lucky to work remote for most of my career, so living in a metro area with fewer tech jobs hasn't been an issue. However, if I were to move to one of the big tech cities, obviously I would be contributing to the pricing problems that already exist.

KeenFox 8y ago
Systemic issues require systemic solutions. The only thing an individual can do is advocate and vote. Even that might not be enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
- TomMarius 8y ago
  How exactly should we vote supply and demand out of existence? You propose a left-ish solution but the same left-ish people that would enact it also support housing regulation, and due to supply and demand, your goal simply can't be met. This is not a systemic issue in most places where the program exists, it's an issue of current regulation (and the people that created it).
  - nikomen 8y ago
    I assume this would mean trying to vote for politicians that would remove the artificial supply and demand in somewhere like San Francisco where, if stories are correct, the local population doesn't allow for dense development. I'm not sure what you do in locales like New York where development is already dense in many areas.
    - TulliusCicero 8y ago
      NYC has some similar problems, albeit not as severe. IIRC much of the existing housing in NYC is 'illegal' in the sense that current zoning would prevent it from being built today due to density restrictions. For a counter example, you can look at Tokyo as a place that's more of a free for all, and indeed while it's still fairly expensive, it's much less so than the bay area or NYC.

blakesterz 8y ago

>> Mr. Wardrip, Mr. Fee and Ms. Nelson define a “good job” in simple terms: It has to pay more than the national median wage, $37,690 in 2017, adjusted for the cost of living in the area. I'm not usually one to be pedantic, but it seems like there's many MANY "terrible jobs" that pay $37k or more. I assume they had to keep it simple for their definition, and much of what makes a job actually good is subjective, but I was hoping this would have a little more nuance. It seems obvious to say pay is only part of what makes a good job good.

LeifCarrotson 8y ago
To perform a statistical analysis, you want an objective measure, and money is a great proxy for value. You can pay people to be frustrated and stressed. The interesting thing about this definition, to me, is the Lake Wobegon-esque effect that statistically half of all jobs are "good" because they're above the median. A poverty level or inflation-adjusted absolute metric might be more useful; you could measure the effect of policies based on the reduction of or increase in the number of good jobs.
Rapzid 8y ago
It also makes me wonder if those are all entry level jobs or require a lot of experience. If they are available to somebody just starting out, that's one thing. But that's not "good job" money 10 years in if you are trying to live a life and work towards some semblance of financial security/independence.

mothsonasloth 8y ago

In the UK there was a drive by the Labour government to push everyone into higher education. Not to blame them for this but it has effectively made it worse for some people who took any degree and at the same time has made it hard to fill trades and apprenticeship schemes (at least in Scotland). There is a kind of snobbery to working jobs which I think is wrong. My pal who is now a leccie (Electrician) can charge crazy money and is laughing all the way to the bank. Maybe I will quit my dev job and become his apprentice :)

heavenlyblue 8y ago
>> My pal who is now a leccie (Electrician) can charge crazy money and is laughing all the way to the bank. Can he scale his business to more than a single employee? Does he get many connections that allow him to move on - e.g. become a senior engineer at a nuclear facility? What happens to him when we move on to some other "smart" electricity scheme which outdates all of his practical skills?
- reallymental 8y ago
  How far away is that? 20 years? That's 20 years worth of "laughing all the way to the bank" for that guy. Also, does every business need to scale more than 1 employee? Even if it's 2, 3 people max, that level of "freedom from worry" would make that duo/trio very happy indeed. AFAIK smart electricity for scheme for even a block level is notoriously hard with today's tech, the number of edge cases must be enormous.
- hinoki 8y ago
  GP already talked about taking on apprentices, with the implication being the the friend is already scaling their business past a single employee. The practical skills are unlikely to become outdated quickly, since they are mainly about standards compliance and electrical safety. Even if something as large as the shift from gas lighting to electricity >100 years ago happened today, there would probably still be need for electricians, just as we still have gas engineers now.
- swarnie_ 8y ago

katzgrau 8y ago

I've hired people with both some college and an actual degree. I honestly haven't seen a big difference in ability. In fact, the ones with only some college (especially those with a family) seem to be more reliable and willing to do the occasional boring things that those with a degree tend try to avoid doing. That's probably my own experience and it involves a low sample size, but as a small business owner, Id argue that you can really benefit by dropping the degree barrier and looking for other indicators of maturity and reliability.

Wheaties466 8y ago
as someone that falls into the category described in this article I may be able to shed some light into my personal way of thinking. I've always been very grateful and always been willing to do any work I can or go out of my way when I can to get the job done. This stems from the fact that I am grateful for my boss for "taking a chance on me". I know hiring doesn't always work out and I do what I can to be the shining star of people they look for, in the future to hire. It was very rewarding when in fact my direct manager said to me in conversation " How do we find more people like you?" Probably the best compliment I could have received. Before anyone else chimes in, I am not underpaid. I work for a great company and am probably paid above market average.
fatnoah 8y ago
>Id argue that you can really benefit by dropping the degree barrier and looking for other indicators of maturity and reliability. I've hired dozens of Software Engineers and could only tell you the degrees and/or schools of a couple of them. I don't even look at that. Can you demonstrates proficiency in what I'm asking you to do? Do you seem intelligent and willing & able to learn? Do you fill a gap on the team? Those are the things I want to know.
- twodave 8y ago
  I think the barrier specifically for software engineering is probably a bit lower now than in the past. Information was tougher to get at 10-15 years ago than it is today, and many of the candidates who in past times would not have gotten the necessary structure from a university can now go to a few bootcamps and be pretty much on par with people who completed a 4-year degree. Software engineering is a trade skill, after all.

LeanderK 8y ago

>> The median wage for workers with some college education but no four-year degree is $835 per week, about 10 percent less than it was at the turn of the century, after inflation This is a crazy sentence if you think about it. For a significant part of society wages did not only stagnate, they dropped. I don't think the trend will reverse any time soon. If the wages of another profecion rose 10 percent and were equal before, we would see a 22 percent difference (which is a lot!). Since this is the trend for all workers with some college education but without a four year degree, i think it's a dire situation for those people. There's no easy way out (the article suggesst moving!). The suggestion in the article may be smart on an individual level, but it could lead to a further segregation between sucessfull and not sucessfull regions.

thrower123 8y ago
On the other hand, $835 a week is over $20/hour, which to my blue-collar redneck-steeped brain, seems like pretty damned good for somebody with no education - and a partial college education is not worth a flying fuck, because the way things are structured, it's typically all core high school++ courses for the first year or two, before going into actually field-specific training.
- moate 8y ago
  You sound delightful. Also, there's plenty of associate degrees out there which represent a college education, non-4-year degree. Many of those represent trade/union type jobs (mechanics and many other types of technicians) with good pay rates
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't cross into personal attack on HN. "Be kind. Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lallysingh 8y ago
  My first year was programming and vector calculus. Second year was operations systems internals and differential equations. And this wasn't even a top tier school.

loblollyboy 8y ago

Without really doing research myself. If there is 1 factory left in Youngstown, and it’s hiring for 3 welders or something, and 1 accountant. And those are the only 4 jobs in Youngstown, then Youngstown’s “share” of good shit jobs is pretty high and there is still absolutely no reason to move there. My bro makes a lot more than me in DC without a college degree (or skills) bc he’s good at talking and handsome. I had to leave DC b/c I just am not good enough to get a good job there, and if you don’t make a lot there, then you have to move. So I get that if you’re a loser in capitalism move to a cheap city, but this share metric I think makes cheap cities look like good cities. The shares are likely high b/c there are NO educated jobs, and the cities are probably harder places to earn in (there are more nurse jobs in DC than Toledo, and my brother would not be able to do whatever the hell he does in Toledo, there is still more sense there than money).

suff 8y ago
I think the main drive of the article is "just don't even try to move here" which is very anti-competitive. Sounds to me like writers in NY have a hard profession, and do not want more people competing with them for lower wages.

strict9 8y ago

Weird how all of these think pieces pondering places and lifestyles available without a degrees only focus on healthcare and manufacturing. I've met numerous people in my 10+ years of software development without a degree. I don't have one either. As I heard from one candidate in an interview, “software development is one of very few career paths left to have a middle class lifestyle without a degree.“ My biased opinion is that devs without a degree hustle a little more and are more willing to tackle brownfield projects and nasty refactoring/conversion efforts.

AlexB138 8y ago
> As I heard from one candidate in an interview, “software development is one of very few career paths left to have a middle class lifestyle without a degree.“ That's very true, and it's because technology is more of a meritocracy than most other professions. Your compiler doesn't care about your credentials, or who your family is, emotional pleas, or any of the other myriad factors that get people into jobs they're not capable of. The culture of meritocracy is pretty heavily under assault, but I'm confident it will survive for a while yet.
flybrand 8y ago
In manufacturing - any position will interact with software for most of the day, and it is definitely part of the promotion path.
kyoob 8y ago
I agree with this. I think their methodology of scouring requirements in job ads might have something to do with it. I don't know if I've ever seen a listing in software development that didn't mention requiring a degree. I don't have a degree, and it's never stopped me from applying, but it is usually in there.
sparkpy724 8y ago
I'd argue that the number of non degree holders that are capable of being good Software Engineers is very small.

j7ake 8y ago

$835/week is $43000 a year, which is approximately what postdocs (people who hold PhD degrees) receive.

snarf21 8y ago
And soon we'll have nationwide $15/hour minimum wage (~$30K/year) for people who take your coffee order or put fries in a bag.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  45k/yr if you work 60hr/wk (which isn't all that bad if you're doing something that isn't stressful).
- milquetoastaf 8y ago
  Because god forbid those people who do these things for you on a daily basis should have enough money to live
- chachachoney 8y ago
  Sounds like you have a problem with people getting paid a living wage. Care to articulate your reasoning?
- objectivetruth 8y ago
  Yes, since those people deserve housing, education, and healthcare, the costs of all of which have grown dramatically faster than the minimum wage.
asdff 8y ago
A postdoc is a training position, most people are postdocs for 3-5 years before moving on to faculty track or staff scientist (where you finally get compensated appropriately).

moorhosj 8y ago

==To figure out how many of these jobs are open to people without degrees, the economists scoured nearly 30 million local job ads across 121 metropolitan areas to determine their minimum educational requirements. They called them “opportunity jobs.”== I would be interested to know what percentage of these jobs are actually filled by people without degrees. It could be that these markets have less degree holders so they change the requirements to increase applications. What matters is who ultimately gets hired.

frankosaurus 8y ago

The article ranks cities by their percent share of "good jobs" rather than total count. If you calculate totals, the "superstar" cities do better, thanks to their larger overall populations. For example: The lowest scoring city, Washington, has 452,600 good jobs. The highest scoring city, Toledo, has only 100,980 such jobs.

notfromhere 8y ago
and by CoL you're gonna get screwed in one of these "good jobs" in superstar cities
- frankosaurus 8y ago
  The article's definition of "good job" is cost-of-living adjusted: """ It has to pay more than the national median wage, $37,690 in 2017, adjusted for the cost of living in the area. """
  - notfromhere 8y ago
    It put a good job at San Jose as one making over 47k a year. You're not going to live comfortably in San Jose on 47k a year.
  - deathanatos 8y ago
    I question their CoL adjustments. The median US rent is ~$1k/month[1], whereas in SJ it's ~$2.7k[2]. That's ~$20k more per year, twice what they adjusted for. ($37k → $47k, or $10k additional CoL expenses.) That's not accounting for any other CoL, such as higher gas prices and CA's higher state tax. [1]: https://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us https://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us [2]: https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/santa-clara-county/san-jose/ https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/sa...

dalbasal 8y ago

Who cares if nursing or carpentry don't require college. They require specialized qualifications in nursing or carpentry, regardless of how we categorize the certificate or lack thereof. I don't see how any of this relates to "opportunity," in the sense that they're going for in this article. These jobs aren't any more accessible than college-required jobs.

hharnisch 8y ago

Having worked in Cedar Rapids there's really only 1 employer that makes up the "good job" pool - used to be called Rockwell Collins. I'd guess there's a similar situation in most of towns on this list, which would mean living there is a huge risk unless you plan on working at the one or two companies in town for life.

threwawasy1228 8y ago
I feel like there is an implicit assumption in the article that people without a college degree won't want to switch jobs as often because they have less upward mobility as a whole.

TheCoelacanth 8y ago

Putting "Registered Nurses" at the top of the list of occupations that are available without a bachelor's degree seems kind of misleading. Yes, it is technically possible to become one without a bachelor's degree, but it does require a minimum of three-quarters of a bachelor's degree and it is becoming more and more common for new RNs to be required to go ahead and get a bachelor's.

analog31 8y ago
Indeed, the criterion for requiring a degree is a regulatory one, involving licensing. But a degree may be a practical requirement if you're competing with people who all have degrees. One reason for a nurse to stay in school for another year is to open up future jobs or education opportunities, e.g., grad school.
threwawasy1228 8y ago
This was my first thought as well, a lot of the other 'uneducated' jobs they list are also pretty specialized and require some other form of long term certification accumulation.

mfer 8y ago

Anyone else notice the publish date for this piece is May 2. It's in the future. I wonder if this is a presentation bug or it was accidentally published early

mhb 8y ago
What is the date where you are?
- mfer 8y ago
  That isn't going to matter is it. The date in some regions goes up to Friday May 1 but not on to Saturday May 2. At least not at the point in time I'm writing this. The URL has 5/2 in it which appears to be a date.
  - gipp 8y ago
    I think you may just be mistaken about the date, friend... The last TZ hit may 2 several hours ago.
asdff 8y ago
It's May 2 here, am I in the future?

suff 8y ago

And by 'good jobs' they mean 'anything near a decent wage'... for dropouts. This is one of the most patronizing, anti-competitive articles I've seen in a long time. If you want evidence of coastal elitism, read this article as exhibit A. As a dropout who learns faster on youtube than in a classroom, and making more than my state senator's entire family, let me give everyone reading this advice: Don't be scared away by elites protecting their jobs in large cities. Come in at 70% of the price, excellent work ethic, and give them a run for their money. Most Americans live in a country that values cost efficiency over credentials. We hold meritocracy above bureaucracy, and it should be celebrated not discouraged.

humbleMouse 8y ago
Agreed. Today's gatekeepers are trying harder than ever to gaurd the gates, but the tide is turning and the gatekeepers are loosing.
- maceurt 8y ago
  Especially when the barrier to entry for a good college is getting lower and lower, and community colleges are getting better and better. The only thing holding up a lot of colleges now, is their low acceptance rate and their past prestige.
  - suff 8y ago
    And their endowments... and tax payer subsidized student debt programs... and rich people paying $10m to skip the line... not sure I would characterize that as clinging to life support. I would say though, that it's a giant waste of money and an efficient market gives ZFs about how much money you wasted.
    - maceurt 8y ago
      It will be an exponential decline once people start realizing that they are not as good as their prestige holds them to be. Once that happens their tax subsidies, student applications, bribes from wealthy families, etc will all go with it. What is the core product that an Ivy League level school is offering that makes people come there? Prestige, and I don't care what business your in, you will decline immensely once you lose what made you the best. ExpertsExchange and Netscape Navigator are just two examples (albeit wildly different market) of rapid decline when their bread and butter was not as good relative to their competition. I promise you, unless these prestigious schools are able to vastly change their business model, they are going to decline heavily.

deleted 8y ago

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lacker 8y ago

This article title is ridiculous. These aren't the "good jobs" at all. These are the "best jobs available assuming you have no particular skills and no college degree".

squish78 8y ago
What is your definition of a good job?

Balgair 8y ago

A very good related article also out from the Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/01/magazine/lordstown-general-motors-plant.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/01/magazine/lord... "The last Cruze remained inside the plant, awaiting a final inspection. By then, it had already come to be much more than a car. It was a token of the most coveted working-class possession: a secure, well-paying job with health insurance and a pension." I mean, guys, it's not much folks are asking for here.