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>Many of the students had very limited programming experience and many were not MIT-affiliated, so it is not as though we took MIT computer nerds and made them
by lukeschlather 16y ago
>Many of the students had very limited programming experience and many were not MIT-affiliated, so it is not as though we took MIT computer nerds and made them slightly more nerdy.
There seems to be some deliberate dishonesty here. First of all, you're posting this on the Harvard blog, so this sounds like a group of undergrads from the Ivy League and top 20 schools. So this little anecdote has almost no relevance to those who have been on unemployment for over a year. The deliberate omission of where these students come from makes it difficult for me to take this article seriously, especially with the explicit assumption that only MIT students are nerds of a serious caliber, and furthermore that basic SQL is something difficult for non-nerds to pick up.
Furthermore, the article doesn't recognize that retraining and job-hunting are separate tasks, and not only are they difficult to do at the same time, but it's actually counterproductive.
Finally, the assumption that people are sitting around playing XBox with this money is slander. I doubt the author has spent more than 10 minutes in a social setting with anyone on unemployment. Unemployment checks in most cases probably won't even pay rent.
- ZachPruckowski 16y agoEither some of those training times are unrealistic, or there are broadly different definitions of competence. I'm extremely skeptical that ANYONE can learn enough about video editing in 2 weeks to become a professional editor. Or "go from zero computer knowledge to being a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer or a Cisco network engineer" - I'm not sure we have the same understanding of the general public's computer knowledge. There's a bit difference between "Harvard non-nerd" and the average unemployed person in terms of learning aptitude and in terms of computer familiarity. Not to mention that with lots of people from Tier 1 schools having a hard time finding jobs, it's not like the recession is a result of not enough people having college degrees. I mean, training never hurts, but the issue we're facing isn't a skills-to-opportunities mismatch, it's just a total lack of available jobs in all sectors.
- ZachPruckowski 16y agoEither some of those training times are unrealistic, or there are broadly different definitions of competence. I'm extremely skeptical that ANYONE can learn enough about video editing in 2 weeks to become a professional editor. Or "go from zero computer knowledge to being a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer or a Cisco network engineer" - I'm not sure we have the same understanding of the general public's computer knowledge. There's a bit difference between "Harvard non-nerd" and the average unemployed person in terms of learning aptitude and in terms of computer familiarity. Not to mention that with lots of people from Tier 1 schools having a hard time finding jobs, it's not like the recession is a result of not enough people having college degrees. I mean, training never hurts, but the issue we're facing isn't a skills-to-opportunities mismatch, it's just a total lack of available jobs in all sectors.