Apr 1, 2008
Is College Really Worth It?
The answer to that question is that in the vast majority of cases, yes, it most certainly is.
It’s time, though, to move past our national snobbishness toward tradesmen/women. Not everyone who forgoes college winds up flipping burgers. Not too long ago, nearly all of those people went into some kind of trade. Now those jobs are less available due to immigration and less desirable because every level of our education system is focused on pushing kids into a 4-year university.
Jenna was telling me the other day that it’s almost impossible to find a non-immigrant (legal or otherwise) drywall installer in Texas. It’s a skill bordering on an art form, and since kids coming out of high school aren’t choosing that path for employment, there are fewer people here to do it.
Let’s get over our national obsession with pushing everyone into college. We need tradesmen/women just as much as we do computer programmers and marketing folks.
There is so much to be said about working in a trade. Every time I watch This Old House, I think that those guys have some of the best jobs in the world. Just the idea of having a physical record of doing something is lost in the business world. There is also a tactile/sensory world that is lost in offices.
You have an office? I have a subterranean sensory deprivation chamber. It sucks. Hard.
I totally agree. Not only construction but auto mechanics, plumbers, linemen, technical equipment operators, etc.
I would add that many technology jobs are becoming trades as well. There’s no need to take 12 hours of history or literature if you just want to work on computers.
I agree and disagree regarding the tech jobs. It totally depends on your role. Yes, a programmer or DBA who works under a project manager at a large company can afford to be lacking in the history and literature departments.
Tech support, desktop technicians, anyone in the IT world that interfaces with customers (technical or non-technical) or has any dream of going into management needs those fluffy classes to chip off the sharp edges.
I see it a little differently. I’m an IT Project Manager and have worked with all of the disciplines you named. IT has two tracks: the technical track and the managerial track. Any employee of the specialties you named (and many more like server ops, network technician, telecom, even tape mounter) has the ability to choose the track they prefer. I know many people in all tracks who are degree-less that have chosen the management track and done very well for themselves. Some slide into s/w or h/w sales if they have that natural ability (which really can’t be tought). Many rise to the director level in large firms based on years of service, knowledge, and competence. Some make good contractors.
There is a ceiling however. They generally don’t interface well with “the business”. The do not make great consultants due to a lack of communication skills and strategic thinking. They especially do not make good project managers, because they they are too far in the weeds and do not see the big picture, lack communication skills (90% of what PM’s do), don’t relate well to executives, and don’t understand finance or accounting.
But you can make an excellent living staying on an IT management track and relying on your PM’s to handle the business interface. You can make an even better living in technical sales, pre-sales engineering, or implementation technician for a vendor.
I have an MS in IT and could name a dozen people without a Bachelor’s that leave me in the dust. (part of this is because I’m kinda lazy, but most of it is because these folks are great at what they do AND have a chip on their shoulder about the whole college thing.)
I think I’m one of those people with the chip, but I doubt I leave you in the dust.
My opinions are clouded by my last year at UTA. There is only one path of advancement here, and that’s into management. Unfortunately that means that a lot of those people who are great technicians get promoted into management roles that they’re woefully unsuited for. Most of them do their best. A few of them hide in their offices and only come out at review time, where they then hammer you because you were doing something wrong, but they never told you about it.
I agree on the ceiling aspect, but there’s also the perspective where you’re preemptively disqualified from even getting to the interview because you don’t have a degree. I know this has happened to me. I blame HR departments who don’t really understand what’s involved in being a Help Desk or Desktop Support person. (Or even a SysAdmin for that matter.) They see that it’s a computer job and automatically assume that a Computer Science degree would qualify a person for it. I don’t think I’ve EVER met someone with a Computer Science degree who was well suited for Help Desk or Desktop Support work. (I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m just saying I haven’t met one in my 10 years in IT.) In my experience, the best ones have Liberal Arts degrees or business degrees coupled with geek tendencies.
I’ve found lately that the best way to get a job is to find the one where yours is the only name on the list for hiring. This is how I got back in to UTA after a 7 month absence, and it’s also how I plan on getting every new job I move into from now on.
What resonated with me the most was your comment about good technicians being promoted into managerial roles for which they are unsuited.
This happens everywhere in every discipline. My first real job out of A&M was as the Industrial Engineer at what is now the Fedex Ground Hub at 287 and 820 (it was RPS before Fedex bought them out to compete with UPS in the ground business). For the laborers, this was horrible work. Guys were expected to load 400 boxes/hr into the standard 28′ drop frame trailer. The temperature in the trailers got up around 140 in the summer (I know this because Hallmark’s candles were melting.) But when a supervisory role came open, who do you think they promote? The guy that could load over 400 boxes/hr despite this person having no managerial skill whatsoever. There were plenty of loaders that had management potential (good communication and motivational skills), but they were never considered.
And I’ve seen it over and over in IT as well. The best techs get put into management which fucks everything up. You lose a good tech and gain a bad manager.
When I’m consulted, I do what I can to emphasize that managerial skills are different than technical skills. I’ve won a few, but lost many more.