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I'd love to buy you a beer or coffee sometime and chat about our shared interests!

sillysaurus3 4253 days ago

Unfortunately, this only tends to work during periods of economic prosperity. When times get tough, those without credentials usually seem to be the first to be ousted.

But I've long wondered whether that's true. How'd you fare during 2008? It'd be nice to collect some datapoints from someone else.

The phenomenon seemed most true just after The Bubble. I think tptacek mentioned he had some pretty substantial credentials yet finding a job was extraordinarily difficult.

Faired okay in 2008. Company I was working for went out of business (was IT manager making $96K/yr), was hired 3 months later to do IT operations for datataking for a detector at the Large Hadron Collider ($86K/yr). Managed ~6K linux boxes, had a good time, learned what essentially became my DevOps career. Left after a year to go back into the private sector for a $40K/year salary increase managing datacenters.

I've only been asked 3-4 times about my college education (or lack thereof), and its never stopped me from getting a job. YMMV.

this can happen only in NA: people w/out school lead data centers. I know a Sociologist who was a Director of IT Strategy and Planning, a retail salesman and Preacher becoming Oracle Developer (I had to visit internal establishments of a big job agency just to see who is it that they are hiring for Oracle positions because I, who started doing Oracle with it's first commercial version, Oracle 5 Beta in 1988., and worked in and around Oracle ever since, was certainly not amongst those lucky souls. They even told me, just before the Internet Bust 2000-2002 that "they will not be recommending me for Oracle projects"!? I made sure that in the last 14 years, every 6mths or so I send an email to that person starting always with that quotation and always reminding him that I was the state Champion of Math and Physics at the age of 17 and never mentioning my University Electrical Engineering degree and M.Sc. Computer Science including 25 years of experience in IT - btw, in order to feed my family, back in the 90s, I had to go low level, deep down low where no shoe salesman can ever go, writing STREAMS drivers and Unix communication gateways - ALL other positions were taken by people not educated in IT, computer science and electrical engineering. 2000s improved a bit: they started hiring Chemical and Mechanical engineers in IT as well, but not computer science and electrical engineers. Nowadays still 80% of IT positions are taken by intruders in the field!), etc. etc. NA led world to this Slump of All Slumps from which it will never recover, read my lips

JasonFruit 4252 days ago

Reading what you wrote, I wonder if you've considered that there might be non-technical, more personal reasons you've had a hard time finding employment in your field. Holding a 14-year-long nastygram-writing grudge against a job agency doesn't seem like the best use of your clearly valuable time. I really mean no offense here; I've had to make some adjustments in my way of dealing with people over the years, as well.

there are too many stories. On 23rd of Dec 1999. I went for an interview with XXX, an Enron like looser company (btw, this is what happened in Enron, a distilled hitchhiker guide to enronization of NA: a company A sold assets to company B. Company A continued to use those assets). This was my second or third coming to their establishments (first time I visited them they were porting from Ingres to Oracle; on my second visit (different) they informed me they are porting from Oracle to - Ingres). So here I am on 23rd of Dec. 1999. I was greeted by a - think John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever - a "project manager" (btw "project manager", "business analyst" and similar stupidities are all The Tools of Corruption of Enormous Proportions. Project Management exists...in projects like NASA Space Shuttle etc. Or Hadron Colider and similar. But to create a "project" around 4 (four) lines of Perl code?? That is plain stupidity (I used Perl intentionally to express my disgust with all of that nonsense which cost NA economies trillions and trillions of dollars, together with so called "HR departments", "job agencies" and similar stupidities). Back to our Travoilta PM. The guy had an Oracle book besides him (!it takes a disco dancer to at least come close to something that has any connection to Oracle whatsoever. All other idiots who declined my application for Oracle jobs, they opted for so called "behavioural" interviews (these are interviews where milk can be white or black, depending on the wish of the Travolta, pardon "interviewer"). Of course Travolta didn't understand a word I was saying. I was looking those huge establishments with 1000s of cubicles and at that moment I knew one thing with 100% certainty: this is going down sharply very soon. I knew something (but not enough, and not enough time to learn more) about short selling. I remember thinking: this Travolta company's stock is $125 and it must go to $60 no question about it. I had 300,000 at the time. Long story short: the stock went down not to $60, not even to $6, but TO F. 6 CENTS (!). From $125 to 6 cents. And I was a prime witness and I due to trading inexperience did nothing. I mean how many stock analysts could have such opportunity to observe a praised (top 3 companies in the field) company from inside and spot a huge technical signal: SELL, SELL, SELL.

seanflyon 4253 days ago

> When times get tough, those without credentials usually seem to be the first to be ousted.

I have seen those without credentials having a harder time finding work, but I don't see why they would be the first to be ousted. Credentials are great for making the first cut in applying for a job, because they have to make that decision with relatively little time and effort. Credentials are also great for applying to companies that have little trust in their ability to interview candidates, but after you have been there for a while, they know what you can do. It doesn't make sense to get rid of people based on lack of credentials (and I've never seen it happen).

My anecdotal experience agrees with you. Also, having a decent network negates most issues "making the cut" (in the vast majority of cases).

network, you mean - corruption?

toomuchtodo 4252 days ago

Knowing decision makers who are going to bypass HR filters.

of course it does, read my post above. Even if an uneducated person is (uneducated) Edison himself as for every Edison there is an (educated) Tesla. No exceptions allowed

canvia 4253 days ago

The kind of people that would judge a person over a piece of paper are not the kind of people that anyone would want to work for.

bruce511 4253 days ago

When it comes to hiring, a degree acts as a filter. Let's say 200 people apply for a post. (and when the economy is bad that number goes up). I know that of the 200 probably 20 would be perfect for the job.

Now I don't want to interview 200, because all I need to find is one of the 20. So first thing to do is filter the pile based on some objective measure. Having a degree is a quick way to get from 200 to 100 or less. And my experience has shown, that at least for some jobs, the bulk of the 20 will be in the 100 that are left.

Of course I'm talking about technical jobs here - if I was looking for a carpenter I'd use a different filter.

Are there people who would be perfect for the job excluded in the filtering process? Of course the are. But I'm going to reject 19 perfectly good candidates anyway so filtering a few out early is fine.

Of course the filter is not the only filter, and is not absolute. Experience trumps education so good specific experience can get you through to. And (for me) personal passion for the work trumps them all. That's hard to put in a resume, but is great whe I find it.

Incidentally of the 200 resumes the goal is to interview as few as possible. Ideally < 10. Like I say, I don't need 20 great people, just 1.

Using a degree as a filter tells me the company in question is absolutely horrible at hiring. Grab a dart board. Just as effective.

bruce511 4252 days ago

In a completely random spread is should be able to discard 90% of the applications without even looking at them. That's you dart-board approach.

In order to improve the odds though one can apply some reasonable filter. Any filter that does a better job of improving the dart board odds is, by definition, better than a dart board.

Now different jobs benefit from different filters. If I'm applying to do a job that takes a high-functioning brain, then it makes sense to apply a filter that already clasifying people based on mental ability.

It's important to understand that the goal is not to find the best 20 people. The goal is not to even find the best person. (because after some level the notion of "best" is highly subjective.) the goal of a recruiter is to find someone who is capable, and is good at the job.

The goal of you, the person trying to get hired, is to get past the filters. You may think you're the "best" person for the job ( but how would you know without yourself interviewing the other 199?)

Some filters, like a college degree, are hard to overcome. Because I can completely ignore you and still succeed in my task of hiring someone. To be honest what -you- think of my filter(s) is irrelevant. I'm not out to find every quality candidate - just fining 1 is sufficient.

If you find you are being negatively affected by hiring filters then you need to be creative about overcoming that.

gaadd33 4252 days ago

You wouldn't filter out people who have no experience or knowledge of the job field? So if you have a grocery store bagger with no other job experience or schooling applying for a highly technical position that also requires managing 20 people and budgeting several million dollars, you would interview them?

That seems like a waste of time for both sides.

this sounds like a very good reasoning. with your permission I'll pass it on to different other forums/blogs, like a prime example of Hiring Common Sense reasoning, Effectiveness in Hiring , something that was (with purpose?) dismantled in the years that preceded 2000-2002 Internet Bust and following Decade Long (And Counting) Bust

bruce511 4252 days ago

Sure, do what you like - there's no patent on common sense.

freehunter 4253 days ago

Statements like this are really easy to make when you have money to support your family. I've often said "I don't want to work for someone who does [x]" then taken a job for someone doing [x] and a lot worse because when push comes to shove, I needed the money.

14 years ago, mostly because people like you, I got high blood pressure. I started to read a lot about it in the coming years and, in my twisted mind, I even considered myself to be an expert in the filed (!?), more so because in my University times I was doing research in Biocybernetics, digital processing of biomedical signals etc. So I was on the health forums, writing about the subject like some, God forbid, doctor. I was in a heated discussion and a forum member, a Cardiologist, told me: "- Listen, go and read 9000 pages so that you can become a Cardiologist. Then come back and we can discuss". I thought for the moment, remembered my 47 exams in University Electrical Engineering department, and wholeheartedly agreed with him. I never wrote a single post about health again

angelbob 4253 days ago

The trick is to learn some things that don't require a lot of company support. "Gold standard" skills, if you like. I sell books and classes, for instance.

Those still get harder in a downturn, but you need less company agreement that your skills are good. Instead, sell directly to people who mostly don't care about your formal credentials.

It's not perfect. But even a little goes a long way.

Learn skills that are in demand in any org. I can do Sysadmin/Network Admin/IT Manager/Devops for an enterprise, a SMB, a startup, or even consulting part-time if you don't need a full-time person.

You don't need AWS? Cool, I can manage Hyper-V, Openstack, or VMware. You use .NET instead of Python? I can do that. You need me to be customer facing? Easy as pie.

I am not an IT professional. I've a business professional that uses IT to solve problems.

EDIT: /u/todayiamme, saw your reply you wanted to get in touch. I'd love to!

girvo 4253 days ago

While I'm young (24), I'm putting my effort into cultivating that sort of attitude. Learning is something I love in general, and one great thing about our industry is how there is that you can learn and apply, and how applicable skills from things that aren't directly related actually are. Basically, what you've done is what I want to do, so thanks for the inspiration :)

bad news for you all: in 2014 I noticed, for the first time in 25 years, a slight shift toward Common Sense Hiring: companies are, still bashfully, starting to hire Computer science engineers on IT positions, just like in 60s and 70s. Mind you, this is just a signal for the trend reversion. Expect, in the next five years, full blown shift toward Common Sense Hiring - ONLY Software Engineers on Software IT positions, and ONLY Computer/Electrical Engineers on Hardware IT positions. No exceptions whatsoever. For the first time in 25 years I, the man who was fired numerous times by people without school, "fired" a company. I gave the pink slip to a company which paid me well for two years (140,000 net) because they abused me. Why is this happening? My research shows that many high posts are shaking. For the first time in 25 years management is fearful. And when they are fearful they know how to hire, rest assured (but they still like to abuse quality workers, the WORKHORSE, along the way - the sadism is an illness). Right now, what they are doing, is the following: they take a WORKHORSE and abuse him until he dies with a view to hiring another WORKHORSE when the first one dies. And so on.

I tip my hat to you sir (or miss)! Never stop learning, and you'll go far. And if you don't want to go far, you'll have fun in the process.

watson 4253 days ago

After you get 8+ years of real world experience doing what you do under belt, your education becomes irrelevant in most fields.

So if you've been lucky enough to have someone believe in you without caring about your missing degree, and you do that for enough years, you should be just fine.

toomuchtodo 4252 days ago

> So if you've been lucky enough to have someone believe in you without caring about your missing degree, and you do that for enough years, you should be just fine.

I'd say luck comes into play in any job. You could have an ivy league background. Now someone thinks you're overqualified for the position, and picks the cheaper candidate.

In my case, it was part luck and part a numbers game. I was 17, and applied at ~30 companies for their IT roles. Why not? It was cheap for me (print resume, mail, follow up over phone) both in resources and time. I took pics with of my racks of older cheap PCs in my parent's basement doing distributed.net's RC5 challenge, all networked and cable tied, proxy configs, etc. It wasn't a hard sell to a decision maker.

godzilla82 4250 days ago

That also depends on the population of your country! In India, you are worthless without a degree. People look down on non engineers. Even bachelor of science in computer science is considered crap. Your value as a developers depends only on how many other developers are out there.

toomuchtodo 4250 days ago

Wow. I am terribly sorry to hear that. :(

malandrew 4253 days ago

I would love to see details on your 40' sailing vessel project. How much of it is your own design and how much of it involves relying on designs from others.

I'll have details up on my blog someday! I rely heavily on other designs, as I'm no nautical engineer, but I do pull elements from different craft designs (its a catamaran).

XJOKOLAT 4252 days ago

Awesome. Would love to see you/r progress. That's on my dream list.

malandrew 4252 days ago

sweet. my friend dominic from nz has been working on a similar project.

shostack 4253 days ago

Curious if you happen to have a significant other or family that would consume a significant chunk of your potential free time.

I built my CNC mill with my wife. She's helping me build my boat. We've been married 6 years, and we enjoy working on projects together. We also try to spend as much time with extended family as possible.

shostack 4253 days ago

Awesome, glad to hear you've been able to find a balance. Sounds like a big part of that is your shared interests in these areas with your wife which allows you to focus the time there.

Out of curiosity, how much technical knowledge was needed for the CNC mill?

> Awesome, glad to hear you've been able to find a balance. Sounds like a big part of that is your shared interests in these areas with your wife which allows you to focus the time there.

Most definitely. I'm not a sit on the couch and watch TV sort of guy. I need to be doing something, and I love that my wife loves to join me in my endeavors.

> Out of curiosity, how much technical knowledge was needed for the CNC mill?

6-8 hours of research.

el_benhameen 4253 days ago

Thanks for validating my attempted trajectory. It's really encouraging to hear stuff like this. Kudos to you for making life just as you want it.

joshu 4253 days ago

Please talk more about the CNC mills, as this is my current obsession.

bartwe 4252 days ago

Family life will slow those plans down considerably

toomuchtodo 4251 days ago

Life is all about prioritizing the things that are important to you. If I have to work less to still work on projects and have a family life, I can do that.

jonmrodriguez 4253 days ago

That's badass!

Thank you!

ultimoo 4253 days ago

Don't feed the trolls.