The author makes a lot of great points here but I took issue with this sentence:
All jobs that currently require a degree, should instead require a knowledge test. The employer should not care how the knowledge was obtained, just that the applicant has the knowledge.
I would argue that the degree does provide some value beyond what can be easily tested in an interview setting. I'm not sure if it is the only way but the type of person who completes a degree is the type of person who is able to sit down and start a difficult task and complete it. Often these tasks are not directly related to what the student is passionate about, and sometimes not even necessary without taking into consideration the bigger picture of a multi-year program. In my experience dealing with the drudgery of the tedious day-to-day of most white-collar jobs, this college education degree provides a coarse litmus test for the type of person who will thrive in this environment. A person who will do things well and thorough for their own sake and deal with the bullshit.
Just as a hypothesis: is it possible that the sheer number of people we're putting through increasingly bureaucratic college curricula (do this busywork, now go sit in this room listening to a topic you don't care about for a while, etc) is creating a feedback system that encourages the creation of tedious drudge work since that's what we've "trained" people to be good at? Though I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg in this situation.
To me it looks like we asking young people, in their brightest years (from a neurological point of view) to sit through boring classes, under-qualified teachers, just so that afterwards they'll have proven themselves able to stand a boring job too? That seems very perverse. It is _not_ a "skill" to be able to do what you don't like and be happy with it. It is a skill to learn to (genuinely) like it or get out.
I can see that...it's almost like corporate stalking. Personally, I don't get the company worship thing...there's plenty of interesting jobs outside of Google, Facebook, etc.
Well said and as someone commented earlier about "building a table" I think there is some sense of accomplishment and utility you can get from that vs something in tech.
I think comparing is inevitable.. going through a lot of this now personally and sometimes i wonder how much a factor is the size of the pond you swim in.
I agree comparing with others is inevitable. I also think you can derive joy and satisfaction in comparing against your self (i.e. your previous work). Admire your improvements, however small, and pat yourself on the back for having persistence. It might seem hollow/shallow, but I really believe it's a powerful way to frame skill-building.
Yeah honestly i find the experience of going to glassdoor and entering or retrieving info actively hostile to the end user as far as ui and interface is concerned.
Nothing noteworthy, aws lambda and api gateway with dynamodb to handle the submissions. Cloudfront/s3 for the static content. The only tooling i used was kappa which is a very lightweight deployment wrapper for lambda.
Thanks for sharing your website. I think the idea is great-- a simple place to share just the basics about your job. Good luck with it, I'll be sure to keep it bookmarked :)
All jobs that currently require a degree, should instead require a knowledge test. The employer should not care how the knowledge was obtained, just that the applicant has the knowledge.
I would argue that the degree does provide some value beyond what can be easily tested in an interview setting. I'm not sure if it is the only way but the type of person who completes a degree is the type of person who is able to sit down and start a difficult task and complete it. Often these tasks are not directly related to what the student is passionate about, and sometimes not even necessary without taking into consideration the bigger picture of a multi-year program. In my experience dealing with the drudgery of the tedious day-to-day of most white-collar jobs, this college education degree provides a coarse litmus test for the type of person who will thrive in this environment. A person who will do things well and thorough for their own sake and deal with the bullshit.