US education system, Job market scam - ever moving goal line & requirements for same or less pay

I've found that the old saying "if you work hard you will be rewarded" is largely flawed because there seems to be an ever moving goal line for what is enough in just about every field from sports to education to business. There always seems to be some added unknown condition after reaching the goal or some unknown "other" who has the same talent, more experience, etc but was "invisible" or unknown when working to attain the goal. I first noticed this in High school but didnt' really understand the way it worked but it became very evident and prolific while in college and when entering the job market.

When I was in college studying business and IT, most of my class mate in my major seemed completely uninterested in technology. I'd say the vast majority didn't even have computers in their apt or dorm (and they weren't very expensive then for even a mid level new machine) and most seemed incapable of discussing anything tech related except for a very few minority who were "tech nerds". I spent much more time learning on my own about current tech, not 4-10 year old stuff being taught in class, though I learned that stuff just fine as it was easy after knowing the current stuff. Me and the other "tech nerds" could have easily worked for an IT company doing support and admin, but very few of us ever got job offers even though we were most qualified. What we saw was internships being given to people who may have had good grades but seemed completely opposite from hectically inclined people. Many of them had close relationships with professors who helped them get internships or jobs. It was almost impossible to find a job (professional position) without having an internship first, so I did my best to find one and moved 1,000 miles away for 4 months to work for just over minimum wage and no credits. The internships through the school, some paid more than what graduates were making & had BENEFITS & credits!

Once I graduated with an internship I started looking for work and it seemed that everyone required 3+ years of experience (not internships anymore), so I took jobs wherever I could and most were relatively pretty bad as far as experience, pay and working environment, as compared to what other classmates (who seemed totally inept technically) had found. As contracts expired and I looked for new jobs, the new requirement was a degree, experience and certifications (which require paying to take a course and at least a test and was expensive). So every job posting had cert's as a requirement and all the resume's posted all seemed to have lots of certs, degrees and experience, where 1 year ago, I rarely saw certs on resumes (maybe 10-20%). I continued contract work and did'n' get my certs. After about 3 years the new requirements didn't include certs at all anymore and I was told by some employment agencies and HR departments that they didn't mean a whole lot any more, because lots were faked (people paying others to take the test online, selling tests, etc) but now they wanted masters degrees and 3-10 years experience in mid level support. On top of all this, the pay was about the same as when I left college if it hadn't dropped by 10-20%.

In addition to wanting people to have a masters degree the list of reponsibilities for the job was a mile long and the needed skills had expanded from doing just hardware/networking/system/OS support to now include software programming, web design & programming, things that used to be their own specialty were now included in the normal IT admin role and all of this for less pay (by maybe 1/2 & no where near the benefits) of some internships people had in college.

Now I know this isn't just in IT but that sector seems pretty hard hit by it. We were told starting salaries would be $55-70K upon graduation and many were lucky to find part time work making over $12 an hour, even people who were extremely skilled in tech. I saw the same thing happen in my girlfriends field (marketing) where she got an extremely well paid internship with a huge insurance company and I don't even know what she did, I don't think she did either besides making & giving some power point presentations with all the information supplied to her. It seemed a young pretty face was worth a lot in that field and they were willing to pay a lot for a little work.

What was most disturbing is all through college and much of my professional career I found that many of those working in the field hardly worked or were basically inept in what they were doing. I had a relative working for one of the largest global IT companies for 30+ years and I asked him what he did at least 30 times and I never figured out what he did other than instruct new clients. I was also dumbfounded at the pedestrian level of technical know-how for someone working in IT for 30 years. During my internship of 4 months I can't tell you one thing that changed or was updated at the company (8 in the IT department) that I didn't have hands in doing and it wasn't b/c I wasn't involved, the dept was an open book to the IT workers, it was just that it seemed no work was done. A web page of employees hadn't been updated in over 2 years (on person was hired for this specifically - it was 1/2 of her job) the manager of the flagship hotel had been there for 2 years and the page still showed the old manager - it would take 2-3 mins to change it b/c his bio & pic was on the server just not added.

Have others noticed this in business or the education system? It seems like it is there to push courses and suck in money through "teaching" people what they need to get a job, then once that level is reached, a new requirement and course is added. All this causes people to go into debt and become slaves who have to work $8/hr jobs to pay off their debts.

For those who think slavery ended, they are truly fooled. It never ended it just changed form and they allowed a small SELECT portion of the "public" to become wealthy (making say $100+ per year) and pointing to them saying "look anyone can do it, just work hard". I think they pick idiots to become wealthy because it gives more weight to their claim that "anyone can do it", and they know that when people attack this system the idiots will stick up for themselves thinking that they got there on their own genius and hard work, not by cutting corners, breaking laws, exploiting the system, cronyism, having the right last name, skin color, religion, etc - and they won't see that others more qualified than they don't make it because they weren't "chosen". It's a willful blindness and ignorance on top of arrogance that allows them to sleep at night.

I probably haven't been in the work force as long as you have, but this strikes a major chord of truth!!

Education goes from child day care to a massive money making empire in no time flat. If they actually taught critical thinking, education/high education would be banned overnight.

The only way the empire of lies keeps on going year after year is precisely due to our educational system here in the states.

It doesn't even seem the large corporations have any intention of changing the system or taking upon the task of properly training their employees. It is almost like the bottom line isn't even important anymore after a company surpasses a certain size, then it become all about the magic accounting book manipulation. That is where the real profits start showing up.

This is what happens when the government starts paying for anyone with a f# pencil to go to college.

Now a BA doesn't mean anything because everyone has one. Soon it will be the same with a Masters. And on and on it will go.

Free s# yay.

I do have some college credits. Probably all told about 30-40 Credits. No degree though.

Never, ever stopped me from getting a job. Ever. I routinely beat out college graduates with experience and better interviewing skills.

Unless you are trying to become a Lawyer or a Doctor or an Accountant or something with a very specific degree associated with it, you don't need a degree. Sure it gives you a leg up on the competition but for tens of thousands of dollars? Not worth it. Throw away that business degree. I will beat you by reading free books from the library every time.

originally posted by: amazing
I do have some college credits. Probably all told about 30-40 Credits. No degree though.

Never, ever stopped me from getting a job. Ever. I routinely beat out college graduates with experience and better interviewing skills.

Unless you are trying to become a Lawyer or a Doctor or an Accountant or something with a very specific degree associated with it, you don't need a degree. Sure it gives you a leg up on the competition but for tens of thousands of dollars? Not worth it. Throw away that business degree. I will beat you by reading free books from the library every time.

Weren't you the one just talking about turning $1 mill into 1 billion and how easy it would be?

As far as the business degree, I don't think I have ever highlighted that in a resume let alone an interview. Never once was it a reason I thought I would get hired but it seemed to be a requirement on job postings, and by requirement, I mean REQUIRED. So it is listed but the main focus is experience and skills. I totally agree with you about the education system and the benefits of doing it on your own. The thing is you need to have an interest and or motivation to want to learn the subject and then it is relatively easy to do it on your own.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

That was very well said, and it is sadly true. I can see it right now where I work. Management is made up of people who make themselves look good, but drag the company backwards when you view the bottom line.

They also showcase themselves as promoting and retaining quality talent while half of the workforce quits for better jobs, because the company doesn't actually promote the retaining of talented employees.

It really is just a sham of sorts.

It's happening here as well. Back in the early 1990's, there weren't any internet job boards. All the jobs were advertised in magazines like computer weekly. Skills in demand back then were MS-DOS, UNIX, X-windows/Motif, X.25/TCP-IP (even PPP and SLIP weren't around then - enabling internet over PC modems and ISP's). Over time that became Windows NT/XP/95/98/7/8/9/10. The in demand skills in the past were data mining using languages like R. Now it is big data with Hadoop, GPU processing and deep learning.

Our course was advertised as training knowledge workers for the future - people whose entire careers would be dedicated to research and writing software and nothing else. Getting a job locally really depended on knowing a friend inside a company. But there were plenty of jobs down South and that is where everyone moved to. Most of those companies have now merged, downsized, automated and reduced their workforces.

The universities and governments realized there was money to be made by bringing in international students (with the goals to help end world poverty, bring money into the country and local economy, boost trade relations and gain extra research funds).

Now in the last two decades, there has been a trend for corporations to try and offshore many of the entry-level jobs or bring in foreign workers and move the current engineers into management. Now after so many people have burned out, there is a national shortage of senior engineers and above. Everyone I know has either emigrated abroad, works as web page designers, freelance writers, sales directors, actors, or runs their own shop business, simply to get away from the headhunters.

Jobs with defence companies are still available, but the catch is many don't expect employees to ever leave, so won't provide references. Other industries like HPC/parallel processing and GPGPU are so desirable, they practically only recruit entry level graduates. Many universities now just focus exclusively on big data, data mining and physics/mathematics/applied HPC, so they have dropped anything involving embedded electronics, mobile or desktop PC.

It's not easy changing career paths unless you have previous experience on your resume, and even then, sometimes there are thing you never ever want to do ever again, but because it is on your resume and they can't find anyone else internationally, employers will try and bully you back into those areas. Headhunters prowling around on social media can become so persistent and determined to track people down and badger them into applying, that it becomes nearly essential to delete the account. They will even refuse to delete your details and constantly send out automated job adverts that get triggered when you send out emails. Even CV websites will send out phishing attempts claiming that you need to update your details even though you no longer have an account.

Does anyone have any ideas on how this can change, if there is any way to incentivize quality work over cronyism, nepotism (or nepotism lite), gender/race quotas, etc? You would think that if profit was the main goal that this would self correct, but there is either so much fat in the system that it can support all these people or there is a massive burden being placed on other people that is "unseen" (but well known by those carrying the burden).

originally posted by: DigginFoTroof
Does anyone have any ideas on how this can change, if there is any way to incentivize quality work over cronyism, nepotism (or nepotism lite), gender/race quotas, etc? You would think that if profit was the main goal that this would self correct, but there is either so much fat in the system that it can support all these people or there is a massive burden being placed on other people that is "unseen" (but well known by those carrying the burden).

I don't think there's a huge problem. If you are qualified and appear to be a good candidate you will land some jobs.

Experience is key, but also being good at the interview.

Certifications and Experience, including volunteer and charity work experiences. If you want to do good in an interview read some book son it. If you want a good resume, look them up online and copy them.

Life Hack #1. Pay if you have to, to post a job on Craigslist for the job you want to apply for. Check out all your competition and update your resume to match theirs. Get the interview and ace it, because you read books on it.

Life Hack #2. Role play your interview with a friend. Good sales people do this all the time. When the interview happens you'll ace it and be at ease because you've practiced. All the hard questions will be easy.

I agree somewhat. I'm kindof in a similar situation myself. I recently finished college with a BS in a particular IT field, but I didn't learn anything in college. I even had one course where the professor would come in and literally just sit quietly at his desk on his computer the entire course, teaching nothing whatsoever. He was just assigning random grades to the homework too, he wasn't even looking at what people uploaded - which I know, both because I uploaded completely blank documents that I received 100% on, and because when I asked him why I hadn't gotten 100% on one of the assignments, he admitted that he fiddles with the grades so it looked like he was doing something in case anyone checked. To top it off, a student asked him for help with one of the assignments once. Guess what happened? He had to ask the rest of the class how to do it because he had no idea. Many other classes in my major were nothing more than being given an e-book and a short quiz every week. So... I learned nothing and I'm not prepared to work in the actual field I was supposed to be being taught about and prepared for. Regardless, I've been applying for IT positions that I feel I'm actually qualified for, and the majority of them are asking for people with multiple years of experience and skills in multiple different areas just to do basic things like image computers and replace hard drives and whatnot.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think part of the problem is that in many cases, the managers and top people in these businesses and organizations don't have a clue what's actually involved in the tech side of their business, so they either think that simple jobs like this require years of experience or certifications upon certifications, or they don't understand what's actually involved in the job they're hiring for, so they're just kindof shotgunning the requirements and hiring the best interview bullsh*tters - hence why alot of IT people seem to have no clue what they're actually doing. I've seen a few stories from people in tech jobs who say they work like 1 hour and browse the internet the other 7 every day because their boss thinks the work they're assigned takes way longer than it actually does.

I have gotten a call from one place... About a part-time job listing things for sale on a website. I figure I might as well take that in the meantime and save up a tiny fraction of what I owe in student loans, but I have to wait for their HR people to approve of me to even do that. I guess that's what a Bachelor's from a 4-year university gets you nowadays.

There are two reasons, well three actually:

- Corporations are evil
- Population growth causes more competition for everything
- Society pushing diversity companies just want to hire women, gay people, and minorities.

I kept my education simple. Took the necessary classes to get my subcontractors license and my real estate brokers license. Didn't cost me much either. But for some reason 17 years later I found myself in a foreign country just using my wits to survive and keep a roof over the family head. Not in debt either, home paid for, no car payment.

There are thousands and thousands (and thousands and thousands) of technical jobs available. You don’t need to work in an office to be successful. Hard physical work still pays very well.

a reply to: trollz

this is why I chose WGU's Networking and Security degree, it checks off the degree box on the applications and I have to complete the CCNA R&S and CCNA Security in order to finish the degree which will get my foot in the door.

I did about a years worth of research and acquired a few certifications prior to choosing a degree program

originally posted by: CB328
There are two reasons, well three actually:

- Corporations are evil
- Population growth causes more competition for everything
- Society pushing diversity companies just want to hire women, gay people, and minorities.

the real reason is because automation is displacing millions of workers so there's massive demand for jobs but not workers

I have about 10 years experience in IT and a Masters with good grades. This involved experience in software programming, network administration, system administration, systems analysis, etc.

Many people I have worked under have less education than I have. Most are friends, relatives of higher management or high achievers that learned how to work the system in their favor. Companies no longer look at college or university degrees as being of any value.

Currently from the standpoint of IT, companies are seeking the best quality for the cheapest price. Most determine that an employee with a degree and experience will not stay with the company because the employee will move on to some other company that makes a better offer.

Someone with a Masters and experience in IT will be lucky to land a job for 45k per year in the private sector, which in my opinion is a pittance when the amount of responsibility involved with the job is taken into account.

The government sector pays twice that but they use the same hiring practices as the private sector.

My University time is what got me in the position I'm in today. Not because of what I learned but who I met and made friends with. I really is "who" you know; And it's more important now than ever before.

Union proud, Union Strong....

a reply to: eManym

I personally know network engineers making well north of 100k

Coming from someone very successful and who has been in the IT industry for a decent number of years. You get out of IT what you put in.

What I see as a mid 30's Engineer is the guys in their 20s and fresh out of college thinking they are going to make salary figures like us older guys. Ain't gonna happen. Why would entry level college skills be paid the same as someone with years of experience under their belt. The college freshies are directly competing with us experienced guys. Jr positions are few and far between and they are really the only job that a newbie can fill.

Grind your way up if you don't get lucky. Get the experience and get the cred.

Been in IT since 2009 and started off at about 13-15 per hour with crap benefits. Worked for telecom companies , Ge healthcare caterpillar and united healthcare in IT operations, working as a tech auditor now making over 100k a year in the private sector and got there with just certifications. Just got my bachelors this year. The key to success in any job is constantly reinventing yourself and marketing yourself. Stop blaming the education system and spend more time doing these things and not complaining on ATS. reply to: DigginFoTroof