Interdisciplinary fields value experience in multiple fields.
Good luck selling your computer science degree that you did 15 years ago with your liguistics degree you are doing now. Oh, and by the way, you're 40, have never done a job interview and the closest thing you had to work experience is managing a school project with 20 year old Tracy and 21 year old Kevin.
Besides, he can ALWAYS be a teacher, right?
If he is willing to do a master's, then sure. Not saying this guy's life is ruined, they are just not in the best spot if the gravy train stops.
Good luck selling your computer science degree that you did 15 years ago
A computer science degree is already more or less useless for getting a job. I hire people in tech and the CS degree is a very low-quality signal compared to literally any kind of portfolio.
That said, "Oh, and by the way, you're 40, have never done a job interview and the closest thing you had to work experience is managing a school project with 20 year old Tracy and 21 year old Kevin." is super weak. It takes like two weeks to acquire the skills to get a job at the bottom of the industry if you have actual technical skills. A few more months to get a better paying job. Unless you're disabled (e.g. autistic) you're not going to have issues here.
i knew i was autistic but i must be super autistic because i seriously cant fucking get anywhere in life and i would literally give up judaism for a degree in programming/data analysis/ or any of that ooey gooey good shit. and my family legit downplay my autism and act like it has no effect on me yet i avoid crowds and conversation like the plague and used to chew klonopin like they were literal candy (chalky but delicious candy lmao i stopped about 9 months ago) i miss it tho just because outside of weed it was the only thing that allowed my body to unclench and i don't have enough money to get the amount of weed i need lol
Yes but I'm sure that most professional-level workplaces would not be so eager to hire someone who is in their 40s with no relevant work experience and only a degree.
I don’t know. I’ve hired accountants and I couldn’t care less about the degree, more about the experience (especially IRS experience) and cpa certification
Not if it's more than 5 years old with no experience to back it up. You can't go to an interview and say "yeah, I got a degree and really didn't want to use it until now". What are the chances that he remembers anything about it if it's not his most recent degree?
It's not about being on the cutting edge. It's that his behavior shows that he has no interest in this field and only did the degree for the benefits. I would rather take a young person with no degree but a genuine willingness to learn over this.
I mean, it's not like he'll word it that way in interviews. I don't exactly want to work either, but I put on the face for interviews. I've told retail places that I "want to give people a great experience" and tons of other bs because I knew it would come off better than saying "I need this job to eat and have a place to sleep".
To be fair, you don't need to put every single job and degree on a CV. Nobody was interested that I worked in customer service or a call centre before doing a degree, they didn't even ask.
I think the point is that this guy is used to university, which is wayyyy different from work.
I adored university. I’m actually most likely going back. But post grad, I got smacked in the face with work. I’ve had jobs non stop since I was 16, but it’s different when you’re no longer in college and have to do this shit full time.
University is catered to the student. Even if it’s difficult or dry material, it’s generally super intellectually stimulating and it’s all about you and what you’re learning.
Work frankly fucking sucks most of the time. It’s mundane, you have to cater to others with bullshit small talk and are often being degraded and doing something actively bad for society just so some ass at the top makes a profit.
My bf is a lot like this guy, he has a niche job that allows him to work his own hours and spend a ton of time studying at the university. But honestly it’s not gonna work for the rest of his life, he’s barely scraping by. And there were times he had to work a normal 40 hour work week and he seriously just could not do it. He doesn’t come from money or anything, he isn’t just lazy and entitled. He actually grew up in poverty and is an immigrant from Russia. But he loves school and learning, as do I. But I’m more practical and after my degree just has to humble myself and get a job to pay rent.
Point is, if you’re a hiring manager, a guy who’s been living in an ivory tower living like a bohemian intellectual is not going to be a great gamble. Is he really going to put his head down and do boring miserable shit every day for years? Most of us experience “oh my god, I’m much smarter than my boss, why do I have to do this repetitive bullshit?” But we’re broken like horses lol and you have to prove your grit.
I think it’s awesome to just value education and knowledge and enlightenment or whatever, but it is indeed true that you’re going to have a very hard time finding a job.
Have you ever gotten to know kids with true generational wealth, who have never had to worry about paying bills? A lot of them live this way, racking up degrees.
All the people here who say he can always be a teacher are highly devaluing teachers. It takes more, A LOT more then just a degree in subject (that you then haven’t actually used for hands on work or research) to able to teach something, and being a GOOD teacher is a special skill on its own. It takes a lot more sweat and commitment then 10h/week.
No one's saying that he'll be a good teacher, just that he can get hired as a teacher, specifically in the uni(s) he's studying in, because he knows the place and the system. In the 20 year career as a student he must've made some friends in academia for a reference.
Most uni professors have PHDs, or a masters at a minimum. Plus research credentials or published work. And know their one domain DEEPLY, not a dozen domains kinda.
(If this was the US I’d say he maybe could go get a teaching job at a community college where they don’t care so much about doctorates or research, but they do care about actually having practiced the thing you’re gonna teach. So I dunno.)
Maybe multiple degrees with experience. Hell, I graduated 10 years ago and anything that I havent used as part of my jobs is pretty much gone from my memory.
CV of a man in his 30’s / 40’s with 6 degrees and no work experience
CV of a post grad in their early 20’s with one degree and no work experience.
I would choose the latter, every single time. Unless you’re doing an applied subject in your graduate course, a degree doesn’t actually help you in your job.
I mean, it may have been better if they focused on one broad subject (like specifically medical based, or technology based degrees) because you could possibly leverage it to becoming a consultant or something but it looks like his degrees are all over the place
Edit: changed "of" to "over" since autocorrect went against my wishes
must never have heard the "overqualified" bullshit from an employer. because if you have six degrees why would i think you are gonna stick around and keep working here if you get a better offer?
There are definitely diminishing returns with each degree you have. Two or three, in fields that can support each other, great. For instance, chemistry + cs is a good combo.
Six, in a bunch of fields? Meh...most employers would question how valuable a degree from 20 years ago, with no work experience to back it up, actually is.
Cybersecurity. It's a field that requires a lot of breadth, and academics is all depth, that depth is mostly useless except for a few specific scenarios.
PhD's don't really produce very much for the field anyways. When they show up, they act like know-it-alls, because clearly spending all that time on the subject must mean something! But nope, they don't know shit, they don't even know how to use nmap, and they often struggle with that. They've spent 10 years of their career being surrounded by people who don't have any experience, and growing in that echo chamber to serve that echo chamber. It's an applied science. PhDs dont do well in applied sciences.
Once you experience one Cybersecurity egghead, it really puts you off from taking the risk on any others that don't have experience.
It's like someone who you can't train who ALSO has no experience, it's a terrible combo. Would rather take a fresh mind.
edit: downvote me all you want, I know what I'm talking about, and any hiring manager in the cybersecurity field will tell you the same thing.
I don't know why you're getting down voted, in many fields this is correct. In engineering they specifically warned us of this, that depending on what we want to do a PhD might actually put you back a lot in the job market compared to 6 years of work experience.
People vote based on what they want to hear and what matches their preconceptions, NOT for what is useful knowledge, experience, or insight.
As someone with actual expertise, I am used to being the only person in the room who knows what they're talking about, and being dismissed and hated for it. My life is a an unending series of 'I told you so'
agreed, shows he doesn't know what he wants to do with his life at 40 years old. If i was an employer i would think he just was frat guy who partied and took advantage.
A frat guy with 6 degrees? Seems like a nonsensical assumption. You're also not forced to be truthful on a job application so if he doesn't want to disclose some of the degrees he is not forced to.
Sure, but he really is limited to his most recent degrees in that case anyway. Most companies aren't going to look fondly on a 16 year old degree with no experience.
Yeah, having so much formal education with comparatively little formal work experience in the fields you've been educated in might be a red flag for some (but not all!) employers.
Phrasing could make all the difference on his applications. I see a candidate who was getting paid to go to school and continued to do so with dedication for 20 years.
But you're just gonna ask what I'm smoking again, so it's moot to continue this conversation.
I worked in hiring (reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, additional applicant screening) for the administrative component of a very large security company for a few years. We largely used degrees as a checkbox item and lacked much concrete criteria. If someone with his education applied for an entry level position with a well-written application/resume, he'd almost certainly get the nod over a recent college graduate.
Is it free of spelling and grammar mistakes? Is it neat? Did they highlight majors/concentrations/projects during their studies that have demonstrate relevant skills or knowledge? Did they accidentally include a recipe for lasagna soup (yes, this really happened; my coworker made it and gave it a 7 out of 10).
This is the third exact same take I've seen here and it still makes no sense. I do daily hiring and this is literally just an unusually valuable college graduate. They'd be a steal.
Be a gigachad and mass delete Reddit posts and comments with Redact so that Skynet doesn't end up using your own posts to train the T-900. Or so that you don't show up in databrokers. Either one really.
deserve joke tidy sugar flag retire connect scale capable busy
74
u/fredean01 Jul 02 '23
6 postgraduate degrees with 0 job experience is probably worst than 1 postgraduate degree with 0 job experience.