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You know what college graduates need to offer more than ANYTHING else??? OPEN EARS! They need to close the mouths, loose the egos, and learn from the people who have been doing the job they want longer then they've been on this earth. It's the biggest problem I encounter at any job I've ever had.
Dealing with new engineering grads can be a painful experience. Sometimes, I wonder how some of them fit their big heads through the door And then they take offense when it's a guy like me, whose been doing my work for nearly ten years, who does not have a degree, has to show them the practical side of the work. They take offense to the fact that, I might know a thing or two that they do not. They absolutely hate it at first, until it's me whose kissing their booboo and making their stupid little mistake all better. And then they start to see things the way they really work in the real world. Unfortunately, it gets a little old for me having to go through that process with every new encounter... If only colleges could teach their students... They are not special, they are not gifted... They can be, if they work very hard and listen to those around them. It will take years, but they can get there if they work for it.
It's gotten so bad, that many manufacturing companies are more than willing to hire an experienced engineer with no degree, over the degreed guys who are full of hot air. And some of those engineers are so arrogant that they will try and tell someone that they cannot be an engineer without the degree In every job shop I've ever worked in, there were more engineers without degrees than with. The degree did not determine pay, the ability to get the job done properly did.
And the excuses we get... Oh, but the book said this... It worked on CAD!... I've never seen a +.001, -.000 tolerance before, that must be a mistake!... Excuses like that would never fly for a guy like me, I would have gotten s*** canned after a week if I tried to use some of the excuses I've heard from college graduates.
I donno what they are doing in colleges these days, but they need to offer some courses in being humble, and listening to those with more experience, even if they didn't buy their degrees. It would really help things run a bit smoother, and help businesses in America remain, or become competitive.
How many times on this forum have people tried to tell me... Engineers cannot be engineers without the glorified 4 year degree? Trust me, in my line of work, you aren't that special cupcake
Young people are gonna have to bust their butts harder then ever to really live up to the potential their degrees can afford. If they aren't willing to be humble along the way, they are really gonna have a rude awakening.
tell me about it. I am going to wind up taking a job in February probably for $15k less than I was making when I was laid off in July. Good thing is this position has a 401k and a pension, and with zero other offers, and the future of continued extended benefits for the unemployed questionable, I really have no other choice, have to think of the future too, maybe I have to take a step back to take two steps forward down the road?
Arent too many companies that offer a pension any longer. besides State jobs, teachers, police officers/firemen, most companies offer a 401k and that's it.
Trust me 6 months of unemployment is quite humbling, guess I have to start at the bottom again and go from there...thank god for my nurse wife
Gotta be happy to find a job though. I was outta work for 2 weeks last year. It was the most miserable two weeks of my life. It sure did motivate me to bust my butt looking though.
My dad just got a job five years after his last full time job Going from a +100K engineering job to a refrigeration maintenance job will certainly be an adjustment, but I know he's very happy to have something. I'm glad to see the men in America, particularly some of the middle age men, starting to get back to work.
Unfortunately, that's how it goes. We, too, will likely reach a point where we are claiming that the generations succeeding us are a bunch of slackers and degenerates. C'mon, how many times did you hear this from grandpa: "When I was a little boy, we had to walk 15 MILES to school, rain or shine!" Personally, I think it's a coping mechanism for getting older and trying to remain relevant.
Don't take it personally, as I find the sentiments expressed in the OP to hold very little water in the real Corporate America. I have worked in it for the past four years, and never once has any one of my managers or the execs that I have come to know expressed this sort of loathing towards young adults entering the workforce. If anything, they have generally been pretty understanding and empathetic towards the situation we have been facing as recent grads in this economy.
I could be grandpa but today's youth have it a whole lot tougher today.
Going through school I lived in Hayward, CA and in 1972/73 I took a job with "Concise Castings Corporation" out in the industrial park for $4.50/hour as a laborer. A terrible job I ground the burrs out of the insides of cast toilets they were making for the nations prison systems. Yeah, for 8 hours a night (worked night shift from 4:00 to midnight but I did get paid for the 30 minute lunch period) I spend with my head in a toilet.
But I earned $4.50/hour plus benefits and every Saturday you could work overtime at time and a half if you wanted to.
$4.50 then is equivalent to $22.93.hour today and it was one of the worst jobs you could imagine. I do remember my take home pay being at $160 for a 40 hour week which was equivalent to $815.24 today. With overtime I earned $234 for the week which was equivalent to $1,192.29 today.
Finding the job was easy, I drove out to the industrial park and started knocking on doors. In a week I was hired full time.
I have to imagine more than one recent college graduate would jump at the chance to earn $1,192.29/week plus medical insurance for the family grinding burrs off toilets if given the chance.
I didn't know where life would take me but I always knew I would do better than my parents did and I did. If times got hard you could always land a manufacturing job in a factory.
Unless tariffs are brought back I don't see us every recovering to the days of the early 70's. Say whatever you want the American worker can not compete against the Chinese labor for $250/month.
Of course no college student wants to work in manufacturing but it is manufacturing that allowed the jobs of college graduates to exist. 100 workers would work for $10/hour which enabled the company to pay a graduate $30/hour but without the manufacturers all you are left with is a paper shuffling job that isn't worth $5. Manufacturing was the backbone.
I could be grandpa but today's youth have it a whole lot tougher today.
Going through school I lived in Hayward, CA and in 1972/73 I took a job with "Concise Castings Corporation" out in the industrial park for $4.50/hour as a laborer. A terrible job I ground the burrs out of the insides of cast toilets they were making for the nations prison systems. Yeah, for 8 hours a night (worked night shift from 4:00 to midnight but I did get paid for the 30 minute lunch period) I spend with my head in a toilet.
But I earned $4.50/hour plus benefits and every Saturday you could work overtime at time and a half if you wanted to.
$4.50 then is equivalent to $22.93.hour today and it was one of the worst jobs you could imagine. I do remember my take home pay being at $160 for a 40 hour week which was equivalent to $815.24 today. With overtime I earned $234 for the week which was equivalent to $1,192.29 today.
Finding the job was easy, I drove out to the industrial park and started knocking on doors. In a week I was hired full time.
I have to imagine more than one recent college graduate would jump at the chance to earn $1,192.29/week plus medical insurance for the family grinding burrs off toilets if given the chance.
I didn't know where life would take me but I always knew I would do better than my parents did and I did. If times got hard you could always land a manufacturing job in a factory.
Unless tariffs are brought back I don't see us every recovering to the days of the early 70's. Say whatever you want the American worker can not compete against the Chinese labor for $250/month.
Of course no college student wants to work in manufacturing but it is manufacturing that allowed the jobs of college graduates to exist. 100 workers would work for $10/hour which enabled the company to pay a graduate $30/hour but without the manufacturers all you are left with is a paper shuffling job that isn't worth $5. Manufacturing was the backbone.
Now all we got is a mess.
There are still manufacturing jobs around, just fewer of them due to automation. It's the only way to compete in a lot of areas with the cheap labor nations. They offer upward potential, and those shops still require the office staff. Manufacturing will not be going anywhere, but the jobs will be higher skilled, lower paying than you described for equivalent skills, and there won't be as many of them. I work with plenty of people earning $20-$30/hr, some even more, but they had to work hard to get there. For a guy with no college degree, there are very few opportunities like it.
The reason I still encourage SOME younger folks to at least get experience in them is because NO ONE with a brain pursues them anymore. Every year, I saw my wages go up, my skills broaden, and my opportunities grow. At the shop I work at, I'm seeing college grads starting in the trenches, where I started. They are getting moved up progressively by the year.
If people are whining because they can't earn the equivalent of $20 sitting in front of a drill press anymore, I don't think they are going to fair too well in the future no matter what they pursue. Manufacturing has actually been one of the few bright spots in our economy over the past couple years, because it's one of the fastest adapting sectors of our economy.
The large International Company I work at has a college recruiting division and the people who interview college seniors or recent graduates are always shaking their heads in dismay. Here are their complaints:
1) Why should an applicant with a BA Degree in Liberal Arts think they are more valuable to a corporation than some joker with a High School Diploma? All they accomplished is just taking more classes.
No, an employee with a college degree is much better intellectually. College is much more rigorous than High School.
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2) Why are so many students graduating with absolutely no work experience at all? About 50% of applicants have never worked any job at all, not even in retail or fast food.
And if not that, they'd complain how their ONLY work experience is in retail and fast food.
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3) Why are the students who did get an internship so naive about the business world? Maybe because they were not very aggressive while they interned and did not push to learn more and do more. Most student internship experience is one semester at a copy machine, or answering phones, or one long research study which was similar to the classes they took.
Duties of internships are spelled out. Companies are looking for cheap labor, not to train someone who could work for the competition. So it's the intern's fault?
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Even students who did an internship show no understanding of business. They don't seem to understand office politics, motivation, morale, supervision, time management, how things get done, hierarchy, the role of various departments in a business, etc.
4) Why are the applicants who graduated from college last year so unfamiliar with how adults talk? They seem so ill at ease and unfamiliar with things like eye contact, listening skills and understanding interpersonal dynamics in the adult world. Didn't they ever talk to their parents or adult relatives? And get a haircut, long hair is for kids!
That's what you learn on the job. You are making this a Catch-22.
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5) Finally, if the recruiters hear the words MANAGEMENT TRAINEE ever again they will scream. So many recent college graduates think that if they graduate some huge company is going to hire them in some management trainee program where they will be taught how to do a job in one of the business functions. They are asked what aspect of business most interests you, and the typical response is, "you hire me and train me and I am flexible, anything is fine, I just need a job!"
What a sad state of affairs.
You know...I really think things are not that much different from 10,20,30,40,... years ago. Sorry, this is the flow of life folks.
No, an employee with a college degree is much better intellectually. College is much more rigorous than High School.
No it wasn't. That's why I dropped out. Waste of my HARD earned money. Since I was paying for my college classes out of my own bank account (not ma and pa's, not the governments, not a loan), I was going to get the best return on my investment. Sorry, but COLLEGE WASN'T IT.
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Originally Posted by MathmanMathman
And if not that, they'd complain how their ONLY work experience is in retail and fast food.
That's because politicians and speculators have gutted the real economy. College is it's own sector of the economy these days. If it wasn't being pumped up, our economy would be in even worse shape. At the same time, I wonder what everyone else was doing in highschool? I was working since I was 16, and jobs were not that hard to get in 2004. Heck, it paid quite a bit better than retail and fast food, and I tried to encourage some of my friends to do the same, because my employer was having a hard time getting younger folks in for any pay rate. It also involved hard work, sweating, getting dirty... Hard sell I guess...
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Originally Posted by MathmanMathman
Duties of internships are spelled out. Companies are looking for cheap labor, not to train someone who could work for the competition. So it's the intern's fault?
It's the interns fault for not hunching over the shoulders of their superiors every chance they get to learn. If a young person thinks they are just there to look pretty, they won't learn a thing. If a trainee was brought in to learn my job, and wasn't making a serious attempt to show interest, I would suspect they are just there for the paycheck and not waste my time or energy. When the grown ups are working, they've got more important things to worry about than whether you're getting valuable experience and will have a peachy career one day, unless you make the effort like a grown up and show you are worth it. Too many young people are just looking to get a job, while not showing the passion required to command a high paying, lucrative job. You've gotta have the burning desire to want that career, whatever it is you are passionate about. Lots of them want the money offered in certain lines of work, but have absolutely no desire for the actual work involved.
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Originally Posted by MathmanMathman
That's what you learn on the job. You are making this a Catch-22.
Actually, I believe the parents and the K-12 system used to teach this stuff. We as a nation have dropped the ball when it comes to developing our greatest form of infrastructure... Children!
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Originally Posted by MathmanMathman
You know...I really think things are not that much different from 10,20,30,40,... years ago. Sorry, this is the flow of life folks.
You're right. The smart will always have the best odds of success. Even though the degree may make some people feel smarter, it really doesn't. It also can't take the place of drive, ambition, and work ethic. Sorry, but some of the folks in my generation are lacking that, and no degree with every take the place of that.
a BA or BS has become what a high school diploma was 50 years ago.
w/o unions, "employment at will" and 10% unemployment that can make u stand on your head if they want to.
time for y generation to rethink the game, get a trade instead of an advanced degree, america does not need 20 million new managers.
Might as well go ahead and add MBA, JD, or Masters of Accounting to this. Plenty of folks going that route before getting any meaningful experience.
At my firm, our new hires come from all different backgrounds (some liberal arts majors), and are mostly 20-somethings. Yet if you catch us in a meeting you can tell we can all communicate effectively and are relatively smart people. The fact that I had solid internship and international experience from college might have helped me get the interview, but what got me the job was having good answers to their questions that stemmed from my experiences (limited as they may have been).
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And then they take offense when it's a guy like me, whose been doing my work for nearly ten years, who does not have a degree, has to show them the practical side of the work. They take offense to the fact that, I might know a thing or two that they do not. They absolutely hate it at first, until it's me whose kissing their booboo and making their stupid little mistake all better. And then they start to see things the way they really work in the real world. Unfortunately, it gets a little old for me having to go through that process with every new encounter... If only colleges could teach their students... They are not special, they are not gifted... They can be, if they work very hard and listen to those around them. It will take years, but they can get there if they work for it.
In every job shop I've ever worked in, there were more engineers without degrees than with. The degree did not determine pay, the ability to get the job done properly did.
Going from a +100K engineering job to a refrigeration maintenance job will certainly be an adjustment, but I know he's very happy to have something. I'm glad to see the men in America, particularly some of the middle age men, starting to get back to work.
Sorry, this is the flow of life folks.
