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He should work on raising the wages too. I have a dual Masters and applied for a position comparable to the one I have with the med school in Scranton. It's a position that requires a Bachelors at minimum, generally speaking with the Masters being the preference with employers.
The offer was 50% lower than my present salary before I pay into pension and health benefits, neither of which I do now. Never mind all the other fringe benefits the State of PA does not offer that I currently have.
yeah really...back in early 04 I started my consulting company. Given that the first year can be kinda thin until you build clients I threw a lot of irons in the fire. I took all the civil service exams for PA in 'computer' things, programmer 1-2-3, dba 1-2-3 etc, and since I was in huntingdon pa at the time, I think you had to drive to lock haven - over and over - to do so to get them all in schedule.
after that the way the system worked was you got put in the 'wheel', jobs come up, they select the next candidate using the score and time in the queue...so I kept getting openings for dauphin county at like $18,500-$20,000 a year - serious? so you turn them down and when you do it puts you back at the end...and this is after I had wrote up the design for PAs enhanced online safety/emissions inspection so notoriety got you nowhere...
You made something that is not about race about race. This is about college requirements for state jobs. I was gently teasing you about how you escalated this conversation to one about race. C'mon, lighten up.
thats not entirely true. The state admin said this was to bolster diversity with no specifics but the point about college degree graduation rates is spot on. if you want to change it, you have to look somewhere else...especially in what they now call 'STEM'. we called it engineering and sciences back in the day, but that got 'dumbed down' (to include 'spells and hexes' ;-) )
thats not entirely true. The state admin said this was to bolster diversity with no specifics but the point about college degree graduation rates is spot on. if you want to change it, you have to look somewhere else...especially in what they now call 'STEM'. we called it engineering and sciences back in the day, but that got 'dumbed down' (to include 'spells and hexes' ;-) )
"Dumbed down" how?
Last I looked, the acronym stood for "science, technology, engineering and mathematics."
Unless you're telling me that techies and mathematicians are actually magicians and sorcerers.
Edited to add: Oops! The science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke beat you to it:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Just another thinly veiled reverse discrimination action. 51% of whites graduate with a 4 year degree versus 2% of blacks. See where this is going? Don't complain about how bad government services are if you're for such a measure. Seriously.
It's not saying people that do have a degree won't be considered for jobs. It's just saying that people with degrees will be. That being the case, how is that reverse discrimination?
I've worked in HR for decades. I hire people for a living. For the past few years, I've hired cybersecurity specialists for the federal government, but I have hired IT folks for almost as long as they've existed. And I absolutely HATE degree requirements. Hate them.
The best developer I have ever hired has never taken a college class in his life. I would take someone with loads of experience over someone with loads of degrees any day of the week. College degrees are not an indicator of how well someone can do their job in most cases. I mean, if you're a cardiologist, then yeah. But not in most positions. Do you really think someone with a Computer Science Degree from 20 years ago uses that degree at all? Most of the programming languages used now didn't even exist then.
Requiring college degrees has just become discriminatory in my view. There are a lot of people who just can't afford it. Doesn't mean they didn't want to or wouldn't have done well, but they just didn't have the opportunity.
For what it's worth, I have a degree. And it's in something completely unrelated to what I actually do. So what's the point in requiring me to have it? Most companies that require degrees don't even require that the degree be related to the actual job. What's the point in that?
The main difference between STEM and STEAM is the way of approaching scientific concepts. While the focus of STEM is on hard scientific skills, STEAM makes used of both hard and soft skills to solve problems.
STEAM encourages collaboration to understand a STEM concept.
Sounds like communication skills to me.
I'm a fan of the new rule. Sure, there are lots of jobs that require a degree, but I bet at least half of the state jobs are OJT.
I'm a fan of the new rule. Sure, there are lots of jobs that require a degree, but I bet at least half of the state jobs are OJT.
Communications skills ain't beanbag. Consider user manuals, many of which were written by people with a firm grasp of the technology but a weak grasp of the English language.
Communications skills ain't beanbag. Consider user manuals, many of which were written by people with a firm grasp of the technology but a weak grasp of the English language.
But as I said above, I too applaud the move.
Back at IBM each project had a rep from the 'ID' team (internal docs)
while the docs are no longer printed (books) or distributed (CD) they are still published online, and you dont even have to be a customer with a service ID to read them (but I guarantee it will make zero sense if you are not a student of the OS - sometimes tech is STILL tech)
OPR-GDE (operations guide) took the grammar right out of the code
MSG-CDE (messages and codes) literally took the explanations from the "write to operator" messages and the 'dump codes'
MSP-PRM came from the high level design
MSP-PLM from the low level
DAT-MAN came directly from the Dsects, Csects and Structs...
when you are in business, international business no less, and really working on or for international business machines, this kinda stuff is a natural flow for the adults in the tech world. plus when you market to just about every continent, you find a large portion of your customers are NOT americans and look at things differently...swiss air (when they existed) was a prime example...they would take the english language literally and unpredictable results would occur.
but as I said this is 100% greek unless you are well versed in it and while operators and 'coverage programmers' can come from the food service industry, it is an OS, a highly advanced OS and without a degree and a crap ton of high tech follow-on training - you will not be successful. and you have to have an innate 'knack' for it anyways
The problem with STEM and 'spells and hexes' STEM is that too often the product technology is driven from the marketing definition. Gee, can we think of any product(s) that over hype and under deliver? it is far better you come up with a cog, and package the cog, not the other way around. But that is the engineer in me speaking.
FORTUNATELY, for example, companies like Boeing leave the interior fulfillment to the artsies and keep the wings and engines in the engineers hands and the flight directors with the programmers.
In my employed area of expertise you can teach people APIs and get them to write a 'hello world' and it might even do something fun and useful. But its never written to standards, never follows best practices, is never portable, it oft linear thinking and it sure as heck is not maintainable and never documented. buy anything electronic and chinese lately? lol
FWIW I publish a couple dozen manuals, guides, how-tos, etc a year, every year. often never for fortune or glory anymore. I have found that a frozen in time picture and well placed precise words far outweigh the youtube videos everyone does - face it, if you are not a trained broadcaster/actor, your videos lose more attention than they gain. based on the feedback I get from the users....we are dumbing down america at an alarming rate. we are confusing people with specific one-off knowledge of a 'thing' or process to replace those with knowledge of a discipline. This bill/law is a gateway to misery. mark my words.
think of the college degree- in field - as the 'ASE cert' for that particular area...
Back at IBM each project had a rep from the 'ID' team (internal docs)
while the docs are no longer printed (books) or distributed (CD) they are still published online, and you dont even have to be a customer with a service ID to read them (but I guarantee it will make zero sense if you are not a student of the OS - sometimes tech is STILL tech)
OPR-GDE (operations guide) took the grammar right out of the code
MSG-CDE (messages and codes) literally took the explanations from the "write to operator" messages and the 'dump codes'
MSP-PRM came from the high level design
MSP-PLM from the low level
DAT-MAN came directly from the Dsects, Csects and Structs...
when you are in business, international business no less, and really working on or for international business machines, this kinda stuff is a natural flow for the adults in the tech world. plus when you market to just about every continent, you find a large portion of your customers are NOT americans and look at things differently...swiss air (when they existed) was a prime example...they would take the english language literally and unpredictable results would occur.
but as I said this is 100% greek unless you are well versed in it and while operators and 'coverage programmers' can come from the food service industry, it is an OS, a highly advanced OS and without a degree and a crap ton of high tech follow-on training - you will not be successful. and you have to have an innate 'knack' for it anyways
The problem with STEM and 'spells and hexes' STEM is that too often the product technology is driven from the marketing definition. Gee, can we think of any product(s) that over hype and under deliver? it is far better you come up with a cog, and package the cog, not the other way around. But that is the engineer in me speaking.
FORTUNATELY, for example, companies like Boeing leave the interior fulfillment to the artsies and keep the wings and engines in the engineers hands and the flight directors with the programmers.
In my employed area of expertise you can teach people APIs and get them to write a 'hello world' and it might even do something fun and useful. But its never written to standards, never follows best practices, is never portable, it oft linear thinking and it sure as heck is not maintainable and never documented. buy anything electronic and chinese lately? lol
FWIW I publish a couple dozen manuals, guides, how-tos, etc a year, every year. often never for fortune or glory anymore. I have found that a frozen in time picture and well placed precise words far outweigh the youtube videos everyone does - face it, if you are not a trained broadcaster/actor, your videos lose more attention than they gain. based on the feedback I get from the users....we are dumbing down america at an alarming rate. we are confusing people with specific one-off knowledge of a 'thing' or process to replace those with knowledge of a discipline. This bill/law is a gateway to misery. mark my words.
think of the college degree- in field - as the 'ASE cert' for that particular area...
Nothing you've written leads me to believe your grasp of plain English is anything short of strong. But I wasn't even thinking of the ESL types when I wrote the above. I was thinking more of the people whose native tongue is English and grasp the tech but write like only techies will read the documentation.
The "plain English" movement in legal documents is another attempt to solve the problem I speak of here. The piling on of verbs and definitions in legal documents exists because lawyers want to dot every i and cross every t to forestall the possibility that some other lawyer will find a hole in the document and run their client through it. But it makes legal contracts impenetrable to the average Joe.
When I was learning news writing, I learned that news stories were supposed to be written so a reader with a 9th grade education could understand them. I think that standard still applies even today.
Nothing you've written leads me to believe your grasp of plain English is anything short of strong. But I wasn't even thinking of the ESL types when I wrote the above. I was thinking more of the people whose native tongue is English and grasp the tech but write like only techies will read the documentation.
The "plain English" movement in legal documents is another attempt to solve the problem I speak of here. The piling on of verbs and definitions in legal documents exists because lawyers want to dot every i and cross every t to forestall the possibility that some other lawyer will find a hole in the document and run their client through it. But it makes legal contracts impenetrable to the average Joe.
When I was learning news writing, I learned that news stories were supposed to be written so a reader with a 9th grade education could understand them. I think that standard still applies even today.
so you could not refute any of the argument? Gotcha.
but thank you for the compliment in the first sentence.
I didnt bring up legal speak at all cuz a) I have numerous IPL attorneys for the patents I filed and they do the work and b) all the code I publish is under GPL and they do the work
ps: yes, only 'techies' read technical documentation. I mean c'mon, you have never even read the owners manual for your car or any car for that matter.- let alone a service manual. So why would you pickup a redbook on any of the IBM operating systems? You wouldnt. And to stay on topic, without the degree and years of training it would be gobbledegook.
so you could not refute any of the argument? Gotcha.
but thank you for the compliment in the first sentence.
I didnt bring up legal speak at all cuz a) I have numerous IPL attorneys for the patents I filed and they do the work and b) all the code I publish is under GPL and they do the work
ps: yes, only 'techies' read technical documentation. I mean c'mon, you have never even read the owners manual for your car or any car for that matter.- let alone a service manual. So why would you pickup a redbook on any of the IBM operating systems? You wouldnt. And to stay on topic, without the degree and years of training it would be gobbledegook.
Yes, I have consulted car owner's manuals when I've picked up a car share if the controls didn't make sense to me. I also did so once when the Zipcar I was driving got a flat on the Garden State Parkway so I could learn where to put the jack.
And of course I would have no reason to read the manual for an OS like what you're talking about, but when I first encountered an IBM Personal Computer, I did read the manual for both it and for MS-DOS. (I didn't when I first encountered a Mac, however, and the on-screen help gave me enough info to get me around the parts I couldn't figure out by looking at the thing.)
Maybe I'm geeky in that I do tend to read the owner's or user's manuals for the stuff I buy. And doing so should be somewhat redundant if the product is intelligently designed. But I find doing so helps me get acclimatized to using the product quicker.
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