• (cs) in reply to Drum D.
    Drum D.:
    SomeCoder:
    I will admit, there are a lot of moronic college graduates out there. Even so, I think Jay's opinion of himself was a bit inflated.

    Nevertheless, he got the/a job so he was kinda right.

    Regarding the texan habit of wearing Colt 45s. Everyone knows that today Desert Eagle .50 is the preferred model ;)

    Do they know that's a Jewish handgun?

  • rumpelstiltskin (unregistered)

    Funny Mississippi story: Back when I had a real job (as opposed to an IT job), my company bought a piston plant in New Albany. I was the Product Manager of the piston line, so I flew down to the plant to talk with the Plant Manager about our plans. I asked him how long it would take to hire and train a bunch of people, since we planned a big expansion. He said it could take a while, because unemployment ran around 3% there. I told him the State figures showed over 20% for that area. He said, "yeah, but they count the blacks."

  • (cs) in reply to rumpelstiltskin
    rumpelstiltskin:
    Funny Mississippi story: Back when I had a real job (as opposed to an IT job), my company bought a piston plant in New Albany. I was the Product Manager of the piston line, so I flew down to the plant to talk with the Plant Manager about our plans. I asked him how long it would take to hire and train a bunch of people, since we planned a big expansion. He said it could take a while, because unemployment ran around 3% there. I told him the State figures showed over 20% for that area. He said, "yeah, but they count the blacks."

    I wonder where he got the whites-only figures from? Possibly his capacious backside?

  • Alonzo Turing (unregistered)

    Does anyone study for the knowlegde? You seldomly get taught anything about functional programming or information theory when programming a PHP script... I know it may not get you money later, but maybe (just maybe) it's not all about the money?

  • (cs) in reply to Let the South Secede
    Let the South Secede:
    http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/statelis.htm

    MS is sixth for highest percentage of health uninsured MS is second at 12.9 murders/100,000 people tenth in highest unemployment rate second in percent under poverty line (23.5) seventh in per-capita defense spending

    http://www.morganquitno.com/edrank.htm

    Don't know if it's valid, but you're #49 of 50 there...

    <snip>

    oh yeah..

    • [you're] stupid
    Way to go on an intentional wind-up -- I'm proud of you, kid.

    However, you should note that, in the survey you quote, California comes 46th. (This is a source of distinct disquiet to me. I love the place, but God, the educational system blows chunks.)

    This doesn't stop it being chock-full of hi-tech jobs, intelligent people, etc etc. It just suggests that you shouldn't convert a global prejudice ("Mississippi is part of the Third World") to a particular case (interviewing for a job in Mississippi). It will certainly be wrong in the particular, and might welll sit on shaky foundations in the general.

  • (cs) in reply to pweegar
    pweegar:

    And why do graduates from DeVry rate so low in your opinion???? I graduated from DeVry and felt the CIS courses were VERY good. Not only did we get theory, we got practical experience. EVERY computer class had a related programming lab. NOne of them easy. In fact, one of the best instructors I've EVER had was at DeVry.

    Someone else mentioned this study in the thread, but you should google for "Unskilled and Unaware of It". Thinking DeVry was rigorous isn't helping your cause. Your punctuation and spelling are not helping either.

  • (cs)

    All the talk about degrees here seem to be missing something but everyone seems to be saying it without realizing it.

    Networking, outlook on life, basic knowledge, all this you get, but for how long is it truly worth it? They way I see it, these "advantages" are only valid for maybe 5 years.

    You want networking and the example that I work hard? I spent a few years as a professional musician living off the money I made while playing and touring the east coast of the US. I showed my hard work and dedication for something I am passionate about. I learned how to network with people within my field, from club owners, record companies, booking agents, talent scouts and other musicians. Basically, I got paid to party for two years instead of having to pay to party for two years. That is the only difference between what an education 15 years ago would have given me today over having the guts to chase a dream.

    Anyone in this field for more than a few years and still talking up their degree, in my opinion, are seriously lacking in true skills. The industry changes to fast for that degree to mean anything for to long. Any theory and basic practices you learned while there could easily be learned on the job.

    Everything else being equal, a junior programmer with a degree will be hired first, a senior still thinking his degree makes him better will be removed from the list. A senior developer should have a degree as a footnote, not as a major accomplishment, it just doesn't mean anything after five or more years in the field.

  • AdT (unregistered) in reply to misha
    misha:
    Do they know that's a Jewish handgun?

    It's not, unless it received the bris by the mohel.

  • (cs) in reply to AdT
    AdT:
    misha:
    Do they know that's a Jewish handgun?

    It's not, unless it received the bris by the mohel.

    No it can be Jewish, just not kosher.

  • Shlomo (unregistered) in reply to AdT
    AdT:
    misha:
    Do they know that's a Jewish handgun?

    It's not, unless it received the bris by the mohel.

    So my sawed-off shotgun is Jewish?

  • (cs) in reply to poopdeville
    poopdeville:
    pweegar:
    And why do graduates from DeVry rate so low in your opinion???? I graduated from DeVry... <snip>
    Your punctuation and spelling are not helping either.
    The mission of DeVry is to help you get school financing so that you can saddle yourself with a debt of 10 times what their education is actually worth. The teaching is just a necessary sideline to keep up appearances. Never trust a school that advertises on TV.

    Regarding the punctuation: The four question marks, followed immediately by the declaration of school allegiance, said it all for me.

  • RichNFamous (unregistered) in reply to Yeraze
    Yeraze:
    ...people who seem to think we all have Moonshine Distilleries behind our outhouses.

    You don't? Dammit, you can't even trust Hollywood these days. I bet you shoot at road signs, tho...

  • Mike (unregistered)

    FYI, Mississippi State University in Starkville, MS had the first major web server in the south and the largest server farm in the states in the 60s (i think) the school is a major pioneer in computing technology and AI development with a lot of government backing (the Air Force base nearby helps a bunch)... also USM (southern Miss) is fondly in my memories as the host of yearly computer programming competitions...

    MS may seem backwater, but you would be surprised what gulf coast casino money can buy...

  • Cloak (unregistered) in reply to jayh
    jayh:
    An interesting scientific study a while back found the people who were actually lacking in a particular skill tended to rate their own performance higher than people who demonstrated significant skill.

    I suppose it's because most people cannot conceive of how much they don't know.

    and yeah, I got pretty far without a degree, but it didn't happen overnight. Fortunately my son did not have to start with that handicap.

    I don't believe that owning a CS diploma will always be an advantage compared to somebody without one. At least when I started (some 15-20 years ago) industry was looking for people who had that special skill to be computer literate and at the same time were actually a (not so dumb) user. With that combination it is possible to understand both worlds and, hence, write programs with usable user interfaces. In my opinion many HS people are not the best choice for such a project.

  • (cs) in reply to Shlomo
    Shlomo:
    AdT:
    misha:
    Do they know that's a Jewish handgun?

    It's not, unless it received the bris by the mohel.

    So my sawed-off shotgun is Jewish?

    A rabbi and a priest are discussing their new cars. The priest says "I sprinkled my new car with holy water and performed a benediction." The rabbi says "Well I also performed a ritual on my new car. I cut 2 inches off the exhaust pipe."

  • fsilber (unregistered) in reply to Let the South Secede
    Let the South Secede:
    - Your culture is explicitly racist (as opposed to vaguely racist in the north and west) ... MS is sixth for highest percentage of health uninsured MS is second at 12.9 murders/100,000 people tenth in highest unemployment rate second in percent under poverty line (23.5) seventh in per-capita defense spending ...

    so: -crappy -dangerous -lazy -poor -fat on the government till

    oh yeah..

    -stupid

    However, if you correlate by racial background, Mississippians are probably doing fairly well. That is, the statistics for Mississippi whites are comparable to those for whites in other states, and the statistics for Mississippi blacks are probably also at least as good as those for blacks in other states.

    Mississippi probably has the highest black percentage of any state in the U.S. (I think one-third) -- and given the racial discrepancies nationwide this cannot but affect Mississippi's overall state averages.

    If the difficulties with which blacks nationwide struggle make you not want to have many of them around, then you won't like Mississippi. However, I suppose that insulting Mississippi for the resulting averages is one of the ways people in the North and West can avoid expressing explicit racism. Indeed, your insults are virtually identical to the accusations racists make.

  • (cs)

    A degree doesn't just happen overnight. At the very least you know this person set goals, pursued them, and didn't give up along the way. This is the type of person that I would hire...

  • (cs) in reply to stupid old me

    There is no rule in English forbidding ending a sentence on a preposition. Please learn that fact and spread it to all the people you know who also think it's somehow true.

    It's one of the most commonly misunderstood rules in English I know of.

    Here's a link for the non-rule, as well as many other non-rules in "formal" English: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html

    And here's a slightly amusing thing I found with a quick internet search for "ending sentence with preposition:"

    Child: I want to be read to. Mother: Which book would you like to be read to out of? Child: Robinson Crusoe. Mother brings Swiss Family Robinson. Child: What did you bring me that book to be read to out of for?

    There are actually quite a few amusing ways various educational institutions and grammarians poke fun at this non-rule.

    The non-rule is based on people trying to shoehorn English into Latin, which it most certainly does not fit particularly well. Much of our syntax is directly descended from original anglo-saxon, while it's mostly just a bunch of words that are based on latin roots - not our grammar. If English was like Latin, word order in languages like French and Spanish would not seem odd to English-speaking students of those languages.

  • Cloak (unregistered) in reply to GrandmasterB
    GrandmasterB:
    SomeCoder:
    Sorry, but the real WTF is that Jay thought he was more qualified than someone that went to college.

    Of the truly exceptional developers I've worked with over the past 20 years, most did not have degrees in Comp Sci, and most of them had no college degree at all. I'd hire a young developer with no college education and 4 years of real world programming experience over a kid right out of college (dont care which) any day of the week. With the former, he already has a track record and you know he's got a passion for programming. With the college kid, he's just as likely to have chosen his major because he thought it'd land him a good job after graduation as he is out of interest in the field.

    Imo, I think people over-inflate the importance of a college degree in Comp Sci/IT because the alternative is to admit their degree isnt worth as much as they think, and that they wasted 4 years and a crapload of tuition on skills they could have learned in 6 months on the job.

    We seem to have the same opinion regarding CS diploma. But what about certs? I must admit that (MS) certified people tend to have a more theoretical than practical background.

  • (cs) in reply to Cloak
    Cloak:
    I must admit that (MS) certified people tend to have a more theoretical than practical background.

    I'd say that's true of a lot of certifications - not just MS. Once again, a book cannot convey experience.

    Most people end up "studying" for certification exams by memorizing a bunch of test material, anyway, so why would one expect it to be particularly valid?

    This coming from someone who just took (and passed) a certification exam just two hours ago... Shows you what the industry values...

    At least some of us take it seriously and actually learn what the certification says we should know and then apply it.

  • Your Name (unregistered) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    poopdeville:
    pweegar:
    And why do graduates from DeVry rate so low in your opinion???? I graduated from DeVry... <snip>
    Your punctuation and spelling are not helping either.
    The mission of DeVry is to help you get school financing so that you can saddle yourself with a debt of 10 times what their education is actually worth. The teaching is just a necessary sideline to keep up appearances. Never trust a school that advertises on TV.

    Regarding the punctuation: The four question marks, followed immediately by the declaration of school allegiance, said it all for me.

    Yay for ad-hominem attacks.

    Notice the discourse. Traditional colleges apparently don't teach you job related skills. The paper diploma gets your foot in the door. DeVry tries to be job-related. The diploma still gets your foot in the door, but it is resented by some. None of the previous statements are universally true, but yet it keeps getting repeated.

    The other unfortunate part about ITT/Phoenix/DeVry is brand image. It's too easy to say "McDonald's food is bad" because it "made me throw up." Then you tell 20 people. Never mind if it was a particular crew at a particular time period and particular location (or you were already sick or hung over). Because of the unpleasant experience and a clear attributable source (a brand), the memory is cemented.

    Where did you go to school? Option 1: I went to University of <State> (never mind if it was crappy X extension campus). Option 2: I went to ITT Technical Institute. <snicker>

    Maybe large private technical college bashing is just par for the course here. I would surmise a story involving VB, DeVry, and a long code snippet failing to use a regex would become article of the year.

  • (cs) in reply to Your Name
    Your Name:
    It's too easy to say "McDonald's food is bad" because it "made me throw up."
    I prefer to say "McDonald's food is bad" because "it tastes like assbarf."
  • ac (unregistered) in reply to fsilber
    However, if you correlate by racial background, Mississippians are probably doing fairly well. That is, the statistics for Mississippi whites are comparable to those for whites in other states, and the statistics for Mississippi blacks are probably also at least as good as those for blacks in other states.

    Mississippi probably has the highest black percentage of any state in the U.S. (I think one-third) -- and given the racial discrepancies nationwide this cannot but affect Mississippi's overall state averages.

    If the difficulties with which blacks nationwide struggle make you not want to have many of them around, then you won't like Mississippi. However, I suppose that insulting Mississippi for the resulting averages is one of the ways people in the North and West can avoid expressing explicit racism. Indeed, your insults are virtually identical to the accusations racists make.

    Great, Mr. Apologist - what the fuck is West Virginia's excuse, then?

  • (cs) in reply to Your Name
    Your Name:
    Maybe large private technical college bashing is just par for the course here.
    I couldn't say. My position on any subject is never based on its popularity here or anywhere.

    I had a girlfriend some years back who decided to improve her employment chances by taking some business courses. She went to DeVry to discuss curriculum and enrollment. They hooked her up with a finance manager who was eager to help her find financing. As this was back in the '90's, I don't recall exact amounts, but it added up to a ridiculous amount; I want to say, something like $2200 for a typing course.

    Later, a friend of mine went to work for DeVry. When she mentioned this to me, I told her frankly that I considered the school to be a ripoff, created to sucker under-educated people into committing to massive student loans for a chance at the dangling carrot of becoming a skilled and desirable part of the workforce. She apologetically explained, "Yeah, I know it is, but I need to support myself, and they were hiring."

  • fsilber (unregistered) in reply to ac
    rumpelstiltskin:
    Funny Mississippi story: ... my company bought a piston plant in New Albany. I was the Product Manager of the piston line, so I flew down to the plant to talk with the Plant Manager .... I asked him how long it would take to hire and train a bunch of people, since we planned a big expansion. He said it could take a while, because unemployment ran around 3% there. I told him the State figures showed over 20% for that area. He said, "yeah, but they count the blacks."
    I imagine a piston plant needs mainly tool-and-die men -- steelworking lathe operators. These people have to be able to read 2-D technical drawings of 3-D objects (a talent for geometry), have problem-solving skills, etc. I guess that's why good tool-and-die men earn as much as programmers. Training a laid-off cotton-picker might not be so easy.

    Your story reminds me of New York City in 1978. Back then recruiters had ads everywhere begging college graduates who had at least minored in math to accept positions with Fortune 500 companies to be trained in computer programming. That's how hard they thought it was to find qualified trainees. This was while NYC had a 10% unemployment rate -- 50% of the blacks in NYC were receiving welfare, were presumably unemployeed, and therefore would have welcomed the opportunity. (At least New Yorkers know how to speak with political correctness.)

    ac:
    However, if you correlate by racial background, Mississippians are probably doing fairly well. That is, the statistics for Mississippi whites are comparable to those for whites in other states, and the statistics for Mississippi blacks are probably also at least as good as those for blacks in other states.

    Mississippi probably has the highest black percentage of any state in the U.S. (I think one-third) -- and given the racial discrepancies nationwide this cannot but affect Mississippi's overall state averages.

    If the difficulties with which blacks nationwide struggle make you not want to have many of them around, then you won't like Mississippi. However, I suppose that insulting Mississippi for the resulting averages is one of the ways people in the North and West can avoid expressing explicit racism. Indeed, your insults are virtually identical to the accusations racists make.

    Great, Mr. Apologist - what the fuck is West Virginia's excuse, then?

    I suppose this can only be due to the rampant hateful (and obviously unjustified) anti-hillbilly bigotry which for 200 years has pervaded our society.

    Some of the stereotypes are accurate, however. In my previous job in the south (New Orleans, LA), my boss and I had a big disagreement over handguns in the workplace. He simply refused to admit that the right ammo could make a 9mm every bit as good as a .45acp.

  • BigJim (unregistered) in reply to pweegar

    Here is why DeVry rates LOW in my opinion. True story. I worked with a DeVry graduate, who lived his ENTIRE life in Illinois. Which is bordered by this great big river called the Mississippi. He actually came to me with a US map (with states outlined) and said "I have to write this code for the eastern section of the US. Can you show me which states are east of the Mississippi?" DeVry taught him NOTHING but how to code COBOL (back in the 80s when this was more valuable). Nothing about the outside world around him!

  • commenter (unregistered) in reply to BigJim
    BigJim:
    Here is why DeVry rates LOW in my opinion. True story. I worked with a DeVry graduate, who lived his ENTIRE life in Illinois. Which is bordered by this great big river called the Mississippi. He actually came to me with a US map (with states outlined) and said "I have to write this code for the eastern section of the US. Can you show me which states are east of the Mississippi?" DeVry taught him NOTHING but how to code COBOL (back in the 80s when this was more valuable). Nothing about the outside world around him!

    You're blaming DeVry for what his first grade teacher most likely taught him and he simply forgot?

  • (cs) in reply to commenter
    commenter:
    BigJim:
    Here is why DeVry rates LOW in my opinion. True story. I worked with a DeVry graduate, who lived his ENTIRE life in Illinois. Which is bordered by this great big river called the Mississippi. He actually came to me with a US map (with states outlined) and said "I have to write this code for the eastern section of the US. Can you show me which states are east of the Mississippi?" DeVry taught him NOTHING but how to code COBOL (back in the 80s when this was more valuable). Nothing about the outside world around him!

    You're blaming DeVry for what his first grade teacher most likely taught him and he simply forgot?

    Agreed, I'd be more critical of the school that taught BigJim his critical thinking skills.

  • fsilber (unregistered) in reply to commenter
    commenter:
    BigJim:
    I worked with a DeVry graduate, who lived his ENTIRE life in Illinois. Which is bordered by this great big river called the Mississippi. He actually came to me with a US map (with states outlined) and said "I have to write this code for the eastern section of the US. Can you show me which states are east of the Mississippi?"

    You're blaming DeVry for what his first grade teacher most likely taught him and he simply forgot?

    In Europe, universities are mainly just for scholarly people interested in the liberal arts. What Americans learn in third and fourth tier colleges is pretty much what Europeans have already learned by age 15, when they begin their vocational training and apprenticeships.

    America changed to its system because, during the 1950s and 60s it was rich enough that we could afford to waste years of our children's lives and tens of thousands of tax dollars per child. Also, when sociologists discovered that high school graduates got most of the best jobs (this was in the 1950s), they decided that a good way to pursue economic equality would be to lower the standards far enough until every child could get a diploma.

    It seems as though an employer ought to be able to test the effectiveness of an applicant's education rather than relying upon degrees awarded, but the federal EEC won't allow it. So instead, they demand college graduates only. The EEC would probably put a stop to that as well, but then there'd be fewer jobs for people teaching or doing research in race, class, gender, and sexual-orientation victimology.

  • (cs) in reply to BigJim
    BigJim:
    Here is why DeVry rates LOW in my opinion. True story. I worked with a DeVry graduate, who lived his ENTIRE life in Illinois. Which is bordered by this great big river called the Mississippi. He actually came to me with a US map (with states outlined) and said "I have to write this code for the eastern section of the US. Can you show me which states are east of the Mississippi?" DeVry taught him NOTHING but how to code COBOL (back in the 80s when this was more valuable). Nothing about the outside world around him!

    Did you tell him you didn't know?

  • (cs) in reply to fsilber
    fsilber:
    commenter:
    BigJim:
    I worked with a DeVry graduate, who lived his ENTIRE life in Illinois. Which is bordered by this great big river called the Mississippi. He actually came to me with a US map (with states outlined) and said "I have to write this code for the eastern section of the US. Can you show me which states are east of the Mississippi?"

    You're blaming DeVry for what his first grade teacher most likely taught him and he simply forgot?

    In Europe, universities are mainly just for scholarly people interested in the liberal arts. What Americans learn in third and fourth tier colleges is pretty much what Europeans have already learned by age 15, when they begin their vocational training and apprenticeships.

    Eh? Eh?! Is this some wonderful fairy-tale version of Europe I've somehow missed? You do realise that a modern apprenticeship is something devised by Satan to make people more stupid, so that employers have to patiently unteach the lies and half-truths their new employees have learned as fact?

    I'm happy to accept the idea that America has a rubbish education system, but I don't know where you get the idea Europe's is any better. OK, I've never been to school in France or Germany; maybe education is just another of those things in which Britain comes bottom of the EU league table.

    Also, I've been to plenty of interviews where I was given aptitude tests, what EEC regulation are we talking about here?

  • mudkip (unregistered) in reply to Your Name
    Your Name:
    FredSaw:
    poopdeville:
    pweegar:
    And why do graduates from DeVry rate so low in your opinion???? I graduated from DeVry... <snip>
    Your punctuation and spelling are not helping either.
    The mission of DeVry is to help you get school financing so that you can saddle yourself with a debt of 10 times what their education is actually worth. The teaching is just a necessary sideline to keep up appearances. Never trust a school that advertises on TV.

    Regarding the punctuation: The four question marks, followed immediately by the declaration of school allegiance, said it all for me.

    Yay for ad-hominem attacks.

    Notice the discourse. Traditional colleges apparently don't teach you job related skills. The paper diploma gets your foot in the door. DeVry tries to be job-related. The diploma still gets your foot in the door, but it is resented by some. None of the previous statements are universally true, but yet it keeps getting repeated.

    The other unfortunate part about ITT/Phoenix/DeVry is brand image. It's too easy to say "McDonald's food is bad" because it "made me throw up." Then you tell 20 people. Never mind if it was a particular crew at a particular time period and particular location (or you were already sick or hung over). Because of the unpleasant experience and a clear attributable source (a brand), the memory is cemented.

    Where did you go to school? Option 1: I went to University of <State> (never mind if it was crappy X extension campus). Option 2: I went to ITT Technical Institute. <snicker>

    Maybe large private technical college bashing is just par for the course here. I would surmise a story involving VB, DeVry, and a long code snippet failing to use a regex would become article of the year.

    poopdeville here -- posting from work.

    I went to Reed College, in Portland Oregon. One of the better institutions of higher learning, and top among liberal arts colleges in producing PhD's in my field of study.

    But bragging is pointless, especially since I had to drop out due to financial reasons. On the other hand, I completed my senior thesis on a fairly esoteric subject, and later joined a firm specializing in data mining and classification algorithms. I'll be going back to school in a few months (sadly, I was unemployed for a few months and couldn't use my severance to pay for school this Fall)

    In short, college is what you make of it. If I hadn't been passionate about mathematics, I wouldn't have been hired at my previous job. I wouldn't have been able to do cool research, and gained a great entry for my resume. At the same time, being passionate about a subject is much easier when you can focus your time on it, and have the necessary resources to persue the subject available.

    Obviously, I do not regret going to school. Once I've completed my bachelor's degree, I will persue graduate studies.

    I try to not be pretentious, but DeVry does not teach anything I couldn't have learned in my first year in my first job. Very much unlike a traditional four year institution. I value what I have learned, and hope to continue.

  • Kuba Ober (unregistered) in reply to masuku
    masuku:
    I spent 15 years working in "higher education" at four different universities watching the show, so get real - what you want is paper (degree), what they want is FTE (full time equivalent) seat-time students so they don't lose funding. If you learn anything, it is an accidental byproduct of years of sitting on your ass, with an overpriced book (that is changed every year to keep the bookstore in business) in front of you.

    I agree with the book part. Unfortunately, many academic books seem unfinished, rushed, and not fully thought of. Worse yet, most are wholly redundant, with good texts on the same subject existing even 100 years ago.

    The authors think that there's some good reason for a 192nd intro calculus book, like if all of the 191 before it weren't good enough. The worst incarnation of the NIH syndrome is the academic book market. Instead of rewriting the same crap over and over, someone should get in touch with the copyright holder(s) of a "pretty good" out-of-print book, update it, maybe extend, clean up, and get it back on the market. I could never understand why noone tries to bring back older, out-of-print books, in a contemporary revision. Work on extending and improving existing works... this model has worked pretty well in bringing open source software to us. Just imagine where GNU/Linux would be if we'd get new set of core tools every other year.

    Admittedly, the publishers aren't used to this, but it has to change, othrewise we'll all just keep wasting time revising our course notes with new problem numbers, writing the new books about the same topic, presented in the same way... ARGH.

    Cheers, KUba

  • Richard Asscock, III (unregistered)

    Did anyone ever consider that your 4 year college degree shows an employer that you have commitment to take on an extended task and complete it? You're damn right if you think that's pretty important. Have you ever been on a 2+ year project?

    Sorry, 4 years in highschool, no matter how much of a spaz you were in drama club, doesn't count.

    IMO, I prefer the IT/programmers that have a math background (or received their degree from an engineering school). Sure, most of 'em will end up supporting business software rather than designing operating systems (or XBox Live as a buddy of mine), but their mind will be trained to think properly and they will easily pick up the equivalent of a business degree in 12 months. If you understand numbers, it ain't much of a big deal to undertand how to make a profit, debits and credits aside.

    Peace out, Dick Asscock

  • (cs) in reply to Richard Asscock, III
    Richard Asscock:
    Did anyone ever consider that your 4 year college degree shows an employer that you have commitment to take on an extended task and complete it?
    So does four years at the same employer. Difference: they pay you instead of you paying them.
  • Richard Asscock, III (unregistered) in reply to FredSaw

    Oh, c'mon. It's pretty easy to 'float' four years on the same job/employer (plenty of the stories here on thedailyWTF* are about those floaters), but a heck of a lot more difficult to complete that engineering degree in the same time. Sure, there are exceptions--like the employee who is NOT related to anyone in management carving out some promotions on her [<-yes, I'm trying to impress the chics] own.

    *I don't recognize this site by any other name.

    Regards, Dick Asscock

  • Anonymous Pedant (unregistered) in reply to Opie
    Opie:
    There is no rule in English forbidding ending a sentence on a preposition. Please learn that fact and spread it to all the people you know who also think it's somehow true.

    It's one of the most commonly misunderstood rules in English I know of.

    Here's a link for the non-rule, as well as many other non-rules in "formal" English: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html

    And here's a slightly amusing thing I found with a quick internet search for "ending sentence with preposition:"

    Child: I want to be read to. Mother: Which book would you like to be read to out of? Child: Robinson Crusoe. Mother brings Swiss Family Robinson. Child: What did you bring me that book to be read to out of for?.

    I lately lost a preposition It hid, I thought, beneath my chair And angrily I cried, "Perdition! Up from out of in under there."

    Correctness is my vade mecum, And straggling phrases I abhor, And yet I wondered, "What should he come Up from out of in under for?"

    -Morris Bishop in the New Yorker, 27th September, 1947

  • (cs) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    Richard Asscock:
    Did anyone ever consider that your 4 year college degree shows an employer that you have commitment to take on an extended task and complete it?
    So does four years at the same employer. Difference: they pay you instead of you paying them.

    You can't be serious...wtf.

  • (cs) in reply to seymore15074
    seymore15074:
    FredSaw:
    Richard Asscock:
    Did anyone ever consider that your 4 year college degree shows an employer that you have commitment to take on an extended task and complete it?
    So does four years at the same employer. Difference: they pay you instead of you paying them.

    You can't be serious...wtf.

    Of course I'm serious. If your reason for going to college for four years is to prove that you can stick with something for four years, you're going to be out an awful lot of tuition to make that point. Why not stick with a job for four years, all the while pulling in money instead of paying it out? Where's the WTF in that?

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to fsilber
    fsilber:
    I suppose this can only be due to the rampant hateful (and obviously unjustified) anti-hillbilly bigotry which for 200 years has pervaded our society.

    Some of the stereotypes are accurate, however. In my previous job in the south (New Orleans, LA), my boss and I had a big disagreement over handguns in the workplace. He simply refused to admit that the right ammo could make a 9mm every bit as good as a .45acp.

    I find it amusing that you can have an argument with your boss over handguns - most places on the west coast wouldn't be so friendly.

    And yeah, you're right - 9mm hollowpoints do very well, especially when you have 15 per mag.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous Pedant

    [quote user="Anonymous Pedant"][quote user="Opie"]There is no rule in English forbidding ending a sentence on a preposition. Please learn that fact and spread it to all the people you know who also think it's somehow true.

    It's one of the most commonly misunderstood rules in English I know of.

    Here's a link for the non-rule, as well as many other non-rules in "formal" English: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html

    [/quote]

    I don't exactly disagree with you, as English has no "rules." But your interpretation of that link is wrong. The prescriptivist grammarian John Dryden established that rule based on Latin grammar. It definitely had a historical and linguistic basis, even though it has fallen out of favor.

  • Synonymous Awkward (unregistered) in reply to Richard Asscock, III
    Richard Asscock:
    thedailyWTF*

    *I don't recognize this site by any other name.

    You must be getting pretty confused by now, then.
  • anon (unregistered)

    If I had gone to a bad grammar school and someone pointed that out for me, I'd just agree without being insulted. It doesn't mean I am stupid. I could have all kinds of reasons to go to that particular grammar school. If however the person seemed to imply (telling by eg. the tone) that I was stupid, that'd be an insult.

  • Hognoxious (unregistered) in reply to Otter
    Otter:
    Which state you lived in as a teenager doesn't constitute "intelligence".
    On the other hand, living in some of them (no, I'm not looking southwards, it was just a tic) is a pretty reliable indicator of stupidity. Hey, that's a nice gu
    no carrier...
  • (cs) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    seymore15074:
    FredSaw:
    Richard Asscock:
    Did anyone ever consider that your 4 year college degree shows an employer that you have commitment to take on an extended task and complete it?
    So does four years at the same employer. Difference: they pay you instead of you paying them.

    You can't be serious...wtf.

    Of course I'm serious. If your reason for going to college for four years is to prove that you can stick with something for four years, you're going to be out an awful lot of tuition to make that point. Why not stick with a job for four years, all the while pulling in money instead of paying it out? Where's the WTF in that?

    Explain that to your next interviewer.

  • (cs) in reply to seymore15074
    seymore15074:
    Explain that to your next interviewer.
    No need to explain. That wasn't my reason for going to college.
  • (cs) in reply to poopdeville
    poopdeville:
    I don't exactly disagree with you, as English has no "rules." But your interpretation of that link is wrong. The prescriptivist grammarian John Dryden established that rule based on Latin grammar. It definitely had a historical and linguistic basis, even though it has fallen out of favor.

    It most certainly has not fallen out of favor. In fact, if anything, it's just as popular now, among pedantic english teachers, as it ever was.

    Also, don't say English has no rules. Only people who don't know of their existence say such things. English is actually quite specific about a LOT of things you wouldn't expect it to be.

  • Hognoxious (unregistered) in reply to fsilber
    fsilber:
    In Europe, universities are mainly just for scholarly people interested in the liberal arts.
    Totally true. Our doctors grow on trees, engineers are mined from under the ground and chemists are bred in the seas West of Corsica.
  • Hognoxious (unregistered) in reply to misha
    misha:
    Also, I've been to plenty of interviews where I was given aptitude tests, what EEC regulation are we talking about here?
    Wild guess time. Given mentions of: DeVry, Illinois, and the Mississippi, I'd conclude thate none of the 'E's stands for Europe[ean].
  • J (unregistered) in reply to SomeCoder

    That's true for the first 2-5 years. After that, the gap disappears.

    As a side note, my first boss would've done the same thing. I learned more from him than any boss since.

    Captcha: muhahaha - boy, i wish i'd had a better comment now

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