Comment by run4yourlives | Hacker News Reader

Comment by run4yourlives | Hacker News Reader

I'm 35. I'll try not to be too critical. Moral of the story:

Being educated doesn't say anything about you being smart.

Here's the rub. A college degree is a specialization. That's why you "major" in something. It was never designed to be an extension of high school. So, you should get a degree in something that you are both passionate about and also accept the limited career paths that come with that particular passion. If the career paths are limited and/or not to your liking, assume that the degree will not help you find a job. You may as well use the money to travel instead.

The further you deviate from the career paths that are attached to the degree you obtain, the more worthless it becomes. Attempting even greater specialization along this field of study only enhances this effect; it will not correct it.

So, Mr. Masters in English: Why are you not focusing your search on the career paths that are attached to the degree that you have; assuming this is actually a passion of yours, namely teaching and/or writing?

Applying for random positions because you figure your degree actually means something is about as stupid as applying to the space program and for all the same reasons. You do not have a catch all pre-requisite. You have specialized training, and you receive little to no benefit over the random person on the street when you are evaluated for suitability to this position if the training isn't aligned with the job you are trying to get.

Not realizing this after years and years of education isn't very smart at all, really. Sadly I know you aren't alone.

Personally, I have a BA in English with a minor in CS. Except for my first year out of college (performance analyst at a pension consulting firm -- I had applied to their computer department!), I've spent my entire career in computers. I've ticked most of the boxes -- coding, junior DBA work, junior sysadmin work, spec / doc writing, system architect, team lead, Director of Programming, and now Co-Founder.

I am incredibly glad that I majored in English and not CS or something "more practical." English in particular and Humanities in general teach you the most valuable skill there is: effective communication. Everything else you can self-teach or hire, but it's really, really hard to find a more efficient system for learning good communication than by writing 5-10 page papers 2-4 times a week for four years, while having to participate in class discussion (frequently on things you haven't actually read but were supposed to, which teaches you a lot about active and reflective listening).

Not to seem like a downer but it sounds like your trying to justify your choice of major. I do it too, though. I majored in physics and am a web developer guy too now, and I try to convince myself that I learned how to comprehend difficult topics and solve intricate problems while I was in college, but there's this sneaking suspicion I have that that time (and money) might have been better spent doing what I'm doing right now.

Be very careful though that you don't misinterpret what I said to mean that there is no value whatsoever in your English major. While over the course of a career you may draw on that experience - the same way, for example I draw on my military experience - more than anything else, what got you employed in this field was your CS minor, and what keeps you employed is your wealth of experience.

Being a good communicator is a bonus, but - sadly perhaps - I've never seen anyone get hired for their communications skills alone.

You've really never seen anyone hired primarily for their communication skills?

Not without any other relevant experience to speak of, no. I've seen good communicators beat out poor communicators, but there is almost always something else that makes them attractive to the employer as well.

There are many fields (for example media, PR, some civil service positions) where communication is the primary skill being assessed - written in the CV & spoken in the interview. If you have a non-maths written component to your interview, you're being judged on your communication skills/literacy.

I agree there is often something else required too - but not always in a 'first' or 'graduate' position.

To be honest, I thought it was rather obvious to those of us in this thread that if the primary technical skill for the job is communication, then having good communication skills is having good technical skills.

I believe the topic however centred around communications skills as ancillary to other technical skills that were part of job description.

Sorry if I caused confusion.

No apology needed - thanks for the clarification.

Humanities academics can obfuscate meaning just as proficiently as any engineer. See: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html

I am incredibly glad that I majored in English and not CS or something "more practical." English in particular and Humanities in general teach you the most valuable skill there is: effective communication.

Indeed. Norman Mailer believed that the highest moral good was to follow your own passions -- and if you happened to kill a few people along the way, so much the better. Serves 'em right for falling lockstep into the dangerous and dehumanizing machine of American culture. But despite this moral reprehensibility... damn, what a communicator he was!

(Yes, one of my undergrad English profs was a total Mailer fanboy.)

Lest anyone get carried away here I'd like to say that my Eng Lit Honours degree from a prestigious British university consisted of writing 2 papers every 3 months, listening to seminar presentations which were often copied wholesale from Wikipedia, and participating in 'discussions' where 90% of the people had nothing to say but still graduated. The idea that it turns you into an elite analytic/communicative essay writing engine was in my case pure fiction. I did write some high quality critical essays but it wasn't exactly a habit. I think I got by on previously acquired abilities. I deeply regret taking that course.

The English majors I've known have never struck me as especially good writers. Philosophy was a little better--you stretch your communications skills more when you have to discuss more complicated ideas, and philosophy is generally more complicated than literature--but by and large even that was not especially useful. I learned a lot more about communication through internet discussions than through any form of schooling, largely because feedback was stronger and more immediate.

Specialization can definitely be a negative when you apply for a position where your degree doesn't apply.

As an employer, if you see someone applying for a "billing specialist" (read: fairly unspecialized) job with a masters or PhD, you instantly think: "This person is not going to be satisfied working this job, this person is going to want to get paid too much, etc"

Exactly, which is basically what the author of the post is feeling.

Part of the problem is that there is almost no career path for the specialization called "Masters in Humanities." Even with a PhD, the career path is very limited. I've watched my sister-in-law, with a PhD in English and teaching experience, pretty much give up on her career because it is nearly impossible to find a tenure-track position in the humanities.

"Smart people" evaluate this prior to spending 4-5 years and a shitload of money trying to obtain a "Masters in Humanities".

Does it really take this long to get a "Master's in Humanities?" It only takes 3 years to get a law degree. FWIW, my sister has what effectively has a "master's in humanities." It took her 18 months and she makes 6 figs working at some sort of think tank in DC, so I think the individual matters a lot more than the degree...

I have no idea, but if you figure 3-4 for a Bachelors, plus an extra 2 for the Masters, I assume 4-5 years of work.

Most M.A.s in humanities disciplines take two years, although many students stretch it to three; PhDs take somewhere between five and ten. Ten is the median for English PhDs and many others these days, according to Louis Menand in The Marketplace of Ideas (http://www.amazon.com/Marketplace-Ideas-Resistance-American-...):

"People who received their PhDs in English between 1982 and 1985 had a median time to degree of ten years. A third of them took more than eleven years to finish, and the median age at the time of completion [BREAK] was thirty-five. By 1995, 53 percent of those with PhDs that had been awarded ten to fifteen years earlier had tenure; another 5 percent were in tenure-track positions. This means that about two fifths of English PhDs were effectively out of the profession as it is usually understood (146).

He goes on:

"It was plain that [by the 1980s] the supply curve had completely lost touch with the demand curve in American academic life" (147), at least as far as PhDs are concerned.

The point about careers in "humanities" are well taken.

I think the OP's sister has taken a really unusual route.

"I think the OP's sister has taken a really unusual route."

Maybe that's true, but for positions like the one she's in, the educational background tends towards the humanities, not towards STEM degrees.

Also, I always assumed that English PhDs take forever because people do it part-time, which is usually not an option with STEM degrees (although is often an option in CS).

10 years to get a PhD!! Ten years is about 1/4 of your "working" life....

They evaluate it and... then they are all supposed to pick another subject, because of... money? Well, I hope you are happy: I certainly wouldn't have been if those were my most important criteria for choosing my education.

Applying for random positions because you figure your degree actually means something is about as stupid as applying to the space program and for all the same reasons. You do not have a catch all pre-requisite.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I wanted to note that Mathematics is, IMHO, as close to a "catch all pre-requisite" degree as you get, at least in the sciences and engineering.

I'd like to, one day, have the option of doing a Ph.D. in the informatics/CS field but am first doing a plain old math BSc because it opens so many doors if I choose to go a different route later.

I believe he put in the comments that the author is now a professor. So I'm assuming he is teaching English or something related to his PHD

Reply on news.ycombinator.com