Comment by gmjosack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gmjosack | Hacker News Reader

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I barely graduated high school in 2002 and there was definitely an emphasis on higher education at that time. My family didn't have the money to pay for college and I knew I wouldn't do well in college, I had a hard time learning from teachers, and didn't even take my SATs. I'd messed around with HTML and copying/pasting JS snippets but was not an early coder by any means.

I got a job doing tech support for a web hosting company at 19 (requirements for getting hired included listing 3 FTP clients, listing 3 e-mail clients, what is whois, and things you could teach to anyone). I worked with many high school dropouts as well.

After getting that tech support job, learning about open source (LAMP stack) changed my life. I didn't have much money but I was able to self study on linux, apache, mysql, php/perl/python with minimal equipment. Over the years open source has provided and avenue that allowed me to better myself to the point I've worked as an SRE for Google/YouTube, a Staff SRE for Dropbox, and starting soon as a Staff SWE at Discord. Open source has given me so many opportunities, made me a better person, and allowed me to provide for my family.

There are a lot of people like me in the industry who care about socioeconomic diversity. I will absolutely interview and hire dropouts if they are driven and capable.

It's great and I wish everyone to achieve the same career progression during their lifetime.

Now, let's keep in mind that we are approaching 2020. The high school dropouts are facing support guys, online MOOC students and boot camp graduates who are all searching for the same developer job with no experience. The competition is more intense than ever.

Also, your text implies that you work in the bay area. It's an order of magnitude easier to find a tech job there than in the rest of the world.

The first 8 years of my career was in South Florida progressing from tech support -> web hosting sales -> NOC -> Jr. Sys Admin -> Sys Admin -> Sr. Sys Admin. Only then did I make the move to the Bay Area to work for Google in 2010.

I don't think everyone should take the path I did. If you can afford it, college is a really good option and I would never discourage someone from going that path. But there are other paths, if you work hard, and have some luck.

I'm now in a position that interviews and helps make hiring decisions. I still know a lot of people from South Florida that have spread out all over the country. There are many of us who don't come from traditional backgrounds that have progressed into leadership roles where we impact hiring who do not require college.

Yes it is very competitive, yet so many companies are constantly turning people away, people with and without college degrees. I'm so happy that there are so many more resources today compared to what I had when I started. MOOCs are awesome and I use the to this day for continuing education. I've been part of apprenticeship programs to train bootcamp graduates as SREs. And I've helped mentor people internally transferring from support into SRE.

College is definitely the most typical paths but there are still paths for humble people willing to start that the bottom and work hard. College just isn't an option for everyone unfortunately.

>>> College is definitely the most typical paths but there are still paths for humble people willing to start that the bottom and work hard. College just isn't an option for everyone unfortunately.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. I will just make a cultural parenthesis on that last sentence.

In the USA, degrees are expensive, the only reason they are not for everyone. It limits the supply of degrees and make them more valuable.

In other parts of the world, mostly thinking of western Europe here, higher education is free or affordable. Degrees are much more common and of higher level, while the job market is pretty bad. It's really shooting oneself in the foot not to get one.

What measure are you using for "much more common"? According to the OECD data, the US is 7th for percent of population 16-64 with a post-secondary degree, and Luxembourg is the only western European country ahead of the US (the others are Canada, Russia, Israel, Japan, and South Korea).

If you limit it to 25-34 year olds with at least a 4 year degree, the US falls to be in the middle of the pack compared to western Europe- behind Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and the UK, but ahead of Norway, France, Spain, and Germany.

The bachelor is usually 3 years in Europe and not every country is following the bachelor/master/phd system.

So you are saying that the amount of bachelor+ in USA is on par with the amount of master+ in Europe. That's my point, Europeans have higher education because it's free.

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