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Comment by throwaway283719 | Hacker News Reader

You might get the impression that the author studied engineering ("I studied engineering, not English...") or perhaps computer science ("...graduated at the top of my class in computer science...") whereas a quick look at his LinkedIn profile shows that he studied Management Information Systems[0] which, as far as I can tell, is a non-degree along the same lines as "Marketing" or "Media and Journalism" i.e. light on technical skills and heavy on jargon and buzzwords.

[0] http://www.smeal.psu.edu/scis/mis-undergrad

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Nice catch. Someone in the comments section pointed out that the WaPo actually listed MIS as one of their "most unemployable majors." (Is that irony on some level?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/26/t...

None of the "10 Most Unemployable Majors" are even remotely related to MIS (well maybe graphic design, but I'm sure that number is inflated by a lot of unemployed art majors).

Business management & administration

That's a big difference. I wondered what possible computer languages that he could have studied recently in school that he couldn't get work in today, and why he was talking about the industry software he learned in school. He seems a little young to have done a pascal or scheme CS program.

The only applications I learned in CS/EE school were POSIX, the Microchip assembler IDE, and EAGLE. For every other one, I was on my own.

He might be complaining about C++ or Java. If you read Hacker News, you might think those were dead.

MIS programs are glorified IT training--which is fine, if you're good at what you do. University of Houston runs a decent degree program in MIS, and they can place graduates.

Had the author wanted us to actually feel bad for them, maybe they should've linked a github.

The first paragraph says it all:

>According to Alan Morrison of PwC, "The new analytics is the art and science of turning the invisible into to visible...It's about detecting opportunities and threats you hadn't anticipated, or finding people you didn't know existed who could be your next customers. It's about learning what's really important, rather than what you thought was important. It's about identifying, committing, and following through on what your enterprise must change most."

According to his LinkedIn[0] he doesn't even list any of the tell tale indicators of being a programmer/engineer/etc. No GitHub/BitBucket/etc, no descriptions of code projects worked on, etc. But hey, he does have "Direct Mail" as a skill!

[0] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/casey-ark/23/194/668

Top Skills: Breathing (2 endorsements)

And they wonder why linkedin isn't taken seriously anymore.

Penn State has a college of engineering and a college of business. It seems like it would be pretty easy to tell which one you were in, and if you went to the business school, you wouldn't say "I studied engineering."

Although to be honest, the only place it says "engineering" is in the headline, which editors often mess with.

The article itself gives a strong implication that the author graduated with a CS degree: "I’d worked hard, graduated at the top of my class in computer science and managed to acquire lots of experience with the sorts of industry software that I was sure hiring managers were looking for. I’d even chosen a STEM degree." So, apparently there are people who seriously think business MIS degrees are STEM?

I have an MIS degree, and generally, you're correct. They're light on technology, though I did learn some basics. I already knew a lot of that already, though... what I learned the most from were the Accounting, Marketing, and Business Management classes I took.

I didn't verify that he had an MIS degree... but MIS is definitely not the same thing as Computer Science or Engineering. If this is true it's a fairly disingenuous and manipulative article.

Thank you. I found his post baffling for that reason.

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