8 ms·

Why reskilling won’t always guarantee you a new job

61 points by novask 6y ago

ryan-duve 6y ago
It seems to me the title would have been better named "Why reskilling will probably not guarantee you a new job". The first two thirds of the article about how and why this doesn't happen, and it sums up with what appears to be the exception. That said, I couldn't agree with the closing more: "You've got to work so hard at it and do all these extra activities and just immerse yourself fully. Without that passion, I can't see them getting anywhere." Trying to gain new skills with the mindset that it's a burden does not pan out. Instead, finding a topic that has lots of natural interest yields the best results, and is way more fun!
- bluedays 6y ago
  Agreed. Transitioning into tech for this very reason has yielding amazing results for me.
  - kaloy 6y ago
    Same here, its going to be the same overall if you found something that you are passionate and really spend your time immersing yourself in it(and of course talent in that field counts). Find that and you will probably succeed
  - _they 6y ago
    Same. In three years of immersing myself in my passion (pentesting/vuln research), I've tripled my income and vastly improved my quality of life. A lot of it was just going after my area of interest vs listening to other people tell me what I "need" to do before I go there. Again, probably not the route if you aren't interested in it though... Not saying you need to wake up, hack, sleep, repeat, but you probably won't be able to "tough it out for a paycheck"... There needs to be a substantial level of passion/interest in the subject for it to work. IMO, that's where it goes wrong for a lot of people. They get excited about buying a bootcamp or whatever, but then quickly find out that it isn't for them and lose interest, or worse, go through the motions and then wonder why it isn't working...
- i_haz_rabies 6y ago
  I find this passion argument accurate, yet distasteful. We as a society should not expect adults with dependents to do the "passionate, young, single developer" grind just to get a steady job because their old one is automated or outsourced. This is not healthy even for the stereotypical CS grad, much less your average out-of-work auto plant worker.
  - unishark 6y ago
    I think it's more about the energy level needed to get over the learning curve. Like learning a new language, if you aren't really serious it isn't going to happen, and going at it slower makes it take disproportionately longer, making it disproportionately more likely you'll get frustrated and give up before you succeed at it. As for younger versus older, I'd say this is a screening process that filters young people out even more if anything. When it comes to students in a MS program, older students are much more able to handle it in my experience.
    - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
      This is why I think on-the-job training is important. I know there isn't much of an economic argument for a company to take on older candidates and teach them how to be a productive developer, but maybe subsidies would help? I don't know, I just don't think we can reasonably expect people to retrain on their own time... especially if they're dealing with financial stress already.
      - unishark 6y ago
        > I don't know, I just don't think we can reasonably expect people to retrain on their own time... especially if they're dealing with financial stress already. Many govt programs criticized in the article do support people through the training. It was more about people being encouraged to reskill into the wrong fields when it comes to programming (which I didn't agree with, by the way). A "pull based" system where companies recruit people to train based on their needs does have benefits over letting people guess and run up debt on their own (the current system, which crashes and burns when people make bad predictions). The govt does this, e.g. where the military will pay for your education in return for service. But do we really want people deeply indebted to private employers? Otherwise they'd only be willing to risk training people a limited amount, since trained employees will subsequently only stay a limited duration on average. The is how it more or less already is.
HarryHirsch 6y ago
They bury the lede: "In reality, employers report difficulty hiring because the wages they offer don’t match the skills they’re after, she says" Also: "In a 2018 paper, he and colleagues showed that only about 60 to 70% of US computing and engineering graduates land jobs in STEM, dropping to between 10 and 50% for those studying life sciences, physical sciences and maths."
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  In reality, employers report difficulty hiring because the wages they offer don’t match the skills they’re after, she says AND only about 60 to 70% of US computing and engineering graduates land jobs in STEM I don't know man? The implication there is that there exist up to 30-40% of new computing and engineering grads who on the one hand are without jobs in STEM, and on the other are willing to leave the STEM jobs that offer lower wages on the table. It's been decades since I was a new STEM grad, but I still remember being a new grad. Only my opinion, but I feel something else must be going on.
  - dcolkitt 6y ago
    There are good paying jobs outside STEM. Finance, consulting, media, law (especially IP law if you have a bachelors in STEM), etc. If an engineering grad decides to become an actuary or management consultant or investment banker, that doesn't necessarily mean they couldn't find a STEM job.
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      A good number of lifescience graduates at regional colleges aim for nursing, also because it's about the only paying career that's left. The Department of Education reports a median salary of 54.5 kUSD for a nursing graduate at my regional college, meanwhile a chemical contract manufacturer nearby recently advertised a skilled BSc job for 35 kUSD. It's a mystery how you can make rent and student loan payment on that and have money left over for food.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
dallasrpi 6y ago
Some of the people they are talking to here have just done 3 month courses. They are competing against people who have 4+ year degrees and people with more experience. They are going to have to build up their resumes with smaller things whether its a project of their own or small jobs for other people.
- troupe 6y ago
  But where are they going to get the experience if no one will hire them at the full wages they have heard software engineers get? :) To get to the point where they are on par with a college graduate, they would need to pay an employer to give them on the job training for several years and then try to get a paying job.
mlamat 6y ago
Why does everyone always suggest coding as an alternative career path? Why not laying floor tiles??? I have more than 5 years of experience as a developer and am unemployed, so I'm currently finishing my degree, which will take at least another 6 months. Some day I will smack someone who says that they can't find developers, honest to God.
x87678r 6y ago
On a related note changing tech stacks and industries is hugely more difficult than I expected. I started in C++ in a steel company and moving to Java with Financial services was so different it was like starting from scratch. Now I'm trying to move more JS/Python in tech land and again its much harder than I expected just to get basic tooling, workflow done, let alone trying to get someone to hire you.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  I don't know why you're being downvoted but I found the same. Changing industries and stacks is massively difficult if you're doing it for getting a new job and not just for a hobby as most employers won't value your previous experience if it's not needed, so all that is just useless baggage now rather than an asset. I tried going from algos/embedded SW development to backend/devops and it took me almost a year of rejections despite my best efforts to self study(in Europe). Yeah, be careful into which stack/domain you pigeonhole yourself into as, depending on the market you're in, it might not be easy to change course later despite you being a skilled generalist. Not every employer will have the time and resources to verify or value your general skill set and will instead focus on going for sure-hires who better match their specific tech stack.
  - colmvp 6y ago
    Just to +1 the two of yours assertions, I've been experiencing the same. I recall one agency had a tagline "specialization is for insects" but the reality I've found for applying is a number of tech teams have pretty rigid requirements of x years experience with specific languages/libraries and won't consider what other valuable assets you bring to the table or how fast you're able to pick up material. Which I guess makes sense for senior level positions but junior/intermediate?
- ptmcc 6y ago
  I've experienced this as well, even after years of experience. The fundamentals all transfer, but ramping up on an entirely different language/stack/toolchain, an entirely different business/industry, and an entirely different company culture/management/process all at the same time can be a really big challenge, especially in more senior roles where expectations of autonomy are high. But eventually you finally get over the hurdle and it starts to click. I've done it a few times, and each time I have to remind myself that I've done it before and I can get through it. Fortunately, so much of being an effective senior engineer is not about programming. But it's hard to remind myself of that when I feel like a "bad" programmer in a new stack for a while.
dcolkitt 6y ago
The biggest thing from the employer side is that the cost of a single bad hire can be potentially enormous. This is a combination of legal (threat of wrongful termination lawsuits, COBRA) and cultural (nobody likes to feel like a jerk boss, morale problems among the remaining employees). The rule of thumb among managers is don't hire anybody unless you're 90% sure they'll work out for at least a year. That creates a major roadblock for entry-level employees. No matter how much formal training somebody's had, they've still never actually performed the role before. That makes it substantially riskier that they won't fit. Even just a couple years of experience is a credible signal that the person has basic competence in the actual job. What we need is another category of transitional employment, with both much lighter regulatory barriers to turnover as well as more relaxed cultural expectations about job security. In the olden days we'd call this an "apprentice". Today it might be an "intern", but the general expectation is that only applies to very young workers- not those reskilling to make a lateral move.
- noneeeed 6y ago
  The concept of the apprentice has come back into vogue here in the UK. It doesn't work eveywhere, but I know a couple of firms who bring in cohorts of apprentices in the same way they do with graduates. They use a local company to do the first few months of training and then have a continuous development programme. A friend is a senior manager at one of them and he loves it, he's been really impressed with the calibre of the apprentices and how quickly they've picked things up.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  > What we need is another category of transitional employment, with both much lighter regulatory barriers to turnover as well as more relaxed cultural expectations about job security. In the olden days we'd call this an "apprentice". Today it might be an "intern", but the general expectation is that only applies to very young workers- not those respelling or making a lateral move. I agree that this is a good idea, but the market won't accommodate this kind of labor change without government help. Employers have been able to shift responsibility for training off onto other organizations (i.e. coding bootcamps) to get individuals trained and prepared for jobs. Nowadays, workers themselves largely have to bear the financial burden of training in hopes that they land a good-paying job. What you're suggesting essentially places the financial burden of training and skill development back on companies through apprenticeship programs. That's not going to happen voluntarily.
chrk33 6y ago
I think a seasoned developer needs about 3 months to get familiar with a new framework/toolset within the same environment e.g. moving from React to Angular. What can a person without prior in-depth knowledge learn in a Three-month, full-time software-engineering course? This does not sound to me a programme wherein they genuinely want people to get into software development. But disprove me please, if you have experience about this.
- mlamat 6y ago
  Of course it is a scam. Learning how to print "Hello World" and counting to 10 is not software engineering.
- i_haz_rabies 6y ago
  I did a 9 week bootcamp and I've been a productive developer for 5 years now (I was an unproductive developer for the first year). I was incredibly lucky to find a company willing to take a chance on me, because I was completely useless at first. This is not an advisable strategy for changing careers, especially for someone with dependents.
  - troupe 6y ago
    Did you have much tech experience before the bootcamp?
    - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
      Zero! I was a newspaper reporter.
      - mreome 6y ago
        The argument could be made that you had a lot of valuable experience though. If I were looking to hire a new programmer, and had someone with experience as a reporter, I’d be thinking about all the places that experience would be useful. It would suggest to me that you’re a good writer, communicator, you can deal with the general public, and function reasonably well in a high-paced, short-deadline, office environment. A decent programmer who is an excellent communicator is hard to find and can be incredibly valuable, and if I couldn’t get you up to speed as a programmer, you could still make an great technical documentation specialist, marketer, etc. If I was looking at someone with the same amount of programming training who had previously flipped burgers or been the proverbial “ditch digger” I’m not going to see many parallels for those skills.
freetime2 6y ago
> Why, then, do policymakers and business leaders continue to focus on reskilling? Lafer thinks it gives them an easy way out by laying the blame for workers’ dim employment prospects on their failure to acquire the right skills rather than facing up to deeper structural changes in the economy. He says that a better option might be a push for better pay and conditions in other in demand industries that employ lots of people but are poorly rewarded such as construction, healthcare and education. I subscribe to the Keynesian philosophy that the government should at the very least hire displaced workers to dig holes in the ground and fill them back up. Even better - use that effort to build roads, clean our cities, provide services, etc.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Installing renewables, as well as installing EV charging stations and upgrading electrical infrastructure is going to be a Herculean effort, lots of good jobs to provide for folks in that domain. I believe many on Native American lands still don’t have running water, internet, or power. Should be a top priority for such a jobs corps.
  - an_opabinia 6y ago
    When Alaska and Wyoming have the same number of senators as California and New York, the problem becomes not the lack of resources or even the wild inefficiency of serving rural communities, which are problems everywhere in the world that nonetheless have better infrastructure, but plainly, Republicans, which only exist here.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - elcritch 6y ago
      As someone currently living in Wyoming, I’m really disconcerted by SanFran when I visit, as an example. At least Wyoming’s low taxes (no state income tax) and low population explain the state of the infrastructure. SanFran? Not so much, it’s a golden child of incredible economic success, liberal ideals, and horrible (political) mis-management. The issues on infrastructure in the US run much more than Red vs Blue. It’s deeply ingrained in the modern American culture across the board.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
Reskilling is tough in a world where you have to compete with people with many year degrees for an entry level job. If you imagined people reskilling twice in their careers, that's two extra times through college. Say they can skip the general education reqs the second time through and it's just 3 years. That's still 10+ years of undergrad in a 50 year career. I think educational specialization is going to be a massive issue going forward. In the past, one industry had to compete with another for labor. As time goes on, it's increasingly only within-industry competition that matters, because workers have sunk too much time and money into simply getting their feet in the door to switch. If you could spend three months and $20k to switch industries, you're much more likely to move compared to the friction of spending a few years and many tens of thousands (and who knows if that specialty will be flooded a few years later when you finish?).
neilwilson 6y ago
There are 19 bones and 20 dogs. No matter how many training and reskilling courses they go on 5% of the dogs will remain unemployed. The fundamental problem is a lack of jobs, because there is no market mechanism by which the private sector will create sufficient jobs to hire everybody who wants work. It's time to restore the Beveridge condition. Jobs should wait, not people.
- zamfi 6y ago
  > The fundamental problem is a lack of jobs, because there is no market mechanism by which the private sector will create sufficient jobs to hire everybody who wants work. This is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.
  - lordnacho 6y ago
    Actually it's phrased as a negative. Isn't it up to the positive side to come up with the evidence? Alternatively, pick it apart and expose it as a positive claim and ask for evidence.
    - zamfi 6y ago
      How it’s phrased is irrelevant to who bears the burden of proof. You are the one making the claim, therefore the burden of proof is on you to back up your claim, no? This is true regardless of how extraordinary the claim is. I find your claim that “markets cannot provide full employment” not at all obvious, regardless of phrasing, and am asking for evidence. Your response suggests you don’t have any. By this logic, if I say something like “there was no moon landing”, I could demand that you offer evidence to the contrary instead of offering any of my own.
      - lordnacho 6y ago
        > How it’s phrased is irrelevant to who bears the burden of proof. It's a principle that the person who presents a positive case is the one who needs to come up with the evidence. I can say "there's no god" without evidence, it's the guy who says the God of the Bible is real who has to explain what he means. > I find your claim... Note the reply chain, I didn't claim anything. > By this logic, if I say something like “there was no moon landing”, I could demand that you offer evidence to the contrary instead of offering any of my own. The contrary would be that there was a moon landing, and indeed the person who claims it happened would be required to come up with the evidence. Luckily there's a lot of it.
hi41 6y ago
This article speaks to me. I had experience on mainframe and wanted to get a job in Java. I learned Java however the interviewer would always say I was missing something. It could be J2ee, Jboss etc. with the Java ecosystem so large, can someone please help me how to learn. Is J2ee still in use or has all development moved to cloud. Where do I even begin to learn modern technologies. TIA.
- selestify 6y ago
  That sounds like suboptimal interviewing on their part. So long as you understand programming fundamentals, you should have no trouble looking up documentation on the fly while on the job, as opposed to memorizing everything before the interview. It might take you a little bit to get ramped up and productive, but that’s normal. I have only been asked once to answer specifics about the idiosyncrasies of a particular language or framework. Everything else I’ve been asked is about generic algorithms and data structures. Sorry that this doesn’t help much, I just find the kind of interview you encountered pretty frustrating. Have all the companies you applied to been like that? Because clearly you and I have different interviewing experiences.
  - hi41 6y ago
    I attended 3 interviews. In addition to Java, one interviewer asked for solr experience. Another asked for 5+ years of experience on J2ee. Another spoke yo me, took my details and never came back. All 3 interviews ended unsuccessfully.
    - selestify 6y ago
      Sorry to hear that, that’s quite unfortunate.
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  J2ee is now called just Java EE afaik (for a while now). I think Spring was new hotness a few years back and java ee was waning could be totally something new now.
- 6y ago
PlugTunin 6y ago
It takes longer than 3 months to acquire the skills necessary to land a job.
cihan_e 6y ago
From my point of view, reskilling will be the main discussion for the next decade. Here is my experience about reskilling: I quit my banking career 3-4 years ago with the thought of career transition. I thought the daily routine that I had could easily be automated. Therefore, I made the decision to leave my job quite easily after having a burnout. First I took a gap year in a foreign country to recover from burnout totally. I came back to my country in the beginning of 2019 start learning to code immediately. I learnt Python. It was, and still is, a popular language, so learning Python should be a logical decision for me. I thought 6 months would be enough to learn fundamentals and transition your career. First I took a bootcamp that lasted 6 months and applied for jobs after I finished it. It didnt go as it planned. I couldnt find a job. Now it has been more than 1 and half years. Still no job. I have started my master degree in IT and am specializing in Data Analysis/Science to be more specific. I consider my undergraduate degree relevant to Data Science, which is Mathematics. Still no positive response from employers. I completed all necessary stuff to put on my resume like end-to-end projects and MOOC specializations(yes it's more than one) Luckily, I am earning my living by tutoring and no financial concerns for near future. My point is reskilling and learning to code are not always guarantee someone a new job as the caption suggests. At least, I love spending time with computers and totally enjoy what I do whether I can find a job or not.
clusterhacks 6y ago
At my workplace (of 10+ years), when we recruit for entry-level positions, we typically get 15-50 applicants. We are not a software company so we do not use deep algorithm testing as part of our evaluation process. Most applicants (probably 80% or more) have a computer science or information systems 4 year BS degree. The other 20% typically have a STEM degree with some programming courses or experience. Probably 20%-30% have some type of graduate degree as well - we sometimes have career changers who have picked up a MS in computer science from some coursework-only MS program at a small school. My experience has been that of that candidate pool, we will have 3-6 candidates with well documented programming projects or job experience. These tend to be the candidates we interview - we use a simple rubric with yes/no for 5-10 categories we evaluate. The categories are broad ("Has this candidate written code in either personal projects or previous employment?") and minimally skill-specific. We do tend to have some bias towards database (SQL) skills and some hands-on experience with Linux, but not specific "hard" requirements for either (don't care if MS SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, or Debian vs Ubuntu vs CentOS, etc). We have had success with non-traditional candidates - we have team members with backgrounds ranging from BS in History to PhD in Bioinformatics, so we aren't super-credential sensitive. All these details seem to add up to a rather stark observation - there is NO shortage of highly qualified applicants for these types of jobs. Our geographic region has many tech employers so we aren't the only option for job seekers. We probably aren't even in the top 25% of employers for salary in our area. Candidates with only three months of training are just not going to be successful getting to the front of the hiring line in the deeper pools of applicants we get.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > All these details seem to add up to a rather stark observation - there is NO shortage of highly qualified applicants for these types of jobs. Our geographic region has many tech employers so we aren't the only option for job seekers. We probably aren't even in the top 25% of employers for salary in our area. Where is that? > We are not a software company so we do not use deep algorithm testing as part of our evaluation process [...] My experience has been that of that candidate pool, we will have 3-6 candidates with well documented programming projects or job experience. These tend to be the candidates we interview - we use a simple rubric with yes/no for 5-10 categories we evaluate You should try it. Right now it seems you are skewing toward hiring folks who already have experience vs fresh grads for entry level positions. Whiteboard, if done right, gives a chance to college hires to prove themselves. Especially if there are other tech companies in the area. The pool of candidates that have one year of experience and are already looking to jump ship is very different than fresh grads (where everyone is looking for a job).
jriggs 6y ago
I think 3 months of full-time study is more that enough time to get the fundamentals of software development and land an entry level dev job. This is especially true when paired with a career preparation program. Many bootcamps have 90+% verified placements rates after graduation
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA's at Lambda are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I guess that counts toward their "placement" stats! Not only that, but Lambda (probably the most notorious bootcamp out there) seems so desperate that they will offer a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period. [1] [0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    I've worked with some Lambda grads who I considered worthwhile hires. They had previous degrees that had prepared them for the type of critical reasoning that makes a good programmer.
anm89 6y ago
> An ambiguous action in response to a highly varied problem does not guarantee a uniform outcome for every member of society. Who would have guessed? The inverse claim would be the interesting one. If reskilling regardless of how that was defined guaranteed you a job.

61 points by novask 6y ago

It seems to me the title would have been better named "Why reskilling will probably not guarantee you a new job". The first two thirds of the article about how and why this doesn't happen, and it sums up with what appears to be the exception. That said, I couldn't agree with the closing more: "You've got to work so hard at it and do all these extra activities and just immerse yourself fully. Without that passion, I can't see them getting anywhere." Trying to gain new skills with the mindset that it's a burden does not pan out. Instead, finding a topic that has lots of natural interest yields the best results, and is way more fun!

bluedays 6y ago
Agreed. Transitioning into tech for this very reason has yielding amazing results for me.
- kaloy 6y ago
  Same here, its going to be the same overall if you found something that you are passionate and really spend your time immersing yourself in it(and of course talent in that field counts). Find that and you will probably succeed
- _they 6y ago
  Same. In three years of immersing myself in my passion (pentesting/vuln research), I've tripled my income and vastly improved my quality of life. A lot of it was just going after my area of interest vs listening to other people tell me what I "need" to do before I go there. Again, probably not the route if you aren't interested in it though... Not saying you need to wake up, hack, sleep, repeat, but you probably won't be able to "tough it out for a paycheck"... There needs to be a substantial level of passion/interest in the subject for it to work. IMO, that's where it goes wrong for a lot of people. They get excited about buying a bootcamp or whatever, but then quickly find out that it isn't for them and lose interest, or worse, go through the motions and then wonder why it isn't working...
i_haz_rabies 6y ago
I find this passion argument accurate, yet distasteful. We as a society should not expect adults with dependents to do the "passionate, young, single developer" grind just to get a steady job because their old one is automated or outsourced. This is not healthy even for the stereotypical CS grad, much less your average out-of-work auto plant worker.
- unishark 6y ago
  I think it's more about the energy level needed to get over the learning curve. Like learning a new language, if you aren't really serious it isn't going to happen, and going at it slower makes it take disproportionately longer, making it disproportionately more likely you'll get frustrated and give up before you succeed at it. As for younger versus older, I'd say this is a screening process that filters young people out even more if anything. When it comes to students in a MS program, older students are much more able to handle it in my experience.
  - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
    This is why I think on-the-job training is important. I know there isn't much of an economic argument for a company to take on older candidates and teach them how to be a productive developer, but maybe subsidies would help? I don't know, I just don't think we can reasonably expect people to retrain on their own time... especially if they're dealing with financial stress already.
    - unishark 6y ago
      > I don't know, I just don't think we can reasonably expect people to retrain on their own time... especially if they're dealing with financial stress already. Many govt programs criticized in the article do support people through the training. It was more about people being encouraged to reskill into the wrong fields when it comes to programming (which I didn't agree with, by the way). A "pull based" system where companies recruit people to train based on their needs does have benefits over letting people guess and run up debt on their own (the current system, which crashes and burns when people make bad predictions). The govt does this, e.g. where the military will pay for your education in return for service. But do we really want people deeply indebted to private employers? Otherwise they'd only be willing to risk training people a limited amount, since trained employees will subsequently only stay a limited duration on average. The is how it more or less already is.

HarryHirsch 6y ago

They bury the lede: "In reality, employers report difficulty hiring because the wages they offer don’t match the skills they’re after, she says" Also: "In a 2018 paper, he and colleagues showed that only about 60 to 70% of US computing and engineering graduates land jobs in STEM, dropping to between 10 and 50% for those studying life sciences, physical sciences and maths."

bilbo0s 6y ago
In reality, employers report difficulty hiring because the wages they offer don’t match the skills they’re after, she says AND only about 60 to 70% of US computing and engineering graduates land jobs in STEM I don't know man? The implication there is that there exist up to 30-40% of new computing and engineering grads who on the one hand are without jobs in STEM, and on the other are willing to leave the STEM jobs that offer lower wages on the table. It's been decades since I was a new STEM grad, but I still remember being a new grad. Only my opinion, but I feel something else must be going on.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  There are good paying jobs outside STEM. Finance, consulting, media, law (especially IP law if you have a bachelors in STEM), etc. If an engineering grad decides to become an actuary or management consultant or investment banker, that doesn't necessarily mean they couldn't find a STEM job.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    A good number of lifescience graduates at regional colleges aim for nursing, also because it's about the only paying career that's left. The Department of Education reports a median salary of 54.5 kUSD for a nursing graduate at my regional college, meanwhile a chemical contract manufacturer nearby recently advertised a skilled BSc job for 35 kUSD. It's a mystery how you can make rent and student loan payment on that and have money left over for food.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago

dallasrpi 6y ago

Some of the people they are talking to here have just done 3 month courses. They are competing against people who have 4+ year degrees and people with more experience. They are going to have to build up their resumes with smaller things whether its a project of their own or small jobs for other people.

troupe 6y ago
But where are they going to get the experience if no one will hire them at the full wages they have heard software engineers get? :) To get to the point where they are on par with a college graduate, they would need to pay an employer to give them on the job training for several years and then try to get a paying job.

mlamat 6y ago

Why does everyone always suggest coding as an alternative career path? Why not laying floor tiles??? I have more than 5 years of experience as a developer and am unemployed, so I'm currently finishing my degree, which will take at least another 6 months. Some day I will smack someone who says that they can't find developers, honest to God.

x87678r 6y ago

On a related note changing tech stacks and industries is hugely more difficult than I expected. I started in C++ in a steel company and moving to Java with Financial services was so different it was like starting from scratch. Now I'm trying to move more JS/Python in tech land and again its much harder than I expected just to get basic tooling, workflow done, let alone trying to get someone to hire you.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted but I found the same. Changing industries and stacks is massively difficult if you're doing it for getting a new job and not just for a hobby as most employers won't value your previous experience if it's not needed, so all that is just useless baggage now rather than an asset. I tried going from algos/embedded SW development to backend/devops and it took me almost a year of rejections despite my best efforts to self study(in Europe). Yeah, be careful into which stack/domain you pigeonhole yourself into as, depending on the market you're in, it might not be easy to change course later despite you being a skilled generalist. Not every employer will have the time and resources to verify or value your general skill set and will instead focus on going for sure-hires who better match their specific tech stack.
- colmvp 6y ago
  Just to +1 the two of yours assertions, I've been experiencing the same. I recall one agency had a tagline "specialization is for insects" but the reality I've found for applying is a number of tech teams have pretty rigid requirements of x years experience with specific languages/libraries and won't consider what other valuable assets you bring to the table or how fast you're able to pick up material. Which I guess makes sense for senior level positions but junior/intermediate?
ptmcc 6y ago
I've experienced this as well, even after years of experience. The fundamentals all transfer, but ramping up on an entirely different language/stack/toolchain, an entirely different business/industry, and an entirely different company culture/management/process all at the same time can be a really big challenge, especially in more senior roles where expectations of autonomy are high. But eventually you finally get over the hurdle and it starts to click. I've done it a few times, and each time I have to remind myself that I've done it before and I can get through it. Fortunately, so much of being an effective senior engineer is not about programming. But it's hard to remind myself of that when I feel like a "bad" programmer in a new stack for a while.

dcolkitt 6y ago

The biggest thing from the employer side is that the cost of a single bad hire can be potentially enormous. This is a combination of legal (threat of wrongful termination lawsuits, COBRA) and cultural (nobody likes to feel like a jerk boss, morale problems among the remaining employees). The rule of thumb among managers is don't hire anybody unless you're 90% sure they'll work out for at least a year. That creates a major roadblock for entry-level employees. No matter how much formal training somebody's had, they've still never actually performed the role before. That makes it substantially riskier that they won't fit. Even just a couple years of experience is a credible signal that the person has basic competence in the actual job. What we need is another category of transitional employment, with both much lighter regulatory barriers to turnover as well as more relaxed cultural expectations about job security. In the olden days we'd call this an "apprentice". Today it might be an "intern", but the general expectation is that only applies to very young workers- not those reskilling to make a lateral move.

noneeeed 6y ago
The concept of the apprentice has come back into vogue here in the UK. It doesn't work eveywhere, but I know a couple of firms who bring in cohorts of apprentices in the same way they do with graduates. They use a local company to do the first few months of training and then have a continuous development programme. A friend is a senior manager at one of them and he loves it, he's been really impressed with the calibre of the apprentices and how quickly they've picked things up.
save_ferris 6y ago
> What we need is another category of transitional employment, with both much lighter regulatory barriers to turnover as well as more relaxed cultural expectations about job security. In the olden days we'd call this an "apprentice". Today it might be an "intern", but the general expectation is that only applies to very young workers- not those respelling or making a lateral move. I agree that this is a good idea, but the market won't accommodate this kind of labor change without government help. Employers have been able to shift responsibility for training off onto other organizations (i.e. coding bootcamps) to get individuals trained and prepared for jobs. Nowadays, workers themselves largely have to bear the financial burden of training in hopes that they land a good-paying job. What you're suggesting essentially places the financial burden of training and skill development back on companies through apprenticeship programs. That's not going to happen voluntarily.

chrk33 6y ago

I think a seasoned developer needs about 3 months to get familiar with a new framework/toolset within the same environment e.g. moving from React to Angular. What can a person without prior in-depth knowledge learn in a Three-month, full-time software-engineering course? This does not sound to me a programme wherein they genuinely want people to get into software development. But disprove me please, if you have experience about this.

mlamat 6y ago
Of course it is a scam. Learning how to print "Hello World" and counting to 10 is not software engineering.
i_haz_rabies 6y ago
I did a 9 week bootcamp and I've been a productive developer for 5 years now (I was an unproductive developer for the first year). I was incredibly lucky to find a company willing to take a chance on me, because I was completely useless at first. This is not an advisable strategy for changing careers, especially for someone with dependents.
- troupe 6y ago
  Did you have much tech experience before the bootcamp?
  - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
    Zero! I was a newspaper reporter.
    - mreome 6y ago
      The argument could be made that you had a lot of valuable experience though. If I were looking to hire a new programmer, and had someone with experience as a reporter, I’d be thinking about all the places that experience would be useful. It would suggest to me that you’re a good writer, communicator, you can deal with the general public, and function reasonably well in a high-paced, short-deadline, office environment. A decent programmer who is an excellent communicator is hard to find and can be incredibly valuable, and if I couldn’t get you up to speed as a programmer, you could still make an great technical documentation specialist, marketer, etc. If I was looking at someone with the same amount of programming training who had previously flipped burgers or been the proverbial “ditch digger” I’m not going to see many parallels for those skills.

freetime2 6y ago

> Why, then, do policymakers and business leaders continue to focus on reskilling? Lafer thinks it gives them an easy way out by laying the blame for workers’ dim employment prospects on their failure to acquire the right skills rather than facing up to deeper structural changes in the economy. He says that a better option might be a push for better pay and conditions in other in demand industries that employ lots of people but are poorly rewarded such as construction, healthcare and education. I subscribe to the Keynesian philosophy that the government should at the very least hire displaced workers to dig holes in the ground and fill them back up. Even better - use that effort to build roads, clean our cities, provide services, etc.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Installing renewables, as well as installing EV charging stations and upgrading electrical infrastructure is going to be a Herculean effort, lots of good jobs to provide for folks in that domain. I believe many on Native American lands still don’t have running water, internet, or power. Should be a top priority for such a jobs corps.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  When Alaska and Wyoming have the same number of senators as California and New York, the problem becomes not the lack of resources or even the wild inefficiency of serving rural communities, which are problems everywhere in the world that nonetheless have better infrastructure, but plainly, Republicans, which only exist here.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - elcritch 6y ago
    As someone currently living in Wyoming, I’m really disconcerted by SanFran when I visit, as an example. At least Wyoming’s low taxes (no state income tax) and low population explain the state of the infrastructure. SanFran? Not so much, it’s a golden child of incredible economic success, liberal ideals, and horrible (political) mis-management. The issues on infrastructure in the US run much more than Red vs Blue. It’s deeply ingrained in the modern American culture across the board.

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago

Reskilling is tough in a world where you have to compete with people with many year degrees for an entry level job. If you imagined people reskilling twice in their careers, that's two extra times through college. Say they can skip the general education reqs the second time through and it's just 3 years. That's still 10+ years of undergrad in a 50 year career. I think educational specialization is going to be a massive issue going forward. In the past, one industry had to compete with another for labor. As time goes on, it's increasingly only within-industry competition that matters, because workers have sunk too much time and money into simply getting their feet in the door to switch. If you could spend three months and $20k to switch industries, you're much more likely to move compared to the friction of spending a few years and many tens of thousands (and who knows if that specialty will be flooded a few years later when you finish?).

neilwilson 6y ago

There are 19 bones and 20 dogs. No matter how many training and reskilling courses they go on 5% of the dogs will remain unemployed. The fundamental problem is a lack of jobs, because there is no market mechanism by which the private sector will create sufficient jobs to hire everybody who wants work. It's time to restore the Beveridge condition. Jobs should wait, not people.

zamfi 6y ago
> The fundamental problem is a lack of jobs, because there is no market mechanism by which the private sector will create sufficient jobs to hire everybody who wants work. This is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.
- lordnacho 6y ago
  Actually it's phrased as a negative. Isn't it up to the positive side to come up with the evidence? Alternatively, pick it apart and expose it as a positive claim and ask for evidence.
  - zamfi 6y ago
    How it’s phrased is irrelevant to who bears the burden of proof. You are the one making the claim, therefore the burden of proof is on you to back up your claim, no? This is true regardless of how extraordinary the claim is. I find your claim that “markets cannot provide full employment” not at all obvious, regardless of phrasing, and am asking for evidence. Your response suggests you don’t have any. By this logic, if I say something like “there was no moon landing”, I could demand that you offer evidence to the contrary instead of offering any of my own.
    - lordnacho 6y ago
      > How it’s phrased is irrelevant to who bears the burden of proof. It's a principle that the person who presents a positive case is the one who needs to come up with the evidence. I can say "there's no god" without evidence, it's the guy who says the God of the Bible is real who has to explain what he means. > I find your claim... Note the reply chain, I didn't claim anything. > By this logic, if I say something like “there was no moon landing”, I could demand that you offer evidence to the contrary instead of offering any of my own. The contrary would be that there was a moon landing, and indeed the person who claims it happened would be required to come up with the evidence. Luckily there's a lot of it.

hi41 6y ago

This article speaks to me. I had experience on mainframe and wanted to get a job in Java. I learned Java however the interviewer would always say I was missing something. It could be J2ee, Jboss etc. with the Java ecosystem so large, can someone please help me how to learn. Is J2ee still in use or has all development moved to cloud. Where do I even begin to learn modern technologies. TIA.

selestify 6y ago
That sounds like suboptimal interviewing on their part. So long as you understand programming fundamentals, you should have no trouble looking up documentation on the fly while on the job, as opposed to memorizing everything before the interview. It might take you a little bit to get ramped up and productive, but that’s normal. I have only been asked once to answer specifics about the idiosyncrasies of a particular language or framework. Everything else I’ve been asked is about generic algorithms and data structures. Sorry that this doesn’t help much, I just find the kind of interview you encountered pretty frustrating. Have all the companies you applied to been like that? Because clearly you and I have different interviewing experiences.
- hi41 6y ago
  I attended 3 interviews. In addition to Java, one interviewer asked for solr experience. Another asked for 5+ years of experience on J2ee. Another spoke yo me, took my details and never came back. All 3 interviews ended unsuccessfully.
  - selestify 6y ago
    Sorry to hear that, that’s quite unfortunate.
dilyevsky 6y ago
J2ee is now called just Java EE afaik (for a while now). I think Spring was new hotness a few years back and java ee was waning could be totally something new now.
6y ago

PlugTunin 6y ago

It takes longer than 3 months to acquire the skills necessary to land a job.

cihan_e 6y ago

From my point of view, reskilling will be the main discussion for the next decade. Here is my experience about reskilling: I quit my banking career 3-4 years ago with the thought of career transition. I thought the daily routine that I had could easily be automated. Therefore, I made the decision to leave my job quite easily after having a burnout. First I took a gap year in a foreign country to recover from burnout totally. I came back to my country in the beginning of 2019 start learning to code immediately. I learnt Python. It was, and still is, a popular language, so learning Python should be a logical decision for me. I thought 6 months would be enough to learn fundamentals and transition your career. First I took a bootcamp that lasted 6 months and applied for jobs after I finished it. It didnt go as it planned. I couldnt find a job. Now it has been more than 1 and half years. Still no job. I have started my master degree in IT and am specializing in Data Analysis/Science to be more specific. I consider my undergraduate degree relevant to Data Science, which is Mathematics. Still no positive response from employers. I completed all necessary stuff to put on my resume like end-to-end projects and MOOC specializations(yes it's more than one) Luckily, I am earning my living by tutoring and no financial concerns for near future. My point is reskilling and learning to code are not always guarantee someone a new job as the caption suggests. At least, I love spending time with computers and totally enjoy what I do whether I can find a job or not.

clusterhacks 6y ago

At my workplace (of 10+ years), when we recruit for entry-level positions, we typically get 15-50 applicants. We are not a software company so we do not use deep algorithm testing as part of our evaluation process. Most applicants (probably 80% or more) have a computer science or information systems 4 year BS degree. The other 20% typically have a STEM degree with some programming courses or experience. Probably 20%-30% have some type of graduate degree as well - we sometimes have career changers who have picked up a MS in computer science from some coursework-only MS program at a small school. My experience has been that of that candidate pool, we will have 3-6 candidates with well documented programming projects or job experience. These tend to be the candidates we interview - we use a simple rubric with yes/no for 5-10 categories we evaluate. The categories are broad ("Has this candidate written code in either personal projects or previous employment?") and minimally skill-specific. We do tend to have some bias towards database (SQL) skills and some hands-on experience with Linux, but not specific "hard" requirements for either (don't care if MS SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, or Debian vs Ubuntu vs CentOS, etc). We have had success with non-traditional candidates - we have team members with backgrounds ranging from BS in History to PhD in Bioinformatics, so we aren't super-credential sensitive. All these details seem to add up to a rather stark observation - there is NO shortage of highly qualified applicants for these types of jobs. Our geographic region has many tech employers so we aren't the only option for job seekers. We probably aren't even in the top 25% of employers for salary in our area. Candidates with only three months of training are just not going to be successful getting to the front of the hiring line in the deeper pools of applicants we get.

908B64B197 6y ago
> All these details seem to add up to a rather stark observation - there is NO shortage of highly qualified applicants for these types of jobs. Our geographic region has many tech employers so we aren't the only option for job seekers. We probably aren't even in the top 25% of employers for salary in our area. Where is that? > We are not a software company so we do not use deep algorithm testing as part of our evaluation process [...] My experience has been that of that candidate pool, we will have 3-6 candidates with well documented programming projects or job experience. These tend to be the candidates we interview - we use a simple rubric with yes/no for 5-10 categories we evaluate You should try it. Right now it seems you are skewing toward hiring folks who already have experience vs fresh grads for entry level positions. Whiteboard, if done right, gives a chance to college hires to prove themselves. Especially if there are other tech companies in the area. The pool of candidates that have one year of experience and are already looking to jump ship is very different than fresh grads (where everyone is looking for a job).

jriggs 6y ago

I think 3 months of full-time study is more that enough time to get the fundamentals of software development and land an entry level dev job. This is especially true when paired with a career preparation program. Many bootcamps have 90+% verified placements rates after graduation

908B64B197 6y ago
I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA's at Lambda are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I guess that counts toward their "placement" stats! Not only that, but Lambda (probably the most notorious bootcamp out there) seems so desperate that they will offer a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period. [1] [0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I've worked with some Lambda grads who I considered worthwhile hires. They had previous degrees that had prepared them for the type of critical reasoning that makes a good programmer.

anm89 6y ago

> An ambiguous action in response to a highly varied problem does not guarantee a uniform outcome for every member of society. Who would have guessed? The inverse claim would be the interesting one. If reskilling regardless of how that was defined guaranteed you a job.