Random Thoughts - Part Deux [NO POLITICS]

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Maybe he's an aviation buff.

strength
mass
cost


This is day-1 "cad guy" shit. I don't believe he doesn't realize that it costs money. I'm sure he's a lightness buff but CAD Guy is taking it upon himself to set priorities.


This is management shit, plain & simple.

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by soundman98

yea, i've heard that before. it's a common denominator metric.

the irony though is that it doesn't work for hands-on positions, only office jobs that continue the 'shuffling of paper', and 'follow the rules' that school work inherently encourages. school work fundamentally doesn't encourage people to think independently. i nearly failed out of high school in 2 different courses. by the grades, i barely passed, and was a sub-par student. but tech courses, i all but aced, and my attendance record was in the top 5 of my class..

it was around the 3rd-semester of junior year that i finally just gave up on school-- all the after-hours 'talks', individual time with teachers, and 'shaping things up', and 'you have to be better than this', and started turning in 0.5-1 page essay's despite the teachers requiring 4-8 pages. in that semester, just making that 1 change, my essay's went from d's and f's, to b's, despite the chastising note of not hitting the length requirements... school got easier once i gave up trying to do what they demanded. of course, that's got it's own irony.

so i still find it funny how the best possible metric for measuring employee success, after so many decades of, well, 'work', involves something paralleling a George Orwell novel...

Your professors sucked. Not sure how else to put it.

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by Capt Spaulding

Your professors sucked. Not sure how else to put it.

yup. STEM at work, for someone who very clearly doesn't fit into those boxes.

around that same time, being a junior, i had a pre-scheduled meeting with the Career Opportunity Office counselor. basically, it was a 'day in the life of' or 'bring your kid to work' kind of thing--so us kids could get some career advice from people that were in the field we were interested in to decide if it was what we really wanted to do. as i walked in, she laid out 5 college brochures to the most common colleges everyone in the school went to, and said "which one are you going to?"

i said "none." "i need something where i can work with my hands."

i explained my love of car audio at the time, showed her the overstuffed binder that i carried everywhere of every single piece of car audio info i could find anywhere-- whenever i got bored during class, i read that instead (i'd already read ahead in all my textbooks, and the teachers just re-hashed less interesting material anyways). told her to point me to any sort of hands-on thing they had, and i'd take it. was probably the hardest she'd had to work in a long time to find anything that fit that..

[spcmafia]

On another episode of dumb sht that spcmafia shouldn’t be spending money on. New chucks coming in. Couldn’t help myself at all.



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[weederr33]

Originally Posted by spcmafia

On another episode of dumb sht that spcmafia shouldn’t be spending money on. New chucks coming in. Couldn’t help myself at all.



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The redeeming aspect is it's only Gen 1 and Gen 2 Pokemon

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by Capt Spaulding

[B]I suspect many employers used it as a measure of work ethic. Can you start a project and see it through to completion? Second, there is a base level of problem solving ability required to navigate college.

If you're having trouble meeting your staffing needs, lowering standards is one way to do it. At one point, IIRC, the Army did this. My recollection is the results were suboptimal.

THIS^
When looking at degrees that seem irrelevant for the position we are just considering "does this person see things through" more than "what did this person learn".
Somewhere along the line some places started missing that it should be only one small part of the requirements and it turned into the main one instead.
There are of course still some jobs where we do indeed require a degree (i.e. engineers) but even then it is not the only or even most important thing we look at when hiring.

Lowering your standards is not a good idea. Taking a close look at the priority that you give to each of your requirements however may open up the position for more suitable candidates. Pretty much what @Dadhawk said really.

[humfrz]

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by humfrz

Explains why Uncle Sam put you in charge.

[NoHaveMSG]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

THIS^
When looking at degrees that seem irrelevant for the position we are just considering "does this person see things through" more than "what did this person learn".
Somewhere along the line some places started missing that it should be only one small part of the requirements and it turned into the main one instead.
There are of course still some jobs where we do indeed require a degree (i.e. engineers) but even then it is not the only or even most important thing we look at when hiring.

Lowering your standards is not a good idea. Taking a close look at the priority that you give to each of your requirements however may open up the position for more suitable candidates. Pretty much what @Dadhawk said really.

I have understood that point, but when does 6..7..8 years of relevant experience not count or is considered a “lower standard” for a sales position at an industrial parts company ?


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[NoHaveMSG]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Maybe he's an aviation buff.

Your speed hole could be someone else's lightening hole (which is what they are called in airplanes). Without them, most small airplanes wouldn't fly.

The main spar and ribs on a two seat aircraft....

Worse, he’s a Porsche guy.

Here’s the bracket in question. All it does is hold a throttle position sensor. Probably doubled the amount of time on the laser table.




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[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by soundman98

yup. STEM at work, for someone who very clearly doesn't fit into those boxes.

around that same time, being a junior, i had a pre-scheduled meeting with the Career Opportunity Office counselor. basically, it was a 'day in the life of' or 'bring your kid to work' kind of thing--so us kids could get some career advice from people that were in the field we were interested in to decide if it was what we really wanted to do. as i walked in, she laid out 5 college brochures to the most common colleges everyone in the school went to, and said "which one are you going to?"

i said "none." "i need something where i can work with my hands."

i explained my love of car audio at the time, showed her the overstuffed binder that i carried everywhere of every single piece of car audio info i could find anywhere-- whenever i got bored during class, i read that instead (i'd already read ahead in all my textbooks, and the teachers just re-hashed less interesting material anyways). told her to point me to any sort of hands-on thing they had, and i'd take it. was probably the hardest she'd had to work in a long time to find anything that fit that..

Among the things I objected to most strenuously when I was working were the ideas that "online instruction can be as effective as face to face instruction," and "you must have a college degree to be a success." Neither objection made me a prime candidate for an invitation to the president's holiday party.

The flirtation with on-line teaching was pretty well damped by our experience with it so far during the pandemic. We can yak about that if someone wants, but the 'every student must get college or university degree' is my target here.

First, there are loads of ways people can prosper (and I use that term in the broadest sense) without a degree. Over the years, I have met immensely talented auto techs, electricians, plumbers, and a host of artisans of various types, for whom, 4 to 7 years getting a BA/S would have largely been a poor use of their time and money.

Second, I still think everyone who can cut it intellectually would benefit from two years of higher education. That's right - the dreaded "core curriculum." The part of college most every student loves to hate. The interminable purgatory all most go through to reach the "COURSES THAT MATTER."

THe goal of that first two years isn't really to weed out the weak, although it may do that to some extent and some of my colleagues viewed it that way. The goal, at least in the core courses I taught was to broaden and enrich the thinking of my students. If the schools and students approached this correctly it could work very well for a lot of the folks (not just kids) we taught.

The Math classes could get students to see that math isn't a scary boogie man, but simply another language - a way of expressing relationships. The Philosophy classes could introduce them to the thinking of people, dead and living, that form the bases of much of what we do as societies. English classes could expose them to literature (western and eastern) that could offer profound insights into the human condition. Maybe it could teach them to write a decent essay or memo or at least construct a comprehensible sentence or paragraph. History could teach them that there is no shortage of bad ideas that have been tried, retried, reretried, and are still competing successfully in the "marketplace of ideas." Political Science or Government classes could expose them to the basic ideas behind the idea of government, the various approaches to it, perhaps actually force the READ the US Constitution and understand what its various parts do and why they do it.

Edit: And, for the FSM's sake, learn what SOCIALISM and COMMUNISM actually are. (Hint - Bernie and AOC - at least their public pronouncements - don't really fit either definition)

I could go through all of the rest of them, and wind up with a book length manuscript no one would read, so I'll stop there = sort of. I have a PhD in political science, but among my most memorable classes are the ones I took in the '70s to satisfy the core requirements for my BS. All of my core classes including those I haven't mentioned; Physics, Economics (the second of my UG majors), Fine Arts - contributed, and continue to contribute today, greatly to who I am and to my satisfaction with my life. I really wish I could have imparted this enthusiasm for learning to more of my students.

So, after all that, I would like to see every person to be strongly encouraged to get an associates degree. I would like to see all colleges and universities, even doctoral granting "research" universities do so, and encourage their best teachers (not necessarily the most prolific publishers) to teach them.

To call this Panglossian (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Panglossian) (freshman Western Lit - 1972) is a gross understatement. But, if I were a deity, I'd love to make it happen.

[NoHaveMSG]

Originally Posted by Capt Spaulding

Second, I still think everyone who can cut it intellectually would benefit from two years of higher education. That's right - the dreaded "core curriculum." The part of college most every student loves to hate. The interminable purgatory all most go through to reach the "COURSES THAT MATTER."

THe goal of that first two years isn't really to weed out the weak, although it may do that to some extent and some of my colleagues viewed it that way. The goal, at least in the core courses I taught was to broaden and enrich the thinking of my students. If the schools and students approached this correctly it could work very well for a lot of the folks (not just kids) we taught.

Yeah I agree. I was about 95% done with the core classes from a local community college so I could transfer to a 4 year school before I broke my pelvis racing MX. I took a lot of extra literature, sociology, and political science classes because I found them interesting. If I would have buckled down and not taken them I would have been done and had enough proper credits to transfer before then. Oh well, live and learn.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by NoHaveMSG

I have understood that point, but when does 6..7..8 years of relevant experience not count or is considered a “lower standard” for a sales position at an industrial parts company ?


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That is exactly the situation I said some places have got themselves into. They are the ones that need to reevaluate their priorities.
The current job market is actually starting to force many places to do exactly this so change is in the works. Not to say you won't still have some old school holdouts that are still working from 1976s HR manuals and policies.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by NoHaveMSG

Worse, he’s a Porsche guy.

Here’s the bracket in question. All it does is hold a throttle position sensor. Probably doubled the amount of time on the laser table.

It is also probably about half the weight than if it did not have the holes as well.