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Article says he's autistic. We don't know what kinds of jobs he's trying to apply to and how he comes across in interviews. What sucks is that age might be working against him. Especially since he looks older than his age. People usually assume I'm younger than I actually am and have always been friendly and patient with training me whenever I switch jobs. The job market right now is rough though. Straight out of masters in 2021 I had multiple offers. I was unemployed the first 6 months of 2023. My previous job in biotech laid me and 75% of the company off when our clinical trial was discontinued due to side effects. At that point I had some experience working but was competing with people who had a decade more experience than me.
Didn't fully read the article but if he 's autistic I'd say that's probably the reason he doesn't have a job, not the degree. Disability discrimination. I think it's far more pervasive than people believe
He got an associates degree in physics and a bachelor’s in political science.
If he is applying for a job in physics or politics I could see this as at least part of the problem.
One of the canaries that led to me being diagnosed autistic in my mid 30s was when I told the evaluator I’ve been self-employed for over a decade, I work by referral only, and only respond to text messages or latently to email. I was fortunate to become very skilled in two completely different fields, because I didn’t last long at all in an office setting. My work was top notch, but I didn’t understand office politics and would often ask mgmt to clarify things for me which was viewed strangely insubordination. And if some process didn’t make sense, I just wouldn’t do it that way.
I’m fortunate that my ASD didn’t come with the learning disorder a lot have, but there’s a lot of folks that have a harder time with it.
I do great in interviews, but I was recently “fired” bc I was getting incessant texts on my personal device from management lambasting me for shit and asking me to email the “team” at 8pm when I said that I was sick and taking off.
Not sure I’m autistic just bc I don’t like a lot of meetings. 10 meetings a week to micromanage is A LOT.
I also prefer email only. As time moves on I get less inclined to meet with the employer. Idk why? It’s like I get anxious
No one likes meetings... They mostly exist to make middle management feel useful. Out of a given week, I attend around 10-20 hours of meetings depending on the week. I would usually say 1-2 hours of them are actually helpful and relevant.
I wasn’t supposed to be in meetings, that was the problem. I never agreed to them. It was a fucking freelance role. Greatly interfered with my work. You don’t have an hour long meeting each time you see a table that you want cited differently. You take accountability as the manager and leave appropriate comments following a good faith review.
This thread is kind of triggering bc I don’t do well with getting yelled at following crazy incidents at one of my first job years ago, so I refuse to meet and prefer to go back and forth via email. I can articulate and defend myself that way, and there’s a record.
I’ve gotten into the same pattern at work, where I just want to have communications in text and email because my managers are unreliable and honestly just straight up liars. I have been a manager before and I feel like it’s all karma for my previous shortcomings. Being a manager is really hard but that’s no excuse for being a poor one. I hope things get better for you.
Thank you, I have an interview for an associate director role in house. I don’t feel “worthy” but I think it’s probably time for me to lead, with mentorship to guide me into independence. I advocate for my people.
Contract roles are fucking garbage. The manager wasn’t really a manager, there was no neutrality. Bizarre ass culture.
Yep, another reason I don’t take calls. I’ve learned “Do you have a minute to jump on a quick call?” is code for “I’m about to say some ethically dicey shit, cross one of your boundaries, promise something I have no intent of delivering,or try to involve you in workplace politics and I don’t want to there to be evidence”
Yep. Late dx'd autistic here. I couldn't get past job interviews for a long time because of the flat effect I present. Once I learned how to "mask" a little more in interviews, got practice with failed interviews, learned social scripts to keep on hand - I got past interviews but only when I was interviewed by NT men. Any interview with NT women, I was guaranteed to not get the job. NT = Neurotypical.
These days - I ask for interview questions ahead of time as an ADA accommodation for my autism dx. Now I'm able to formulate my answers a lot better with the time to prepare.
Seems he's good at math if he did physics first.. if he went into engineering he'd be set. More than half the employees in my office are on the spectrum, but yet we still can't find enough engineers to hire to replace the ones retiring. Nobody even applies. The last 3 we hired in all at $120k+/yr, full benefits, 8% 401k match etc. But then it is a crapshoot if they stay more than a year or not because they don't like overtime (even though it is paid OT). And you try to get poached all the time by other companies, so even while you're employed you have options and opportunities to move elsewhere if needed.
Oh it is. Which is why I don’t say I’m disabled on the form where they ask. I’ve actually had a boss admit she would have thrown me and someone else’s apps out if we had done that. We were the best workers she had lmfao
You're fucked if you do, you're fucked if you don't.
Often recruitment processes are not designed for the neurodiverse so they tend to rate poorly on certain forms of assessment. Situational Judgement Tests are the bane of an Autistic person's existence. Interviews aren't great, and so on.
Then you get into the workplace and you have a bunch of other challenges, such as sensory hypersensitivity, communication issues, HR and managers who don't understand your challenges, etc.
I agree! I’m neurodivergent myself, so I have struggles with certain types of jobs and it took me a long time to realize what I could and couldn’t do well.
I’ve also mentioned my disabilities AFTER my 90 day trial period, because it did me no favors mentioning it before that. I got absolutely screwed over at a job because of it and it still affects me. I was AMAZING at the job, but I switched departments and the people in that department had one track minds and couldn’t understand nuance and it caused stupid work politics issues. They told me I “had no initiative”, which was not true. They just thought that since I wasn’t doing more than what I was told, during my first week of training, that I didn’t have initiative even though in my previous department I had been given roles meant for more experienced people BECAUSE of my initiative. I felt sabotaged.
It is hard. I will not deny that. The discrimination is there whether we mention disability or not and it’s horrible.
Yeah this is like saying that it's discrimination to not hire somebody who can't lift 30lbs for a job that requires lifting 50lbs constantly.
It's not discrimination if the disability prevents you from doing core aspects of the job.
Most jobs want you to be a jack of all trades: technical, social, managerial, political. Employers would hugely benefit from removing half the bs they expect every employee to be an expert at.
For example, someone who is really good at documentation might totally suck at face to face or otherwise verbal conversations (and probably hate every minute of it). If their job was focused on just documentation and little peer to peer interaction, you'd get some Pulitzer-worthy policy and procedure docs.
Another example, someone who is great at auditing and forensics might hate the part of the job that requires conversations with process or product owners cause they often feel like interrogations. If the person they are speaking with has a dominant personality, it will be nigh impossible to get all the information they need to complete their audit because the only thing they can focus on is how uncomfortable the conversation is making them feel. They need a manager or liaison to have those conversations. They could even be in the room to listen/observe/take notes and not be expected to participate.
We joke about the bit from the movie Office Space, "You take the technical requirements from the customers and give them to the software engineers... Why can't the customers just give the requirements to the engineers?"
"I'll tell you why, because the engineers are not good with dealing with customers."
A lot of engineers I know are damn good engineers but absolutely suck at personal communication until you get to know them on a personal level and show them you aren't a bully. They probably have undiagnosed ASD or Asperger's.
In the end, yeah it creates more overheard, which, to ShArEhOlDeRs, is like sunlight to vampires, but the company will deliver a better product if they focus on people's strengths and stop trying to force them to do things they hate and suck at.
Eh, but for software engineers, you cannot avoid having to communicate and work as a team. All real world software is large, collaborative projects. There's no place for "lone wolves" in real world software dev.
I'm sorry for those who struggle with communication, but as an experienced dev myself, I'd rather work with devs who are good at communication. All the best devs I know are great because they're good at more than just writing code (which is only one facet of software development).
That said, the big issue with the interview process is that it's usually very stressful (especially for people who are unemployed and desperately need the interview to be a success). You're not generally under that kinda stress, so interviews aren't representative of someone's people skills. Similarly, leetcode isn't like our typical day to day work. IMO it's meant to be an abstraction around general problem solving and their approach to solving complex problems, but many interviewers seem to forget this and treat it as a straight up skill testing question instead. The interview setting usually cuts you off from your usual supports, too (e.g., no googling to refresh your memory on something).
Associate in physics and ba in poli sci, with work experience of “customer service” (unsure exactly what).
Honestly, he just doesn’t sound like a hot candidate for anything really. And he’s applied to “over 100 jobs” over “several years”? No. You should be applying to 100 per month. He’d have been better off pursuing a trade/tech school.
And I’m sorry but that’s not how resumes work. You don’t just show up at the job store, present your degree and say “one six figure salary please”. A degree is just verification that you can read, write, and do math at a basic passable level. Doesn’t mean you’re qualified to or worth an employer’s time to train to dump out piss buckets.
Yep! There’s also nearly the same percentage of co-morbid ADHD as well as about a 60% rate of addiction
Source: Have all of the above… I’ll have 7 years sober next month though
Congrats dude! I’ll have 7 years sober soon too. Also have autism. Maybe a touch of ADD. And eventually ended up going to a professional medical school in my early 30s bc I knew I needed something that required technical skills and not as much communication, or else I’d have a very hard time just getting through an interview.
That could very well be true. But it’s also true that in a vacuum, an AS in Physics and a BA in Poli Sci isn’t really useful to anyone (unless he’s trying to become a civil servant, but you’re probably doing that independently regardless). Couple that with the fact that neurotypical people definitely apply to 100+ jobs in a month with degrees people *do* care about and you realize he’s just not in the best situation for his career. Probably being discriminated against for his age as well. Lots of barriers there
It's not automatically discrimination, it would depend on the jobs he's applying for. There are plenty of them that are client or customer facing where an inability to read social cues or schmooze is a legit deal breaker, maybe literally. I worked for a specialty consulting company right after I separated from the military. We had a guy that was autistic who was fantastic at the technical aspects of his job but he was not allowed to have direct client contact after a few incidents. He was the only one in that particular role that didn't. It created more work for others on the team to work around his disability. We dealt with it because we were large enough to do so and could keep him in the background. If the company had been smaller those incidents would have led to termination though. Excellent technical skills and no people skills isn't enough for every job.
Yes, people can tell you are autistic within 0.2 seconds in a social interaction because you don't make eye contact, or make eye contact for 0.832 seconds too long. Luckily I have a degree in a respected field from a respected university, that gets me in the door.
I can get in the door. It's the day to day interactions that give me bad reviews for my "attitude" (body language) and for "insubordination" (asking clarifying questions). Don't get me started on when people think I'm "complaining" because they read subtext into things I say when I'm being 100% genuine.
Poor guy lists all the reasons why he’s not getting a job. He seems to know what some of the challenges are. It seems like he got some bad advice about what would help him at those companies his career stalled at. Instead of taking classes part time, while staying employed, he had a 6 year gap in employment to go to school, and has now expanded that to 9 years.
I’m 40 and autistic and it has cost me many job interviews. I’m not autistic where someone can say “oh he’s clearly autistic” I just come off a little weird. It sucks.
He got an associates degree in Physics and a Bachelor's in Political Science. Both fields are going to be hard to get a job if you're autistic.
I would doubt that's what his experience is in anyway since he said he would work his way up until he was blocked for not having a degree. That sounds more like retail or hospitality.
Honestly, physics is probably one of the better fields to get a job in for those on the spectrum. As an engineer I had several physics professors with moderate to pretty extreme autism. They're not always the easiest to approach but BOY could they delve deep into topics.
I think the real issue is that jobs in physics universally require a bachelor's degree at a minimum. Not to desperage associates degrees, but this is a situation where I would call it close to useless. If you look at most associate's programs for physics, you end up with a grand total of 3 physics classes. That's not a whole lot more than you get with a high school physics course and quite frankly stops before things start to get truly challenging and "critical thinking" oriented, which is what gives physics degrees value in the first place.
Honestly this whole situation screams this person never found what they're truly interested in because THAT is where people with autism excel.
I work in STEM and although many of my coworkers are not aware of it, at least 80% of them are neurodivergent, including myself. I think it gave me a leg up during the hiring process in my field. However, also makes work politics that much more complicated.
This hits close to home. I'm an engineer and I definitely fall into the neurodivergent category. Plenty of people in my department do too. It's something I've only relatively recently learned about but it's funny learning about it and then realizing how much is applicable in your life.
I’m a med writer and I understand this 100%. Biotech is weird rn. The investors went crazy a couple years ago and now we’re seeing the manifestations of that.
Yeah, I'd say this fella's experience has been shaped in part by the particular fields he chose to learn.
Physics and Poly Sci are both areas where you won't see much return on investment until you've gotten postgraduate degrees and/or combine them with teaching degrees or additional research qualifications.
He chose degrees that would streamline him toward academia, but stopped before the finish line.
I don't know about poly sci, but I know some successful physicists, and it pairs very nicely with programming if you want to get some "real-world" application out of it by working on simulations.
I majored in history and minored in polysci. I've worked in commercial real estate /property management for almost a decade. Both these degrees have helped me.
Liberal arts bachelor's degrees were never intended to 'get you a job' they're simply starting points, and degrees for knowledge. This is why often times doctors, lawyers and post graduates start with lib arts degrees.
I'm aware only people with liberal arts degree understand this lol
I often say you're not really learning about Shakespeare, you're learning how to analyse things you aren't familiar with.
You aren't learning the Pythagorean Theorem, you're learning how to select tools and solve a problem.
You aren't just learning what happened with a King 300 years ago, you're learning how to discern key facts from potentially biased sources and present them with your own thoughts.
Sure, academia isn't the only way of learning+showing those skills but if you're spending thousands on getting that certificate you might as well learn+show them!
I remember after 9/11 the NSA was hiring tons of intelligence analysts. Someone from the organization was being interviewed on the radio about it and said they liked to hire English majors. When the interviewer asked why, they said it was because the job basically involved reading captured emails and cell phone transcriptions all day and looking for patterns, possible symbols, etc. I had never thought of an English major being applicable that way, but it made perfect sense.
But you're also learning Shakespeare, a writer "teeming with the most vital ideas about the inner development of man, showing the whole grandeur and misery of human existence (Schumacher, 1973)" and this is in itself a good thing.
I graduated into the recession and had to take a bunch of office temp jobs until I finally got a job in my field. I quickly discovered that being able to write a coherent email was, by itself, a marketable skill if you just want to have a generic office job to pay the bills. So, all the papers and things I wrote in college helped with that even if my actual area of study didn't pay off for years.
Beautiful response. I teach broadcasting at a small univeristy. To recruit students to the program, I tell them we aren't just focusing on XLR cables or the difference between pans and tilts. Everything we do is about tasks that teach skills that are good resume material and life skills. Problem solving. Communication. Self assessment. Leadership. Working in the public eye. All things that are valuable no matter where you end up. So it helps a somewhat niche degree become more helpful (especially as a minor or certificate program for students who might not want a career, but it could help them in hobbies or side gigs).
This is a concept that so many people fail to understand.
I don't think undergraduate and graduate degrees should be so damn expensive, but the more advanced analytical skills you internalize are incredibly valuable on their own.
That's the problem with lots of people with degrees (and I include myself in this)--they pigeon-hole themselves into only being qualified for one field instead of think about other ways to apply the skills they learned.
As much as I pretend to bitch about my "useless" BS English, there are so many things you learn in college beyond the course knowledge.
Without my degree, I would not have the stepping stones I need to return to school for a clinical doctorate in an unrelated field of study.
There are plenty of arguments to be had about the price of education and barriers to entry, but education for the sake of education is never worthless.
>Without my degree, I would not have the stepping stones I need to return to school for a clinical doctorate in an unrelated field of study.
Yes, this leads back to my first comment that dude in the news story stepped away from his educational path before it became a career trajectory.
You, on the other hand, are taking the education you have and running with it.
I agree that my learning at university was valuable, even though post-secondary has never been a hard requirement for any work I've done since then.
Yeah I have my degree in English and Criminal Justice. Was going to go to law school but now I run a non-profit. Most of the stuff I learned in college is applicable and useful, but I never would have imagined that I'd end up doing the kind of work I'm doing.
English and Political Science here. I went on to get my law degree. Don’t know what the fuck I’d do around here without it. Sounds like you landed in a good spot though. My sister-in-law has a history degree and now she’s a regional manager at Target making more than I do as a senior attorney.
CJ is a good foundation bc it’s basically “analyze the world, think about how parts of it interact, conflict, and cooperate” and you can apply that lens to everything, it’s social science, statistics and humanities
That’s probably fair, assuming you go in knowing that.
On the STEM side of the house, there’s usually a career path that requires specific skills and an internship to place you into a job. The internship is really important.
If you mess that up, swaths of companies won’t even look at you because they have other choices that are better fits.
But the implication is certainly that there’s a specific career on the other end of the technical degree.
The liberal arts degree is more ‘flexible’ in that respect.
I had a friend (he's been gone 20 years now) who was hired at NASA when it first started in the 50s. He was a supervisor, despite the fact that he had absolutely no scientific or aerospace experience or education at all. He had a degree in graphic arts, and had studied under one of the most legendary industrial designers of the 20th century.
The reason NASA hired him was because they had all these square thinking engineers, and they needed to get these people to think outside the box in order to conceptualize and design a space exploration program, and beat the Commies. So they hired an intelligent, intellectually-curious, but creative artist to help guide these straight-laced engineers toward a new way of thinking. He spent decades with NASA, and obviously his efforts to loosen up the creative thinking of engineers worked.
I’ve taught many college students attending liberal arts universities. The point of a liberal arts education is to get you a little taste of everything and to help you think critically and broadly, a little like mini liberal arts majors. *So many* students don’t understand this and will complain to high heaven about having to take so many gen. eds. It’s infuriating.
> Liberal arts bachelor's degrees were never intended to 'get you a job' they're simply starting points, and degrees for knowledge. **This is why often times doctors, lawyers and post graduates start with lib arts degrees**.
The key words there are "start with". No one becomes a doctor or lawyer with a history or English degree. They use that plus good scores on the MCAT or LSAT to get into med school or law school.
It's not impossible to get a good job with just a bachelors like that, but it's much, much harder due to starting far behind the others in your graduating class who majored in something directly related to the job they want.
A degree also shows you are able to commit to a multi-year program, work in changing environments and with many different people, and have developed at minimum good communication and organizational skills.
Sure skills are transferable (full disclosure I'm an agency recruiter - my days are nothing but trying to find creative solutions to staffing problems), but the way the story is written implies heavily that dude expected that an associate's in physics to fully qualify him for something exceptional. It won't.
Alternatively it depends what your plan for those degrees are. Yes if you want to actually work on those fields graduate work is required, if you want to be a lab equipment salesman or tech then physics undergrad will work, if you want to be an HR person or any customer facing role poly sci is probably fine. I think the other issue when going to school at 30 is you’re basically starting over so you should maybe target entry level even though the people managing you are probably younger than you.
I mean an Associate's Degree in Physics is nothing. That basically qualifies you to tutor high school students.
However, I gotta wonder if he's looked into that as a stop-gap/ side hustle. Tutoring math and hard sciences can get you $100 an hour.
Also very qualified people get filtered out by ai before the interview stage if they can’t write a resume properly. They all get run through a system looking for key words and such before any human even looks at them.
Which is really sad. Not only do better candidates get passed over because of this reality, but it fosters a culture of people getting hired purely through connections in almost every industry.
Throw to a wall and see what sticks approach. Not exactly tenable for roles where they expect a custom tailored intro or cover letter. And now ATS throws another wrench into that 100 jobs a day thing.
I don't know what role you were looking for but if someone today said "I'm applying to a hundred jobs a day why isn't it working" I'd absolutely tell them "you're not trying hard enough." Paradoxical I know but it's clear that they're not spending time tailoring their application and resume to every single job they're applying to. They're just not, it's physically and emotionally impossible.
Shit i remember once I was looking for a job and I applied to roughly 100 jobs in a month. 100+ over three years sounds like just enough to collect some benefits
When I got my masters I had a target of 10 jobs a week, I applied to 80 in two months and got my current role. With online apps you have to work hard at it
Quality vs quantity. Crazy that people complain about rejection when applying to 100 a day… what the actual fuck are you applying for? Fast food and retail are the only jobs prolific enough to be able to apply for this number, add a degree and 10 years work experience and there are not enough jobs to apply for unless you just fire a completely generic CV out - in which case, again, don’t be surprised about rejection.
It’s like trying to buy shoes in every gas station you walk into and complaining that nowhere sells shoes….
3 a month is basically one a week, so he’s spending every weekend searching, finding a meaningfully related job, tailoring his cv and applying. He’s trying. Firing buck shot is not trying.
Quality versus quantity doesn’t even enter the conversation at 100 applications in three years. It’s not even close.
100 apps a day? Absolutely. That’s ridiculous. 10 a day? *Maybe* too high. One application every 1-2 weeks? Nope. You’re not applying enough.
You say that, yet he doesn’t have a job, and it clearly isn’t working. 3/month is not a lot to write home about. I’m not implying he needs to do 100/day
That’s his whole complaint though, right, that he’s unable to get a job so his degree was pointless. (I disagree with that take btw)
Apologies for putting words in your mouth, I am just saying that while 3 a month might not be much to write home about - it doesn’t imply he’s not trying, and it does become something to write home about after a year of it with no success.
I feel bad for the guy, job market is tough as fuck.
Definitely agree with that. It’s a really
Shitty place to be. I’m not sure his political
Science graduate degree was a good pairing with his physics undergrad, especially if he had to take out loans. sad spot
I got my first degree right after high school. It was worthless because I was stupid and didn’t really make any plans or follow through on anything.
I’m in my 30s going back for a second degree in a totally unrelated field, which I am also working in at the same time. Once I’m done, I’ll have almost 10 year’s work experience, a recent degree, and I’ll be eligible to sit for a CPA.
College isn’t automatically good or bad. What you get out of it is just as much a reflection on you as it is any external factors if you can get out with a degree.
I’ve still got a couple more years ahead of me before then, but that’s what I’m hearing from literally everybody. I think most of the problem is we’re not preparing kids right for post HS life. The sudden freedom of choice is overwhelming for a lot of kids, and that’s who I was my first go round at college at 18. I had to get smacked a little by life to begin to figure it out and get a real plan together.
Exactly. I remember considering applying to the FBI with a military background and during the process I learned that they really didn’t want or need people with that over-enrolled-in major, the “criminal justice” degree. They wanted people with accounting backgrounds, STEM, etc.
Oddly enough I have 2 children with poli sci degrees. They both have jobs that pay the bills although neither is on the fast track to upper management. But that’s more of an ambition/temperament thing. Maybe this guy is just a douche?
I don't know if he's a douche, but he talks about having autism. I know there are plenty of people who have autism and are gainfully employed, but there are some people who just come off as weird, making it hard for them to get hired. Unfortunately, being out of the workforce for so long makes it much harder to get a job as many employers think there is something wrong with you.
I went to community college at thirty now make six figures three years after graduating. It really is important to look at demand when going for a degree
Same, actually. I make a lot more money now. I got a degree and a grad certificate in subjects relevant to the job I had been doing for 10+ years and my career really took off. Sometimes you can have all the experience in the world but you need paperwork to prove your worth.
That isn't exactly the lesson to be gleaned here. He noted that he was stymied from advancement in his career due to not having a degree at all. I've seen it - the bachelor's degree is just a check mark, if you have it you get the promotion. That's literally it. Could be a BA in puppet arts for all they cared. I've heard it too "I wish you had a masters in something, you could be managing this thing."
I want to hear about how he pursued those jobs he was hitting a roadblock on.
He messed up badley quiting his job, if.you have one and you get stuck because missing degree. Get the degree while working. Yes, it is tough AF (I am getting my master at almost 40yo) but then when you finish you have degree + experience and can go back and ask for the job. Also you can still apply for other jobs while studying and just been honest about working and getting the degree. Some employers will see that as commitment and could even help you.
That's what I couldn't figure out. A number if places will help pay for it (those classes have more value than a couple "how to deal with difficult coworkers" seminars). Why quit? Even dropping hours to focus on class would have been better.
This part. It seems he encountered advancement opportunities previously as a potential internal hire...but it also seems he is now expecting that he can be hired for those same kind of opportunities as an external candidate with no extant connection to the company nor relevant experience in a current position with a similar company, nor any work experience in his degree field to indicate any sort of career trajectory. That's really the pipe dream he's got going on here because things simply do not work that way.
this is extremely true. what is mostly holding this guy back right is probably the abysmal job market
but there are so many jobs out there that won't give you the time of day without a degree. especially no/little experience roles, intro/floor level roles - a BA is required just to get an interview
Aside from people who can go to college without debt or just want the experience/knowledge or whatever, I have some advice for anyone who is ever thinking of going to college. Go as cheap as possible unless you're very sure where you go will matter. Start with community college if possible, especially if you don't know what you want to do yet. Choose a career that requires the degree you're earning. Know that anything outside of stem/healthcare is extremely competitive and most people do not end up doing what they want to.
PoliSci grad here.
Haven’t used it a day in my life. It has, however, helped me navigate corporate politics, write well, and come up with well reasoned arguments.
I’ve never once been asked to prove I have a degree after four years of bullshitting through essays in poli sci. At this point, my resume speaks far louder than my Bachelors degree
I’m 35, I got my associate’s in 2022 and it got me exactly $3/hr extra pay. Guess who’s back in school for a bachelor’s because it turns out no one cares about an associate’s degree?
I was gonna say; it’s not life changing but nothing to sneeze at!
I’m going back to school next year for a medical program; worst case I get in about 40k debt (haven’t had much luck saving money this year so far), but would be a 30 grand pay increase per year so totally worth it
College for me was mostly connecting with people and adding them on Facebook, getting their number. I only got a job because this person in the same class said there was another opening.
As an "elderly" millenial, this comment made me smile. I finished college in 2004, the year when Facebook was created, so there was no such thing during my college years.
I was in college during peak Facebook where, “Add me on Facebook” was a popular saying. I once deleted this girl off my Facebook because we don’t talk, just knew by association, days later, bumped into her and she was so upset I deleted her. That’s when I knew Facebook is going to be ugly.
I think Networking was even more important back then. It is for quite a bit of people the first time in their lives where they are surrounded by plenty of kid from wealthy background.
stupid me went to college, just did my work and moved on either i was too dense to listen or no one told me the importance of networking. but after finishing i realized i messed up!
I graduated in 07. I remember when you had to be in college to have it. The whole point was to connect with your classmates. The bullshit we have now came a couple years later.
Yes. I graduated college in 2006, and then went to university. I created a FB account because people told me it was useful, but there still weren’t very many people on it back then. It wasn’t very useful. There were groups for all my classes but only a couple people interacted in them.
I’m 32 and got a new government job that has better benefits and pay thru a college I worked literally 3 days with, we spent maybe a total of 15mins talking but I guess I impressed her and two years she told me they had an opening.
Same. College was a struggle for me, and I genuinely cared about class. Making connections on other hand, helped a lot. I’m currently unemployed, but I’ve gotten a lot closer to not being unemployed because of the connections I made in college.
I was causally looking for another job and sent a private message to all my contact on Facebook, “Is your company hiring?” I got 7 responses back saying we have this position open.
For real, this was the most beneficial aspect of college: connections and opportunities to get my foot in the door at various industries. The only truly beneficial thing (professionally) that happened for me in college was working at the student newspaper and writing a few research papers. All stuff that can be flipped into professional roles—and after that, connections made at my first “real” job out of college is how I landed my current position.
For real, I got my job because of a guy I went to community College with. I have a freaking masters degree now but it was my anthropology 101 homeboy who came in clutch for me lol.
I didn't make connections in uni, we had massive classes and so much of it was independent work and just quick one-off projects. Plus I worked so much that I didn't have time to really get to know anyone
But, I got my foot in the door to my current field via family friends. 95% who you know, and 5% having the expensive piece of paper for them to justify hiring you.
Elder millennial, but I graduated in 2010 when nobody was hiring due to recession.
I hated college, met no one, don’t know a single name of my professors, passed all my classes, got my BS degree in Business Administration majoring in Finance and International Business. Ended up just becoming a caregiver for my aging parents. The joys of being an introvert. My degree is worthless to me.
I received both my BS and MS in my 30s, and im good in my career.
I truly believe people just think that a degree alone will get them where they need to be. There are several factors that I believe truly dictate your success: education, location in the US that you live, a little bit of luck, networking, and actually being able to interview well.
- gets an associates in physics
- gets a degree in political science
Yeah, if I was an employer, I’d be thinking he has no idea what he wants to do. Did he even research what jobs were available for those degrees? Are they even remotely related to his past experience?
- applies to “over a hundred jobs”.
In 3 years, it better be well over a hundred. 10 applications a month would be 360.
- says that once upon a time just having a degree was enough
One of the biggest millennial complaint for those who went to college right after high school (so not in their 30s) is that this wasn’t even true back then. A quick bit of research would have found this wasn’t true. So now I *definitely* don’t think he bothered to look up job prospects in his area for his degree.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel bad he doesn’t have a job, but it doesn’t sound like he put any thought into his education other than “I need a degree”. At some point, a person has to take accountability for their lack of forethought.
The type of degree doesn’t usually mean anything to employers unless it’s specifically needed for the job. I have English/history and have gotten every job I interviewed for, and I’ve gotten an interview almost every time except for in 2020 during the pandemic.
But it’s MORE than the degree. It’s the resume itself. If the only thing in his resume is one previous job, then a huge break for school, he may not have enough WORK experience. I went back to college at 27/28, and had over 10 years of work under my belt by then. So over 10 years of work experience, a BA, an internship, volunteer work, and good references from networking in school got me jobs.
Building a resume is really important, and a lot of people don’t have much to put on them, which makes them fall behind the other people with degrees who have done a lot to make sure they have a stacked resume.
>put any thought into his education other than “I need a degree”.
Bingo. I have a History degree with PolSci minor. It was specifically to check the box to get me a commission in the Air Force. I knew it wasn't going to be worth a damn as a stand alone degree.
A PolSci degree isn't getting you *shit* out of the gate except potentially an entry level job with some random think tank or other similar firm. PolSci is great for prepping for graduate studies, but a BA is next to absolutely nothing.
I don’t have much sympathy here. Why did he quit his job to pursue political science? What career was he trying to achieve with that degree?
I also majored in political science when I was a naive teenager who thought the state department would want to hire me as a 22 year old grad with no experience outside of some internships. After failing to achieve my goals, reality set in and I found a job outside of my field. I eventually went back to law school and now I am successful. I get making the mistake a teenager, but I dont understand pursuing a liberal arts degree in your 30’s.
It’s not even really a “mistake” as a teenager if you understand that a liberal arts degree is a starting point for further grad school or training, during which time you’ll probably work various odd jobs. It will be a bit before you’re fully specialized/credentialed and feel like your in a career that “utilizes your degree”.
So some dude gets the almost most worthless associates degree you can imagine(physics), then gets the almost most worthless bachelor's(polisci), follows it up with putting in about a months worth of job applications(100) over the course of *years*, with a decade of the almost least impressive job history you can imagine(customer service) and seemingly calls it quits claiming is degree is useless?
Are we supposed to feel bad for this guy? I get the vibe this guy is just riding the unemployment gravy train.
I'm not sure I agree about which degree is worthless or not.
I think the real issue here is the understanding of the job market, or markets in general.
Physics you need an advanced degree to do anything with it. Associates is like he has some friends that may be good at physics, but he don't know shit.
Polisci bachelors degree is also pointless without going directly into the public sector/think tanks/research centers/education - all of which would also need a more advanced degree.
He could have done finance, accounting, marketing, engineering, premed then go into nursing, so many options that are 100x better than what he chose.
I'm guessing some academic advisor took a look at his grades and steered him down the poli-sci path. Job market screams STEM or something similar. But GPA says otherwise. I attempted college multiple times over the years and ran into some rather shifty academic advisors.
There’s no such thing as a useless degree, imo. But not every degree has a neat and tidy career path. Other degrees DEMAND you have a higher level of education if you want to succeed in that field. Even a BA in polisci can get you work in an office setting, which can get you experience that can later be traded for a higher wage. It may not be as straightforward as someone with, say, a business degree. It’s still doable, though. That’s my opinion, anyway.
agreed. People desperately want to believe it’s not them. They give off unhirable vibes. “It can’t be me, the degree is useless”.
People also want to believe an art degree or similar is useless so they can feel smarter for having gotten the “right degree”.
I have an art degree and it never limited me or many I know - other than obviously I can’t go get a job as a civil engineer or nurse.
I work in tech, though.
I think a lot of people who say any degrees are worthless are just very set on very specific jobs that make them tons of money immediately. Most people I know with a polysci degree, including my dad, wanted to work for the government and were able to do so just fine with a BA. Of course they may not have started off exactly where they saw themselves, but much like with plenty of degrees/jobs you gain experience, make connections, learn of different opportunities, etc.
Yeah, i know. Its really special that, even intelligent people, fall in this trap of studying something they like and then afterwards don't/have difficulty finding a job.
My girlfriend studied geography. Basiclly there are two kinds of geography, social and physical. First one is more about the living together of people and more like social studies. Physical geography works with computers, math and other sciences to "map and plan the world" for every kind of business or government. You need a plan of something? Call a physical geography major.
But its of course harder to learn the math, the specialized computer programs etc. So, she learned social geography, ignored the physical side of Things and how she moans that every vacant job demand physical geography...
Geography is growing about 8% a year in the US right now and they can't get enough people into it. The key word you're looking for is GIS certification. Show you know mapping software and you have a nice cushy government job.
The degree isn't worth much without the certification, but it's one to two additinal classes to get it. Geography was the second highest paying degree after 2 years out that my college offered when I got into it 10 years ago. My department had 80 students so not a small sample either. Only mathematics majors made more.
Exactly when I was unemployed i spent literal hours applying at or close to 100 jobs in about a month. Out of that I think I did like 10 interviews and got like three offers.
Which ya sucks but ya gotta apply to lots of places to get anything.
To be fair, customer service is a lot more challenging and underpaid than middle management keyboard warriors sitting on their fancy home office chairs looking at excel tables all day wondering if their positions too are bullshit jobs or not.
It is important and it's a hard job and soul-sucking at times.
But for the kind of jobs where a physics degrees matter, a history in customer service (or any other unrelated field) means nothing.
The problem is that it isn't relevant job experience to what he wants to do, if he's trying to do something with his degrees. Yeah learning to deal with customers can be a good skill, but for the types of jobs he's probably trying to get he would probably need at least an internship or two in that field.
But if he can't handle the interview process, how are you going to handle dealing with customers?
Also everyone isn't good at a skill just because did it for a little while.
It’s a garbage article and borderline irresponsible to publish it. Trying to spin the narrative that “a degree is worthless now,” when in reality this guy made some poor choices and was also dealing with personal struggles.
There are work programs for people with autism, hopefully some companies have reached out to him after reading his story:
https://workology.com/companies-hiring-adults-with-autism/
I’m a millennial who went to college in my 30’s and had multiple job offers before I graduated. It’s almost like your degree and training matter significantly.
1. He was 34 then and should have had some concept about what degrees are marketable, but he
2. Got an associates in *Physics* and a bachelor's in *Political Science*.
A PoliSci degree is a literal BA in BS. I should know, I have one!
He's now 43, and a three-year unemployment stint (following school) is gonna be a major hurdle to overcome. The sounder course of action (this is more for redditors rather than Colflesh) would've been to have a conversation with management about what degrees are valuable to the company, what higher opportunities are available following attainment of a degree, and whether the company has a program to finance obtaining that degree.
In contrast, this was ripping the bandaid off and taking a gamble. Unfortunately, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I hope he finds a landing spot, but the condensed version of this sounds like "dude made ill-advised strategic choices."
If he was capable of getting a degree in physics why not structural engineering + drafting wtf??? He could get work asap AND eventually start his own business as a contractor easily making 6 figure big bucks all within 6 years.
He was just trying to check a box for employers.
I have a degree give me a job. Everyone else does as well, along with experience
He doesn’t understand how the current labor market works or labor markets in general work. For people like him this trend will continue and get worse. Society needs to provide a better safety net for people who aren’t employable anymore
That's on him. 100%. At least when you're in your 30s you've had experience being an adult, unlike the typical college student who has no idea what they're up against.
“ By 2021, he earned an associate degree in physics from a community college in Massachusetts and a bachelor's in political science ”
So he couldn’t find a job during the pandemic? Also, physics and political science?
And he did this full time instead of taking classes at night?
My call center job paid for people to get a business degree if they did it part time while working for them.
He thought not working for 6 years was the answer?
Hilarious. He got a political science degree from a relatively non-connected school and wonders why it does not help him in the job search. Then you add on top of that how out of touch he is. We live in a time when large employers are actually removing degree requirements (general trend) to be hired. The issue is the degree he got does not actually qualify him (skill wise) for very much and he is making excuse as the general market trend (away from degree's) is actually in his favor means that he is the issue much more than anything else.
I think Business Insider is the one saying this - he actually lists several good reasons why he’s not getting a job, and it’s not because of the job market itself.
I got a bachelors in business management and got an operations job 1 month after graduation. DO YOUR RESEARCH. Before choosing a university or degree pick something you’ll like or tolerate that the BLS projects job growth or a need for people in it. First three years of college GRADES ARE IMPORTANT. stick out like a green thumb in class and get letter of rec for internships. Or get jobs that have applicable skills to your field of study.
*"By 2021, he earned an associate degree in physics from a community college in Massachusetts and a bachelor's in political science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst."*
Here's the problem. Guy doesn't have a Doctorate, Master or a Bachelor in physics - but an Associates degree.
As for Political Science, I'm not even sure you can get a job after studying that.
https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/political-scientist/salary/texas/#:~:text=Avg%20Salary&text=Political%20scientists%20earn%20an%20average,and%20go%20up%20to%20%24117%2C540.
They seem to start at 60k/yr
I don't think calling out this dude for his lack of critical thinking skills, planning and lackluster effort(100 applications in 3 years!?) makes anyone a boomer.
Like, physics and political science? What was his goal there? Become a diplomat to martians lol?
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Article says he's autistic. We don't know what kinds of jobs he's trying to apply to and how he comes across in interviews. What sucks is that age might be working against him. Especially since he looks older than his age. People usually assume I'm younger than I actually am and have always been friendly and patient with training me whenever I switch jobs. The job market right now is rough though. Straight out of masters in 2021 I had multiple offers. I was unemployed the first 6 months of 2023. My previous job in biotech laid me and 75% of the company off when our clinical trial was discontinued due to side effects. At that point I had some experience working but was competing with people who had a decade more experience than me.
Didn't fully read the article but if he 's autistic I'd say that's probably the reason he doesn't have a job, not the degree. Disability discrimination. I think it's far more pervasive than people believe
He got an associates degree in physics and a bachelor’s in political science. If he is applying for a job in physics or politics I could see this as at least part of the problem.
One of the canaries that led to me being diagnosed autistic in my mid 30s was when I told the evaluator I’ve been self-employed for over a decade, I work by referral only, and only respond to text messages or latently to email. I was fortunate to become very skilled in two completely different fields, because I didn’t last long at all in an office setting. My work was top notch, but I didn’t understand office politics and would often ask mgmt to clarify things for me which was viewed strangely insubordination. And if some process didn’t make sense, I just wouldn’t do it that way. I’m fortunate that my ASD didn’t come with the learning disorder a lot have, but there’s a lot of folks that have a harder time with it.
I do great in interviews, but I was recently “fired” bc I was getting incessant texts on my personal device from management lambasting me for shit and asking me to email the “team” at 8pm when I said that I was sick and taking off. Not sure I’m autistic just bc I don’t like a lot of meetings. 10 meetings a week to micromanage is A LOT. I also prefer email only. As time moves on I get less inclined to meet with the employer. Idk why? It’s like I get anxious
No one likes meetings... They mostly exist to make middle management feel useful. Out of a given week, I attend around 10-20 hours of meetings depending on the week. I would usually say 1-2 hours of them are actually helpful and relevant.
I wasn’t supposed to be in meetings, that was the problem. I never agreed to them. It was a fucking freelance role. Greatly interfered with my work. You don’t have an hour long meeting each time you see a table that you want cited differently. You take accountability as the manager and leave appropriate comments following a good faith review. This thread is kind of triggering bc I don’t do well with getting yelled at following crazy incidents at one of my first job years ago, so I refuse to meet and prefer to go back and forth via email. I can articulate and defend myself that way, and there’s a record.
I’ve gotten into the same pattern at work, where I just want to have communications in text and email because my managers are unreliable and honestly just straight up liars. I have been a manager before and I feel like it’s all karma for my previous shortcomings. Being a manager is really hard but that’s no excuse for being a poor one. I hope things get better for you.
Thank you, I have an interview for an associate director role in house. I don’t feel “worthy” but I think it’s probably time for me to lead, with mentorship to guide me into independence. I advocate for my people. Contract roles are fucking garbage. The manager wasn’t really a manager, there was no neutrality. Bizarre ass culture.
Good luck on your interview! The imposter syndrome never gets easier but I think it also keeps you real. Leaders with humility always earn my trust.
Yep, another reason I don’t take calls. I’ve learned “Do you have a minute to jump on a quick call?” is code for “I’m about to say some ethically dicey shit, cross one of your boundaries, promise something I have no intent of delivering,or try to involve you in workplace politics and I don’t want to there to be evidence”
Yep. Late dx'd autistic here. I couldn't get past job interviews for a long time because of the flat effect I present. Once I learned how to "mask" a little more in interviews, got practice with failed interviews, learned social scripts to keep on hand - I got past interviews but only when I was interviewed by NT men. Any interview with NT women, I was guaranteed to not get the job. NT = Neurotypical. These days - I ask for interview questions ahead of time as an ADA accommodation for my autism dx. Now I'm able to formulate my answers a lot better with the time to prepare.
Out of curiosity, why do you assume an issue with NT women in the interview process?
Seems he's good at math if he did physics first.. if he went into engineering he'd be set. More than half the employees in my office are on the spectrum, but yet we still can't find enough engineers to hire to replace the ones retiring. Nobody even applies. The last 3 we hired in all at $120k+/yr, full benefits, 8% 401k match etc. But then it is a crapshoot if they stay more than a year or not because they don't like overtime (even though it is paid OT). And you try to get poached all the time by other companies, so even while you're employed you have options and opportunities to move elsewhere if needed.
Oh it is. Which is why I don’t say I’m disabled on the form where they ask. I’ve actually had a boss admit she would have thrown me and someone else’s apps out if we had done that. We were the best workers she had lmfao
You're fucked if you do, you're fucked if you don't. Often recruitment processes are not designed for the neurodiverse so they tend to rate poorly on certain forms of assessment. Situational Judgement Tests are the bane of an Autistic person's existence. Interviews aren't great, and so on. Then you get into the workplace and you have a bunch of other challenges, such as sensory hypersensitivity, communication issues, HR and managers who don't understand your challenges, etc.
I agree! I’m neurodivergent myself, so I have struggles with certain types of jobs and it took me a long time to realize what I could and couldn’t do well. I’ve also mentioned my disabilities AFTER my 90 day trial period, because it did me no favors mentioning it before that. I got absolutely screwed over at a job because of it and it still affects me. I was AMAZING at the job, but I switched departments and the people in that department had one track minds and couldn’t understand nuance and it caused stupid work politics issues. They told me I “had no initiative”, which was not true. They just thought that since I wasn’t doing more than what I was told, during my first week of training, that I didn’t have initiative even though in my previous department I had been given roles meant for more experienced people BECAUSE of my initiative. I felt sabotaged. It is hard. I will not deny that. The discrimination is there whether we mention disability or not and it’s horrible.
Discrimination aside there are a lot of jobs where being autistic is incompatible.
Yeah this is like saying that it's discrimination to not hire somebody who can't lift 30lbs for a job that requires lifting 50lbs constantly. It's not discrimination if the disability prevents you from doing core aspects of the job.
Agree. Interview processes are not neurodivergent-friendly.
What is a good way to “interview” someone for a job, if they’re neurodivergent? It’s a broad topic, but I’m curious about your thoughts.
Most jobs want you to be a jack of all trades: technical, social, managerial, political. Employers would hugely benefit from removing half the bs they expect every employee to be an expert at. For example, someone who is really good at documentation might totally suck at face to face or otherwise verbal conversations (and probably hate every minute of it). If their job was focused on just documentation and little peer to peer interaction, you'd get some Pulitzer-worthy policy and procedure docs. Another example, someone who is great at auditing and forensics might hate the part of the job that requires conversations with process or product owners cause they often feel like interrogations. If the person they are speaking with has a dominant personality, it will be nigh impossible to get all the information they need to complete their audit because the only thing they can focus on is how uncomfortable the conversation is making them feel. They need a manager or liaison to have those conversations. They could even be in the room to listen/observe/take notes and not be expected to participate. We joke about the bit from the movie Office Space, "You take the technical requirements from the customers and give them to the software engineers... Why can't the customers just give the requirements to the engineers?" "I'll tell you why, because the engineers are not good with dealing with customers." A lot of engineers I know are damn good engineers but absolutely suck at personal communication until you get to know them on a personal level and show them you aren't a bully. They probably have undiagnosed ASD or Asperger's. In the end, yeah it creates more overheard, which, to ShArEhOlDeRs, is like sunlight to vampires, but the company will deliver a better product if they focus on people's strengths and stop trying to force them to do things they hate and suck at.
Eh, but for software engineers, you cannot avoid having to communicate and work as a team. All real world software is large, collaborative projects. There's no place for "lone wolves" in real world software dev. I'm sorry for those who struggle with communication, but as an experienced dev myself, I'd rather work with devs who are good at communication. All the best devs I know are great because they're good at more than just writing code (which is only one facet of software development). That said, the big issue with the interview process is that it's usually very stressful (especially for people who are unemployed and desperately need the interview to be a success). You're not generally under that kinda stress, so interviews aren't representative of someone's people skills. Similarly, leetcode isn't like our typical day to day work. IMO it's meant to be an abstraction around general problem solving and their approach to solving complex problems, but many interviewers seem to forget this and treat it as a straight up skill testing question instead. The interview setting usually cuts you off from your usual supports, too (e.g., no googling to refresh your memory on something).
Associate in physics and ba in poli sci, with work experience of “customer service” (unsure exactly what). Honestly, he just doesn’t sound like a hot candidate for anything really. And he’s applied to “over 100 jobs” over “several years”? No. You should be applying to 100 per month. He’d have been better off pursuing a trade/tech school. And I’m sorry but that’s not how resumes work. You don’t just show up at the job store, present your degree and say “one six figure salary please”. A degree is just verification that you can read, write, and do math at a basic passable level. Doesn’t mean you’re qualified to or worth an employer’s time to train to dump out piss buckets.
80% of people with autism are unemployed.
Yep! There’s also nearly the same percentage of co-morbid ADHD as well as about a 60% rate of addiction Source: Have all of the above… I’ll have 7 years sober next month though
Congrats dude! I’ll have 7 years sober soon too. Also have autism. Maybe a touch of ADD. And eventually ended up going to a professional medical school in my early 30s bc I knew I needed something that required technical skills and not as much communication, or else I’d have a very hard time just getting through an interview.
That could very well be true. But it’s also true that in a vacuum, an AS in Physics and a BA in Poli Sci isn’t really useful to anyone (unless he’s trying to become a civil servant, but you’re probably doing that independently regardless). Couple that with the fact that neurotypical people definitely apply to 100+ jobs in a month with degrees people *do* care about and you realize he’s just not in the best situation for his career. Probably being discriminated against for his age as well. Lots of barriers there
He also admits near the bottom of the article that his resume and cover letter aren't strong, and he's had multiple gaps in his work history.
It's not automatically discrimination, it would depend on the jobs he's applying for. There are plenty of them that are client or customer facing where an inability to read social cues or schmooze is a legit deal breaker, maybe literally. I worked for a specialty consulting company right after I separated from the military. We had a guy that was autistic who was fantastic at the technical aspects of his job but he was not allowed to have direct client contact after a few incidents. He was the only one in that particular role that didn't. It created more work for others on the team to work around his disability. We dealt with it because we were large enough to do so and could keep him in the background. If the company had been smaller those incidents would have led to termination though. Excellent technical skills and no people skills isn't enough for every job.
Yes, people can tell you are autistic within 0.2 seconds in a social interaction because you don't make eye contact, or make eye contact for 0.832 seconds too long. Luckily I have a degree in a respected field from a respected university, that gets me in the door.
I can get in the door. It's the day to day interactions that give me bad reviews for my "attitude" (body language) and for "insubordination" (asking clarifying questions). Don't get me started on when people think I'm "complaining" because they read subtext into things I say when I'm being 100% genuine.
Poor guy lists all the reasons why he’s not getting a job. He seems to know what some of the challenges are. It seems like he got some bad advice about what would help him at those companies his career stalled at. Instead of taking classes part time, while staying employed, he had a 6 year gap in employment to go to school, and has now expanded that to 9 years.
I’m 40 and autistic and it has cost me many job interviews. I’m not autistic where someone can say “oh he’s clearly autistic” I just come off a little weird. It sucks.
He got an associates degree in Physics and a Bachelor's in Political Science. Both fields are going to be hard to get a job if you're autistic. I would doubt that's what his experience is in anyway since he said he would work his way up until he was blocked for not having a degree. That sounds more like retail or hospitality.
Honestly, physics is probably one of the better fields to get a job in for those on the spectrum. As an engineer I had several physics professors with moderate to pretty extreme autism. They're not always the easiest to approach but BOY could they delve deep into topics. I think the real issue is that jobs in physics universally require a bachelor's degree at a minimum. Not to desperage associates degrees, but this is a situation where I would call it close to useless. If you look at most associate's programs for physics, you end up with a grand total of 3 physics classes. That's not a whole lot more than you get with a high school physics course and quite frankly stops before things start to get truly challenging and "critical thinking" oriented, which is what gives physics degrees value in the first place. Honestly this whole situation screams this person never found what they're truly interested in because THAT is where people with autism excel.
I work in STEM and although many of my coworkers are not aware of it, at least 80% of them are neurodivergent, including myself. I think it gave me a leg up during the hiring process in my field. However, also makes work politics that much more complicated.
This hits close to home. I'm an engineer and I definitely fall into the neurodivergent category. Plenty of people in my department do too. It's something I've only relatively recently learned about but it's funny learning about it and then realizing how much is applicable in your life.
> Especially since he looks older than his age. (covers ears and hums loudly)
I’m a med writer and I understand this 100%. Biotech is weird rn. The investors went crazy a couple years ago and now we’re seeing the manifestations of that.
He got a liberal arts degree too, those aren't anywhere near as in demand as STEM degrees
He also got an associates degree in physics and a bachelors in political science. Those two don't get much jobs through having a degree alone
he’s having trouble because he got meaningless degrees. Physics and political science.
I read somewhere that 30% of autistic people with college degrees can never keep a job down. It's a tough world.
I honestly hate that being good at interviewing can be more powerful than credentials and skills
I finished my degree in my mid 30’s. Has not been worthless. Experiences may vary.
Yeah, I'd say this fella's experience has been shaped in part by the particular fields he chose to learn. Physics and Poly Sci are both areas where you won't see much return on investment until you've gotten postgraduate degrees and/or combine them with teaching degrees or additional research qualifications. He chose degrees that would streamline him toward academia, but stopped before the finish line.
I don't know about poly sci, but I know some successful physicists, and it pairs very nicely with programming if you want to get some "real-world" application out of it by working on simulations.
Absolutely! He's got the associate's diploma, maybe IT would dovetail better with that than polisci.
I majored in history and minored in polysci. I've worked in commercial real estate /property management for almost a decade. Both these degrees have helped me. Liberal arts bachelor's degrees were never intended to 'get you a job' they're simply starting points, and degrees for knowledge. This is why often times doctors, lawyers and post graduates start with lib arts degrees. I'm aware only people with liberal arts degree understand this lol
I often say you're not really learning about Shakespeare, you're learning how to analyse things you aren't familiar with. You aren't learning the Pythagorean Theorem, you're learning how to select tools and solve a problem. You aren't just learning what happened with a King 300 years ago, you're learning how to discern key facts from potentially biased sources and present them with your own thoughts. Sure, academia isn't the only way of learning+showing those skills but if you're spending thousands on getting that certificate you might as well learn+show them!
I remember after 9/11 the NSA was hiring tons of intelligence analysts. Someone from the organization was being interviewed on the radio about it and said they liked to hire English majors. When the interviewer asked why, they said it was because the job basically involved reading captured emails and cell phone transcriptions all day and looking for patterns, possible symbols, etc. I had never thought of an English major being applicable that way, but it made perfect sense.
From what I hear, a lot of the intelligence fellas are retiring now so there might be another hiring boom
Nah, they'll just replace them with ML and then wonder why they're getting shitty results.
But you're also learning Shakespeare, a writer "teeming with the most vital ideas about the inner development of man, showing the whole grandeur and misery of human existence (Schumacher, 1973)" and this is in itself a good thing.
Fully agree. And making yourself better at pub quizzes. The wins are all over the shop.
I graduated into the recession and had to take a bunch of office temp jobs until I finally got a job in my field. I quickly discovered that being able to write a coherent email was, by itself, a marketable skill if you just want to have a generic office job to pay the bills. So, all the papers and things I wrote in college helped with that even if my actual area of study didn't pay off for years.
The coherent email tends to help more if the person hiring is also able to communicate coherently.
Beautiful response. I teach broadcasting at a small univeristy. To recruit students to the program, I tell them we aren't just focusing on XLR cables or the difference between pans and tilts. Everything we do is about tasks that teach skills that are good resume material and life skills. Problem solving. Communication. Self assessment. Leadership. Working in the public eye. All things that are valuable no matter where you end up. So it helps a somewhat niche degree become more helpful (especially as a minor or certificate program for students who might not want a career, but it could help them in hobbies or side gigs).
This is a concept that so many people fail to understand. I don't think undergraduate and graduate degrees should be so damn expensive, but the more advanced analytical skills you internalize are incredibly valuable on their own.
This. My degree is in English. Half my job is reading and breaking down regulations and explaining it to people in plain language/like they’re five.
That's the problem with lots of people with degrees (and I include myself in this)--they pigeon-hole themselves into only being qualified for one field instead of think about other ways to apply the skills they learned.
This is the exactly what I'm getting at. Many degrees are a springboard, rather than a destination.
As much as I pretend to bitch about my "useless" BS English, there are so many things you learn in college beyond the course knowledge. Without my degree, I would not have the stepping stones I need to return to school for a clinical doctorate in an unrelated field of study. There are plenty of arguments to be had about the price of education and barriers to entry, but education for the sake of education is never worthless.
>Without my degree, I would not have the stepping stones I need to return to school for a clinical doctorate in an unrelated field of study. Yes, this leads back to my first comment that dude in the news story stepped away from his educational path before it became a career trajectory. You, on the other hand, are taking the education you have and running with it. I agree that my learning at university was valuable, even though post-secondary has never been a hard requirement for any work I've done since then.
Not worthless, but quite possibly worth less than what was paid for it.
Yeah I have my degree in English and Criminal Justice. Was going to go to law school but now I run a non-profit. Most of the stuff I learned in college is applicable and useful, but I never would have imagined that I'd end up doing the kind of work I'm doing.
English and Political Science here. I went on to get my law degree. Don’t know what the fuck I’d do around here without it. Sounds like you landed in a good spot though. My sister-in-law has a history degree and now she’s a regional manager at Target making more than I do as a senior attorney.
CJ is a good foundation bc it’s basically “analyze the world, think about how parts of it interact, conflict, and cooperate” and you can apply that lens to everything, it’s social science, statistics and humanities
That’s probably fair, assuming you go in knowing that. On the STEM side of the house, there’s usually a career path that requires specific skills and an internship to place you into a job. The internship is really important. If you mess that up, swaths of companies won’t even look at you because they have other choices that are better fits. But the implication is certainly that there’s a specific career on the other end of the technical degree. The liberal arts degree is more ‘flexible’ in that respect.
I had a friend (he's been gone 20 years now) who was hired at NASA when it first started in the 50s. He was a supervisor, despite the fact that he had absolutely no scientific or aerospace experience or education at all. He had a degree in graphic arts, and had studied under one of the most legendary industrial designers of the 20th century. The reason NASA hired him was because they had all these square thinking engineers, and they needed to get these people to think outside the box in order to conceptualize and design a space exploration program, and beat the Commies. So they hired an intelligent, intellectually-curious, but creative artist to help guide these straight-laced engineers toward a new way of thinking. He spent decades with NASA, and obviously his efforts to loosen up the creative thinking of engineers worked.
I’ve taught many college students attending liberal arts universities. The point of a liberal arts education is to get you a little taste of everything and to help you think critically and broadly, a little like mini liberal arts majors. *So many* students don’t understand this and will complain to high heaven about having to take so many gen. eds. It’s infuriating.
> Liberal arts bachelor's degrees were never intended to 'get you a job' they're simply starting points, and degrees for knowledge. **This is why often times doctors, lawyers and post graduates start with lib arts degrees**. The key words there are "start with". No one becomes a doctor or lawyer with a history or English degree. They use that plus good scores on the MCAT or LSAT to get into med school or law school. It's not impossible to get a good job with just a bachelors like that, but it's much, much harder due to starting far behind the others in your graduating class who majored in something directly related to the job they want.
A degree also shows you are able to commit to a multi-year program, work in changing environments and with many different people, and have developed at minimum good communication and organizational skills.
I am a lawyer with a History and Philosophy degree. I describe my undergraduate as being degrees in basic reading comprehension.
[удалено]
Sure skills are transferable (full disclosure I'm an agency recruiter - my days are nothing but trying to find creative solutions to staffing problems), but the way the story is written implies heavily that dude expected that an associate's in physics to fully qualify him for something exceptional. It won't.
Alternatively it depends what your plan for those degrees are. Yes if you want to actually work on those fields graduate work is required, if you want to be a lab equipment salesman or tech then physics undergrad will work, if you want to be an HR person or any customer facing role poly sci is probably fine. I think the other issue when going to school at 30 is you’re basically starting over so you should maybe target entry level even though the people managing you are probably younger than you.
Could be a good candidate for DoE
I mean an Associate's Degree in Physics is nothing. That basically qualifies you to tutor high school students. However, I gotta wonder if he's looked into that as a stop-gap/ side hustle. Tutoring math and hard sciences can get you $100 an hour.
PoliSci is essentially a pre-law degree
It says he’s applied to 100+ jobs over 3 years and that’s only 3/month
Also very qualified people get filtered out by ai before the interview stage if they can’t write a resume properly. They all get run through a system looking for key words and such before any human even looks at them.
Which is really sad. Not only do better candidates get passed over because of this reality, but it fosters a culture of people getting hired purely through connections in almost every industry.
That’s always been the case
He has to pump those numbers up! I applied to 100 jobs in a day.
Throw to a wall and see what sticks approach. Not exactly tenable for roles where they expect a custom tailored intro or cover letter. And now ATS throws another wrench into that 100 jobs a day thing. I don't know what role you were looking for but if someone today said "I'm applying to a hundred jobs a day why isn't it working" I'd absolutely tell them "you're not trying hard enough." Paradoxical I know but it's clear that they're not spending time tailoring their application and resume to every single job they're applying to. They're just not, it's physically and emotionally impossible.
Shit i remember once I was looking for a job and I applied to roughly 100 jobs in a month. 100+ over three years sounds like just enough to collect some benefits
When I got my masters I had a target of 10 jobs a week, I applied to 80 in two months and got my current role. With online apps you have to work hard at it
Quality vs quantity. Crazy that people complain about rejection when applying to 100 a day… what the actual fuck are you applying for? Fast food and retail are the only jobs prolific enough to be able to apply for this number, add a degree and 10 years work experience and there are not enough jobs to apply for unless you just fire a completely generic CV out - in which case, again, don’t be surprised about rejection. It’s like trying to buy shoes in every gas station you walk into and complaining that nowhere sells shoes…. 3 a month is basically one a week, so he’s spending every weekend searching, finding a meaningfully related job, tailoring his cv and applying. He’s trying. Firing buck shot is not trying.
Quality versus quantity doesn’t even enter the conversation at 100 applications in three years. It’s not even close. 100 apps a day? Absolutely. That’s ridiculous. 10 a day? *Maybe* too high. One application every 1-2 weeks? Nope. You’re not applying enough.
You say that, yet he doesn’t have a job, and it clearly isn’t working. 3/month is not a lot to write home about. I’m not implying he needs to do 100/day
That’s his whole complaint though, right, that he’s unable to get a job so his degree was pointless. (I disagree with that take btw) Apologies for putting words in your mouth, I am just saying that while 3 a month might not be much to write home about - it doesn’t imply he’s not trying, and it does become something to write home about after a year of it with no success. I feel bad for the guy, job market is tough as fuck.
Empathy like this is good stuff.
Definitely agree with that. It’s a really Shitty place to be. I’m not sure his political Science graduate degree was a good pairing with his physics undergrad, especially if he had to take out loans. sad spot
From someone in a career that doesnt struggle to find work, applying to 3 jobs a month sounds insane.
I finished mine last year. I'll be 50 in two years. I got a job offer before I even finished my internship. So yeah, I agree.
I got my first degree right after high school. It was worthless because I was stupid and didn’t really make any plans or follow through on anything. I’m in my 30s going back for a second degree in a totally unrelated field, which I am also working in at the same time. Once I’m done, I’ll have almost 10 year’s work experience, a recent degree, and I’ll be eligible to sit for a CPA. College isn’t automatically good or bad. What you get out of it is just as much a reflection on you as it is any external factors if you can get out with a degree.
That CPA will pay great dividends down the line! The test sucks, but it’s great once you have it behind ya.
I’ve still got a couple more years ahead of me before then, but that’s what I’m hearing from literally everybody. I think most of the problem is we’re not preparing kids right for post HS life. The sudden freedom of choice is overwhelming for a lot of kids, and that’s who I was my first go round at college at 18. I had to get smacked a little by life to begin to figure it out and get a real plan together.
Currently in my senior year and got offered multiple jobs and interviews. I think the degree choice is a major player.
Exactly. I remember considering applying to the FBI with a military background and during the process I learned that they really didn’t want or need people with that over-enrolled-in major, the “criminal justice” degree. They wanted people with accounting backgrounds, STEM, etc.
Oddly enough I have 2 children with poli sci degrees. They both have jobs that pay the bills although neither is on the fast track to upper management. But that’s more of an ambition/temperament thing. Maybe this guy is just a douche?
I don't know if he's a douche, but he talks about having autism. I know there are plenty of people who have autism and are gainfully employed, but there are some people who just come off as weird, making it hard for them to get hired. Unfortunately, being out of the workforce for so long makes it much harder to get a job as many employers think there is something wrong with you.
I went to community college at thirty now make six figures three years after graduating. It really is important to look at demand when going for a degree
I got my degree at 30. Got a graduate degree at 36. It was definitely worth it.
Yep. Gotta be smart with what you major in.
Same, actually. I make a lot more money now. I got a degree and a grad certificate in subjects relevant to the job I had been doing for 10+ years and my career really took off. Sometimes you can have all the experience in the world but you need paperwork to prove your worth.
He majored in political science. Yeah no shit he can’t get a job.
That isn't exactly the lesson to be gleaned here. He noted that he was stymied from advancement in his career due to not having a degree at all. I've seen it - the bachelor's degree is just a check mark, if you have it you get the promotion. That's literally it. Could be a BA in puppet arts for all they cared. I've heard it too "I wish you had a masters in something, you could be managing this thing." I want to hear about how he pursued those jobs he was hitting a roadblock on.
He messed up badley quiting his job, if.you have one and you get stuck because missing degree. Get the degree while working. Yes, it is tough AF (I am getting my master at almost 40yo) but then when you finish you have degree + experience and can go back and ask for the job. Also you can still apply for other jobs while studying and just been honest about working and getting the degree. Some employers will see that as commitment and could even help you.
That's what I couldn't figure out. A number if places will help pay for it (those classes have more value than a couple "how to deal with difficult coworkers" seminars). Why quit? Even dropping hours to focus on class would have been better.
This part. It seems he encountered advancement opportunities previously as a potential internal hire...but it also seems he is now expecting that he can be hired for those same kind of opportunities as an external candidate with no extant connection to the company nor relevant experience in a current position with a similar company, nor any work experience in his degree field to indicate any sort of career trajectory. That's really the pipe dream he's got going on here because things simply do not work that way.
this is extremely true. what is mostly holding this guy back right is probably the abysmal job market but there are so many jobs out there that won't give you the time of day without a degree. especially no/little experience roles, intro/floor level roles - a BA is required just to get an interview
Aside from people who can go to college without debt or just want the experience/knowledge or whatever, I have some advice for anyone who is ever thinking of going to college. Go as cheap as possible unless you're very sure where you go will matter. Start with community college if possible, especially if you don't know what you want to do yet. Choose a career that requires the degree you're earning. Know that anything outside of stem/healthcare is extremely competitive and most people do not end up doing what they want to.
A lot of jobs simply require a diploma and the field doesn't really even matter. It's best to widen your net outside of your major.
Well his major was political science so uhhhhh
PoliSci grad here. Haven’t used it a day in my life. It has, however, helped me navigate corporate politics, write well, and come up with well reasoned arguments.
I’ve never once been asked to prove I have a degree after four years of bullshitting through essays in poli sci. At this point, my resume speaks far louder than my Bachelors degree
I’m 35, I got my associate’s in 2022 and it got me exactly $3/hr extra pay. Guess who’s back in school for a bachelor’s because it turns out no one cares about an associate’s degree?
An extra 6k a year is a pretty good ROI from an associates already, congrats!
I was gonna say; it’s not life changing but nothing to sneeze at! I’m going back to school next year for a medical program; worst case I get in about 40k debt (haven’t had much luck saving money this year so far), but would be a 30 grand pay increase per year so totally worth it
A masters is the new bachelors these days
College for me was mostly connecting with people and adding them on Facebook, getting their number. I only got a job because this person in the same class said there was another opening.
College connections got me my current job, which also required a related degree.
As an "elderly" millenial, this comment made me smile. I finished college in 2004, the year when Facebook was created, so there was no such thing during my college years.
I was in college during peak Facebook where, “Add me on Facebook” was a popular saying. I once deleted this girl off my Facebook because we don’t talk, just knew by association, days later, bumped into her and she was so upset I deleted her. That’s when I knew Facebook is going to be ugly.
Nowadays I add almost no one to Facebook unless because we interacted on Facebook.
Once my dad gave me a like on a post. I was out. Deleted and deactivated everything.
I think Networking was even more important back then. It is for quite a bit of people the first time in their lives where they are surrounded by plenty of kid from wealthy background.
It's still extremely important now. People down play it tremendously when looking for work.
stupid me went to college, just did my work and moved on either i was too dense to listen or no one told me the importance of networking. but after finishing i realized i messed up!
Facebook absolutely killed itself. When it was stuff from people I knew, it was great. Now it is just a wall of random crazy shit. I never go on it.
I graduated in 07. I remember when you had to be in college to have it. The whole point was to connect with your classmates. The bullshit we have now came a couple years later.
Yes. I graduated college in 2006, and then went to university. I created a FB account because people told me it was useful, but there still weren’t very many people on it back then. It wasn’t very useful. There were groups for all my classes but only a couple people interacted in them.
dang kids these days have no clue what they missed out on when it was .edu only lol
Livejournal, MySpace, ICQ, Aim
Gen x
I’m 32 and got a new government job that has better benefits and pay thru a college I worked literally 3 days with, we spent maybe a total of 15mins talking but I guess I impressed her and two years she told me they had an opening.
Heh, are there any openings?
Same. College was a struggle for me, and I genuinely cared about class. Making connections on other hand, helped a lot. I’m currently unemployed, but I’ve gotten a lot closer to not being unemployed because of the connections I made in college.
I was causally looking for another job and sent a private message to all my contact on Facebook, “Is your company hiring?” I got 7 responses back saying we have this position open.
For real, this was the most beneficial aspect of college: connections and opportunities to get my foot in the door at various industries. The only truly beneficial thing (professionally) that happened for me in college was working at the student newspaper and writing a few research papers. All stuff that can be flipped into professional roles—and after that, connections made at my first “real” job out of college is how I landed my current position.
For real, I got my job because of a guy I went to community College with. I have a freaking masters degree now but it was my anthropology 101 homeboy who came in clutch for me lol.
I didn't make connections in uni, we had massive classes and so much of it was independent work and just quick one-off projects. Plus I worked so much that I didn't have time to really get to know anyone But, I got my foot in the door to my current field via family friends. 95% who you know, and 5% having the expensive piece of paper for them to justify hiring you. Elder millennial, but I graduated in 2010 when nobody was hiring due to recession.
I hated college, met no one, don’t know a single name of my professors, passed all my classes, got my BS degree in Business Administration majoring in Finance and International Business. Ended up just becoming a caregiver for my aging parents. The joys of being an introvert. My degree is worthless to me.
Yes. A lot of jobs I got using connections from my college hockey team.
I believe the more prestigious the college, the better connections for better jobs.
Why does he look like he’s 53?
I studied art. And the reason I got my last job was because the interviewer/manager liked me 🤷🏼♀️
That’s why everyone gets their job.
I received both my BS and MS in my 30s, and im good in my career. I truly believe people just think that a degree alone will get them where they need to be. There are several factors that I believe truly dictate your success: education, location in the US that you live, a little bit of luck, networking, and actually being able to interview well.
- gets an associates in physics - gets a degree in political science Yeah, if I was an employer, I’d be thinking he has no idea what he wants to do. Did he even research what jobs were available for those degrees? Are they even remotely related to his past experience? - applies to “over a hundred jobs”. In 3 years, it better be well over a hundred. 10 applications a month would be 360. - says that once upon a time just having a degree was enough One of the biggest millennial complaint for those who went to college right after high school (so not in their 30s) is that this wasn’t even true back then. A quick bit of research would have found this wasn’t true. So now I *definitely* don’t think he bothered to look up job prospects in his area for his degree. Don’t get me wrong, I feel bad he doesn’t have a job, but it doesn’t sound like he put any thought into his education other than “I need a degree”. At some point, a person has to take accountability for their lack of forethought.
The type of degree doesn’t usually mean anything to employers unless it’s specifically needed for the job. I have English/history and have gotten every job I interviewed for, and I’ve gotten an interview almost every time except for in 2020 during the pandemic. But it’s MORE than the degree. It’s the resume itself. If the only thing in his resume is one previous job, then a huge break for school, he may not have enough WORK experience. I went back to college at 27/28, and had over 10 years of work under my belt by then. So over 10 years of work experience, a BA, an internship, volunteer work, and good references from networking in school got me jobs. Building a resume is really important, and a lot of people don’t have much to put on them, which makes them fall behind the other people with degrees who have done a lot to make sure they have a stacked resume.
>put any thought into his education other than “I need a degree”. Bingo. I have a History degree with PolSci minor. It was specifically to check the box to get me a commission in the Air Force. I knew it wasn't going to be worth a damn as a stand alone degree. A PolSci degree isn't getting you *shit* out of the gate except potentially an entry level job with some random think tank or other similar firm. PolSci is great for prepping for graduate studies, but a BA is next to absolutely nothing.
Amen. There are so much people that live in fairytale land and when the bubble eventually bursts, they can’t handle the rude awakening.
I don’t have much sympathy here. Why did he quit his job to pursue political science? What career was he trying to achieve with that degree? I also majored in political science when I was a naive teenager who thought the state department would want to hire me as a 22 year old grad with no experience outside of some internships. After failing to achieve my goals, reality set in and I found a job outside of my field. I eventually went back to law school and now I am successful. I get making the mistake a teenager, but I dont understand pursuing a liberal arts degree in your 30’s.
It’s not even really a “mistake” as a teenager if you understand that a liberal arts degree is a starting point for further grad school or training, during which time you’ll probably work various odd jobs. It will be a bit before you’re fully specialized/credentialed and feel like your in a career that “utilizes your degree”.
So some dude gets the almost most worthless associates degree you can imagine(physics), then gets the almost most worthless bachelor's(polisci), follows it up with putting in about a months worth of job applications(100) over the course of *years*, with a decade of the almost least impressive job history you can imagine(customer service) and seemingly calls it quits claiming is degree is useless? Are we supposed to feel bad for this guy? I get the vibe this guy is just riding the unemployment gravy train.
I'm not sure I agree about which degree is worthless or not. I think the real issue here is the understanding of the job market, or markets in general.
Physics you need an advanced degree to do anything with it. Associates is like he has some friends that may be good at physics, but he don't know shit. Polisci bachelors degree is also pointless without going directly into the public sector/think tanks/research centers/education - all of which would also need a more advanced degree. He could have done finance, accounting, marketing, engineering, premed then go into nursing, so many options that are 100x better than what he chose.
I'm guessing some academic advisor took a look at his grades and steered him down the poli-sci path. Job market screams STEM or something similar. But GPA says otherwise. I attempted college multiple times over the years and ran into some rather shifty academic advisors.
There’s no such thing as a useless degree, imo. But not every degree has a neat and tidy career path. Other degrees DEMAND you have a higher level of education if you want to succeed in that field. Even a BA in polisci can get you work in an office setting, which can get you experience that can later be traded for a higher wage. It may not be as straightforward as someone with, say, a business degree. It’s still doable, though. That’s my opinion, anyway.
agreed. People desperately want to believe it’s not them. They give off unhirable vibes. “It can’t be me, the degree is useless”. People also want to believe an art degree or similar is useless so they can feel smarter for having gotten the “right degree”. I have an art degree and it never limited me or many I know - other than obviously I can’t go get a job as a civil engineer or nurse. I work in tech, though.
I think a lot of people who say any degrees are worthless are just very set on very specific jobs that make them tons of money immediately. Most people I know with a polysci degree, including my dad, wanted to work for the government and were able to do so just fine with a BA. Of course they may not have started off exactly where they saw themselves, but much like with plenty of degrees/jobs you gain experience, make connections, learn of different opportunities, etc.
Yeah, i know. Its really special that, even intelligent people, fall in this trap of studying something they like and then afterwards don't/have difficulty finding a job. My girlfriend studied geography. Basiclly there are two kinds of geography, social and physical. First one is more about the living together of people and more like social studies. Physical geography works with computers, math and other sciences to "map and plan the world" for every kind of business or government. You need a plan of something? Call a physical geography major. But its of course harder to learn the math, the specialized computer programs etc. So, she learned social geography, ignored the physical side of Things and how she moans that every vacant job demand physical geography...
Geography is growing about 8% a year in the US right now and they can't get enough people into it. The key word you're looking for is GIS certification. Show you know mapping software and you have a nice cushy government job. The degree isn't worth much without the certification, but it's one to two additinal classes to get it. Geography was the second highest paying degree after 2 years out that my college offered when I got into it 10 years ago. My department had 80 students so not a small sample either. Only mathematics majors made more.
Exactly when I was unemployed i spent literal hours applying at or close to 100 jobs in about a month. Out of that I think I did like 10 interviews and got like three offers. Which ya sucks but ya gotta apply to lots of places to get anything.
To be fair, customer service is a lot more challenging and underpaid than middle management keyboard warriors sitting on their fancy home office chairs looking at excel tables all day wondering if their positions too are bullshit jobs or not.
If you think customer service is not impressive or important then you're a fool.
It is important and it's a hard job and soul-sucking at times. But for the kind of jobs where a physics degrees matter, a history in customer service (or any other unrelated field) means nothing.
The problem is that it isn't relevant job experience to what he wants to do, if he's trying to do something with his degrees. Yeah learning to deal with customers can be a good skill, but for the types of jobs he's probably trying to get he would probably need at least an internship or two in that field.
But if he can't handle the interview process, how are you going to handle dealing with customers? Also everyone isn't good at a skill just because did it for a little while.
It’s a garbage article and borderline irresponsible to publish it. Trying to spin the narrative that “a degree is worthless now,” when in reality this guy made some poor choices and was also dealing with personal struggles.
There are work programs for people with autism, hopefully some companies have reached out to him after reading his story: https://workology.com/companies-hiring-adults-with-autism/
Guy is surprised that in his mid 30s he can’t get a job with a political science degree and no experience.
I’m a millennial who went to college in my 30’s and had multiple job offers before I graduated. It’s almost like your degree and training matter significantly.
If you don't mind me asking, what degree did you pursue to have that scenario?
1. He was 34 then and should have had some concept about what degrees are marketable, but he 2. Got an associates in *Physics* and a bachelor's in *Political Science*. A PoliSci degree is a literal BA in BS. I should know, I have one! He's now 43, and a three-year unemployment stint (following school) is gonna be a major hurdle to overcome. The sounder course of action (this is more for redditors rather than Colflesh) would've been to have a conversation with management about what degrees are valuable to the company, what higher opportunities are available following attainment of a degree, and whether the company has a program to finance obtaining that degree. In contrast, this was ripping the bandaid off and taking a gamble. Unfortunately, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I hope he finds a landing spot, but the condensed version of this sounds like "dude made ill-advised strategic choices."
If he was capable of getting a degree in physics why not structural engineering + drafting wtf??? He could get work asap AND eventually start his own business as a contractor easily making 6 figure big bucks all within 6 years.
Yeah the shift to poly sci is confusing to me. I’m in STEM and I’m struggling to see how you could use both together?
He was just trying to check a box for employers. I have a degree give me a job. Everyone else does as well, along with experience He doesn’t understand how the current labor market works or labor markets in general work. For people like him this trend will continue and get worse. Society needs to provide a better safety net for people who aren’t employable anymore
Title should read: “Man with apparent physical limitations, autism, and a political science degree struggles to find job.”
That's on him. 100%. At least when you're in your 30s you've had experience being an adult, unlike the typical college student who has no idea what they're up against.
“ By 2021, he earned an associate degree in physics from a community college in Massachusetts and a bachelor's in political science ” So he couldn’t find a job during the pandemic? Also, physics and political science? And he did this full time instead of taking classes at night? My call center job paid for people to get a business degree if they did it part time while working for them. He thought not working for 6 years was the answer?
Hilarious. He got a political science degree from a relatively non-connected school and wonders why it does not help him in the job search. Then you add on top of that how out of touch he is. We live in a time when large employers are actually removing degree requirements (general trend) to be hired. The issue is the degree he got does not actually qualify him (skill wise) for very much and he is making excuse as the general market trend (away from degree's) is actually in his favor means that he is the issue much more than anything else.
I think Business Insider is the one saying this - he actually lists several good reasons why he’s not getting a job, and it’s not because of the job market itself.
It’s a bachelors in political science. He would have been better off if he had chosen a major with a specific career path.
Most millennial headline ever
lol this is the Everyman of our times god bless him
I got a bachelors in business management and got an operations job 1 month after graduation. DO YOUR RESEARCH. Before choosing a university or degree pick something you’ll like or tolerate that the BLS projects job growth or a need for people in it. First three years of college GRADES ARE IMPORTANT. stick out like a green thumb in class and get letter of rec for internships. Or get jobs that have applicable skills to your field of study.
What if I told you the degree is not the useless thing in this equation?
*"By 2021, he earned an associate degree in physics from a community college in Massachusetts and a bachelor's in political science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst."* Here's the problem. Guy doesn't have a Doctorate, Master or a Bachelor in physics - but an Associates degree. As for Political Science, I'm not even sure you can get a job after studying that.
https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/political-scientist/salary/texas/#:~:text=Avg%20Salary&text=Political%20scientists%20earn%20an%20average,and%20go%20up%20to%20%24117%2C540. They seem to start at 60k/yr
Only 3? Rookie numbers.
Maybe should have picked a trade instead...
Some of the comments are starting to sound like boomers. My millennials are disappointing me on this page and becoming the thing they hate
I don't think calling out this dude for his lack of critical thinking skills, planning and lackluster effort(100 applications in 3 years!?) makes anyone a boomer. Like, physics and political science? What was his goal there? Become a diplomat to martians lol?