A story I heard from my mother the other day sparked my interest in this topic.
Her friend’s son apparently just recently graduated from Oneonta with a theatre degree. He has applied to the NYS Tax Dept. looking for an ACCOUNTING job, and asked my mom to ask my father (who works there) why their son wasn’t being considered for the most recent job openings, or at the very least, a summer internship.
Seriously? :rofl
THEATRE. Does that ring a bell? Contrary to what your mother told you when you were 12 years old, you CANNOT be anything you want to be if your dreams aren’t realistic and rational. First and foremost, you don’t land yourself in an accounting job with a THEATRE major. That’s like going to the supermarket and trying to buy a new part for your Honda.
I guess this guy also has tried applying at places like Target, Wal-Mart, etc. and STILL can’t find a job. I’ll leave the explanation for that one up to you.
If she is asking your pops “why my kid didnt get a job with you”, so must be to dumb to realize that her kid has zero expierence in the field he was applying for and doesnt have a degree (which without expierence doesnt mean shit when your new to a career) in the field either.
I am assume that they paid for it too, so they “made him” go somewhere, and thought, gee in 3rd grade he made a good Elf in the holiday pagent and sent him off to movie college.
Parents put too much on kids shoulders, in too many wrong ways. YOU MUST GO TO COLLEGE… blahhh… yeah you should but if your not ready to make a good decission on how to spend $20k-$200K on a degree then why jump on board at a whim?
He would be better off taking heroine and attempting a theatre career vs going to college, most likely taking heroine, and attempting a theatre career.
Reason: Your gonna fail either way, save 40,000 dollars
I think over half of graduates end up working in fields unrelated to their major. That would kinda bother me. Four years is a long time to pour effort into something to just blow it off afterwards.
I earned my B.S. in Comp Engineering, which I guess is an IT degree on the whole but I work in telecom now as a Network Tech doing data/telephony systems. Not quite IT, but not far off. My first job out of school was in IT and only now do I realize how badly I was treated. Telecom folks are happy to have you whereas IT people think they’re doing you a favor in keeping you around.
I’ve been in IT for years. It depends on the company. I’ve gotten 3 raises and 1 promotion since being here. I got hired (from intern to full-time) midway through the year, so technically I wasn’t allowed any annual raise, but my boss still managed to get me more than the 3% they typically gave out (didn’t this year do to the economy).
You have 75% of people in IT with only basic IT knowledge. If you want to get ahead of that you need to have a bigger better resume. A 4 year degree in IT with experience will get you a decent IT job. A 2 year degree and a year exp working at best buy won’t get you shit.
If you’re employed by the State, I’m sure IT is great. For the rest of us that work for a living, the biggest problem with the industry is that fewer and fewer companies are hiring their own in-house IT people. What we have now are hundreds of these bottom-feeding contracting/consultant companies that bid for support contracts and hire people to work at a client site temporarily. I worked for one of those companies–was a contractor for a major corporate client.
I did everything: servers, printers, helpdesk, imaging, sys administration, repairs. It was cool for a while and great experience, but I didn’t like:
Zero job security. IT is flooded with techs.
Huge turnover rate. People came and went all the time. Most people were fired and weren’t replaced so more workload for everyone.
Once contract ends, you have no job.
Being on salary. No overtime. No bonuses.
People looking at you differently because you’re just a contractor, not an employee.
IT has unusually large amounts of goofy ass people. Some are cool as hell, but most I wouldn’t want to hang out with.
Got my Cisco and Avaya certs and said see-ya-later. Never going back. Before the dot-com bust and guys were making $60k+ skipping out on college and getting their MCSE instead, IT was where it was at. But now? Not an industry I want to be in and much happier in telecom.
Agreed, while im still in the IT field an enjoy it this is the sad truth, when i started going for IT as a career it was still booming pretty good and the enocomy wasnt completely in the shitter. As you stated many companies espeicaly smaller ones are now outsourcing their IT as they cant afford nor can justify having an in house IT guy for only a few hundred users. Example where I worked for the past 2 years at vellano brothers, had about 200-250 units. The first 6 months to a year their i was very busy upgrading and doing prevenative measures on a lot of the machines so they were breaking all the time… my last 6 months there i was never busy why? because i did the job i was supposed to do. Granted I was lucky and was on good terms with the owners of the company and also found out about 6 months in that they were good friends of good freinds of the family. WHen I gave my boss my 2 weeks I told him and the owner thank you for keeping me around even in the slow times as you both know I wasnt doing much and they said your welcome and if we dident like you so much we would have let you go 6 months ago.
Now I work for a repair/consulting company. I do a lot of in store repairs also do residential calls and small offices etc use us as their IT guys.
Right now the only way your going to make good money in the IT field is working for a big company, contracting work or working for a companie much like the one I am. I make good money where im working now, and I get to deal with a lot of cool new people everyday, although some are d-bags.
I also love doing residential shit, but im a good people person, which well as most of us IT people know… many IT guys are not very people friendly, most sit in their dungeon in some office and dont want to be bothered and are very vague and bad at describing things to people much less holding out an interesting conversation.
when your ready to apply for the state let me know… my mother is the deputy state treasurer for the tax department. i might be able to help you get placed or atleast get a good word in for you
I’ve always been told most jobs don’t look so much at what you majored in so much as whether or not you HAVE a degree, cuz they’re more looking at the fact that you can put the hard work and effort into doing what it takes to get the degree in the first place… BUT, if you’re gonna go get a job as an accountant for the state in the TAX department, wtf was this kid thinking going to school for THEATRE?! lol
That’d be like me trying to get a job as a clinical psychologist after going to an 8 year CLOWN COLLEGE. lol DUHHHHH!