control over which kind of manager is going to be interviewing you.
offhand, I would prefer to work for one who can see the value of
intelligence and thinking on the feet, but if I were broke enough I'd be
happy to have a manager period.
BTW, I wrote a GED when I first came to the states, to demonstrate that
yeah verily 10 years of Canadian plus two years of French education did
equal an American high school education, even if I hadn't graduated
anywhere.
Your story reminds me of when I was living in London, near Vauxhall, and a
friend of my boyfriend's came to visit us from Paris. He was working on his
doctorate in English (at the Sorbonne, a most presitgious Paris university)
and boasted of also speaking a couple of other languages, a contention I
was not equipped to test. But anyway, he comes to visit us in South London,
and we stroll out to the local bakery for breakfast. I had to translate
when he ordered his cream puffs.
Dana
S. Isaac Dealey writes:
> > it's something tangible you can screen people on. Someone
> > with a college
> > degree can usually be assumed to be literate, which is not
> > always true of
> > high school :P
>
> > But isn't the question whether the industry would benefit
> > from some sort of
> > standard, whether degree, certification or whatever
>
> > Dana
>
> I remember being told that the test to get a GED was harder than
> graduating high-school. I'd gone to private schools throughout (yea,
> in between being beaten with egg-wisks -- don't ask -- I had a very
> bizarre childhood -- my dad was at one point in time worth $25mil as
> an individual, but my mom was taking us to the laundromat to do
> laundry for months when the washer broke because he was too busy being
> a screw up to figure out that he had the money to fix/replace it... I
> went to an expensive summer camp too). But getting back to the point
> -- when I took the test for the GED I thought to myself "this was
> harder than graduating?!!?!"... I could have "CLEP'ed" out of
> high-school all-together and had my minor status removed if I'd had a
> place to stay when I was 15.
>
> A friend of mine got hired to work for the Las Vegas water dept. (not
> directly, he's subcontracted) a couple years ago at $85k to start,
> with generous relo. and everything. He's got a GED and is working with
> CF and ARC-IMS. Prior to getting the job we'd worked together before
> and I'd taught him some of what he knows about CF and I'd like to
> think programming theory. Since then he's recommended me as a
> top-notch developer and his boss has whined and refused to call me
> because I don't have a bachelors, when she knows he's only got a GED.
>
> I'd love to get a bachelors, but there's no way I could afford it now.
> I made some poor decisions early on, got married to a girl I have
> nothing in common with, had 3 kids and screwed myself with Sally Mae
> on a trade school I had to drop out of to support my kids (they lied
> to me about refunding the remainder of my tuition to Sally Mae
> incidentally). I think I'm finally getting to a point where I'm about
> to start earning similar to what my friend is making in Vegas and if
> things go well I'll probably hire out some of the work on my CMS.
>
> As to the industry benefiting from some sort of standard (degree,
> cert, etc.) my vote is no. We already have degrees and certifications
> and whatnot, and although I have the CF cert and plan to get more MM
> certs (because some managers do value them), I don't believe that
> educational standards like certs and degrees are genuinely helpful. A
> person performing an interview focuses on the fact that the candidate
> has or doesn't have a particular cert. or degree and in many cases
> that frees them up from having to know any of the job themselves. Not
> that every manager will be an expert, but having talked to lots of
> really smart people without the degrees or certs, and lots of really
> "well educated" people who can't think on their feet, I think a
> manager's sense of character is a better judge of a person's ability
> to do the job than a standardized test is. I think ultimately it boils
> down to standardized tests being comforting to people who've grown up
> in a world where only things which can be counted are valued.
>
> p.s. See the book Technopoly by Neil Postman for information about how
> all other forms of thought have been deprecated in favor of science
> during its rise to popularity. In particular there's some good stuff
> in there about IQ tests and how they exemplify the cultural need to
> value science and to disvalue anything that's not science.
>
>
> s. isaac dealey 972-490-6624
>
> team macromedia volunteer http://www.macromedia.com/go/team
>
> chief architect, tapestry cms http://products.turnkey.to
>
> onTap is open source http://www.turnkey.to/ontap
>
>
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