> employee have no
> 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.
I'm usually just happy if I find a salaried job. Even though they tend
to take advantage of the fact that you're not getting overtime. The
past couple years I've been doing contract work pretty exclusively,
and been pretty lucky that the folks I've worked for have been the
sort of folks who have some understanding of engineering/programming
and can valuate an individual's skills on the basis of conversational
understanding.
> 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.
You mean they made you take the test?
> 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.
So... I'm studying in Paris and I can speak English, German and Thai,
but I have a problem with french... heh :) Which of course, brings
into question his skill with any languages he claims to speak. I know
little bits of both spanish and french, but I don't claim to actually
_speak_ them... Not conversationally anyway... J'aime parle francais
mais j'aller pas amis parle francais avec moi... and it really is sort
of a "use it or lose it" sort of thing.
> 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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