Not paid enough to care / College degree does not = smart

I'm going to combine these two blogs into one, because I don't feel like write two blog entries.

Anyway....

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Not paid enough to care.

I know that the minimum wage debate brings up a lot of heat.  There are people who are opposed to it, and others who think it should be raised to something "livable."

I can see both sides of the argument, but let's face it: It's not minimum wage that is the issue.   The suits at a company's corporate offices are the issue.  It's the corporate suits who, in an effort to make as much profit as possible for their shareholders, pay the frontline employees absolute shit for a salary. 

You know the complaints of fast food workers getting people's orders wrong, or the salesperson at a local electronics store knowing less than the customers, or the CSR at the other end of the phone who appears to be just reading off a script and just wants to get the caller off the line as soon as possible?

They share one common thing: They are not paid enough to care.  When you're slaving for 40+ hours at a place for peanuts when you know the suits at the corporate offices are making serious coin, you're just going to do whatever gets you through the day.

So how do you make them actually, well, care?

I am with the minimum wage opponents that raising the minimum wage will not do a thing to make employees "care."   After all, let's say your city decides to make the minimum wage $12 per hour.   Employees will know that because it's the minimum wage, they can just go somewhere else in the city and make the same money.   There is no incentive for them to truly excel at their job.

It all comes down to corporations....

What corporations need to do, is pay employees an amount per hour that gives them this mentality:

"Man I better be on my best behavior and do the best I can, after what they are paying me I would be a FOOL  to lose this job or go somewhere else!"

You know what happens when they have that mentality?  Everything improves, because they know that another job, or any other job in the local area, may not pay as well.  So they will do whatever it takes to keep being employed at that company.   The company will have better employees, morale will increase, and the end result will be a better interaction with clients who will thus want to come back, instead of running away to the competition.

Sometimes, corporations have it right, then get it all wrong.  One of the biggest examples is Circuit City.  When their salespeople were commission-based they were indeed very knowledgeable and because they made serious coin, made sure that they didn't do something to screw it up.   Then the company had the *brilliant* idea to lay off their top performing salespeople and replace them with lower-paid hourly workers because they thought that non-commissioned salespeople "put customers more at ease."  In reality, it did the opposite.  The new salespeople knew less than the customers did, people left in droves, and eventually the company as we know it went belly up.

Almost all the time, it depends on the field of work that the company is in that should determine what they should pay employees enough to make someone want to work for them, and do a good job once they actually do get hired.

I'll give you a recent example as it happened to me....

A company offered me a job about a year ago to do on-site computer installs, repairs, software work (mainly virus removal), and basic networking installs (And no, it wasn't the geek squad).   I asked how much their starting salary was, and when they told me I was insulted!  It was less than what I am making now, let's put it that way.   I told them "no thanks, I'm happy where I am."  What I really wanted to say was this:

"Are you kidding?  For the simple fact that walking into a customer's home represents a certain danger - what if he's a nutcase? - you need to start me off at 20 an hour!"

Is that a bit too high an expectation?  Maybe.  But for on-site tech work, where there is a certain danger that the customer you're going to help is, as said above, a nutcase, it makes sense that you want to pay potential techs accordingly.

Oh, and the Geek Squad?  I was reading somewhere that before they were taken over by Best Buy that the "double agents" (The ones that drive around in the VW Bugs) made close to 18 an hour starting, and were in general really talented.  Then they were bought by Best Buy and they reduced the starting pay to 12 an hour, the 18 dollar an hour agents left, and they were forced to hire people that weren't as good.  Then the customer service rankings started to, as you may have guessed, tanked.

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College degree does not = smart.

When I told someone I know about what I was thinking about saying to that computer company that wanted to pay me piss for a salary, this is what he said to me:

"Firstly, you are only going to get to 20 an hour if you freelance.  Secondly, you talk big for someone who doesn't have a college degree."

So I asked him to clarify what he meant by that, after accusing him of basically calling my stupid, and this what he said:

"You are far from stupid, but let's face it most good jobs in the IT field now require a degree and going into the interview demanding 20 an hour without one will get you laughed at."

But most IT positions I looked at, or were offered don't even need a degree to do the work needing to be performed.  So why do they want to see that fancy piece of paper?

First, let's get one thing out of the way: College does NOT make a person smart.  If it did, every college graduate would have an Einstein level IQ, and that simply isn't the case.  Remember the viral video of students at Texas Tech not knowing basic history questions?  Yeah, that's what I am talking about.

People who know me say that I shouldn't talk being that I never went to college.  But I know people who have, and I asked them to be honest about what a college degree actually shows, as it clearly doesn't guarantee making a person "smarter."   Nearly all of them said the same thing: That having that degree shows, in writing, that you are willing to put up with shit you don't really want to do in order to obtain an ultimate goal.  

Now, I can see certain fields, like a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, something that requires specialized training, where a college degree is essential.  But for something in IT?  Shouldn't experience and core certifications be enough? 

Apparently, not so.  I came across an article in a business journal where the interviewer asked the owner of a law firm who he would pick for an IT position: Someone with no degree but 10-15 years of experience and 4 or more certifications, or someone with fresh out of college with a computer science degree, little if any experience and no certifications at all.

The owner of the law firm picked the latter, instead of the former.  When asked why, the owner said this:

"The guy with the degree may not be a seasoned veteran, but with that degree he has proven he can handle pressure and challenges well.  The one without the degree shows none of that."

That coincides with the conclusion of this Cracked.com article: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-nobody-says-about-college-until-its-too-late_p2/

Namely, this line:

....you'll learn more about deadlines and personal management in those four years than you did in the previous 18. That is why employers look harder at graduates' applications. That degree instantly tells them that you can commit and follow through with important tasks without someone looking over your shoulder.....

What the employer said, and that article stated, is what pretty much what the answers that my friends gave me: That you go to college to show future employment prospects that you're less likely to say "fuck this I quit" if they hand you something that you hate doing.  It has nothing to do with intelligence.

Think about it for a moment as to why colleges make you do electives on crap that has nothing to do with your major.  I can see math if you're taking some sort of technology course, but having to study and write term papers on William Shakespeare?!  It's for the exact reason stated above.  Forget the "well rounded education" crap you hear people spew.  They make you do it to see if you're going to say "I quit this crap" or soldier on.

But, ready for it?  Here is something that can be said about people that will blow your mind....

SOME PEOPLE ARE NOT TEST TAKERS.

Yes, I said it.  Even if I went to college, I may not have done well.   Right out of high school I went to a tech school that had the same name as one of our US Presidents (Hint: Emancipation Proclamation) for computer aided drafting (CAD).  Besides the fact that I was lied to (They said you would only spend a month on the paper drawing boards before heading to computers, then on the 1st day of orientation the "instructor" informed us the computers were only about the last half of the course), it's like they set me up to fail.

Let me explain.  I was known as a great artist in my middle/high school years.  I loved drawing cars, trains, and various other machines.  That's why someone suggested when I was in high school, with my then growing interesting in computers, that I should take up CAD.  

But when I was at this school, no matter how hard I tried, I always seemed to fail my drawing assignments, or I would barely pass.  Finally, I asked my instructor "Why is it that I was considered a great artist in middle/high school and here I'm being made to look like I'm terrible?"

My instructor told me with a straight face, "I'm going to give you a sports analogy here.  Just because you're a great high school athlete doesn't mean you have 'it' - whatever 'it' is - that is needed to move on successfully to the next level.  I hate to say it but this may not be for you." 

I tried to prove him wrong, but the last straw was when he gave me a ZERO on a drawing that I thought was perfect.   I asked him why, and he told me one line in "an important area" was too thin.  I asked him what the big deal was, and he told me "In the real would if you submitted your plans to the construction crew the building would fall down."  I told him, "Come on then let me do it over!"   He told me, "In the real world there are no do-overs."  I had enough.  The next day, I resigned myself from the program.  Maybe it would be different if I took the automotive program that they had, but what's done is done.

Speaking of high school....

Having to write essays were the bane of my existence.  I never saw the point in them, after all, the whole damn text book you're learning from is essentially an essay on the subject!  I can't explain it, but I would clam up and it would sometimes take me hours to just to write the very first sentence, and the rest of the way wasn't easy on me either.  However, when we had assignments in "creative writing" class where you could write on just about any topic you want, sure it took me a while to think of the first sentence but after that I was off like a banshee!  In fact, one time I lost a couple of points off my creative writing assignment for being too detailed.

So what does all this mean?

I'm just not good at "testing" situations.  Put me in an actual training situations for the core task at hand, and that's where I shine.  Once I learn something and I'm shown how to do it, I generally have no issues doing the task on my own, without having to have someone look over my shoulder (To be honest, I hate it when people do that).   

And before anyone says anything, I know how to put up with being tasked with stuff I don't want to do.  It's called a job, and all jobs task you with stuff you don't want to do.  It's why they pay you!

Speaking of computer science, as stated in my earlier blog "how to spot a bad IT/tech guy," I wish employers in the IT industry would look at certifications more than that degree.  The man I mentioned earlier who would rather hire the punk fresh out of college over the guy with actual experience will find out soon enough when the computer science major has to hire a hardware tech to change a hard drive, or is tasked with choosing a new ISP for the company and ends up choosing a satellite service simply because it has more advertised "mbps" than a T1 from the local phone company. 

The point is, some people do not need a fancy piece of paper to tell a prospective employer that they would be good at a job.  Experience and a willingness to want to perform the work at hand should matter more than a piece of paper that says "I put up with having to write term papers on William Shakespeare so I can say that I know about the science of computer software."

End of.