Chip companies are scrambling to hire college students dazzled by software dollars

[cmndr]

7 hours ago, Donut417 said:

The problem is, education in the US is expensive.

It can be expensive for SOME people. The median for a bachelor's degree is closer to $15,000 (among those with federal loans). For laughs let's say you went to UCLA (school with the most applications) and studied computer and information science. A random person you meet will have loans around 15k when they finish.
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?110662-University-of-California-Los-Angeles
 

You on the other hand will have around $18,000 in debt, maybe because you spent $3000 on interview prep courses and a 1 week cruise celebrating your first big internship

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?110662-University-of-California-Los-Angeles&fos_code=1101&fos_credential=3

your middle of the road classmate will make around $150k a year 3 years after graduation and will get, after 401k, taxes and deductions, paychecks that are around $7000/month. Of this 7k, about 2.5% goes towards student loans.

 

----

 

If you're risk adverse and don't want THAT much debt there's still another solution - community colleges. You can basically cut costs in half by attending one for a few years.

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7 hours ago, Dracarris said:

JFC this is sooo fucked up beyond imagination (including the rest of what you wrote).

So in the US, vs Europe, you end up paying a few hundred dollars more per month on student loans. You also have the potential to make about 2x what Europeans usually make.

Pay for an L4 engineer at Google in Mountain View - $270k. Pay for an L4 engineer in Ireland or the UK or Canada - $150k.

 

[Brooksie359]

7 hours ago, Donut417 said:

The problem is, education in the US is expensive. I have $47,000 in student loan debt and I make under $40,000 a year. There are a lot of Americans drowning in student loan debt. Between the cost of eduction, pay, and working conditions some industries struggle. Look at Airlines. They are so pasted fucked that its not funny. Decades of treating staff like shit, keeping wages low and not recruiting new pilots is finally catching up with them. Food service and hospitality are other industries who historically had low wages and poor treatment of workers. They can fill jobs fast enough. Every time I got to the store it seems like they are understaffed, worst at some retailers than others. Another critical industry is transportation. Truck drivers are in short ish supply. Mainly because the cost to become one has increased. You work 24 hours a day and if your lucky you get paid $50,000 a year if no less. Plus there are a plethora of regulations you have to follow. 

 

An act of congress with do fuck all to fix any of these problems. Those old fucks wouldn't know a solution if it came up a bit them in the ass. Loads of money is why our economy is sliding in to a recession currently. 

Let be honest here this has little to do with the cost of education. Sure it sucks to have student loan debt but if we are talking about the type of people that would go into this field we are likely talking about people who are going into stem and stem jobs pay very well straight out of college so it's not nearly as big of a problem. I know my friend graduated with around 50k in student loans but ended up getting a job that paid 80k in biomedical engineering and paid it off in a year by living with his parents while paying off the loan. Honestly if more people lived with their parents for a couple of years while paying off their student loans it wouldn't be as big of a problem. Anyways the biggest problem is that like most people who go into stem fields they do so because of good job prospects and the good pay. Who would want to go into a field that has been largely outsourced overseas? I mean you can't expect people going into college 4 years ago knowing that Intel was going to open a huge new facility that would create a ton of new jobs. 

[Brooksie359]

7 hours ago, Fasterthannothing said:

That doesn't have anything to do with the lack of stem majors. It's because of poor stem education in middle and high school. Why better your understanding of something you didn't learn in the first place! We are literally ranked behind craphole Russia and communist China for goodness sake.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markkantrowitz/2021/11/07/us-slips-to-third-in-international-science-and-math-competitions/?sh=18bbf7727db4

If you had any idea how the school system in the US works you would know that different areas get vastly different qualities of education as schools are largely funded by local property taxes. My school we were learning how to solder and do wiring and robotics in middle school and in high-school we had a fab lab where we worked with cnc machines, lazer cutters and 3d printers. I mean by the time I went to college I already knew how to use those machine and my cad cam class that I had to take I already knew alot of the material already. The biggest issue is that my school is the minority and not alot of schools have the same level of education.

[cmndr]

7 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Loads of money is why our economy is sliding in to a recession currently. 

It's probably semi-deliberate. Right now there are supply chain shortages, a bunch of money was pumped into the economy and we JUST had an oil shock due to the Russian war against Ukraine.

This is basically the formula for stagflation (resource shortages in critical areas that can't be quickly substituted).

The current thought is that the stagflation of the 1970s (oil shock due to OPEC) could have been averted by jacking up interest rates, enduring a short and mild recession for a few years and then emerging from it stronger and less reliant on that resource.

 

[Dracarris]

11 minutes ago, cmndr said:

So in the US, vs Europe, you end up paying a few hundred dollars more per month on student loans. You also have the potential to make about 2x what Europeans usually make.

Yeah sure, that applies if you immediately get a well-paying job, otherwise you are screwed.

Student loans and debts are moronic beyond any imagination, especially with the current US system.

13 minutes ago, cmndr said:

Pay for an L4 engineer at Google in Mountain View - $270k. Pay for an L4 engineer in Ireland or the UK or Canada - $150k.

Wages from those tech giants do not reflect the regular salaries. That being said, cost of living, taxes and so on in the bay area eat up an absurd amount of your salary and literally everything is freakin expensive, so even if what you say would be universally true I‘d carefully check what you actually make after deducting everything and checking what you actually get for the money that is left. It is nowhere near 2x, not even remotely.

 

 

That being said, the mountain view salaries you quoted are also not uncommon in Europe from said tech giants, just not as common but 200-400k for skilled engineers is a reality.

[cmndr]

8 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Yeah sure, that applies if you immediately get a well-paying job, otherwise you are screwed.

Student loans and debts are moronic beyond any imagination, especially with the current US system.

It's more representative than you'd think. People in the top half of the US (loosely the college educated) do A LOT better than the top half in the EU.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2017/04/24/western-europe-middle-class-appendix-e/

 

Most of the horror stories about loans are from people with graduate degrees. A 25 year old taking on $100k in debt to become a social worker should know better.
 

8 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Wages from those tech giants do not reflect the regular salaries. That being said, cost of living, taxes and so on in the bay area eat up an absurd amount of your salary and literally everything is freakin expensive, so even if what you say would be universally true I‘d carefully check what you actually make after deducting everything and checking what you actually get for the money that is left. It is nowhere near 2x, not even remotely.

 

That being said, the mountain view salaries you quoted are also not uncommon in Europe from said tech giants, just not as common but 200-400k for skilled engineers is a reality.

Cost of living is less than you'd think. If your goal is to save a ton of cash you can make it happen.

This is about my budget (out of pay check) from when I worked at Google
$1300/month for a room. $250/month for flights to see my SO. $200/month for misc food. $200/month toys and misc fun. Let's call that $2000/month. I was saving around $150,000/year as a 20-something year old. Also my stock went WAY up after.

Definitely a modest lifestyle. But doable. I got free food from work. A free gym. etc.
 

8 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

That being said, the mountain view salaries you quoted are also not uncommon in Europe from said tech giants, just not as common but 200-400k for skilled engineers is a reality.

Internal pay comparison sheet at Google basically showed half the pay in Europe, unless you're in Zurich.

 

You can check on here as well, it's not terribly far off - levels.fyi

[Brooksie359]

5 hours ago, gjsman said:

Illiteracy on college campuses is no joke. If I did a sampling of students at my old college and simply asked them to write a 1000-word essay, on any subject of their choice, and have the essay be correct in both grammar and spelling (other than maybe the occasional minor slip-up that even the best writers have occasionally), I don't think many of them would be capable of such a simple thing that was expected of High Schoolers not long ago.

The ironic part about that is this means basically nothing in terms of ability in the stem field. I'm sorry but if you went and sampled engineers based off of how well they can write then you are going to be disappointed as a large portion of them just aren't great at that. Honestly for the work I do in engineering I rarely ever have to do large amounts of writing. So Honestly this has almost 0 to do with qualifications for working as a chip engineer or other jobs related to the field. Again I think people are simply overlooking such an obvious reason why not a ton of people are going into those fields which is that there wasn't that high of demand so why go study for 4 years to graduate and not be able to find a job easily. Now that there is a higher demand you might see more people going into those fields. 

[cmndr]

29 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

The ironic part about that is this means basically nothing in terms of ability in the stem field. I'm sorry but if you went and sampled engineers based off of how well they can write then you are going to be disappointed as a large portion of them just aren't great at that. Honestly for the work I do in engineering I rarely ever have to do large amounts of writing. So Honestly this has almost 0 to do with qualifications for working as a chip engineer or other jobs related to the field. Again I think people are simply overlooking such an obvious reason why not a ton of people are going into those fields which is that there wasn't that high of demand so why go study for 4 years to graduate and not be able to find a job easily. Now that there is a higher demand you might see more people going into those fields. 

Yes and no.

Writing PRDs is DEFINITELY a thing within technical spaces. So is cross functional communication. It is, however, only tangentially limited to the writing which is expected in a 1000 word essay.

I've written ~1000 word PRDs for a 300 lines of code tweak before... which was its own brand of painful.
 

[starsmine]

6 hours ago, gjsman said:

The US spends more money on education per child than any country in the world, and more money on education in total than any other country in the world. Money isn't the issue.

 

University of California study:

https://rossieronline.usc.edu/blog/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/

I do agree, money isnt the main issue with education.
In my understanding of the complexities of the issue, the most influential factor influencing American education is the cultural proliferation of the philosophy of anti-intellectualism. The US has more then 45% of its population thinking universities are a bad influence to America... https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2017/07/10/sharp-partisan-divisions-in-views-of-national-institutions/
Class politics being a close second with education being mostly funded by property tax which means, good luck lower class. 

I am going back to school this fall after taking four years off of school to try to got a BS in Computer engineering, so chip companies in the OP can hire me pretty soon. 

[Brooksie359]

38 minutes ago, cmndr said:

Yes and no.

Writing PRDs is DEFINITELY a thing within technical spaces. So is cross functional communication. It is, however, only tangentially limited to the writing which is expected in a 1000 word essay.

I've written ~1000 word PRDs for a 300 lines of code tweak before... which was its own brand of painful.
 

Oh I am not saying that engineering doesn't requiring writing but I would say it's much lower on the list of things engineers need to be good at. For me personally my firm has alot of tools specifically to address the issue of not everyone being great at writing. Like obviously for the industry I am in we have to write specs which does require some writing skills but again we have standardized wording for specs to eliminate alot of issue as the wording of specs is incredibly important as if you write them wrong some contractors will do incredibly stupid things which can cause the project alot of money. 

[Montana One-Six]

9 hours ago, Fasterthannothing said:

It's because of poor stem education in middle and high school.

Can confirm. As someone who lived in both Germany and the US as a child and young adult I came to a similar conclusion, although in the US it is also highly dependent on where you go to school (higher than in Germany). I only went to a German high school but when talking to friends in the US about school stuff I always got the impression that schools in Germany had more challenging topics earlier on plus sometimes especially stuff in 12 and 13 grade in Germany seemed to be more on a College/University level than high school. Especially in natural sciences like Math, Biology, Chemistry, ... .

 

9 hours ago, Fasterthannothing said:

We are literally ranked behind craphole Russia and communist China for goodness sake.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markkantrowitz/2021/11/07/us-slips-to-third-in-international-science-and-math-competitions/?sh=18bbf7727db4

These science competitions are cool and all but really are a bad measurement for knowledge or education levels of your average high schooler. If you want to find out if your education system works or if it is better than whatever other counttry it is not very wise to only look at the top 1%. 

[starsmine]

12 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Oh I am not saying that engineering doesn't requiring writing but I would say it's much lower on the list of things engineers need to be good at. For me personally my firm has alot of tools specifically to address the issue of not everyone being great at writing. Like obviously for the industry I am in we have to write specs which does require some writing skills but again we have standardized wording for specs to eliminate alot of issue as the wording of specs is incredibly important as if you write them wrong some contractors will do incredibly stupid things which can cause the project alot of money. 

IDK man, the engineers that are not good at technical writing are not good engineers. Half the job is communicating and working with a team. Its very important to be good at it.

[Brooksie359]

6 minutes ago, starsmine said:

IDK man, the engineers that are not good at technical writing are not good engineers. Half the job is communicating and working with a team. Its very important to be good at it.

Entirely depends on the engineering field. Honestly most of the important communication I do is during meetings so just talking not writing. Also when I communicate with team members it is usually through pictures with annotations rather than lengthy technical writing when I do end up emailing instead of talking. 

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

It's more representative than you'd think. People in the top half of the US (loosely the college educated) do A LOT better than the top half in the EU.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2017/04/24/western-europe-middle-class-appendix-e/

I'm quite sceptical that you can conclude from these graphs that they do so much better and these studies often have deep down in the methodology some twist that changes the outcome quite a lot. You need to make quite a lot of assumptions for starters. And 50% of people in the US have a college education? What? Maybe that's part of the problem.

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

Most of the horror stories about loans are from people with graduate degrees. A 25 year old taking on $100k in debt to become a social worker should know better.

Why does he need to take a loan in the first place. Nobody should. Period.

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

This is about my budget (out of pay check) from when I worked at Google
$1300/month for a room. $250/month for flights to see my SO. $200/month for misc food. $200/month toys and misc fun. Let's call that $2000/month. I was saving around $150,000/year as a 20-something year old. Also my stock went WAY up after.

You can save money everywhere in the world but if you want to enjoy life a bit the bay area is horribly expensive. 1300$ for housing and 200$ for is extremely low. I for sure don't want to live on food that 200$ buys you in the US. I happen to know an European engineer quite high up in the skill levels that went to the US to work for Google and the costs of living he reports are nowhere near what you claim.

And all the gym perks etc are provided in Europe as well.

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

Internal pay comparison sheet at Google basically showed half the pay in Europe, unless you're in Zurich.

And people in Zurich also have zero student debt, so what's exactly the point? Besides that there are more tech giants than Google, and, once again, taking wages of tech giants in the bay area is not exactly reflecting the average. Some wages are just outright absurd, data scientists at AirBnB and Netflix earning half a million per year. W T F

 

---------------------------------------

All this aside:

 

Lets assume what you say is correct: People with student debt in the US have the potential to make more money than those in Europe without debt - how is that any justification whatsoever for that horrible loan system? How in the slightest would getting rid of it hinder companies from continuing to pay such high wages? Where is the causal link between student debt and high wages?

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, cmndr said:

f you're risk adverse and don't want THAT much debt there's still another solution - community colleges. You can basically cut costs in half by attending one for a few years.

Associates degrees are worthless now days. Most places want at min a bachelors or Masters. Furthermore, many colleges make you take bullshit courses to pump up tuition. Add in the other bullshit fees, potentially to have to pay for room and board or parking, it adds up fast. 

 

You also for get the law of supply and demand. Everyone and their mom now has a degree of some kind. That means the pay for someone with a degree will go down. When I was looking for jobs for my degree they wanted to start me off at $13/hr or less. I make $17.70/hr without using my degree and my degree is in business. 

 

Furthermore people need to stop considering colleges as the only way. Trade schools are also a good option. During the pandemic we started having shortages in skilled tradesmen. Cant build shit without electricians, plumbers, or carpenters can you? But the older generation told us that those jobs were crap and we had to go to college. For me I would have probably been better off at a trade school. But Im too old to be going back to school. 

 

2 hours ago, cmndr said:

we JUST had an oil shock due to the Russian war against Ukraine.

The war has nothing to do with the price of gas in the US. The oil companies shut down several refineries. They are keeping the prices jacked up. Thats why even with the price of oil going down, the price of gas isnt. 

 

 

[starsmine]

12 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

 Furthermore, many colleges make you take bullshit courses to pump up tuition. 

OH NO, liberal arts, the horror of having a complete and well rounded education.

[Brooksie359]

59 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Associates degrees are worthless now days. Most places want at min a bachelors or Masters. Furthermore, many colleges make you take bullshit courses to pump up tuition. Add in the other bullshit fees, potentially to have to pay for room and board or parking, it adds up fast. 

 

You also for get the law of supply and demand. Everyone and their mom now has a degree of some kind. That means the pay for someone with a degree will go down. When I was looking for jobs for my degree they wanted to start me off at $13/hr or less. I make $17.70/hr without using my degree and my degree is in business. 

 

Furthermore people need to stop considering colleges as the only way. Trade schools are also a good option. During the pandemic we started having shortages in skilled tradesmen. Cant build shit without electricians, plumbers, or carpenters can you? But the older generation told us that those jobs were crap and we had to go to college. For me I would have probably been better off at a trade school. But Im too old to be going back to school. 

 

The war has nothing to do with the price of gas in the US. The oil companies shut down several refineries. They are keeping the prices jacked up. Thats why even with the price of oil going down, the price of gas isnt. 

 

 

Honestly unless you are going into the medical field, law, or stem you are probably not going to get much value out of having a bachelor's degree. I feel like business school is hit or miss as I know some people who were quite successful with a business degree but they also found a good job in reality. Also business school is honestly a much better second degree rather than an individual degree as you can often take whatever field your first degree is in and make a business based off of it. 

[IPD]

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

OH NO, liberal arts, the horror of having a complete and well rounded education.

That was my point earlier.  Even if the field of study isn't directly related to your immediate profession--the liberal arts background was--traditionally--a testament to your ability to learn, adapt, articulate, think critically, etc.

 

Really, it's not "BS courses to pump up tuition"--it's "BS majors and concentrations to pump in profits".

[cmndr]

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

Associates degrees are worthless now days. Most places want at min a bachelors or Masters. Furthermore, many colleges make you take bullshit courses to pump up tuition. Add in the other bullshit fees, potentially to have to pay for room and board or parking, it adds up fast. 

 

You also for get the law of supply and demand. Everyone and their mom now has a degree of some kind. That means the pay for someone with a degree will go down. When I was looking for jobs for my degree they wanted to start me off at $13/hr or less. I make $17.70/hr without using my degree and my degree is in business.

I never said get an associate's degree. I said do the first half of a 4 year degree at a community college.

Most state universities have transfer programs.

You can also often test out of the "fluff" courses with AP tests from high school. I had about 1 year of AP credit going into college.

You are correct that not all degrees (AND resumes) are made equal. For what it's worth I went from, inflation adjusted, about $13 an hour to around $40 an hour right out of undergrad. Last year I was at something like $100-150ish an hour depending on how you do the math.

 

 

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

Furthermore people need to stop considering colleges as the only way. Trade schools are also a good option. During the pandemic we started having shortages in skilled tradesmen. Cant build shit without electricians, plumbers, or carpenters can you? But the older generation told us that those jobs were crap and we had to go to college. For me I would have probably been better off at a trade school. But Im too old to be going back to school.

"college or bust" is definitely a mindset. "just do a trade" can also be bad. My father did a trade. His back and knees are jacked up. His brother, who got an engineering degree doesn't have joint issues. Same story for his father who did engineering/project management - no joint issues.

Doing a trade WILL wear you out.

 

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

The war has nothing to do with the price of gas in the US. The oil companies shut down several refineries. They are keeping the prices jacked up. Thats why even with the price of oil going down, the price of gas isnt.

The refineries are closed because there's nothing to refine. Russia supplied something like 12% of the world's oil.
The US is also shipping oil over to Europe so that they keep the economic embargo on Russia going.

 

Europeans are also feeling the pain.

There's also an incoming grain shortage because Ukraine isn't shipping out grain as it normally would.

[cmndr]

2 hours ago, Dracarris said:

I'm quite sceptical that you can conclude from these graphs that they do so much better and these studies often have deep down in the methodology some twist that changes the outcome quite a lot. You need to make quite a lot of assumptions for starters. And 50% of people in the US have a college education? What? Maybe that's part of the problem.

Why does he need to take a loan in the first place. Nobody should. Period.

You can save money everywhere in the world but if you want to enjoy life a bit the bay area is horribly expensive. 1300$ for housing and 200$ for is extremely low. I for sure don't want to live on food that 200$ buys you in the US.

I happen to know an European engineer quite high up in the skill levels that went to the US to work for Google and the costs of living he reports are nowhere near what you claim.

And all the gym perks etc are provided in Europe as well.

 

GDP per capita in the US is higher than nearly all European countries.
Inequality is also higher. There's also a link between education and income. ergo there's a BIG wage premium in the US. It's why you have so many people trying to move to the US and you get jokes like "what do you call a successful Canadian? Canadian-American"

The debt is a drop in the bucket. It's something like 0.5% of lifetime earnings for a college grad.
There are edge cases but those aren't the norm.

I got free food from Google every day. It's really easy to live off of $50 on weekends. It's 2 decent but not extravagent dinners or lunches plus 2 large but inexpensive meals - think 1lbs burrito from a Mexican place.
 

2 hours ago, Dracarris said:

I happen to know an European engineer quite high up in the skill levels that went to the US to work for Google and the costs of living he reports are nowhere near what you claim.

He isn't good at budgeting then OR has very different values from me. I also had coworkers who spend $5000/month on a 3 bedroom apartment in San Francisco and who dropped $1000/month on going out. I didn't. Most of my hobbies are either cheap or I make money off of. Some people blow $5k a month on escorts or "sugar babies" I'm not one of them.

If your goal is to retire in your 30s you don't waste money on stupid BS and you cut corners.

 

 

Quote

And people in Zurich also have zero student debt, so what's exactly the point? Besides that there are more tech giants than Google, and, once again, taking wages of tech giants in the bay area is not exactly reflecting the average. Some wages are just outright absurd, data scientists at AirBnB and Netflix earning half a million per year. W T F

 

---------------------------------------

All this aside:

 

Lets assume what you say is correct: People with student debt in the US have the potential to make more money than those in Europe without debt - how is that any justification whatsoever for that horrible loan system? How in the slightest would getting rid of it hinder companies from continuing to pay such high wages? Where is the causal link between student debt and high wages?

 

People in Zurich also make up under 1% of the EU population. Also a good chunk of them are from OTHER countries.

I'm also WELL aware of what AirBnB and Netflix pay.

 

The middle of the road American with a degree makes more than the middle of the road European with a degree. By something like 1 million Euros over their lifetime.

It's not justification for the US having overpriced education. It's just evidence that the debt doesn't really matter THAT much. Even $50,000 debt ($500/month in payments for 10 years) isn't THAT much if you're making $100,000 ($8600/month before taxes) a year for 30 years. It's something you just don't think about.

Where it is a problem is people going to VERY fancy private schools (no one is forced to), getting bad grades, partying a bunch and wasting money, and having poor career prospects after because they screwed around. A LOT of people do that.

A lot of the costs in the US education system isn't from the education itself, it's from the associated housing costs and funds going to things like vacations, parties, etc. Stuff that's less common in Europe because Europeans generally live more humble lifestyles.

The solution isn't to cut costs a ton (it helps) but to increase earnings. Better to make an extra $1million than to worry about 2% of that in debt.

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

GDP per capita in the US is higher than nearly all European countries.

That means very little unless you know the distribution. And that is especially true for countries like the US with rampant inequality. Can as well be made from very few super rich.

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

It's why you have so many people trying to move to the US

Basically no one in Europe wants to move to the US because they know how bad of a deal that is in comparison. Might be true for Asia, Latin America (and Canada?) but certainly not Europe, for good reason.

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

The debt is a drop in the bucket. It's something like 0.5% of lifetime earnings for a college grad.

Simply not true for the average college grad. As a Google employee you are speaking out of an ivory hall. It starts with by far not all majors earning nearly as much as EEs, SW engineers and so on do.

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

He isn't good at budgeting then OR has very different values from me.

Or you are just cheaping out on things that negatively affect quality of life. Doesn't really matter, the simple fact that you payed 1300$ for a room proves my point. That money gets you half of a decent flat (e.g. to share with an SO or a room mate) in even the most expensive European cities and very good ones if you move a bit away from the city center. Whatever thing you look at, it is more expensive in the bay area than basically anywhere else.

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

If your goal is to retire in your 30s you don't waste money on stupid BS and you cut corners.

Good luck with that.

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

The middle of the road American with a degree makes more than the middle of the road European with a degree.

That is a very very very very very vague statement. And I am not buying it. The non-ending reports of the harsh struggles of the US middle class that can't make ends meet, basically set no money aside and have to work well into their 70s to somehow finance their retirement. Simply not a thing in the EU, edge cases excluded.

 

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

A lot of the costs in the US education system isn't from the education itself, it's from the associated housing costs and funds going to things like vacations, parties, etc.

Dude, some of your univesities charge 25k per semester. Just no. Housing yes because that's also often a rip-off but the rest is actually your drop in the bucket.

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

Stuff that's less common in Europe because Europeans generally live more humble lifestyles.

If you are talking about parties and vacation during uni: That's plain not true, especially for partys (and also a super bold and over-generalizing statement).

 

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

It's not justification for the US having overpriced education. It's just evidence that the debt doesn't really matter THAT much. Even $50,000 debt ($500/month in payments for 10 years) isn't THAT much if you're making $100,000 ($8600/month before taxes) a year for 30 years. It's something you just don't think about.

Ignoring any interest rate? Everyone with a college degree will make 100k, everywhere? Again, ivory hall my friend. Not a problem if you are an EE or CS major. A problem for many many others.

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

The solution isn't to cut costs a ton (it helps) but to increase earnings. Better to make an extra $1million than to worry about 2% of that in debt.

Yeah lets continue to let banks leech off of student debts instead of fixing a broken system. Sure. It's just a horrible part of the US economy that should go away IMHO.

[cmndr]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

That means very little unless you know the distribution. And that is especially true for countries like the US with rampant inequality. Can as well be made from very few super rich.

Technically true but that would be astronomical. Also US gini calculations are often truncated such that income past a certain level isn't included.

Also I showed a plot from Pew research which SHOWS the actual distribution. Pew is usually considered reputable.

 

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Basically no one in Europe wants to move to the US because they know how bad of a deal that is in comparison. Might be true for Asia, Latin America (and Canada?) but certainly not Europe, for good reason.

Some will certainly be not wanting to leave home.
With that said, my first manager at Google was Bulgarian and one of the people who interviewed me was German.

 

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Simply not true for the average college grad. As a Google employee you are speaking out of an ivory hall. It starts with by far not all majors earning nearly as much as EEs, SW engineers and so on do.

This is why I linked to tax data from a few universities. US tax data backs what I'm saying.

College Scorecard has median debt by university and major as well as median pay 3 years after gradaution.
The university in the US with the most applicants (UCLA) who did CS had a median debt of $18k and a median income of $150k.

 

In the context of this thread which is "hardware companies are having a hard time competing against SW salaries at top companies" this is a decent point.

 

as an aside I've been homeless before and I'm presently unemployed because F' my last manager. Pretty much his whole team quit.
 

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Or you are just cheaping out on things that negatively affect quality of life. Doesn't really matter, the simple fact that you payed 1300$ for a room proves my point. That money gets you half of a decent flat (e.g. to share with an SO or a room mate) in even the most expensive European cities and very good ones if you move a bit away from the city center. Whatever thing you look at, it is more expensive in the bay area than basically anywhere else.

I paid for 1/3rd of a fairly large and nice apartment. It's not THAT different than you paying for 1/2 of a nice apartment.

And yeah, it's a bit more expensive overall. The upside is you get paid an extra $100,000-200,000 vs someone in Munich or London.

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Good luck with that.

That is a very very very very very vague statement. And I am not buying it. The non-ending reports of the harsh struggles of the US middle class that can't make ends meet, basically set no money aside and have to work well into their 70s to somehow finance their retirement. Simply not a thing in the EU, edge cases excluded.

This has nothing to do with software engineers and hardware engineers with 6 figure incomes.

 

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Dude, some of your univesities charge 25k per semester. Just no. Housing yes because that's also often a rip-off but the rest is actually your drop in the bucket.

If you are talking about parties and vacation during uni: That's plain not true, especially for partys (and also a super bold and over-generalizing statement).

No one is forced to go to those places. Those places also usually give poor people full scholarships. Harvard for example pays 100% of tuition for people whose family makes under $75k and covers MOST of the tuition for people whose family makes under $150k.

 

If you get 0 financial aid, work 20 hours a week at a low wage (let's say $15/hour for 40 weeks a year and this is with 0 paid internships which might add another $10-80k) go to a community college for 2 years while living at home for free and an in state university for 2 years, you'd have earnings of $48000 andtuition costs of $6000 for CC and $30000 for a university and housing costs of around $20k at the university. Or around 8kish in debt... like, it's doable.

In practice student loans are going towards stupid things.

https://lendedu.com/blog/student-loans-for-spring-break/

Quote

 

According to the LendEDU poll, 30.60% of college students with student debt claim that they are using money they received from student loans to help pay for their spring break trip this year.
 

Nearly a quarter (23.80%) of respondents stated that they have used money received from student loans to pay for drinking some type of alcohol. This answer also included spending money at bars.

 

A third (33.40%) of students answered that they have used money received from student loans to pay for clothing and other accessories.

 

Similarly, the same amount (33.40%) of students said that they have used money received from student loans to pay for restaurants and take-out.

 

6.60% of respondents responded saying that they have used money received from student loans to pay for drugs.

Finally, 5.60% of students that participated in our survey stated that they used money received from student loans on gambling or sports betting.

 

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Ignoring any interest rate?

 

Interest on federal loans is subsidized and it's basically the same rate as inflation. It's actually lower than inflation right now. Heck I haven't had to make a federal loan payment in 2.5 years.

 

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Everyone with a college degree will make 100k, everywhere? Again, ivory hall my friend. Not a problem if you are an EE or CS major. A problem for many many others.

 

In a thread focused on top engineering talent it's fair to focus on costs and conditions associated with top engineering talent.

 

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Yeah lets continue to let banks leech off of student debts instead of fixing a broken system. Sure. It's just a horrible part of the US economy that should go away IMHO.

It's mostly federal loans.
The government arguably loses money on these loans overall.

https://thecollegeinvestor.com/39673/does-the-government-profit-off-of-student-loans/

 

 

I'm all for doing things to address housing costs and to cut educational bloat.
Do note that I suggested doing 50% of education at a community college, which is basically free (free for low income individuals and very low cost for most others and sometimes just outright free).  https://thecollegepost.com/free-community-college-states/

Part of the issue is that many people in the US chose a "luxury experience" instead of the "good enough" experience, even if it gets you the same degree from the same university in the end.

It's just that THAT doesn't really move the needle in terms of economic wherewithal for college grads. A few thousand dollars doesn't matter THAT much compared to a multi-million dollar career.

 

I'm actually a proponent of certifications over degrees despite having a masters degree. Similar to what's done in the IT world.

[thechinchinsong]

7 hours ago, cmndr said:

If you're risk adverse and don't want THAT much debt there's still another solution - community colleges. You can basically cut costs in half by attending one for a few years.

I can't emphasize this enough. I graduated with a bachelors from a decent state university with a computer engineering degree and I know many classmates that took community college for 2 years before transferring or even just using community college classes as transfer credit and save some semesters of tuition. It saves so much money and it really doesn't lower the quality of your education since many of the undergraduate starter classes can be replaced with those in community colleges. I know in some states, many community colleges have specific programs/agreements with more prestigious colleges and universities where classes/credits easily transfer and the application process is guaranteed or simplified.

 

I wish I knew more about this and saved a bunch of money from the start. I was fortunate and privileged enough where my parents saved money for my tuition, but I wish I didn't have to take their money so they could've saved more for my younger siblings and retirement.

 

I think for some people, my family included, there can kind of be a pressure or a stigma against community college for one reason or another, but please don't ignore them. You can have the prestige of graduating from a respected, well known university AND not spend a fortune (or at least reduce costs). If you're looking for other degrees like accounting/finance or a nurses/medical assistance program, I would imagine community college would help a lot too, although I don't have as much anecdotal evidence for it. 

 

And yes, trade schools and other technical education programs are also great, but I don't have any personal experience with those.

[Brooksie359]

9 hours ago, cmndr said:

I never said get an associate's degree. I said do the first half of a 4 year degree at a community college.

Most state universities have transfer programs.

You can also often test out of the "fluff" courses with AP tests from high school. I had about 1 year of AP credit going into college.

You are correct that not all degrees (AND resumes) are made equal. For what it's worth I went from, inflation adjusted, about $13 an hour to around $40 an hour right out of undergrad. Last year I was at something like $100-150ish an hour depending on how you do the math.

 

 

"college or bust" is definitely a mindset. "just do a trade" can also be bad. My father did a trade. His back and knees are jacked up. His brother, who got an engineering degree doesn't have joint issues. Same story for his father who did engineering/project management - no joint issues.

Doing a trade WILL wear you out.

 

The refineries are closed because there's nothing to refine. Russia supplied something like 12% of the world's oil.
The US is also shipping oil over to Europe so that they keep the economic embargo on Russia going.

 

Europeans are also feeling the pain.

There's also an incoming grain shortage because Ukraine isn't shipping out grain as it normally would.

I think the problem is that realistically not everyone is cut out for being an engineer or going Into stem so trade school is a good alternative as the majority of trades are unionized and have really decent pay and benefits. It's enough to make a decent living which I can't say the same about getting a useless college degree as people often do. Not all college degrees are equal and you see people waste 100k on a degree with no jobs related to it then you can clearly see the issue. I mean I know alot of people who got a degree in something stupid and ended up not being able to find a job that actually needed the degree and ended up working at places that really only require a highchool education. If they had gone to a trade school they would have been way better off as they would actually be learning something useful for finding a job. 

[jagdtigger]

22 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Decades of treating staff like shit, keeping wages low and not recruiting new pilots is finally catching up with them.

IMO this is pretty much  a wide spread issue, i am myself is a victim to this. No-one wanted to deal with newbies and ended up on a production line. Now they are in deep crap because the sought after experienced workers are nearing retirement..... (/edit fun fact, i get paid more on the production line thn what i would get working in my original profession [car electrician])