How many jobs really require college? - <AUTHOR> https://devinhelton.com/how-many-jobs-require-college <comment><USER3> I think the author of this post is making the same mistake that a lot of other people (particularly smart folks) make whenever they are thinking about the ills of modern education system and what can be done to improve it. Like Peter Thiel and others, I don't think they understand how and why students are failing in classrooms today.

Take for example the author's suggestions on how school systems can be improved:

 _Create a set of free, online high school and college degree programs that any American could enroll in, and pursue at their own pace._

Can you really expect high school students to perform well in online classes? The most elite companies in the valley have correctly found out that remote doesn't work (in most cases)... and yet we're going to do remote with our students? I took online classes when I went back to complete college at an older age... it was the worst mistake of my life. As a human, I needed the social imposition of a disappointed teacher telling me that I performed poorly on my test, I needed the camaraderie of students with whom I could study somewhere. Online classes, _especially_ at high school stage are very bad (perhaps with the exception of "gifted" students who probably would benefit from being in a fast-tracked line).

 _At age 13, give everyone a $100k education voucher._

You're giving too much credit to students, they don't know what is best for them. This $100k will be exploited in some way by profit-seeking companies before you have a second to glance back at the money.

 _Legalize and normalize apprenticeship contracts._

I agree with this.

<comment><USER4> Aren't apprenticeship contracts functionally slavery? You think free money will be abused, but this won't be?

<comment><USER5> So I don't know about all fields, but I know about programming.

Do you know how much value a high school type person has in writing computer programs for an actual software company? Something fairly negative. Say -$10 an hour or -$50 an hour, based on how much experienced person time they take up and how much damage they do.

If you run a small profitable business, even if you could get high schoolers to work for free to write you code, you should not do it. If you need to pay them minimum wage... even MORE reason not do it.

I feel this is a situation that other industries have dealt with for 100s of years. For example the day 1 statue carver was probably a huge negative value also. I suspect they had to sign something like "I will work for enough pay to feed myself for 2 years, and then work for a industry standard wage for 2 years after that if you agree to train me". So all in agreeing to 4 years of work for training. (And some pay, but not really break the bank pay). At the end of the 4 years, the company got a decent amount of value out of the statue carver, and the statue carver learned a bunch of skills without going to college.

Not really anything like this in programming. Not even sure it would be legally enforceable. But I think that is a big reason why there is a gap in needs of programmers vs people willing to train people to do the job. It really would suck for most people to train someone how to do a job for a year (losing tons of money), and then the person job hops to someone who pays higher and bears none of the training cost. This is why so many jobs advertise 1-3 years of experience required. They want people over the initial learning hump, but not making the big bucks yet.

So perhaps I am proposing a way to bring back bonded labor apprentices? Hum, seems terrible. But also seems like it could work...

<comment><USER4> It sucks for the big corps to not be able to contractually force labor out of workers who they have trained. But it sucks far far more if you are stuck in an abusive contract.

<comment><USER5> Maybe. But the end result is where we are now. People go to college to try and learn a skill. Don't really learn the skill as well as an apprenticeship. Get a lot of debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sort of article comes up on Hackerrank a lot. Zero research, a spreadsheet, and a prescription to change eduction from the ground up. The author advocates curiosity as a motivator for education, yet he doesn't appear to know anything about professional architecture (certification is complicated and not always tied to education) and doesn't seem to care enough to research it before bloviating.

I read his article dedicated to architecture on his blog, and it was equally ill-informed. Of course buildings built in the 1880s didn't require architects with a college degree. They didn't require that you know CAD, either.

What appeals to people about this type of article? The author doesn't bring any experience with education policy or teaching. He doesn't back his assertions with research, primary sources, or even secondary sources. He doesn't bother interviewing anyone with experience with the problem or who has thought about it.

And, his reasoning is fairly shoddy. Much of what he's arguing for already exists in parallel with formal education. Nothing stopped me in the past from supplementing my learning on Coursera or hiring a programmer without a degree in computer science. A good friend of mine dropped out of high school, got his GED, and went back to college. Nothing is stopping anyone, you just limit your opportunities.

Even if formal education was abolished or fully privatized, businesses would find a similar, expensive process for screening applicants. The government is rarely requiring this. It's usually industry associations.

I read this article because I'm curious about this sort of thinking. Why do we not only have a desire for simple solutions but a need for radical ones from people with no experience in the field they're discussing? Why is this appealing?

If you're curious about radical approaches to education and the deschooling movement, read Ivan Illich or research the free schools movement. I read Illich before sending my daughters to public school. I didn't think Illich had any answers, and much of what he advocated wasn't precluded by formal education. School doesn't take that much time. My kids thrived in public school, and one of them wants to be a teacher.

<comment><USER7> The author also has a huge blind spot for treating the world like it's a computer program where you can just increment everybody's account by $100,000 in education coupons and there will be no taxation effects, bubbles, scams, or opportunity costs. No understanding of economic incentives, no humility about the difficulty of social engineering, no respect for freedom. "Let's require all businesses to hire 14% apprentices, this will inevitably have exactly one effect, the positive one I envision. We won't require any input from the people I am commanding to carry out my untested plan."

Like you say, for this to get upvoted there must be a high demand for sweeping, uninformed radical change.

<comment><USER6> I'd like to propose a Star Trek test. A lot of people get extremely worked up when sci-fi cooks up something entirely unrealistic, and Hollywood has all manner of advisors on call just to keep fans from jumping down their throats.

People in computer programming professions should extend the same courtesy to the social sciences we expect from Hollywood. There's no reason for Hollywood to care that they're making stuff up, but they have enough shame to care that their imaginary worlds pass the sniff test. Our pronouncements on education, politics, and economics should require us to do the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> College degrees largely serve the social function titles of nobility once did. Having one shows that you have a shared set of experiences and a personal investment in a certain set of values and social norms. Requiring one for many jobs is much more about ensuring applicants belong to the class the employer prefers than any specific education the job requires.

<comment><USER9> True, but regardless of whether you think that is a good or bad thing it's part of the value of a college degree, and should be included in your calculation when you decide if college is worth it.

I've seen the insecurity of some of my colleges without degrees, almost like they think college is a mystical place where deep and unique knowledge is shared. That insecurity can really cripple your career.

<comment><USER10> > That insecurity can really cripple your career.

I struggled with it daily as a self taught developer working at a large company. I eventually dropped out of the workforce and went back to school because of it. I feel pretty awkward now as a 30 something in class with freshman, but the satisfaction and confidence of having that piece of paper seems worth it to me.

<comment><USER11> Just realizing the paper is not the change might be a cheaper solution to what amounts to a psychologocal issue.

<comment><USER10> Well, "just the paper" isn't really all of it. Since I've started going back to school and learning the fundamental maths and science that I missed out on, I've come to understand how ignorant I am to practically everything. If I had just kept going the path I was on as a web developer, I feel like I would have ended up with a career as a specialized technician, which is something I really don't want. Learning just calculus and basic physics is really blowing my mind and opening me up to completely new ways of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lots of interesting ideas here, but also some wacky or condescending assumptions about other people's lines of work. Let's take two:

TRUCK DRIVERS: They don't just move big rigs around. They also need to keep detailed log books, plan out routes, pass inspections -- and know how to talk civilly and constructively to DOT inspectors. An eighth grade education will not get you there. Especially on the last part. The back-and-forth of a high- school classroom socializes teenagers to work with authority. Most high school dropouts give up because they can't conform to those norms, not because they can't do the work. Trucking companies rightfully insist on a high school degree for exactly this reason.

FINANCIAL ADVISERS: Met any lately? I work in a co-lo space with several within 50 feet. They're all college educated, and they put non-obvious skills from their education to work, every day. They need to provide their clients with highly literate, personalized updates via quarterly letters. They need a sophisticated understanding of clients' expressed and unstated needs -- and you're not going to be fully capable of doing that with just a high school education. Some college-level psychology classes, history classes or behavioral econ classes will get you in the game. And if you actually want to be a financial adviser with some understanding of how markets work, an econ/finance major is your best path in.

Some of the other analysis is quite interesting. But the classification errors in this piece are more than just a matter of tweaking a spreadsheet. They come from a deeper misunderstanding of what many jobs are all about.

<comment><USER13> Far from needing a college degree, financial advisors benefit from the unique professional advantage of not needing to exist.

<comment><USER14> Let me guess - you think financial advisors aren't worth their fees, and their jobs are entirely obviated by index funds with sensible portfolio allocations. Is that about the sum of it?

Everyone who agrees with you already nodded to themselves in agreement and scrolled on. No one who doesn't already agree with your just-so statement was persuaded to consider a different perspective. You came into a conversation about the professional merits of education and used a passing comment about financial advisors to inject your ideology.

So what'd we achieve? What's this all been for?

<comment><USER11> Problem is, like used car salesmen, lawyers and mechanics, they are a useful, if not nessarry people in many cases, but are also in a unique position to fuck you. A good one is worth their weight and then some. The extremes make for most public perception, and here we are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of the things _I_ learned in college is that when someone says "I have thought about this social problem and understand both the cause and solution, please join me as I attempt to radically address it via state action" you should get as far away from him as possible. The history of such programs is, to say the least, not a story of success and progress and rainbows.

</comment><comment><USER16> Advocates of this general position, whether it's Peter Thiel and "hey don't go to college I'll just pay you" or this author's "hey your job isn't that complicated, you can figure it out in less time for less money", all miss the point of college.

The best purpose of college is to make you a reasonable citizen in a democracy. Most Americans voting in elections can't even name the Vice President, let alone articulate what plenary powers are, what the 4th and 5th amendments say (or seriously any amendment), name more than 3 executive branch departments (Defense, State and... uh...), point out where Iraq is on a map, etc. It's really no surprise we get the elected officials we get.

Sure, professional training is important and I think our education system is not particularly efficient about it. But education is more than just "here's how you work for the man". It's supposed to make you a well-rounded, well- educated citizen so you can participate effectively in a democratic government.

Which is why things like public education, state colleges and universities, a separation of religion and education, and state subsidized college tuition are so important, and why religious schools, charter schools, and for-profit colleges/universities are so antithetical to democracy: their agenda is entirely separate from "be a well-educated democratic citizen".

<comment><USER17> I had a different college experience. A degree in computer engineering required very little coursework outside of engineering. Due to human nature, I ended up hanging out with primarily other engineering students. All of the non-academic socializing, in retrospect, was very limited to a narrow college bubble.

It was only after I graduated and lived in the real world for a few years that I felt more 'well rounded'.

The tools to become a 'well informed citizen' should be taught at the high school level since not everyone goes to college.

<comment><USER16> Yeah I don't have a strong preference about when they're taught. I think college is probably best because the 17-23 age is probably the earliest that most people are equipped to start learning stuff like this, but then again if you can vote when you're 18 maybe it should start a lot earlier.

I think there's too much siloing between, say, STEM majors and Liberal Arts majors. You get Philosophy majors who are pretty good with concepts like confirmation bias (just for example), but super bad when it comes to things like "why is the sky blue" and "just what is the Internet, anyway". Conversely you get engineers who are pretty good programmers or EEs, but really don't understand things like "Affirmative Action isn't racist" or "taxation isn't government theft or class warfare".

I... mostly think high school is useless? I guess it's more accurate to say I think middle school (6-8th grade) should be more like high school, and high school should be a lot more practical, applied learning. If you're interested in cars, do that. If you're interested in chemistry, do that. Do them both at the same time, and do some music too, whatever.

<comment><USER18> >Conversely you get engineers who are pretty good programmers or EEs, but really don't understand things like "Affirmative Action isn't racist" or "taxation isn't government theft or class warfare".

You can't teach opinions. What you can teach is how to talk to people with a differing opinion.

Let's take this statement: _" Affirmative Action isn't racist"_

The disagreement probably wouldn't be about affirmative action at all, but rather about the definition of racism and whether both parties define it the same way.

<comment><USER16> > You can't teach opinions.

I mean, you can. Basically every parent does this.

> The disagreement probably wouldn't be about affirmative action at all, but > rather about the definition of racism and whether both parties define it the > same way.

Yeah classes about race in the US define the difference between isolated cases of discrimination and institutional discrimination against a racial minority. They go over the history of racial discrimination in colleges and universities and other public institutions as a method to disenfranchise and disempower minorities. They illustrate that college admissions or job positions aren't zero-sum quantities, and that the state goes to great lengths to increase the capacity of universities and add jobs every day so that there are enough for everyone. Finally, they point out that failing to enact policies to level the playing field entrenches privilege: without something to break the cycle of institutionalized racism (and other institutional discrimination), minority groups remain trapped in a cycle of lower opportunity and higher risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The premise of this post is that the author has performed an analysis of the educational requirements for jobs and can extrapolate from it. But this author thinks that only a grade school education and not more than 6 months of training is required to be a cook --- a profession people go to post-secondary school for --- and that some college study is required to be a programmer. How seriously should I take their conclusions?

<comment><USER20> The arrogance of the opening of this piece is amazing. Essentially: "I know nothing about analyzing occupations, I do not work in or hire for any of these occupations, now I will classify these occupations based on my subjective analysis of how much education one _really_ needs to do these jobs."

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately, if you read any of the other posts on this blog, you'll see this is kind of par for his course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From my experience college is not so much about actual knowledge acquired but mostly about learning to learn and think. I could have studied civil engineering instead of CS and be exactly as good software developer as I am, maybe even better.

Is college absolutely necessary to perform some jobs? Probably not. But I think I'd benefit if my hairdresser or tailor (I don't actually use services of any of those) attended some technical university during his/her career. Real shame is that not everybody has time and money to do that.

<comment><USER22> That's totally confirmation bias. Smart people are more likely to go to college. Almost everyone becomes wiser between the ages of 18 to 22.

Why are you so sure that college is causative here?

I don't doubt that college is where many people grow up more intellectually, but I have yet to see proof that it is the cause of that growth.

<comment><USER21> > I don't doubt that college is where many people grow up more intellectually, > but I have yet to see proof that it is the cause of that growth.

I can agree that it's not the sole cause. But I really have trouble believing that being exercised and lectured about the stuff you knew nothing about every working day and being strongly challenged at least semiannually has no effect on people.

<comment><USER22> Well it's not as if people who don't go to college sit about twiddling their thumbs.

Additionally there's an argument to be made that people who don't spend those years having their life structured and defined by a university learn other important lessons.

There's particular irony to making the point that college is where you learn to think on HN. Many founders, like Bill gates dropped out of college to be hyper focused on their mission.

Rather than thinking of college as a blanket solution for everybody I wish people viewed it as a tool. Some people need it, some people flat out don't.

<comment><USER21> > Well it's not as if people who don't go to college sit about twiddling their > thumbs.

If I never went to college I'd just play more computer games and probably get a job few years earlier. Jobs are easy so I don't expect them to develop and challenge me anywhere near as much as college did.

> Bill gates dropped out of college to be hyper focused on their mission.

As I said, shame that not everybody has the time or money do go through college. Bill didn't have time.

> Some people need it, some people flat out don't.

You don't exactly need much in life. Not starving and not dying in the cold on the streets is pretty much enough. The thing is that everything is better when people are doing some things they don't really need to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The author makes a lot of great points here but I took issue with this sentence:

 _All jobs that currently require a degree, should instead require a knowledge test. The employer should not care how the knowledge was obtained, just that the applicant has the knowledge._

I would argue that the degree does provide some value beyond what can be easily tested in an interview setting. I'm not sure if it is the only way but the type of person who completes a degree is the type of person who is able to sit down and start a difficult task and complete it. Often these tasks are not directly related to what the student is passionate about, and sometimes not even necessary without taking into consideration the bigger picture of a multi-year program. In my experience dealing with the drudgery of the tedious day-to-day of most white-collar jobs, this college education degree provides a coarse litmus test for the type of person who will thrive in this environment. A person who will do things well and thorough for their own sake and deal with the bullshit.

<comment><USER24> Just as a hypothesis: is it possible that the sheer number of people we're putting through increasingly bureaucratic college curricula (do this busywork, now go sit in this room listening to a topic you don't care about for a while, etc) is creating a feedback system that encourages the creation of tedious drudge work since that's what we've "trained" people to be good at? Though I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg in this situation.

<comment><USER25> Not only have we trained people to be good at it but we have filtered and sorted them based on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> With the quality of education as it is today, and no improvements in sight in the near or long-term future, I'd say a college education--or self-guided personal learning for the few who have the motivation and ability to do it--is required in the US if one is to not be considered stupid. There are exceptions at certain private--and usually incredibly expensive schools--but overall, even the best public schools are atrocious and don't teach children the skills and knowledge they need to be decent citizens, let alone how to prosper. This is why attending college is not primarily about job preparation. Even when job preparation is not necessary, the rest of the education is. Yes, much of it should have been taught in grades K-12, but since that isn't happening, college is the last defense against stupidity that's likely to last a lifetime. Thus, the question the article asks is not very important, and the article's dismissal of any use for college other than job preparation is short-sighted and ill-defended.

</comment><comment><USER10> Any "job" does not require a college degree. A "job" is something that anyone can be trained to do. If you think that the purpose of college is to train you for a "job" then you're doing it wrong. The point of college is teach you the underlying fundamentals of how things like language and science work, so that you can extend those rules and use them to create new things and new ideas. You go to college to learn how to create value, not get a job. There will always be a need for vocational training. But putting in the long, hard work of accumulating intuitive knowledge of the fundamental sciences, and having that knowledge verified by society to assure you haven't deluded yourself, is the only way to operate at the highest level of intellectual ability for anyone short of a true genius.

<comment><USER27> There's a lot good about this point of view, but it comes from a fundamentally privileged point of view.

For first generation college students, the goal is to get a return on the substantial investment they are making. Achievement in abstract notions is fine, but paying off loans and escaping the career trajectories of their parents and neighbors is paramount.

Maybe the "advancement of humanity" education needs to be more distinct from elite vocational training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> College has become little more than an aptitude test for many jobs. If you're willing to grind through the years of studying and financial hardship to get a degree, then you'll probably be able to handle the job.

<comment><USER29> More importantly, you'll probably not have the financial resources to walk away from the job.

<comment><USER30> I may be putting words in your mouth but I think you are saying that non- graduates who are not soaked in debt have more choices, and if so I'd agree.

Employers want in order of preference:

* h1-b - work late or life as you know it ends

* big mortgage with family - work late or I ruin your family's life

* big university debt - work late or I ruin your life

Debt is a tool of control.

<comment><USER31> I, or my high-paying competitor who wants you working for him :)

<comment><USER29> Although, with some exception where protectionism ensures high pay, the higher the paying the work, the less concerned the market is with degrees. This is more due to the fact that high paying jobs are high paying because it's difficult to find people, and you can't be choosy when your options are already limited. But the secondary effect is that with the high pay, the benefits of "debt control" is lost anyway, so there's still no reason to look for workers with degrees.

Hence why the reasonably high paying software industry couldn't care less about formal education, but lowly office jobs that barely pay minimum wage expect the world from their applicants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I recently helped transform a customer service department from being an embarrassing shambles to something we could be proud of. The queue of tickets is now empty whereas before, when we didn't have things automated, our many customer service agents were struggling to keep up with the back of a 4000 long queue. Things are now pro-active, we fix problems before customers know rather than wait for them to complain.

Essentially it is the same job but done properly, however, now everything is in order, we just need two people rather than hordes of people. Note that these two people are college educated, i.e. able to listen and learn, write good English and show up in the morning.

We get customer service ratings and these also come in for the things that the computer does rather than just what a human agent has done. The computer always writes impeccably, my human colleagues are nearer grunt and point level. The humans are lucky to get 76% satisfaction level, the automated stuff consistently gets 91% satisfaction level.

The net result is that our remaining customer service staff are the educated ones, their work is now pretty professional albeit not to rocket surgery levels and the job pays fairly rather than it being a temp type of arrangement. As a company we no longer need the hordes and the people to manage/hire/fire them.

My point being that college education is more helpful than one might think. It does not matter what the education is in particularly, it is the skills of being able to do basic things like work without disrupting others, being able to write and being able to learn that matter.

<comment><USER33> Was the college degree itself really the difference here though?

I would guess it was more of a high level indicator of someone who has ambition, some base level of intelligence, perseverance, etc.

That still leaves you with false negatives and false positives. Just something somewhat better than hiring randomly. There are other criteria you could have used that had nothing to do with a college degree, that would likely have similar results.

The enlisted ranks of the US military, for example, use something called an ASVAB test as a bar for certain highly skilled jobs. It's also not perfect, but yields at least similar results. And the pool has very few college grads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> My father led the chemical safety laboratory of a ~10000 employee Hungarian drug company from 1990 to 2010 or so. He said this and this stuck with me, that when he started he was able to hire the lowest level assistants straight out of trade school but by the end everyone needed a univ degree because every instrument became so complicated.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sure, very few jobs give you the direct day to day skills required to do a job. That's neither the claim colleges are making, nor the primary reason that business require degrees. This feels like pure opinion with almost no evidence to back it up, divorced from reality. The table displaying apparent sub- percent accuracy for the completely subjective (made up) number of jobs requiring degrees is demonstrating this disconnect hilariously.

I've actually tried hiring people with less schooling than college -- has the author? It tends to not work out that well, especially in tech. Programmers with high school diplomas and two year degrees are usually missing all the theory and most of the practical experience you get during a 4 year degree. Not because someone who skips college can't learn these things, and not because they can't get experience or learn on the job, it just so happens that in the real world they usually don't.

One of the biggest reasons that college is a good idea is that someone with a degree in a field related to the job is more often more capable than someone with only a high school diploma. Not always, of course, but statistically more frequently. So who will the employer choose? The college grad is an easy choice. This means getting a degree is simple market competition for employment, and probably won't go away even if people make convincing sounding arguments. Why would employers choose the minimum necessary qualifications if some candidates will do more? Why would people who want good jobs expect to get hired with less experience than others who are applying for the same job? College is something many people are choosing.

</comment><comment><USER36> In my view, something that has to be considered is the feedback of a worker's education level on the nature of their job. If you stop requiring a college degree for a particular occupation, the nature of that occupation may change, and it may open up a space for new occupations to form.

Remember, anybody can stop requiring a degree for any job, today, so long as the degree isn't required by law. We could stop requiring an engineering degree for Solid Works operators. (Just to choose an example)

In fact, about half of our mechanical CAD operators have degrees. I notice a big difference between those groups when getting CAD work done. If the operator has a degree, it's much more likely that they can take a vague idea of mine, and come back with a nice design that even handles a bunch of issues that I overlooked.

If not, then I pretty much have to give them a complete specification (taking longer than just doing it in CAD myself) or sit next to them at the CAD terminal and direct them. If a design step requires math, I do the math. If a decision is needed, I make it. K-12 teaching would become a different profession if the college degree requirement were dropped, as was proposed in my state.

</comment><comment><USER37> The author risks to make mistakes related to the Dunning-Kruger effect [1].

Quote:

> The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability > individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their > ability as much higher than it really is. Psychologists David Dunning and > Justin Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive incapacity, on the > part of those with low ability, to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate > their competence accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: high- > ability individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may > erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for > others.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

<comment><USER38> "Dunning-Kruger" has become the new "cognitive dissonance", a phrase everyone recognizes just enough to throw around as an epithet in lieu of making an actual point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> When writing Developer job descriptions I typically settle on _" Bachelors degree or equivalent"_ for the education requirement.

The best Programmers I've worked with were self-taught autodidacts with insatiable curiosity.

<comment><USER7> How do people prove they have autodidacted the "equivalent" of a bachelors degree?

<comment><USER39> I prefer a take-home coding exercise for interviews, paid at an hourly rate. Equal parts subjective and objective.

The exercise requires candidates to git clone, unit test, document, submit PR, and walk a reviewer through the solution.... basically go full lifecycle on a coding task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The article's classifications aren't even observed in other OECD countries: for example law and medicine are undergraduate degrees is most of Europe and Australia and people do fine (obviously doctors still need residency etc in order to become skilled). And those countries are doing fine -- better than the US in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER41> Very few. I think it's much more a matter of job culture and a bit of red queen (useless arms race) competition that has brought on this situation. Probably with a sprinkling of politicians wanting to be able to say that "in my country 50% of high school students go on to university" when they hob nob at international conferences.

In almost all white collar jobs the apprenticeship model would work just fine, but that doesn't work well when people want to change jobs every few years. It's not that most desk jobs are actually harder to learn that most skilled manual labor jobs.

<comment><USER42> >the most elite companies in the valley have discovered correctly that remote work doesn't work

That's extraordinarily presumptive. Is IBM and a handful of others gods of all things HR? Why? There's conflicting data on both sides of the table, IBM just went with one choice over another. Recently, by the way, so we don't even know it's going to work. Furthermore, there's a strong argument that the move was an easy way to achieve layoffs, which kind of nullifies the "IBM is big and smart and so they switched because remote work doesn't work" argument.

Finally, I'm not even sure some of these companies you're describing as elite (I'm assuming you mean "companies in the bay area we've all heard of that don't do remote work") are universally regarded as elite. And how do you account for the actual bay area giants that do allow for it, such as Google?

<comment><USER43> Good point. Didn't Yahoo abandon remote work as soon as Mayer took over?

<comment><USER44> Depending on who you talk to, this was either a ploy to do a non-layoff layoff, or since all the good people had already left the people still at Yahoo were just cashing paychecks. It didn't matter if they were in the office or not.

Pointing to the burning, foreclosed house is not a very accurate way to draw conclusions about the whole neighborhood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> If your job doesn't require college, then pretty soon it won't require a human either. The more brain required the longer you have until a robot or computer can do it better.

<comment><USER46> this is a bimodal distribution. my plumber/electrician/mechanic and my investment banker/lawyer aren't going to be replaced by robots any time soon.

<comment> Const-me I once worked for a company that aimed to replace investment bankers with their robots. Basically an AI that reads news and other data sources, and gives stock trading advices.

<comment><USER47> investment banker != trader or investment manager

an investment banker typically advises on M&A transactions which is a very human business where your career path is strongly correlated with your social skills and status rather than technical knowledge.

<comment><USER46> correct - it's a sales job. very few people actually know what an investment banker does. it's just selling or (selling disguised as) buying ownership of shit to rich people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I knew a lot of people in college that didn't work all that hard except for last minute rushes to get things turned in at finals. Those people had a hard time finding jobs that justified the cost of their education. I also saw people that consistently worked hard. They are doing quite well. I think going to college is something you shouldn't do if you're not taking it seriously. If you're using college to put off real life, you might be better off waiting tables.

</comment><comment><USER49> I am 100% convinced that colleges were created for good reasons but were quickly exploited for profit. Today's version of college is designed to empty savings in the maximum way possible. I can't think of too many professions that require the general education requirements that colleges claim you need. I'd say most if not all professions can be learned through training and on the job practice. Take nursing for example. Today's nurses have to write countless nonsense papers that have nothing to do with improving their knowledge. Dental Technician can do their job without prior education yet many are swindled into a technical program. They say designers need formal education to be taught human computer interaction, color theory etc yet here providing for myself and family with less than 8 months of self-taught reading. One time I wanted to check out a Standford online course to see what designers learn there and was blown away by the uselessness of that information. Pardon the typos, I'm on mobile with whacky autocorrect.

</comment><comment><USER50> How many jobs require college is a fair question when you are young. But at the other end of life, I ask how many jobs would have taught you the same things as college. Lifelong education and self improvement is important. Whether it come from college, work, or somewhere else is not as important as just making sure it happens.

</comment><comment><USER51> In my experience as a hiring manager, a degree _can_ be useful as an indicator, but I wouldn't actually require it for most positions. A degree requirement can also be a crutch for HR departments that are overwhelmed by applicant volume and lesser hiring managers that put more stock in a culturally defined checklist than their own judgement about any given candidate's suitability.

The biggest problem with the degree-as-a-substitute-for-judgement approach is that not all degree programs are equal to start with. There are degree programs which absolutely speak well of a candidate (on a resume) and there are programs you can graduate from which would be less of an indicator of suitability than relevant work experience. Certainly not all degrees are equal. There are some real bullshit things you can major in insofar as being an indicator for employ-ability is concerned. So for me to care about a degree on a resume, it has to be an appropriate degree and it has to be from a program that _I know_ indicates some skill and perseverance on the part of the candidate... otherwise I dismiss it as an evaluation factor: at that point it's simply an uninformative data point.... it's just noise.

To be fair, I say this as someone that has had a good career in technology without a degree. I have do have a fair amount of college (in one of those bullshit majors I was mentioning), but no sheepskin. (Actually, one of the schools I attended seemingly attached so little to the degree in terms of success of the candidate, that they had a policy of indefinite re-admittance since many wanted to finish solely for self-enrichment after they had gone off and had their career success pre-graduation :-) ).

</comment><comment><USER52> The question implies "how many jobs require college _to do_ ". A better question is "how many jobs require college _to get_ ".

</comment><comment><USER53> It's cute how software engineers are attributed as the likely inventors of HVAC robots. Whatever happened to mechanical & electrical engineers?

<comment><USER54> EE and ME are not sexy; so 20th century. Labor to be farmed out offshore. Most people think EE is hooking up an Arduino, or ME using Legos. Meanwhile the money is tossed at brogrammers writing sexting apps. /sarcasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The mistake of the education system is its focus on jobs. Education should be motivated by virtue, to raise a generation that can think, reason, innovate, in all aspects of life, emotionally, culturally, artificially, physically, scientifically, spiritually, etc.

If we educated more people that way, we'd probably have a society that could solve the job problem.

</comment><comment><USER56> I can't help but feeling this has something to do with women. Namely that women are "winning" the education game. Each year, the fraction of women to men in (almost) all programs are steadily increasing.

Since men aren't winning anymore, the game clearly wasn't that important. Let's create a new game and play that instead!

</comment><comment><USER57> The author's cherry picked examples from the 19th century are pretty misleading. The state of the art, as well as society's expectations for most professions have changed significantly since the 19th century.

I wouldn't want to live in a building made to 19th century safety and efficiency standards, and while I'm sure some people can teach themselves how to design and build modern buildings, I'm also sure that a good way to get up to speed is to go to school for architecture or civil engineering. Ditto with law and mechanical engineering.

I'm also wary of anybody claiming software engineers and computer programmers don't need a degree or other training. Software quality in general is really crappy, and I'm skeptical the solution is less education.

</comment><comment><USER58> One of the best things you can support, whether you agree with Bill Gates, or with OP, is investment in making primary education as good as is absolutely possible. The result is:

1) people are smarter and more mature even if they don't go to college 2) people who do go to college are already ready to do great work

If, like OP, you seriously want people to effectively graduate at age 13 you need to put a lot of work into primary education first. I admit, if like Gates, you just want more competent graduates, then it is probably going to be more nuanced.

</comment><comment><USER59> College may improve the bargaining position of laborers vis-a-vis employers. Compare eight apprenticeships which provide the ability to work one job each vs a college which provides the ability to work all eight jobs. If students filter into one of the apprenticeships they're locked in; if they go to college then employers must compete for labor across sectors.

</comment><comment><USER60> Most do.

Most high school graduates can barely string a sentence together in writing, and are more likely to have similar limitations in reading.

<comment><USER7> "You need to be able to read and write to do this job" is not the same as "You need college to do this job."

<comment><USER61> But the pool of college graduates who can read and write is much larger than the pool of high school graduates who can read and write.

Considering that requiring interviewees to pass a literacy test may open you up to lawsuits, and that there is a large pool of college grads with no jobs and lots of debt, it's easier to just hire only college grads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> How many jobs _will be_ really required?

</comment><comment><USER63> I think that the really fundamental problem is the proposition that college has the goal of getting you prepared for a job.

That should not be (and IMO is not) the primary goal of education.

The primary goal of education should be to make you a better, more informed member of society. That's the only way democracy can work.

</comment><comment><USER64> I agree with the author's conclusions that college is mostly an expensive waste of time and money. Job training can and should be done in a more cost- effective way with paid apprenticeships. Universities should focus on pushing the boundaries of knowledge (research) not job training.

</comment><comment><USER65> Almost none of them, outside of STEM fields. Even then, not even some of those.

One of the biggest scams of modern times.

</comment><comment><USER66> Nobody has really commented yet on how highly suspect the methodology here is, nor the tradeoff between education and experience, nor the tradeoffs inherent in the world "acceptable" when you're trying to figure out what the minimum acceptable education is to land a certain job.

Just for the easiest example, the given education stat for top executives (chief executives, general and operations managers, and legislators) is listed as "high school." It's not even "some college". Now if I come to you and say, "hey, my niece actually just graduated high school and she's pretty smart, has a lot of ambition and drive, really great extracurricular involvement -- can we set up a job interview where she might take over your company as CEO?" you would laugh at me! You would say, "let her get her MBA and manage real people for a few years, and then let's talk. Or I mean if she really can't wait, let's give her an entry-level position and if she's really as good as you say, she'll be managing in 5 years and might be able to get to the top in 5 more."

But if we say "minimum" as in "could you start a company with only a high- school education and find yourself as its CEO?" then of course the answer is yes. Heck, let's knock this one down a peg, that could happen even if you don't graduate high school, it's just less likely. Legislator? Sure. I mean, most legislators today are presumably former lawyers who have 7 years of post- high-school schooling in them, but all you really need to legislate is to be elected.

Or for another example, Devin has said, "Any job specific training takes less than six months. Examples: ...cook." I mean, that's partly true, some 1/4 of cooks in this country work at fast food joints, some other 1/4 of cooks work in cafeterias etc., but placing it at "high school" as if culinary school isn't a thing is just deluding yourself for the other half or so of cooks. And if you have the choice between going to culinary school for a year or going to work in a kitchen that will take you for a year, probably if you're fresh out of high school you're going to get a lot more out of the culinary school. And that's because education has a different _sort_ of value from work experience, which makes them very hard to compare evenly. The cook who went to culinary school for a year probably knows how to cook a much broader diversity of things, but the one-year-anniversary line cook will probably have greater appreciations for, say, prepping quickly and efficiently, taking multiple orders at once, estimating the time that dishes take to cook and communicating that to others, and so forth. They're not easily comparable.

</comment><comment><USER67> I don't understand all the agurments for apprenticeship, what we're dealing with now are the problems of workers being unable to move over/up after being displaced by technology.

Apprenticeship systems would only exacerbate that problem.

</comment><comment><USER68> Number of births in US per year: 4.24 million

Proposed stipend: $100,000

Budget for proposal: $424B/yr, assuming no overhead (lol)

That's 2.5% of GDP, minimum, which is almost as much as the total non-defense discretionary budget is today.

</comment><comment><USER69> The question to ask is what jobs require you to get educated through either close social interaction with others or needs access to resources you can't just get at home.

</comment><comment><USER70> I go a step further, how many jobs can be done by most people, and things like college or personal connections decide who fills those jobs.

</comment><comment><USER71> christ - reading through this person's website he seems like a parody of the 'arrogant engineer' stereotype.

</comment><comment><USER72> How many jobs really require people?

</comment><comment><USER73> Far fewer than most will admit.

</comment><comment><USER74> Most, according to economic signaling theory.

</comment><comment><USER75> This person has a bunch of essays but he comes across as an sad person who doesn't believe in civil rights for women.

In an eassy on his website [1], he says "Men have natural abilities and disposition towards leadership. To deny this, to mandate equality of results, to push women into masculine roles, to domesticate and feminize men, only results in misery for both men and women.

Universal suffrage elections are virtually always a bad idea."

1\. [https://devinhelton.com/principles-of- formalism](https://devinhelton.com/principles-of-formalism)

<comment><USER76> This is like the definition of an ad-hominem attack. Your argument is basically "he believes some unpopular things so all his ideas should be discredited." I dont know this guy and I doubt I think the way he thinks, but the essay is the essay -- it should stand or fall on its own merits.

<comment><USER77> You're right that it's an ad hominem, as it rightly should be - the character and state of mind of author should be considered when judging their work.

We might have an obligation to read charitably, but we shouldn't be obsequious towards ideas (or people) that are ontologically broken or fly in the face of basic humanism. This author falls firmly into that category, and a quick survey of their work will confirm that for you.

<comment><USER76> I would counter that the reason we consider ad-hominem bad is because it enables lazy thinkers to avoid the topic at hand and redirect it to something thats a lot easier to criticize. Thats the path of sophistry.

<comment><USER77> Maybe it does, but that's perhaps not the point.

The point, at least in this case, is that the author is _counting_ on being treated as a serious thinker at the table of ideas. He is relying on our good faith to promote ideas that are fundamentally incompatible with the existence of exactly the kind of dialogue he's being given on this site. Do not think, should he win, that he will afford you the same charity.

Criticizing someone who uses dialogue in bad faith is an exercise in futility. It's better to recognize their actions before hand and label them as such -- a sophist, or a pseudophilosopher, or whatever. That won't stop them from speaking (nor should we want it to), but it gives us the power to redirect dialogue towards more serious participants.

Edit: I realize that I didn't make this clear: criticizing the easier thing is _not_ sophistry. At the worst, it's poor argumentation. Sophistry involves using rhetoric to hide intellectual bankruptcy and bad faith.

<comment><USER76> Ok but still youre not arguing what he said, youre arguing what he is. To me, thats the dark path. It's intellectually dishonest. This is what generally annoys me about the social justice scene: its always about silencing or shunning people, never about engaging them.

<comment><USER77> Intellectual dishonesty would be denying it. I make no such denial - I have rejected this person's writings because I can't find any reason to believe that this person entertains discussion (or even the _idea_ of discussion) in good faith.

I do _not_ do this out of hand, or on a whim. I've read this person's writings before, and have made a genuine attempt to read him charitably.

> its always about silencing or shunning people, never about engaging them.

Shunning, maybe. I don't think it's inappropriate to stop a conversation that you know is going to be _used as a weapon_ against you later by someone with truly onerous views. I don't have an obligation to engage with people whose only interest in engagement is to use it a token of their ideological legitimacy. Silencing, never.

<comment><USER76> Your actions contradict your words though. None of what this guy said about _education_ matters to you because ideas from "this kind of person" is the overwhelming factor to you. Who cares if he has a point about college if he doesnt towe the feminist line, basically.

<comment><USER77> My actions are commensurate with my words. I don't ask that he be censored - <USER2> ask that his status as an intellectual hack be considered, and that we recognize that his writings on education are informed by his much more onerous positions.

We don't debate round-earth denialists, since we know that their only motive in debate is to maximize their audience and legitimacy. It doesn't matter whether they're actually talking about their ungrounded views in a particular instance, because all that matters is that they _gain legitimacy_ to be spent later.

You're the one who keeps bringing up feminism and social justice, not me. Have you considered that you're trying to imply an ulterior motive that doesn't exist? Every movement has its fair share of people just like Devin Helton.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> The article has some interesting ideas. But it tries to solve a problem that is already solved in other countries. Why do not, instead, start looking at how those countries do it?

The problem needs thinking out-of-the-box. Education is not "too expensive", remove that from your equation. Education is a great investment.

Why is your country not paying for it? Try to solve that instead.

</comment><comment><USER79> 1) People don't know what they want to be when they are 11 years old, so how you do determine who gets what kind of education?

2) People don't want to be truck drivers for their whole lives. Hell, truck driver might not even be a job.

3) The goal of education isn't to get a job, it's to get an education. The job comes after and can be unrelated to the education.

Those are the three things I can think of that make me think this guy hasn't thought his argument through very well.

</comment><comment> anymouse- tl;dr I should have been able to get a 4 year degree after taking 3-4 classes. Why do people who have equivalent education need to _waste_ 4 years of their life?

I think that the largest problem is that there is no way for people who have achieved the equivalent or more of a college education to gain the same recognition. But possibly that is just because it affects me directly.

While working a technician type job for years with lots of downtime, I studied CS at home and with my work downtime. I took lots of the free courses from the elite universities and finished them. I read lots of good book, most of the No Starch Press books, and did all the exercises. Then I had the money to fund a four year degree, with high expectations for the higher level classes I persisted through the absolutely painfully trivial, tedious work. I got anxious about wasting so much time not learning, after I was not just out of high school.

I've burnt out on busywork, started neglecting schoolwork for stuff that actually improved my skill, or to drill way deeper into some interesting bit of a class than needed to get to something challenging. I ignored school for side projects that stretched my legs. It really hit when I took 300-400 level courses and realized that i really wouldn't learn anything CS at all. I've even helped nearly 10 other students learn Python which the school doesn't even teach pair programming with them on a very non-trivial project.

But now here I am, way more advanced and capable than a standard graduate, terrible GPA, not going to graduate, and no job opportunities. I don't even care how much I make, I like programming, I like making things, I like solving problems. Probably going to have to go back to what I was doing.

That said I did pick up a couple math tricks, but _wasting_ 4 years of my life for 3-4 good classes which could have been taken in 3 months, not even remotely worth it.

Been here for a while but using a throwaway for obvious reasons.

</comment><comment><USER80> The solution is to be long in anti-fragile assets such as bitcoins and gold. If approximately everybody else is getting it wrong about degrees, the economy and the value of its fragile assets, especially paper money, will shrink systematically, while my assets will keep gaining value. In that sense, it is better to encourage most other people to get it wrong. Hence, they should get MORE useless degrees and saddle themselves with MORE stupid and MORE enormous student loans. That is what will eventually sink the boat completely and make me more money.

<comment><USER75> Come on, bitcoin and gold are very fragile. Look at their huge variation in value over short time frames. A new crypocurrency could arrive to take bitcoins place, also, or govt regulation could make it hard to use in the us or china. There might be an argument for diversifying your investments in these things, but these aren't the certain safe places to put your money for long term.

<comment><USER31> Yup, and inb4 "it's anon so impossible to regulate". You're not fighting someone trying to stop you from purchasing it, you're fighting an apathetic system that will go with "whatever works" and isn't a pain in the ass to use.

All it takes is for some litigators to decide that operating businesses anonymously is illegal, and now those "anonymous customers" could be police stings making your "system" more trouble than it's worth to use anonymously.

Truly-anonymous currency is either a fantasy or will only exist in niche markets. In reality all they really have to do is scare people at the point of sale, and the point of sale is by the nature of markets not hard-to-find or 'hear about on the street' (because it has to attain customers).</comment></comment></comment>


Why Samsung Abandoned Its Popular Phone, the Galaxy Note 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/business/international/samsung-galaxy-note7-terminated.html <comment><USER2> If anything right now people want to stay away from the risk of third degree burns from an exploding phone.</comment>


How Indian Version of US (like Freshdesk(Zen), Zoho(SF)) are highly successful?  - <AUTHOR>

Is it just price or is there any other critical factor that makes these Indian versions a huge hit? <comment><USER2> Either they work or they don't. There are other indian product that are also cheap but they are not a huge hit. The fact that they're Indian is really not relevant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. But I see them as a successful ripoff. And the stressing factor isn't Indian or not but a Silicon Valley ripoff in India that seems a huge hit.

<comment><USER2> Gotcha. Well they are certainly cheaper, but cost can't be all there is to it. And in the case of Zendesk (we use them at my company), Freshdesk's pricing is not that much cheaper ($25 vs $16, I just checked) - so is $9 per month that important? Plus I assume the lower price comes with a cost - product quality, broken English when you call support, and more. I don't have experience with calling either one of those companies, but from a consumer perspective calling some banks and TelCos I've had that experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that seems to be unwanted trade-off :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kno Raises $46 Million More To Build "Most Powerful Tablet Anyone Has Ever Made" - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/08/kno-raises-46-million-more-to-build-most-powerful-tablet-anyone-has-ever-made/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> Cost will be way too high for the student target market, weight of two screens will also be a major challenge - maybe carbon fiber or other lightweight materials? But this will raise the cost even more. Hope they at least use Android or Chrome and do not try to invent their own software. Duke nukam forever prediction.

<comment><USER3> And who is looking for "power" in a tablet? The current hardware and software is entirely powerful enough to serve any mainstream use case and Apple has pretty much established that what people want is a satisfying and seamless experience over power and features.</comment></comment>


Carbon Planets in the Early Universe - <AUTHOR> http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/05/01/mnras.stw1037.abstract?sid=24475b2f-48a6-42c8-b7d6-8c61afe7e30c <comment><AUTHOR> There is pop-sci reporting on this at [http://www.wired.co.uk/article/universe-first-life-carbon- pl...](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/universe-first-life-carbon-planets) and [http://www.eartharchives.org/sharebars/231](http://www.eartharchives.org/sharebars/231)</comment>


No, Section 230 Does Not Require Platforms to Be "Neutral" - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-not-require-platforms-be-neutral <comment><USER2> Well, for platforms as large as FB, it should.</comment>


SOPA Protest on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.blackoutsopa.org/ Join me & change your Twitter profile picture to protest SOPA. <comment><USER2> Done, great idea, hope it raises awareness.</comment>


Covid-19 Affects Brain in 36% Patients - <AUTHOR> https://www.labroots.com/trending/neuroscience/17302/covid-19-affects-brain-36-patients <comment><USER2> Flagged for totally misleading headline!

36% of severely hospitalized patients in a small study of 234.

A small number and in line with other illnesses that lead to pneumonia and ventilation. Secondary encephalitis is not unique to Covid-19.</comment>


Man-made star to unlock cosmic secrets - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8044620.stm <comment><USER2> This reminds me of another article that was posted to HN a few months ago. The author speculated that one of the reasons why we have not seen signs of alien life, is that any advanced civilization capable of space travel will eventually create a technology that they don't understand, and that destroys them.

I don't think we will be destroyed this time, but we will probably come to a point where there are things we shouldn't try unless we can test the experiment on another planet.

<comment><USER3> Well, to be sure, calling this a "Man-made star" is quite a stretch. In fact, it is nothing of the sort. It is a small-scale fusion reaction. Yes, this can indeed tell them some things about how stars operate, but in no way, shape, or form does it, as claimed by the article, "allow the researchers to probe the insides of stars and supernovae in unprecedented detail".

That's not to say they won't be surprised by some unexpected side-effects. Who knows? But they certainly won't be doing a 2010 to planet Earth. Besides, we have already created fusion reactions vastly larger than what NIF will be creating. It's called the hydrogen bomb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I couldn't find any credits, but the narrator in the video at the bottom of this article sounds like Samuel L. Jackson (to my ears).

I had no idea we were building such a facility. It sounds like fertile scientific ground.

</comment><comment><USER3> Woah. I remember Spiderman 2. Are they sure this is such a good idea?</comment>


New tool for secret agents and the rest of us - <AUTHOR> http://www.caltech.edu/content/new-tool-secret-agents-and-rest-us

<comment><USER2> This is really cool technology. I often wish I could be a part of researching and building new cutting-edge technology, but it's usually cost-prohibitive as a solo hobby (unless you're wealthy, Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne, etc).

And even as a career, it can be tricky to get to that level-- you might need to go back to school just to get access to the research facilities. I feel like its way too easy for someone with a computer engineering degree to end up building websites and software/apps for a living instead of working on some cool futuristic tech.

I'm sure its possible to make the right moves to position yourself to get a shot... I just wish it was easier to do so.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any one else annoyed by the menu bars that follow you around? I've noticed this trend and they just distract me from the article at hand...

<comment><USER4> I have JavaScript disabled by default, so when I see something like that, I assume some style element relies on JavaScript to run correctly. I usually put up with it for the feeling of security I get, but if it is designed to do that I can't say I like it.

<comment><USER5> Hey, quick question for you. I've got a version of Chrome with JS and plugins disabled that I use for not entirely trusted links. Do you know if there are still some exploits we're vulnerable to, especially on Win? I think I remember hearing a while back that it isn't foolproof.

<comment><USER4> Can't say for sure that anything is completely secure. JS is just one of those things that's easy to defend against, and it plugs a major attack vector. It also kills many tracking techniques. I also have a hosts file that blacklists known virus/shock/advertising sites, as well as ad blockers and "antisocial" plugins that remove Facebook "like" and other social media sharing buttons (which can aggregate your browsing history and connect it with your social profile).

If you're very paranoid, you can set up a sandbox VM for risky sites. Just make a good stable image and reload it every day in case you picked up anything bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you want to see the world change, look no further than this development. This is a pretty amazing feat, getting a terahertz transmitter and receiver on one chip. If you want to build a Star Trek style medical tri-corder this is one of the essential parts.

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess near-infrared-opaque clothing manufacturers are really going to like that development.

</comment><comment><USER7> Some more technical details: <https://www.its.caltech.edu/~kaushiks/KS_AH_ISSCC2012.pdf>

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Wow, 280 GHz frequencies! I know this is not clock cycles, but still!

</comment><comment><USER8> Does this mean X-Ray glasses for real?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, yes. If you put one of these into a hand held device and had some sort of eye wear with a display on it you could use it to look through stuff. Its kind of like ultrasound though rather than light as you're looking at reflections of the RF energy of different boundary layers. No doubt you could attempt to reconstruct what that would look like but it would be imperfect, say you painted the blade of a knife white, the scanner wouldn't know that.</comment></comment>


What are the ways for mobile app virality? - <AUTHOR> i have launched my mobile app and looking at ways to promote it. what are the effective ways to make app go viral? <comment><USER2> First, what is the app?

Beyond that, check out the book "Contagious: Why Things Catch On" by Jonah Berger. I found it very helpful.

<comment><USER3> +1 great book for a high level framework of virality

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> tldr: critical mass with the right crowd, real word of mouth, luck, timing. Spread from elite/popular to mainstream.

"After I sent out that first email, I went rollerblading around a big office park where Tellme was based. I went up to a random guy and said, "Hey man, have you checked out hotornot.com yet?" He said, "No, what's that?" I said, "Dude, just go check it out!" Then I went home and watched our logs for Tellme and saw a hit come in 10 minutes later, and then more hits kept coming from different people within Tellme."

-James Hong, cofounder, HOTorNOT

From "Founders at Work"

> "We sent her all over the country," Munoz told me this week. "Her pitch was > pretty genius. She would go to chapters of her sorority, do her > presentation, and have all the girls at the meetings install the app. Then > she'd go to the corresponding brother fraternity—they'd open the app and see > all these cute girls they knew." Tinder had fewer than 5,000 users before > Wolfe made her trip, Munoz says; when she returned, there were some 15,000. > "At that point, I thought the avalanche had started," Munoz says.

[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-02/tinders- forg...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-02/tinders-forgotten- woman-whitney-wolfe-sexism-and-startup-creation-myths) (Paywall)

> Undeterred, Mr. Spiegel and Mr. Murphy shared an updated version for the > iPhone with about 20 friends in September 2011. A few weeks in, they started > seeing an influx of new users, paired with unusual spikes in activity, > peaking between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.

> It turned out the activity was centered around a high school in Orange > County. Mr. Spiegel's mother had told his cousin, who was a student at the > school, about the app, which then spread throughout the school.

> Other high school students in Southern California picked it up, with the > number of daily active users climbing from 3,000 to 30,000 in a month in > early 2012.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/technology/snapchat-a- gro...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/technology/snapchat-a-growing-app- lets-you-see-it-then-you-dont.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Nowadays apps don't go viral, people do.</comment>


A Wearables Startup Playbook - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/12/a-playbook-for-entrepreneurs-of-wearables-and-connected-devices/

<comment><USER2> The data on financing to the space referenced in para 2 is here for those interested - [http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/wearable-tech- vc-2013](http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/wearable-tech-vc-2013)</comment>


Google Now for iOS  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/12/4096074/google-now-for-ios-teased-in-alleged-demo-video

<comment><USER2> Oh boy, that means ironically I get Google Now on my iPhone probably earlier than my girlfriend on Android (if she ever gets it). Android update hell.</comment>


MongoDB Performance Issues – Fact or Fiction - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kenwalger/mongodb-performance-issues-fact-or-fiction-2a2658655919 <comment><USER2> Happy to be quoted in Ken's article - and confirm that MongoDB certainly is performant in 2017. #WhatHaveYouDoneForMeLately

</comment><comment><USER3> great post</comment>


What questions should you be asking before you decide to work at a startup? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Career-Advice/What-questions-should-you-be-asking-before-you-decide-to-leave-your-current-non-startup-job-and-work-at-a-startup

<comment><USER2> I'll add one: Find out who your boss is going to be. Do extensive research if they interview you. Few things will shape your experience more than this.</comment>


Painless iOS Testing With Cucumber - <AUTHOR> http://testingwithfrank.com/ <comment><USER2> This is very clever, but I don't understand why people choose to write natural language tests, rather than code.

Yes, I've heard of those mythical teams that are rumoured to let their project managers/customers/users write acceptance tests, but I've never actually seen one.

I just find it a bit odd that developers would choose to abstract their tests behind a prose based lookup table. Maybe someone can enlighten me?

<comment><USER3> We work together with our clients to craft the language for acceptance tests in cucumber style. It's quite valuable for us, especially on fixed bid projects, in that it saves us from perception gaps later on.

I wouldn't let a customer write acceptance tests in a vacum, in fact we typically recommend the acceptance tests we think are adequate and they sign off usually with modifications.

As a side note, I'm experimenting with RubyMotion and I really like the rspec clone built in, it would be especially nice to use cucumber with it as well though.

<comment><USER4> Do you really though? Most cucumber features i see end up being 20 lines of run on sentences, or they end up looking like short rspec declarations.

If you use a descriptive style "spec" testing framework, the output can be similar "A banana should always ...", "A banana when given to a customer should ..." which is just as readable.

I have programming students who have difficulty at writing integration tests, much let alone their future customers. If a customer was to try to write a cucumber test for themselves you would surely have to modify it to make it work correctly right?

This is the only argument i've heard for this style of natural language testing, and i've never heard it from a customer. I've never heard a contractors client come running in from the wings yelling "WE LOVE CUCUMBER, AND COULDN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT!!". I would be interested to hear their point of view.

Sorry to troll on cucumber, I think easier iOS testing and more iOS testing is only a good thing. I'm just personally not a fan of this style tests. Been there done that, now I write my tests in the same language that i'm coding in.

<comment><USER5> Cucumber is a bit over-used, after having done it for a few years with product owners and testers it can be useful to stimulate conversations around edge cases before someone makes a guess and it ends up being wrong. They are pretty much all integration tests which are expensive to implement and fairly slow to run so the majority of my testing is unit testing.

I found that Calabash does almost the same thing as Frank and has support for more mobile phones <http://blog.lesspainful.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I introduced Frank to the codebase of a shipping commercial app. Just having the ability to write functional tests without having to deal with all the plumbing was a big win for the whole team, devs and QAs alike. Don't let the Cucumber stuff turn you off; Frank is a valuable tool.</comment>


Tell HN: If you like to run, walk, or bike check out my latest weekend hack - <AUTHOR>

I really got into running this year and after using several different tools online to map out routes around my neighborhood I got frustrated and built my own.
This was built over a few weekends and I'm continually trying to refine it, yet keep it simple and focused on one small thing (creating and sharing routes).
The advice in the HN community is second to none so if you have any feedback at all, positive or negative, I'd love to hear it!
http://sketchroute.com
Thanks! <comment><USER2> It took me sometime to figure out you just start single clicking to set markers. (Had to read the about page to know this) A little note to the effect of: "just start clicking to add markers" would have been helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Easy enough, that will go to the top of my list!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1) Hitting the ENTER key on my keyboard should submit the search form on the right. Right now I have to click on the Go button with my mouse or tab - space. (FF on Mac)

2) The elevation map is nice, but it would be great if I could click on a part of it and it would show me exactly where on my route that elevation corresponds to. A flashing marker in that spot for a second perhaps.

3) I've seen other similar services place mile markers along the routes. This is a nice feature that won't detract from the simplicity of your site at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the simplicity of the interface, but second an option to have km's. I always prefer running in km's the numbers are better!

What would be really cool is the ability to set a start point and ask for a circular route of N kms (miles) and have the site create one. No idea if that is even remotely possible with the google map API though ...

<comment><USER5> Circular route calculation would be definitely be the coup de grâce of route- plotting apps for me. I've never tried an online route-plotting app before and was expecting/hoping that yours would be based on generating circular routes.

For most users, I think finding a circular route is the latent need. Being able to plot a route manually is the next-best solution.

Overall, great work! Keep it up and let me/us know when you figure out circular routes. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty cool!

1) It would be good if you gave some instructions about what to do. something like 'click anywhere to map out a new route'.

2) It would be enhanced if you did some geo-location to automatically figure out what city I live in.

3) It would be cool if you could convert the 'miles' counter to kilometers just by toggling a radio button or something.

But this is a great tool and I'll be sure to use it. The elevation graph was particularly interesting.

<comment><USER7> Im from Europe and not used to miles so I would also appreciate a button to toggle between miles and kilometers!

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, I will get that in there ASAP!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> very cool. I've been using gmaps-pedometer for this exact thing.

<http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/>

<comment><USER9> They added a feature about a year or two ago that will lock your routes to roads so you don't have to create little vertices around curves. This would be a helpful feature.

<comment><USER10> I noticed it this week. I wish the lines hugged a little closer to the building and on the sidewalk though. I use it to measure my jogging distance and having it measure the street instead of the sidewalk can add a mile to my routine, which is usually around a big block. I just do it manually now. I can't complain, the site have been really usefully over the last few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use a stationary treadmill or elliptical machine every morning, so how about a feature that lets me input my total watts or calories, and measures a map radius of how far I could have traveled if I were running outside?

Even better, let me chain those lengths end-on-end, so I can simulate running across country to to distant cities?

<comment><USER12> Running on a treadmill is significantly easier due to lack of wind resistance.

Although you probably know this already it bit me pretty hard training for run without doing much outdoor running!

<comment><USER11> I'm not preparing for an outdoor run.

I just think this would be a cool way to track my progress, in addition to the other cardio metrics I already maintain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks cool - I use <http://www.everytrail.com/> and its iPhone app for when I go mountain biking.

As for your service - it'd be cool if you could provide some stock routes just as an example to see what's possible. Maybe do some big hiking routes or something.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice job! Here are some suggestions:

Though it might break the simplicity of the app, it'd be nice if it could plot a road-based route between two points. It'd save a lot of clicks. :)

Also, make the markers smaller and try to detect whether there are any existing plotted routes nearby. My route has a lot of overlaps and it can be hard to differentiate them. Another option is that if you click on an existing marker it will merge the route into it. To diverge from it, you could click the marker you want to diverge from.

Make markers draggable and update distance and height metrics while I drag them. That would be a good way to check for better variations of an existing route.

Show regular distance intervals. So that you'd be able to see the literal milestones of your route.

<comment><USER15> Agreed about the route between two points. DailyMile.com does this very well.

<comment><USER14> Someone also mentioned Gmaps Pedometer: <http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/>

It has most of the things I want in a route planner. I'll also check Daily Mile out, thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hey cool! I was just telling myself the other day that I need to start living a healthier lifestyle, part of this was getting out and going walking, building up to jogging. I've always wondered about just a barebones, downright simple point and click route system, this does it. Bonus points for the elevation widget, and even more points for the "Link to this Route" function.

Great job!

edit Just had an idea, if you have any plans on sharing routes and letting multiple people define courses, maybe color coding I can easily see this turning into a nice tool to coordinate city wide scavenger hunts, or even useful as an aid for geocaching

<comment><AUTHOR> You can share a route by generating a public link then send it to whomever you'd like.

I like the idea of being able to define multiple routes and color-coding and thought that would also be beneficial for events putting on races that have different routes. I'll add that to my list as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I run a lot and have tried out many of these tools and have settled on DailyMile with Garmin GPS integration for a few reasons.

1\. I got bored running the same thing over and over, but re-entering a route is a pain

2\. I like DailyMile so I wanted integration with it (otherwise I have to enter the route again)

That being said, your UI is nicer than most that I used except you don't follow roads. If I didn't use Garmin's GPS, I'd consider it if it exported to DailyMile.

To make it easier for those who have lots of routes, let me edit a past route -- would love if I could just drag/drop like Google's driving route editor lets me do.

</comment><comment><USER18> I use gmap-pedometer to route all of my runs. I probably use it about 2-3 times a week so I've been waiting for someone to build something a bit more versatile and possibly even let me create routes from a mobile phone (this would be a cool feature and differentiate for you).

I've been staring at your site for the last 2 minutes and I can't figure out how to create a route. I think I glanced at one of the comments here and they said single click to drop a marker.... I'll give that a shot. But if I can't figure out how to create a route within 5 seconds you need to find a better way to communicate it.

<comment><USER18> Okay I just created a typical route I usually create in gmap-pedometer using single clicks. Feedback:

1\. The routes don't follow the street...this is good when I go off the road but not so good when I am 100% roads. I like how gmap follows the street as much as possible until you switch it to "off road" which lets you route wherever you want.

2\. I really like your elevation chart. Nice job. What would be even better is if the elevation chart had an X-axis that mapped the elevation to the current distance in the run. That way I know that the hill will hit me at mile 4, etc.

3\. Public link to route should automatically highlight and copy for me. (click to copy)

Additional ideas for features:

-let me drop a note at a certain place along the route to share info -let the community specify areas of high traffic, tourists, etc. -share routes with the community, get feedback

-one problem which I haven't thought about too much yet. when we share routes with each other, everyone has a different "starting" location. it would be good if your site knew my starting location and then when I viewed someone else's route it would automatically re-route and re-calculate the fastest way for me to join his route and at which point to join.... I hope that makes sense.

great work overall.

<comment><USER19> I agree with everything eventhough wrote. I normally use gmap-pedometer and the number one issue keeping me from using your app was 1) on eventhough's list: I need the route to stick to the roads unless I choose otherwise.

Other than that, great work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Clearing the map is kind of annoying since it reloads the page yet I can clear the markers by clicking clear last marker multiple times without the page reloading. Plus the clear option resets my map selection and I really only want to clear the markers.

I'd like to be able to draw my route with the mouse.

The elevation chart is nice. How about an estimated travel time?

How come the elevation limits are different for terrain and the others?

Nice page. Goes in my Interesting Sites folder.

</comment><comment><USER21> The elevation plot is fantastic - it will help avoid any unpleasant surprises when I'm planning new routes! Would be even better if you could somehow link the elevation plot to the position on the route - e.g. if I hover over a point on the elevation chart (or click on it) it will highlight that bit of the route.

I used to use mapmyrun.com for this kind of thing, but they've added so many adverts to it that it's practically unusable now. This is much better.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like it. The elevation graph is great. Needs a 'Complete there and back route' option. and saving seems pretty slow to me.

<http://sketchroute.com/routes/4c51da384790ce3314000025>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comments everyone.

I added the ability to switch to Kilometers as many have suggested as well as a some getting started text.

I will be improving this over the next several weeks I hope you all will continue to check it out.

</comment><comment><USER12> My route is basically - run to park, run around the park x times.

not sure how you can make a UI that easily allows creation of loops and exiting them at arbitrary points, but would be a useful feature to me...

</comment><comment><USER23> right-clicking to remove a marker would be awesome.

having accounts would be nice, too. and being able to upload data from gps watches. but one step at a time. this is really cool, thanks for sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't make it clear enough, so I definitely need to address that, but you can register and once you've done that you have the ability to save and view your own list of routes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I use <http://www.mapmyrun.com> It gets the job done but I find it a bit clunky.

It's nice to see some lightweight but no less functional alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER25> I like it a lot. One thing: I like how this site:

<http://www.mappedometer.com/>

Links two points by actual roads. It would be a cool option.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nifty. I've been using gmaps pedometer for the same, but this is much smoother. The big missing feature for me though is the ability to export to gpx so that I can import on the dailymile.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will look into adding export to GPX. As a simple tool for routing I definitely want you to be able to get your data out of it for use with other tools so this will be high on my list of things to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nice! I walk a couple times a day, but I take shortcuts and routes through parks and woods that are off the map, so to speak. Now I can finally figure out just how far I'm walking.

Good job!

</comment><comment><USER21> Out of interest - how accurate do you think the distances are? Between my bike computer, Garmin footpod and Google Maps I get three different distances.

</comment><comment><USER28> Please let me drag existing markers to move them.

</comment><comment><USER29> Google's bicycling directions automatically highlight bike paths. You should try and integrate that.

</comment><comment><USER30> The "follow road" feature of Daily Mile's route creator is a time-saver. Check it out.

<comment><USER31> +1 for having an option to snap routes to nearby roads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Awesome, I've been looking for something like this as well. Thanks for sharing it!</comment>


To Like or Not to Like: Facebook Like-Gating and Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchenginejournal.com/to-like-or-not-to-like-facebook-like-gating-and-apps/38801/

<comment><USER2> "Like-gating" is a behavior that I find pathetic; it dilutes what little value there might have been to tracking "likes" to begin with.

If you _actually_ care how valuable your brand is, you won't give anyone a damned thing for "liking" you and you won't make it a condition of doing anything else. What good is a disingenuous opinion about your brand? You should only want a "like" if someone gave it to you without being asked.

<comment><USER3> I think you misunderstand the purpose of getting a Like in this example: it's not for social proof, but to create a more direct relationship with the "fan" so that when you post on your Facebook page they become part of the conversation.

Think of it as collecting an email from your customer, it's disruptive to the process of trying the app and some users will not do it, but it allows you to talk to the ones that do submit, helps build a better product in the long run and keep those same users happier.

<comment><USER2> Customers should not see walls or spam. Intentions are irrelevant if the outcome annoys people.

What part of the verb "Like" would make the customer think "oh please make me part of a conversation"? I would go as far as to say it is _obvious they wouldn't expect that outcome_.

If you put any roadblock at all between your customer and the acquisition of your product, you _will_ lose some customers. And you will never know how many because they will silently think "to hell with that" and never return.

If you subsequently spam customers with updates, they will start regretting the purchase and make a mental note to never buy from you again. Once I bought a pair of sunglasses and began receiving spams _once a week_ from the store (seriously, how often could I _possibly_ be interested in sunglasses, especially since I _just bought a pair_?).

It may be a hard pill to swallow, but there is no reason for a customer to give a damn about a company on a regular basis unless it's a product that can be consumed really often (like maybe going to a restaurant every few weeks). If it's something that people may buy only every few years, _they don't care about you_ and _they don't want to hear from you_.

Facebook pages and other sites already have ways to request updates, e.g. the "Get Updates via RSS" link. Unlike abuse of "Like", the updates link is clearly labeled and it _does_ tell the user what will happen when it's clicked. It is also _correctly_ off to the side where it's available for those who need it and not in the way for those who don't.</comment></comment></comment>