this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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It's all fun and games until you graduate, and your employers realize you don't know shit and can't get up to speed.
I'm an engineer and it's easy to pick out the ones who haven't put in the work. They simply don't last. Sure, some can skate by like that and are smart enough to learn on the fly. I'm cool with that.
I've been on both sides of the interview table, and yeah it's not hard to figure out who lives up to their CV. But unfortunately, that giant pool of useless grads clogs up the already horrible HR pipeline. A lot of good people are turned away before an engineer gets to talk to them.
So maybe AI will finally convince HR to charge their hiring practices?
I work in manufacturing and we have multiple engineers on staff. I'm not really sure why because we should have competent maintenance people doing those jobs instead. They have zero trouble shooting skill. The first thing they do is open their laptops. They don't physically look at anything to try to figure out issues. They spend hours trying to figure out basic problems, it's ridiculous. At the last place I worked operators would be fixing most of these things.
It’s a cliche, but “you’re only cheating yourself” is true. You’re paying to learn.
I’ve applied for many jobs, and few even ask your GPA and you could lie about your degree and few would know, even fewer care which school you went to.
What you learned is 90% of the value.
I'm a software engineer without a degree, so I might have to consider finishing it with some questionably-ethical assistance. I can already do the job, but I don't have an expensive piece of paper certifying that I can do the job.
The people who are worth something are already interested in the subject and have taught themselves more than is in the curriculum. AI will not change that.