On Jun 25, 2006, at 11:19 PM, William Chops Westfield wrote:

>
> On Jun 25, 2006, at 8:43 PM, dal wheeler wrote:
>
>> he'd be the first one to tell you its not the easiest way to
>> maintain a career.  I've seen these people in other companies
>> and it is very difficult for them to change jobs...
>
> That matches the experience of assorted friends and relatives.  In
> times of significant company loyalty to the employees, a non-degreed
> engineer can do fine.  But if, say, the Internet Bubble pops, your
> company goes Poof! (and with it your chances of glowing  
> recommendations
> and identifiable accomplishments), and you find yourself with a  
> mortgage
> and kids to support at the same time as thousands of people with  
> similar
> skills, similar resumes, AND college degrees...  Well, you'd better  
> have
> a good nest-egg or many and/or wealthy friends.

Been there, done that.  Lost the nest egg, after being employee #42  
of over 500 at a company that built very nice data centers.  Was the  
first "engineer" assigned to maintain a site while we built 18 of  
them, and was the 3rd hired into the Corporate HQ Operations group  
after we built #3.

At the pop (literally two months after 9/11), I was the second most  
expensive "Operations" person -- but they never asked if I was  
interested in staying to maintain what I built and knew like the back  
of my hand at a lower salary... so the nest egg I thankfully built  
with the bubble money was *poofed*, as you say.

> A 4 year college degree is probably worth 2 or 3 years worth of "real"
> experience (of the sort that it is very hard to get when you're 18.)
> It doesn't exercise the SAME skills as actual work, but the skills it
> does imbue aren't as worthless as some people think.

I'm having a hard time deciding what it's worth in my mid-30's  
though.  Another "poof" and I could find myself eating up another  
nest egg I've been slowly working on.

The market is due for a very long prolonged downturn in the U.S. as  
the Baby Boomers retire without enough money in savings to keep the  
government from taxing the beejeezus out of us "young-uns"... I can  
already see that coming from a macroeconomic perspective (yes, I do  
have SOME college courses done), so I'm hunting around for what  
Boomers will by paying for with that government money (long-term  
care, home health care, stuff they get to write off on their taxes --  
because they'll all be trying to hold on to the little that they've  
bothered to save) and of course, secondary things like "Who's going  
to make money when the Boomers SELL OFF major things and who's going  
to lose money on them (short 'em)."

I guess I'll know if my strategy worked in 30 or so more years...

First Warren Buffet stops investing stating that cash is more  
worthwhile to his shareholders, and then he starts giving all his  
personal cash away -- a sure sign the world is coming to an end, eh?   
Heh heh.  :-)

But back to the topic at hand... what's adding a degree to a resume'  
worth to a 30-something who's been supporting and building stuff for  
his entire career?  I certainly don't need the "3 years experience"  
to tack on at this point.  But I do need that "foot in the door in  
bad times".

It's a harder analysis than watching Boomer's slide through their  
natural economic life-cycle!  :-)

In down times, it's key.  In "normal" times or good times,  
worthless... so it's really hard to do an Opportunity Cost analysis.

Not enough data.  Can not compute.  Heh ... such is life.

Nate 
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