I am an oddball, a tale of the Eloi and Morlocks.
A comment on the Y Combinator website Hacker News made me vent a little steam. I’m going to post my reply here as well, and add to it.
I'm an oddball on Hacker News,
No, I'm an oddball. No degree, no STEM background, no interest whatsoever in CS as a career. Still quite interested in building a better future for humanity, though.
However, it seems tech companies/VC firms/think tanks/philanthropic entities forget (or outright ignore) the fact that it requires more than coders and degree holders to make society happen. sigh.
In the past few years, I've come to be incredibly shocked as I discover more and more how myopic the tech-leaders/teach-wealthy/younger philanthropists are, whether intentionally or unintentionally. A significant percentage come from families where education was stressed, where the families were financially comfortable if not wealthy, a lot of them started working when they began their first startup in college or their first job was out of grad school, people that went to k-12 schools in privileged areas or went to varying levels of private schools, went to top-tier colleges to either drop out when they became millionaires or to graduate and go on to become billionaires long before their peers even finished paying off their crippling student loans. The companies, and empires, they run after obtaining a modicum of success almost entirely require a minimum of a 4-year degree for entry-level positions with most wanting to see at least one major accomplishment or project under your belt even to get a Skype interview. They want people of a specific mindset; they want people with a particular background; they want people with specific accomplishments. Even those that go on to help those that are underprivileged via their philanthropic efforts, just look for the cream of the academic crop, they look for those that have somehow defied the odds and are still already exceptionally bright on paper, to help them get their de facto dues card (a degree) so they can have yet another like-mind to join their ranks.
But those of us that have different experiences? We get told things like (these are actual quotes from rejection emails to me in the past year and a half):
"You obviously have many of the skills we're looking for. However, for the Customs Brokerage role we require a BA/BS degrees" at the time, I had 12 years of experience doing the job, but no 4-year degree in ANYTHING, so wasn't good enough for an interview.
"We know that our process is far from perfect, so please take this primarily as a statement that we have limited interview bandwidth, and must make hard choices. We'd welcome another application in no fewer than 12 months - the best way to stand out is to complete a major project or produce an important result in that time" thank you for comparing me to bits and stripping me of all humanity, also what 'major project' or 'important result' should I produce for an entry-level position in a field where I'd literally be assisting in creating the initial framework for AI policy research? I mean, must everyone that helps with AI policy be a CS type? Should the common man not be consulted when deciding how our future robot overlords will rule us, and how are personal data may or may not be used by such projects?
I am the oddball. I'm John Q Public, not C. S. Programmer.
I want to see a better future for myself and our species. I can't write fancy code, nor do I have any desire to. I'm not going to be the guy that creates the first AI or the first cyborg prosthetic indistinguishable from a human limb. I'm not going to crack cold fusion or bring C4 rice to market. I can sit back and go "that's a good idea BUT here's 17 ways I can exploit it in its beta phase, if you get it fully functional and the company scales I can exploit it even more ways and use it for personal gain and to cause great pain and suffering to individuals or the masses, maybe we should stop and think about this, and these 3 features are all but guaranteed to be used more for bad than good" I can go "so explain to me exactly what you are trying to do... oh, hey, yeah so I know your world is only CS, but this was done by such and such in 1973 and I know I've read about it in a few books, let me check my Evernote references... ah yes so here's a science fiction story where it was done but here is where some students did something similar, does this give you any ideas for getting past your current roadblock?" and I can go "man, you look burnt out, you need a break, come on let's go walk for a few minutes and talk about something else so you can come back with a new point of reference".
I am the oddball.
I think that society is rapidly forking. Compare us to the Eloi and the Morlocks from H.G. Wells' 1895 novel The Time Machine.
The Eloi lived a banal life of ease on the surface of the Earth in the year AD 802,701 - the Eloi are the path the tech types are going down. The industry prioritizes grand accomplishments, fancy degrees, snazzy CVs with lots of exciting experience and projects. Many that excel in this industry (but by no means all) had financially comfortable childhoods, had solid k-12 educations with lots of opportunities, many that go on to became worth many millions or billions of dollars also went on to either sell their first company while at a prestigious college and drop out or obtained multiple degrees from such institutions before jumping into a career with minimal 'mundane' working experience prior.
Then we have the Morlocks that dwell underground. The Morlocks clothe and feed the wealthy upper class...er... I mean, the Eloi. My kind are the Morlocks. Many of us have lackluster childhoods, in my instance my father died 12 days before my 13th birthday, and we went from a comfortable lower-middle-class 2-income house to a lower-middle-class 1-income family and had it not been for the life insurance things would have much rougher than they were, and as someone that had his father die at this age I obviously didn't go "gee golly, I'd better buckle down and start thinking about college now" instead I thought "well this is bullshit, what the hell". Many of us Morlocks are working as soon as we can; in my case around 11, I started delivering papers for 3 cents a newspaper, cutting lawns, shoveling snow, hitting stores on Main Street asking if they needed any errands run for tips, just to bring some more money in. By 16, as a Morlock, I was working the maximum number of hours I could get a week by law. By 18, I was working at least 40 hours a week.
As Morlocks, we have a wide variety of jobs under our belts. In my case I delivered papers, worked fast food, buried people for a living as well as cut grass, also cut grass and did other odd jobs for a realtor, worked multiple retail jobs, finally got a 'good' job doing data entry as a contractor for a whopping 10$ an hour before ending up at my current job which after 13 years on the job last week pays me a little over 1$ more than San Francisco's minimum wage, ha!
I've spent the better part of 3 years trying to get a job at a company that is actively trying to improve the lives of humans now, and striving to make a better future for our species. Every single person I've talked to or cold machine-like email I've received has said the same things. 'Get a degree' - 'We want a degree' - 'Minimum requirement is a degree' - 'We didn't see where you listed your degrees' - 'What major project have you complete' - 'what projects have you worked on' - 'what major breakthroughs have you made' - 'Looking at your CV I'm not sure why so and so wanted me to talk to you' basically - go away Morlock, we only hire Eloi.
The world needs people with different backgrounds, different experiences, different abilities to work optimally. Tech companies, philanthropic endeavors, think tanks, even venture capital firms need to stop trying to hire people with Master's and Doctorate degrees for every single position and start seriously considering looking at people that might have a wholly different perspective from an entirely different life experience that can not only add racial or cultural diversity but go "hey, that thing you're trying to invent, it's stupid" or "hey, that thing you're stuck on, it's kinda like this thing that I know about/do let me explain it to you and maybe it'll give you an idea" or even "hey, uh, folks, what you're creating is called a wheel and, um, it already exists" or even "ha, I can't think of 17 ways to rip someone off with that without even putting some thought into it, and that feature right there ohhhh boy people are going to have a fun time using that to social engineer customer service and then users".
But hey, what do I know, I don't make the big bucks. I'm not a CEO, CIO, CTO, CFO, COO. I'm not a billionaire looking to shape the world after my designs. I'm just one of the 7.5 billion Murlocks that makes the world run for the Eloi.