Careerchat IV

[Iskaral Pust]

1 hour ago, Alarich II said:

I see; interesting perspective. My parents did put me and all my four siblings through at least 5 years of college, however university here is mostly free, so they paid for rent and food and for all else we had to get jobs (which is still a great deal, all things considered). But 140k for each of 5 children would've been very hard. They didn't attach any strings but especially for the three eldes of us it was pretty clear, that we couldn't just hang out and chill because our younger siblings would also want to go to university.

So leaving all emotional stuff aside and just looking at the raw numbers, are the 140k justified in terms of better education or future education? Leaving aside the current state of unemployment because of extraordinary reasons, I would really be interested wether this kind of money can actually buy you a carreer that allows you to amortise your investment within a reasonable time-frame (say 15 years), compared to the free alternative.

Isk indicated that there is a fair bit of consumerism involved in the fees, so maybe not, otoh - if you go "out of state" its presumably for a high reputation university?

Very few families here with five kids (or even 3+) will be sending those kids to out-of-state or private university, not unless you are getting a lot of financial aid, scholarships, etc.  Private university here costs up to $75k a year per student all-in (tuition, room & board), and the top-tier public universities might be $55-65k a year.  You can do the math, but very few families can afford that for multiple kids.  But in-state public university is usually a fraction of that cost.  And yes, people generally pay that premium for a better reputation university.

Only a small fraction of the wealthiest and foreign students are expected to pay full price on those big numbers above.  The sticker price is a fictional starting point before individualized discounts are applied in the form of a financial aid package.  Each financial aid offer is a trade-off between how much the university wants the student and how much money they think they can get from the student.  It’s basically a form of price targeting (or perfect price discrimination in the language of economists).  It allows universities to charge each student the most that they can/will pay without pushing them into the arms of a competing university.

And there is plenty of room for students to find value.  For example the University of Alabama will give a free-ride scholarship to out-of-state students with very good grades in high school.  That university is pretty wealthy from its football program, but the in-state students in Alabama are not academically strong (one of the worst K-12 education systems in the nation), so the university really wants to incentivize some smart kids to come and bring up the academic average. 

Average accumulated debt at graduation is ~$25k for public university students and ~$30k for private university students.  Just one source link And the median is much, much less.  So most people are making sensible choices.  A small % of students incur big amounts of debt, and usually they do so because they can afford it.  The really big student debt numbers come with grad school, especially medical school, law school and business school, where the earning potential should be commensurate.

There are a small number of students who incur ridiculous amounts of debt in undergraduate university for degrees that will never earn enough to balance out.  The NYTimes wrote a series of articles about some of these a couple of years ago, where we were supposed to pity them and wish debt forgiveness for them.  It was some pretty ridiculously indulgent crap.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

Has anyone ever been asked to do an assignment for a prospective job?

Yes, I've had this happen a couple of times when I was applying for jobs a few years back. One was a timed project for which I had exactly 2 hours (or maybe 3, but it was a set amount of time and not very long) to do some small coding projects and one was considerably more involved (it took the better part of a week). It's a pretty common way of demonstrating things that are not obvious in interviews and not controversial unless they're making you work for free rather than testing you.

[Buckwheat]

When reading or hearing about the ridiculous tuitions and other costs of the university education in the USA, I always ask myself how come not more students from there come study abroad. Would it not be cheaper for parents to invest in a very good language course throughout the high school years for their child, so the child will learn for example some European language and come study where the education is mostly free? I realise it is far away and very stressful to move to another country at 18, but still ... maybe there is something I am missing, as I come from a very different cultural environment, so if my thoughts are insulting, please forgive me - basically I wonder if studying in a country with free education even comes up when somebody is deciding about their education path.

Anyway, on topic: after countless applications sent and generic "I am sorry to inform you that we chose another candidate" received (very few interviews too) in the last two/three months, it looks like I am actually going to start with a new job in the beginning of September.  I don't have a contract signed yet, but they already started sending me emails about the organisation and opened an institutional email address for me, I even already attended a zoom meeting this week ... so I am just nervously waiting for them to actually prepare my contract (there is not going to be any negotiation about anything, it is a job within the public school system, all conditions are publically available and the same for the whole country - no negotiating power on either side and no chance of me walking away from any offer, just give me the papers to sign already!).

[baxus]

@Buckwheat I'm not sure if US citizens could qualify for free education in Europe. Still, based on the numbers that have been mentioned in this thread, even paying full expenses (food, accommodation, tuition etc.) would be way cheaper.

[Iskaral Pust]

14 hours ago, Triskele said:

Has anyone ever been asked to do an assignment for a prospective job?  I was told I was a finalist for this one but that there's an assignment which was then sent to me a day later.  It's ultimately just coming up with a slide presentation a plan for first several months of the position.

The internet tells me that this is an increasingly common thing for prospective employers to ask for this, and most of the guidance that I saw suggested that they shouldn't be asking you for something that would take more than 2-3 hours.  But then again if people really want the job I imagine that people go to town.  

This assignment is way intimidating because it's for the side of the job I've not done before (they know this, I got the interview for another piece I do have a lot of experience in).  So it's one of these things where I wonder if they just want to see what I come up with, how my slideshow looks, how I think, etc...and they don't expect this "plan" to be amazing.  Or does it need to be in which case I can't imagine submitting anything I feel good about without spending all weekend on it.  

It did give me the impression that I'm not too sure that I want the position, but I'm still motivated to try to get to the offer to see.

I did this as part of landing my current job last year.  They gave me some limited information about their business and asked me to prepare a short presentation of a business plan for my role to fit into their wider business.  Which is only slightly more structured than a typical interview question anyway.  It took a few hours to prepare because I assembled my thoughts into a structured format over a few PowerPoint slides.  My process is to think it through a few times in scattered downtime and let a picture form, then draft the pages in an hour or two, then go back again and spent another hour to edit and refine.

It’s a good way to expose how you think and approach problems, especially with incomplete information or ambiguity.  And how well you can communicate your vision, support it with logic, and defend it from challenge.  (you need a balance between defending and being open to other knowledge/experience beyond your own). You could possibly even consult other people for input too (I didn’t), because that might be a viable way of approaching a topic where your knowledge is limited.  

[Iskaral Pust]

5 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

When reading or hearing about the ridiculous tuitions and other costs of the university education in the USA, I always ask myself how come not more students from there come study abroad.

 

4 hours ago, baxus said:

@Buckwheat I'm not sure if US citizens could qualify for free education in Europe. Still, based on the numbers that have been mentioned in this thread, even paying full expenses (food, accommodation, tuition etc.) would be way cheaper.

US citizens don’t qualify for the low tuition in other countries.  I asked this question years ago because Irish-Americans can easily qualify for an Irish passport but they still cannot get the low tuition for Irish citizens whose parents have paid Irish taxes for years. 

It is an option to consider though.  Canada has some great universities, and Oxford and Cambridge would both be well respected.  It’s possible that there is some net saving available.  But unrecognizable foreign universities can be a drag on your resume ever after.  My university program in Ireland accepts students only from within the top percentile (top half of the top percentile) of high school exam results, but it’s not recognized in the US as being so selective. 

[Starkess]

@Triskele I think the rule for job application assignments is that they should be more about learning more about you and not about you doing work for free. In this case, it sounds like they want to see your vision for the role, so that seems okay.

@Buckwheat I actually know someone who had a detailed plan to do just that in Norway. I don't think they ever followed through, though. I know a ton of people whose parents didn't want them to go to college in a different state, another country would be unthinkable to them. Americans have a totally different relationship with international travel and relocation than Europeans as well. Basically to go internationally requires an 8 hour flight at minimum, and many Americans have never even been on a plane at all. Exceptions are obviously Mexico and Canada, but I don't think Mexican colleges would be seen as competitive enough and Canada is seen as very cold. Not to mention that in-state, public school tuition is not usually what people are talking about when accruing massive student debts. That usually comes from private, out-of-state colleges, and students and their families are generally choosing them for a) the experience and b) the prestige and that wouldn't really be replicated in an international school, especially if they plan to come back the US for jobs/grad school. And learning a second language in the US is difficult, as the general attitude is, in my experience, different than that of Europeans. The only people I know who went abroad for school went to like Cambridge or Oxford--English-speaking schools that are well-known in the US.

Of course that's setting aside the issues of culture shock (at 18!) and, as mentioned above, most places aren't actually cheaper for international students. (The same is true in the US, btw. Domestic students almost NEVER pay "sticker price", but international students do.)

[kiko]

8 hours ago, baxus said:

@Buckwheat I'm not sure if US citizens could qualify for free education in Europe. Still, based on the numbers that have been mentioned in this thread, even paying full expenses (food, accommodation, tuition etc.) would be way cheaper.

Studying in Germany is free for everyone. I believe they even throw in a free language course. That's how they compete with the other more famous non-english universities. No point in trying to compete with English speaking countries though, they have this huge language advantage going for them.

If you want an engineering degree it is definitely worth thinking about it. 

[Impmk2]

@Triskele my last interview (for my current job) I had to prepare a 10 minute powerpoint presentation outlining my job history and experience. I actually kinda enjoyed the format as it let me really feel prepared, hold the room and play to strengths. Also let them assess my communication ability, which is a pretty important part of my role (dealing with students).

I thought it was better than the traditional Q&A where I tend to get nervous, trip over my tongue and blabber (that part was in there too but felt it held less weight).

[Iskaral Pust]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

That's interesting.  I think I would like tgat format.  Talking about past experiences is easy for me.  

For this one we luckily just send the slideshow in.  I'd feel like a clown presenting a plan for a job I haven't done.

Stop focusing on what you haven’t done.  Start thinking about what you would do.  Even if you don’t yet have a perfect answer, describe the basic outline of a strategy (show you understand the dynamics of the business), identify what information you need to inform the actual plan, describe your first three priorities in the role, guesstimate what resources/support you think you will need, project what business goals will achieved over what timeframe.  

[Buckwheat]

Thanks for all the answers. I did consider that maybe even European universities wouldn't be free for foreigners. I know some people who went to study abroad and didn't pay any additional tuition over what the domestic students paid, but that was almost all within the EU. I also know that US Americans have a different view on what "abroad" is and on learning another language(s), and moving so far away at 18 or 19 is even harder than for somebody with some more life and professional experience.

[baxus]

On 8/22/2020 at 7:28 PM, Triskele said:

Then I suppose there's another possibility (I may have mentioned this upthread when looking at another position for which I never did get the offier) which is would my current position make a counter-offer.

It might be different for you but when I left the first company I worked for I was given a counter offer. After thinking about it for a couple of minutes I figured out that I'm leaving because of other things and that more money would not fix the issues I had with the project I was working on. Since then, I've always kept that in mind when I thought of changing jobs or when I changed jobs.

[A wilding]

I have no answer for you, but some possibly helpful questions:

What sort of relationship do you have with the decision makers? Your competitors? How much of this can you discuss with them up front?

Why do you want the promotion? The money? The career progression? More interesting/challenging work?

Is there room for some sort of compromise - e.g. someone else gets the promotion but you get moved into some sort of senior role created for you?

 

Edit: Though, if you decide you don't want a promotion, tell them up front rather than refusing it afterwards. "I don't know if I am in the running, but just in case I am ...". You come out of it looking much better that way.

 

[S John]

15 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I'm not sure if this belongs more appropriately in this thread or the feminism thread, but I have a unique career-related issue that I was hoping to get some more perspective about.

I work in a woman-dominated industry. My mentor and first boss was a woman, and while that hasn't always been the case, it's likely to be true more often than not.

I also happen to be in the top 5% (if I'm being modest, 1% if I'm being realistic) in my field. That's not saying much; I just happen to be a fairly big fish in a very small pond. But, I'm also someone who jumped ship because I have a vision to grow the industry. I also happen to be a white male who wants to be an ally to women, especially when they dominate the industry I'm a part of, and because I owe so much to women in my career.

So - review and promotion time is upcoming, and I'm at a dilemma. I am the only man in my division. If I were to be promoted, it could not be credibly argued that I didn't deserve it. But, I also know that I don't have any formal management experience, while at least two potential competitors do. The counterbalance is that I've been able to shape the division more to my vision than they have, while also being supportive of their efforts.

The dilemma is - I've more than earned a promotion, but don't have *formal* management experience. I won't be at all upset if I'm passed over for either of them, but I'm concerned at the perception and morale if I were to be offered, and I accepted, a promotion over arguably more qualified candidates.

Can anyone help me square this circle?

ETA: Not sure if this matters or not, but all of their formal experience is outside our industry. We all have approximately the same amount of experience in this other industry.

You should go for the promotion and go have a nice drink if you get it. If you get the job, do the best you can with it. Everyone in the world is out there trying to do the best they can for themselves and their families and there is absolutely no reason for you not to do the same. None.

[Iskaral Pust]

@The Great Unwashed I’m not sure what you’re agonizing over.  If your company/industry is already female dominated then it seems like one of the few instances where you don’t have to worry that women are facing unfair hurdles in applying for the role.  

And you aren’t the one making this decision anyway.

If you’re worried how it will be perceived that a man gets the role while a more experienced women is passed over, then it seems like the gender aspect is not (or should not be) significant here.  It’s always possible that there will be some negative perception if a fast-rising employee jumps ahead of a more established colleague for a promotion.  That’s just a reality and you may be under greater pressure to prove yourself because of it.  That’s the price of success.

It may help you to ask the decision-makers what they are looking for in this role and what trade-offs are they weighing.

[Iskaral Pust]

11 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Yeah, I've been focusing more on what is generating my anxiety; I think I'm conflating the anxiety I'm feeling at overseeing a division composed entirely by women (literally - I am the only man) which will necessarily involve gender considerations such as scheduling and childcare issues that I've watched lots of them struggle with as I've been in the industry over the years - with a much milder anxiety I feel about possible perceived unfairness.

Honestly, I'm the natural fit, and if they do promote me, it might be just to make me happy and to get me to shut the fuck up.

The new team I lead is myself and four women.  We just added a guy as coverage while one woman is on maternity leave for a few months.  They’re all people with their own individual needs as employees trying to develop their careers and to balance their job with their life.  Don’t commit so much to the gender lens.  It’s always better to focus on people as individuals rather than members of any group. 

[Iskaral Pust]

On 9/1/2020 at 8:52 PM, Triskele said:

about 5 business days after submitting the "assignment" I got a brief email from one of the people I'd interviewed with to see if we could do a call with virtually no more information than that.  seems hard to believe it's any negative sign, so we shall see.  Makes it feel a bit more real that this could turn into an offer.  sort of struggling to categorize this stage.  No one has called it an interview like the first round, but I suppose it feels like one, in effect, so interview 3 so far.  eta:  call is scheduled but has not happened yet.  

I’d assume it’s positive.  No-one hurries to turn away a candidate.  Did you just submit your assignment or actually present it?  If the former, they may want you to talk through your material, so be prepared.

And just in case they’re moving faster than you think, make sure you’re prepared for wherever the conversation goes.  Don’t be caught flat-footed if they ask you what more you need to know about the role (do you need to meet a senior leader to hear how your role fits in their strategy?  I met the CEO before I took my current job), or what are your comp expectations, or how soon can you transition.  It’s easy to put all your energy and focus into acing the interview and then be under-prepared for negotiating the actual job offer.

Best of luck, Trisk.

[Iskaral Pust]

@Triskele I’m glad to hear it went well.  I hadn’t realized that it was just about to take place yesterday evening.

If you’re still in a competitive head-to-head situation, take some time today to think if there’s anything extra you should have said.  Anything that really builds on the idea in your assignment, or a good new insight triggered by the conversation.  If there’s something really good, then you can mention it briefly in an email you send to thank them for the conversation.

Don’t get long-winded or ramble, and don’t bother with something that won’t be somewhat intriguing to them.  But if there is a nugget that percolated in your brain overnight (and no-one thinks of every good idea during the actual conversation), then it’s worth sharing to continue to expose your thinking and also to make it feel to them like you are now in an ongoing collaboration with them, not just participating in episodic interviews. 

[Iskaral Pust]

2 hours ago, Triskele said:

So a funny thing happened which is this morning after the interview call yesterday one of the directors sent a quick "can we have a phone call" email but then said something like, sorry, need to push it back a bit, and then I just didn't hear.  figure something just came up for a busy person.  At first that sure felt like a positive sign like perhaps they were going to say something to the effect of wanting to move forward with the offer, but we shall see.  

Yeah, that sounds positive.  A pity they didn’t just commit to the moment, but that sounds like you’re in a good position and they just need to get their stakeholders all aligned.  Fingers crossed for you.

[kiko]

Is this way of hiring in any way usual procedure in the states? Look like and endless procedure from what I read here. But anyway. Seems it may come to a good conclusion after all. All good wishes for you!