TWIT 866: Can't Talk, Doing Laundry

Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…

What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!

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Regarding college, I would agree that a huge part of the financial benefits associated with a degree actually come from access to the right social, and eventually business networks. Much of the in-class stuff can be learned online or through a library for free.

Maybe these days online plays some aspect, but in the past it certainly did not, and of course once you worked through a university degree, became successful and then were doing hiring, you assumed that a new employee should have had some of the same experience(s) you did to become as successful. It’s a supposed self-reinforcing or virtuous cycle (if on the inside of it.)

Anyway, I wanted to reply to say… I agree with the value of a university degree but not the cost of obtaining it. Universities usually have resources that are rarer outside of them–like a laser setup in a physics lab as one example. Also, the actual libraries with very technical info (like say Proceedings of the IEEE) are usually found in university libraries. More importantly, they have professors who can influence you in ways you’d never predict, and lead your professional development, and introduce you to those people who you wouldn’t necessarily otherwise connect with. There is the value of university social groups, like a math/engineering/computer science society–sure they do a lot of partying/drinking, but they’re also filled with your peers that you might not meet another way. Hard work counts for a lot, for sure, but I don’t think you can discount serendipity.

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Exactly. And this is why I like the German system. Anybody who meets the entry requirements can apply for a place, there is a semester administration fee, which ranges from 0€ to 250€. “All” the student has to worry about is studying, plus accommodation and study materials.

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Beyond the show’s content, I could not stop being amazed at the video quality from Carolina Milanesi’s setup. Larry’s video was very good too but something about Carolina’s was over the top from my viewpoint. As good as and maybe a small step even beyond Alex Lindsay :slight_smile:

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Everything I do at my job of 15 years I learned in the office. Went to school for Computer Engineering, working as a software developer using .Net which was not taught when I went to school.

Considering the cost of college in the US, having alternative certification as a means to work is very tempting. Not sure if anyone looked, but the certificate programs from Google do take a lot of time to acquire.

I didn’t notice at the time. I’ll have to find out what she’s doing!

I attended one year of University, from a very predatory and now defunct college. I was studying business administration. Course work was hard but didn’t really get any of the benefits everyone is speaking of. All my connections have come from my burn survivor community more than any educational community I was involved in. But I do agree networking has its great benefits.

I don’t work in the field in which I studied but I now work in healthcare. I make a liveable wage and I enjoy what I do.

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@Leo your suggestion for “The Dropout” is spot on. So far, sure reminds me of all time favorites “Halt and Catch Fire” and “Silicon Valley”.

I agree. At college, I didn’t really learn anything - I had taught myself COBOL before we started studying it and I had already learnt BASIC and Machine Code before I started computer studies at school, I was there purely for the certificate at the end of the course (the worst part was the lecturer on the firt day set us a simple task to see how adept we were with computers, I finished in 10 minutes and set about making it “pretty” with some machine code drawing windows etc. (a Commodore PET 8-bit computer with a 40 column text display) and the lecturer’s reaction was, “wow, I didn’t know you could do that with a computer!” Tell me, who was there to learn, again?). I made some good friends there, but lost contact with all of them after graduation, apart from a mate who came from the same secondary school as me. I moved to another area after college, so it was pretty much make all new friends again, which seems to be the story of my life.

I spent 15 years after college working for a consultancy and moving from project to project, always different people, living out of hotels 8 months a year for a long time. I hardly had any friends at home, because I was never there and I didn’t have any friends at work, because they were always changing every few months.

Through my life, I’ve probably had 2 people I would call real friends, that I meet with and talk to regularly.

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