Financial News

[mr_genius]

I've said it before I'll say it again, I've interviewed at a lot of companies, and a lot of those companies the senior management has had english degrees or odd degrees.

 

^^^

 

i see 'technical' people that have degrees in totally unrelated, easy degree stuff, all the time. but they are all over 30. new grads have limited opportunity.

[bigruss]

I've said it before I'll say it again, I've interviewed at a lot of companies, and a lot of those companies the senior management has had english degrees or odd degrees. This whole "you need a degree in business to be a part of a business" is garbage.

 

But I love how we are blaming laziness as the reason unemployment is 8.1 percent. Not the unbelievable amount of private debt that was accumalated in the 00s by a different generation.

The reason why I blame laziness/unwillingness to be creative in job search is because I've seen it in almost everyone of my friends who didn't land a job out of college.

 

Hell, my current roommate only started looking for work when his parents started pushing him too, and he reached out to me because my dad works at a company that he was interested in.

 

And there are plenty of jobs out there, just in areas people may not want to be in. You can go get certified in areas of IT Security and have multiple job offers waiting for you. Sure, not everyone is going to be able to do this, but the point is there are areas out there in desperate need for workers, and many of these positions pay well. It may not be even in the top 5 choice for job for that person, but if it can pay the bills and lead to other opportunities then you have to be flexible.

[bigruss]

^^^

 

i see 'technical' people that have degrees in totally unrelated, easy degree stuff, all the time. but they are all over 30. new grads have limited opportunity.

Many of those technical people went out and got certified/studied those topics on their own so that they could build their skillset and therefore become attractive to more employers.

 

I work in an area we we have a huge range of backgrounds, a brief sampling:

-No college

-Military

-Nuclear Physicist

-IS/IT

-CS

And the manager was in customer service prior to getting into SAP (got involved in CRM).

 

That's just from a team of 9 people, in a highly technical field.

[iamshack]

^^^

 

i see 'technical' people that have degrees in totally unrelated, easy degree stuff, all the time. but they are all over 30. new grads have limited opportunity.

I work in a very technical area and have an entirely useless history degree...

 

Employers want people who can adapt to change quickly; this is one of the largest skills necessary right now and in the future.

 

To only hire out of certain fields is fairly hypocritical then, if you ask me.

[NorthSideSox72]

^^^

 

i see 'technical' people that have degrees in totally unrelated, easy degree stuff, all the time. but they are all over 30. new grads have limited opportunity.

I work at the intersection of finance and technology. My BA was in Political Science. Got the MBA later. Most of my peers did not come out of undergrad with a plan to work in financial tech - they all got their via other paths.

 

[Balta1701]

I work in a very technical area and have an entirely useless history degree...

 

Employers want people who can adapt to change quickly; this is one of the largest skills necessary right now and in the future.

 

To only hire out of certain fields is fairly hypocritical then, if you ask me.

But when there are so many more applicants than there are jobs, as is the case right now, employers can use whatever means they want to filter down through applicants...even if they filter out some qualified ones, because there are simply so many qualified ones available for every positin.

[mr_genius]

I work at the intersection of finance and technology. My BA was in Political Science. Got the MBA later. Most of my peers did not come out of undergrad with a plan to work in financial tech - they all got their via other paths.

 

I remember when half of the IT department had no degree at all.

[iamshack]

But when there are so many more applicants than there are jobs, as is the case right now, employers can use whatever means they want to filter down through applicants...even if they filter out some qualified ones, because there are simply so many qualified ones available for every positin.

This is true...we have recently been able to hire a ton of electrical engineers as Power Traders and in Portfolio Analytics due to the flux of college graduates in a bad job market. However, these positions we have are a combination of understanding how electrical generating units work and understanding how to trade and move around energy in complex energy markets. It is really a hybrid of skills that no one degree can prepare one for. Thus, we need people that are capable of learning and adapting quickly under pressure, which are more skills that seem to occur naturally in people rather than anything that can be taught.

[Balta1701]

This is true...we have recently been able to hire a ton of electrical engineers as Power Traders and in Portfolio Analytics due to the flux of college graduates in a bad job market. However, these positions we have are a combination of understanding how electrical generating units work and understanding how to trade and move around energy in complex energy markets. It is really a hybrid of skills that no one degree can prepare one for. Thus, we need people that are capable of learning and adapting quickly under pressure, which are more skills that seem to occur naturally in people rather than anything that can be taught.

Eh, in my experience that's the kind of skill that actually is the thing you want to be teaching people, and it's something that can be taught if you have the right people...but then again, I haven't done any sort of study to establish that, so I'm the one throwing out an off-subject-anecdote now.

[iamshack]

Eh, in my experience that's the kind of skill that actually is the thing you want to be teaching people, and it's something that can be taught if you have the right people...but then again, I haven't done any sort of study to establish that, so I'm the one throwing out an off-subject-anecdote now.

Well who are the "right" people?

 

We have some brainiacs who are too socially inept to negotiate prices on the phone when they need power because a generator tripped or a line went down...whereas I am terrible with technical stuff, but I was always able to just determine what I needed to get and built the relationships in the market to be able to get it at a good price very quickly.

 

Perhaps those are what you would call "communication" skills or "negotiating" skills.

 

I mean I am sure you are right; there are probably some areas where people tend to be better at these sort of skills than others. But I think that it's probably not limited to any one given area so much as people that for whatever reason, can think well on their feet and can come off as cool customers even when the s*** is hitting the fan in the background.

 

Not to toot my own horn (but I will), but I've lost 25% of my load responsibility suddenly and was still able to negotiate power prices as if I didn't even really need the energy, when in reality, if I didn't get it, the Bellagio's lights were going to have to turn off.

 

I think it's a combination of skills in a lot of cases that transcends any one given academic area, and a good employer or recruiter knows and understands that.

Edited September 7, 2012 by iamshack

[Balta1701]

If it was easy to identify the "Right people" to be teaching those sorts of skills, we'd have a lot more people who have learned them .

[iamshack]

If it was easy to identify the "Right people" to be teaching those sorts of skills, we'd have a lot more people who have learned them .

Well that is my entire point, I suppose.

[mr_genius]

If it was easy to identify the "Right people" to be teaching those sorts of skills, we'd have a lot more people who have learned them .

 

they are easy to identify. they are referred to as unemployed or underemployed.

 

Edited September 7, 2012 by mr_genius

[Balta1701]

they are easy to identify. they are referred to as unemployed or underemployed.

 

Now that doesn't make a lick of sense...

[mr_genius]

Now that doesn't make a lick of sense...

 

you really do hate America

[StrangeSox]

I was before, and pretty much always have been, neither Dem nor GOP'er. Posters like Balta and SS think I'm a Republican, posters like you think I'm a liberal. People here like to put me into one category or the other. But my views are on the left on some issues, the right on others, and neither on yet more. I've voted in 5 presidential elections so far: I've voted for 2 GOP, 2 Dem, and 1 Independent. And I'm still not 100% sure who I will vote for this time.

 

 

 

I just think your views on capital gains and dividends taxes are wrong and that supporting the privatization of Social Security is crazy.

[Y2HH]

 

I just think your views on capital gains and dividends taxes are wrong and that supporting the privatization of Social Security is crazy.

 

I don't know his views on cap gains and dividends...but odds are I agree with them, and in an actual real world conversation I could easily explain why.

 

SS being privatized, however. How about no.

[mr_genius]

 

LAST I CHECKED THAT EMOTICON IS BANNED FROM THIS SITE.

[Chisoxfn]

I've said it before I'll say it again, I've interviewed at a lot of companies, and a lot of those companies the senior management has had english degrees or odd degrees. This whole "you need a degree in business to be a part of a business" is garbage.

 

But I love how we are blaming laziness as the reason unemployment is 8.1 percent. Not the unbelievable amount of private debt that was accumalated in the 00s by a different generation.

I actually didn't blame it on laziness. I said you really can't. There were lazy people 20 years ago just as there are today. I think there might be a few more, but that isn't why we have unemployment at 8.1%.

[StrangeSox]

LAST I CHECKED THAT EMOTICON IS BANNED FROM THIS SITE.

LAST I CHECKED SO WERE U

[NorthSideSox72]

I don't know his views on cap gains and dividends...but odds are I agree with them, and in an actual real world conversation I could easily explain why.

 

SS being privatized, however. How about no.

Actually my views on Soc Sec are not that simple. In fact, I'm pretty sure my views on what to do with it would manage to piss off people on both sides of the aisle.

 

[StrangeSox]

Wells Fargo forecloses on the wrong family. Twice.

[StrangeSox]

Economists are Hobbesians

 

Big, long post directed at Brad DeLong's defense of the microeconomics view of the world as Lockean. Henry disagrees and goes over why it is instead Hobbesian and that the strict foundations of self-interest that undergird economics aren't a particularly good model of human interactions.

 

There is a disjuncture here, but it cuts in the opposite direction. The assumption of narrow self-interest is not just a rhetorical pose. It is quite basic to the ways that microeconomists model the world. It may well be that microeconomics (outside the core that is taught in Ph.D. textbooks) is relaxing the assumption of rationality in some interesting ways, but actual other-regarding preferences are (as best as I can see from my reading of the field) still at best regarded as a curiosity associated with those odd economists such as Amartya Sen, who have regrettably come to think of themselves as mere philosophers of the unworldly variety. As Cosma noted back at the time, Brad is effectively suggesting that John von Neumann’s understanding of the implications of preference functions rests on a howler. I’d not be wanting to make this claim about John von Neumann, even Dead John von Neumann, myself, without very carefully covering my arse beforehand.

 

This does, indeed, sit badly, with the blithe assumption of many economists that we can ignore politics and distributional questions when thinking about the world. But it cuts in a different way than Brad suggests. It suggests that the basic micro-assumptions of economists are incompatible with their Pollyannaism about how actual economic institutions come into being and work. Jack Knight puts this well in his essay “Models, Interpretations and Theories: Constructing Explanations of Institutional Emergence and Change” in (Knight and Sened, Explaining Social Institutions ).

 

I found it interesting, maybe someone else will. More about economic philosophy than anything political.

[StrangeSox]

QEIII on the way

 

“To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee expects that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the economic recovery strengthens. In particular, the Committee also decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and currently anticipates that exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate are likely to be warranted at least through mid-2015.”

[Balta1701]

Good. Can't hurt.