Video Type: Education

https://youtu.be/6DmAA_lBIjs

I was asked to spend more time discussing remote working and distributed companies.

This is a sensitive subject since I do understand most companies which deny the benefits of remote working.

1. The entire organization has to be set up for remote.
2. Management should understand and have the instruments in place to manage remote staff.
3. People should be motivated, determined, hard-working, and self-managed to a certain extent.

More importantly…

I talk about salaries here. And some notable differences between average wages in various countries and asking paychecks when applying with us.

Highlights

00:00:45 – Finding A Remote Job is Difficult
00:02:23 – Competing In A Very Tricky Game
00:04:46 – How Pricing Works
00:05:45 – What Company Owners Look For
00:07:10 – Pricing And Skills Considerations

Transcript

Mario Peshev from DevriX here.

So I wanted to avoid this topic, but too many people ask me about remote working and working from home, telecommuting and stuff like that. So I just wanted to make a few things clear.

Keep in mind that while it’s becoming more and more and more popular over the past five or 10 years, it’s still a stigma. It’s still something that lots of businesses don’t really deal with. So I just want to discuss different perspectives here as someone who used to do full-time freelance and someone who has been two or three times, actually three times a remote employee at a company, completely remote. And also, someone who is currently running a distributed team of people. I just want to show different perspectives here.

Finding A Remote Job is Difficult

So first off, finding a remote job is difficult. Most businesses are simply not set for remote. Some are. So if you go to remote.corp or probably if you go to indeed.com and look for kind of remote jobs, it’s something that you can do. There are some jobs available out there and you can apply there and you can see whether you’re a good fit or not and whether you kind of match the criteria.

The thing with remote jobs is that those perks come with high kind of responsibility for the employee. Because if you apply on a local scale for a company, at the company that only hires locally, it means that you’re only competing with the people who live locally in that area.

And that’s especially valid for kind of software engineering jobs because the demand is extremely high, lots of companies are looking for people and essentially companies are roughly speaking, exchanging people from one team to another, from one company to another because they’re not enough kind of local people on the market. So that’s as far as local companies are concerned.

In terms of remote companies, you’re competing with the entire universe, or at least the part of that that has humanity kind of inhabited that ecosystem or that world and the one connected to the Internet. So keeping that in mind, when you apply for a job somewhere, you’re competing with probably 10 times or 50 times or a hundred times more applicants interested in working in that particular team. And we deal with that as well, which means several things.

Competing In A Very Tricky Game

When I used to apply for remote working jobs, whenever I’ve been discarded, it was due to other applicants that were more successful than me, with a better portfolio, better communication skills and stuff like that. So that means that you really have to step up your game in order to apply for a remote working job. It means that you need to be great at what you do, really confident at that skill and also compete pretty much on an international level.

Moreover, you’re in a very disadvantages position for two reasons. First, you’re always going to be more expensive than some people. Like even the company really cares about price and most companies do, they’re always going to be applicants from mainly Asia, eastern Europe, South America or other parts of the world where basically people can afford to charge less because their expenses are lower.

The second thing is, again, you’re going to compete with the top players in the market kind of applying for that specific job. So keep that in mind. It’s a very tricky game. It’s mostly based on a kind of reputation, community work, anything that you can showcase a which is not, “I just worked for that random company.” Right? So that’s one thing.

In terms of looking for people because again, we are a distributed company, we also have to deal with that. And we do have people in about probably six or seven or eight different countries right now. We do try to gauge that and find the best fit between, culture fit and skills and portfolio and communication and availability and of course costs. And it gets pretty tricky because … I’m going to be brutally honest with you in terms of pricing.

How Pricing Works

We’re based out of Bulgaria where the average salary is low. But IT industry is booming here. So basically, there are tones of international companies with, not headquarters, but with large offices hiring hundreds of developers here in Bulgaria. Some have higher given thousands, right? Which means that salaries are jumping higher. There are lots of offers with salaries that are competitive to the … salaries that you are going to get in most states in the US. So I just want to make that clear.

You can find junior people at low cost, roughly speaking. But when you start competing for more experienced and senior people, it’s likely to get someone who’s getting as much as a US developer or let’s say just 20, 30% less than that even though the cost of living is low. So it’s a tricky situation.

What that leads to is first off, hiring locally becomes trickier because the more experienced the person gets, the more likely it is for them to be looking into different opportunities, including international companies settling here and also just applying for remote position even though those are still kind of scarce, not widely available everywhere and you really have to be good.

But the other thing is we do get a lot of applications from countries that have lower standard of living of ours and asking for two or three times more money than what we’re going to get here locally with the other drawback of less experience and communication gaps, cultural gaps and other stuff like time zone differences and whatnot. So it gets pretty tricky.

What Company Owners Look For

And I’m not saying … So as a company owner, what I have to do myself, and you know what almost everyone in my inner circle does is we look for two things. Either someone who’s extremely professional, even though we know that they’re going to be more expensive but we know that the return on investment is going to be dramatically higher, right? So we know that we are hiring someone who’s going to be far more experienced or better equipped with those skills or they know how to scale complex platforms. They work very fast, they work long hours, whatever it is. So that’s kind of one thing.

So we know that we are hiring someone who’s going to be far more experienced or better equipped with those skills or they know how to scale complex platforms. They work very fast, they work long hours, whatever it is. So that’s kind of one thing.

Or the second thing is looking for someone who’s a fairly affordable in a sense that we can pay still a lot of money but at the place where that particular person can probably thrive and leave a very comfortable and convenient life. So those are kind of the two contradicting points that we’re trying to kind of match together.

But whenever we get someone who is remote, English isn’t their first language and they don’t really speak English very well, different times zone, some communication gap and asking for a way above average market salary within their region, we are reaching to a kind of tipping point where we simply have to discard that applicant. Because we know that there’s specific overhead for working with remote people. They don’t really showcase anything that’s extremely valuable and that’s adding up to the point.

Pricing And Skills Considerations

So the experiment that I made I think last year was I went through … because we were listed on a Forbes List for 126 I think companies hiring remote people. That led to hundreds and hundreds of applications in our contact form from people from Australia, through Asia to kind of parts of Europe, through the entire North America and even several applications from Brazil and I think Chile. So we got a bunch of different application.

One would expect that people living in the states, at least the … states like Massachusetts or Texas with kind of a higher standard of living are going to ask for more than people in Asia or Africa or parts of Europe. But the thing is the difference wasn’t really quiet quite as much. So I even coached some of … kind of … I called two references from two of the people that apply from … one from … actually both were from Asia. Both people from Asia asked for a salary for junior to mid level developer for about roughly $3,000. So I had to call their references or people in my network. So I understood that they take between five and 10 times less what they were applying for.

Make More Contributions

So again, I do understand the gap, but the thing is if you want a higher paycheck and if you get let’s say $500, if you apply for $1,000, it’s still going to be double what you’re asking for. When you apply for $3,000 with three years of experience in development without actually having contributions, this simply looks wrong and this simply looks like something that doesn’t really add up. So again, in terms of pricing, it’s a very complicated and sensitive matter.

In terms of skills, you’re either trying to be a cost effective, roughly speaking, given your experience or someone who’s insanely experienced. So you’re basically among the top 0.01% on top of the food chain. So those are kind of the two options. But if you’re simply asking for a random paycheck in a random company, hoping that you’re going to get hired, that’s probably not going to happen.

You should either have an open, honest, transparent conversation with that team, just showcasing what you know in order to have a reason for asking for that amount. Or you should have the portfolio, GitHub and pretty much everything else that speaks for your work. Some community experience, extra experience that’s going to contribute to that thing.

But aside from that, just keep that in mind. Just asking for a higher paycheck in a random company isn’t going to cut it. So skills and communication are simply crucial.

https://youtu.be/TZsI37rJ0Wc

The hiring process is broken – and we know that.

❕72% of hiring managers believe they are giving candidates clear job descriptions

❕36% of candidates say that is what they experience

❕55% of candidates report frustration with the recruitment process

❕71% of employers have discovered misstatements in resumes

❕40% of them even found a required skill (reported in CV) was nonexistent

Stats were gathered by TEKsystems surveying 13,000 job candidates and over 1,400 employers.

I learned that 13 years ago. I was surprised to learn how tedious and complicated recruitment was. Job descriptions serve as a matrix ranking different skills and cross-referencing with candidates possessing a portion of those traits and competencies.

It’s especially frustrating. It’s even frightening for recent graduates, interns, and shy introverts who can’t stand the idea of failing an interview.

It’s a challenging matter and I’ve shared my experience in this video.

What misconceptions and oddities have you found as an applicant or a hiring manager?

Highlights

00:00:33 – Hiring is A Complex but Open Negotiation
00:03:17 – Hiring is A Combination of A Bunch of Things
00:04:21 – Custom-Tailoring The CV
00:05:27 – A Company Doesn’t Want A Mercenary
00:06:16 – The Type of Roles That We Cannot Substitute Easily
00:07:38 – The Hiring Factors We Value
00:08:33 – Hiring Entrepreneurs as Intrapreneurs

Transcript

Hey, guys. Mario Peshev here from DevriX.

So about a decade ago, probably even more, I worked for a media company. We were looking for someone else to join our team. I knew the requirements. I spoke to HR when they showed the job description they prepared. It really didn’t have a lot in common with what they were looking for. I mean, obviously, someone with those qualifications was able to work that job. But, this would have been someone who’s wildly overqualified for the job anyway.

Hiring is A Complex but Open Negotiation

So I spoke to HR and they said, “Well, why are we looking for people who are extremely hard to find and essentially those are not really the people who we’re looking for.” And HR said, “Look, the way it works is the following. People are going to apply anyway and we know that they’re not going to possess those specific skills and requirements we are looking for, but the closer they are to this list the better, and if we don’t really have that much in common, we can at least negotiate and see what we can pull off out of that deal.”

So that was the first time I understood that hiring and interviews is essentially a complex negotiation and it’s also an open negotiation. It doesn’t necessarily mean that what the job description says is going to be asked for during the interview or if you don’t really match those skills, you’re not qualified for the job.

Now, if you apply for a senior role and you have barely a year of experience in that role, I would highly suggest you not to apply, but if for example the role requires five years of some technology and three years of something else, and you have corresponding three and two years, you may actually be qualified enough if you prove yourself as such during the interview. And it also depends on the other applications coming for that specific job because we’ve had some months, submitting a job, receiving over 200 applications over the course of a month and then we have other jobs and other months where we submit a job description and we have only three or four applications over the course of a month. That’s especially common for software development jobs of course.

When a Job Offer Doesn’t Match

So when you think of it, it’s more or less a lucky, lucky game. But, if you see a job offer that’s something you did not necessarily match, well, you may still try to match those requirements accordingly. So, yeah, just keep that in mind.

So, from my experience, I’ve had … So, there is also one other thing to add here. Companies do that knowing that many people are going to apply if they’re approaching the required standards for the job. If we need someone with five years of whatever experience we’re going to ask for five to seven years of that specific experience. Other companies are directly going to ask for seven years of that experience. So, let’s talk to people who have four or five years of experience, but automatically discard those that have two years of practical experience for the job.

Custom-Tailoring The CV

So that’s kind of how the business works. And of course, if you like the company, it doesn’t hurt trying to apply there. The less conservative the company is, the easier it would be for you to get an interview if you cover at least some of those requirements.

But what would generally help you with that specific role is customer tailoring your cover and tailoring your specific application and also CV in a way that outlines the fact that you want to work for the organization. This means, don’t send a draft CV, don’t send a blank cover letter or whatever.

Just make sure that you explain the fact that you are fully aware of the job description requirements. Despite the fact that you can’t prove covering all of those, you are certain that you can manage that in a couple of months at the job. And, your experience is closely related with what the job asks for. And, you’re truly determined and committed and yada, yyadda yadda, to do it.

Hiring is A Combination of A Bunch of Things

The other thing is that again, hiring someone is a combination of a bunch of things. It’s skills, experience, salary expectations, specific requirements that person has, and some other things and culture fit, of course.

So, if you apply for a job, you compare yourself with other candidates applying for that specific job and the HR team is also going to compare all of you and try to pick the best person for the job, right? That’s why if you fail a job interview, it’s not necessarily you. Most of the time, it’s just someone else or the hiring team has other preference or something else.

So, in a nutshell, when you do that, when you apply for the job and go there with insufficient qualifications, you can add up additional things such as great culture fit, extreme commitment to the job, fully knowing how the company has evolved over time, knowing how the company works in-house and so forth.

A Company Doesn’t Want A Mercenary

So, why would that help you? Because a company doesn’t want a mercenary. They don’t want someone to hire an assassin for a specific job. What they want is someone to work with them in the long run. They want someone who’s reliable, someone who’s trustworthy, someone who would be a culture fit and someone who won’t be surprised if something happens because they haven’t done their homework upfront, not knowing what the company does for a living.

So, if you cover those points, this will definitely get you some extra perks while applying for the job. So, you may not be the perfect fit for that specific skills, but if you have a lot of other things that add up and you’re not asking for a small fortune, there’s a chance that the company’s going to find something for you in particular.

The Type of Roles That We Cannot Substitute Easily

I’m going to disclose something that I haven’t really disclosed elsewhere in the public. So, we do have specific roles that are not listed on our website. The reason for that is that those roles are not confidential, but they’re dealing with sensitive data. We are talking about business assistant. We are talking about account manager working with clients and so and so on.

So, we keep those roles for people in our network who we can validate one way or another. Most of the time, those are going to be former fellow students of ours, former colleagues from other jobs, or something else and we discuss those roles with that kind of people. So, those are the type of roles that we cannot substitute easily.

We are expected to give them a lot of personal information and delegate a lot of trust and present them in the public and so forth in order to make that work. We don’t want to go through the traditional interviewing process, but we are willing to consider other applicants for the job, even if they apply for something else or even if they just disclose that they are looking for a job.

The Hiring Factors We Value

This is something that’s happened a few times and for instance, right now I have extended a soft offer to someone I’ve been knowing for kind of a decade for one of those roles that are not listed there. This is someone who could have applied for the other job, but since we are relying on other factors, the company culture, will the culture fit?

The trust factor, the reliability, reputability, the online awareness of that specific person, or the fact that they maintain their own personal brand, they’re professional, they could be trusted. They cannot afford to lose their own personal brand for that. It’s something that can work out as well.

It’s also something that happens with entrepreneurs. So, I’ve had companies hiring business owners and hiring full-time freelancers and assigning them to strategic team leading roles in order to get the best of both worlds. This is what the world now calls intrapreneurship.

Hiring Entrepreneurs as Intrapreneurs

Because, there’s an entrepreneur who works intra, inside of the company instead. This is an entrepreneur who can develop business plans, who can build the entire business model, who can work with the team and so forth, but lacks specific things, like they may be unable to raise money. They may not be as good at hiring, or something else.

So, fitting into larger environment that is open to intrapreneurs, is something that is a great feat for them. They can work the type of job they love. They still have the freedom they need for the job, but at the same time, they get the backup from the company. They get extra funding. They get other people they can work with. They get presentations, whatever materials they have, and that’s awesome.

In fact, that’s one of the best things I see happening over and over again, companies hiring entrepreneurs as intrapreneurs and just trying to build the best of both worlds together and trying to prevent the delusion of talent over and over by inventing roles and inventing jobs suitable for the best people.

So yeah, in a nutshell, that’s it. Job descriptions are often wishlists. Push for them if needed. Also, talk to the businesses that you love and ask them if there’s something for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0j07rEMVdw

I still recall the forum days, IRC, ICQ/MSN, MySpace and a lot more.

Social media is supposed to be about social networking and keeping in touch with people. Over the past couple of years, I don’t see that happening. Most interactions are monologues, people maintain accounts without really using them, touching base with folks is not always acceptable.

We are approaching social media wrong. Here’s my take on that.

Highlights

00:00:00 – How People “Use” Social Media These Days
00:02:20 – Mixing Facebook With Business
00:03:43 – How Social Network Interaction Is Supposed to Work
00:05:48 – From A Networking Perspective
00:07:19 – I Think Social Media is Broken
00:08:47 – Ways to Actually Bond

Transcript

I have a pretty pressing problem with social media – the way it works right now. There are far too many social networks. When I get back in time and I remember the old days of forums, and ICQ, and before that, IRC.

Basically, it was a lot easier to create communities of people with common interests and kind of keep them more or less in the same place, right? Like, having just a few networks in IRC and having almost no alternatives other than AOL, and MSN which you know specific people were using for certain things.

It was kind of easier to just hang out with people in the same place. Having forums, which were kind of dedicated on specific activities makes it easier to just bond with people again with common interest, within that same specific circle.

How People “Use” Social Media These Days

Some would argue that it’s kind of similar right now, with having different groups on Facebook or so on. But I’d say that this is actually not the case, and there’s, the evolution of social media has been going on for a while now, and it’s really hard to actually connect to people on social nowadays.

I’ve made lots of experiments, like I go on Twitter, pick a random list that has been maintained a few years ago. I even did that last night with a friend. I just saw that most accounts or at least kind of a third of the accounts haven’t been posting at all for a year or two, which means they’re not using Twitter, which is fine.

But others are just out to posting links, or people are not writing but just sharing and re-tweeting. Which is kind of weird, it really doesn’t spark discussions.

Lots of people are on there if you follow them they won’t even notice, if you write them a direct message they won’t even notice and so on. Then you go on LinkedIn and you see the same thing, like lots of people have account it’s really exploding nowadays, and quite a lot of people are actually moving from Facebook or other places to LinkedIn.

After Microsoft’s acquisition, which I find weird but I don’t mind because I like LinkedIn. But again, lots of people just don’t, they don’t see their requests, user experience is pretty horrible in LinkedIn, it’s just making me crazy especially on desktop to be honest, and so forth.

So that’s another whole other medium that’s not in use.

Mixing Facebook With Business

Facebook – lots of people try to avoid it for business, for those that do business it gets a bit weird because you’re really kind of mix both things together. Like you want to maintain a professional outlook, and then you post photos of eating food, or drinking beers in a bar.

I don’t mind that – like I’m not saying you really need to be completely business professional and so on, but it’s just kind of mixing two things. Or if you’re using Facebook entirely for business I also find that weird, it’s not kind of the purpose of the network like it is with LinkedIn.

Then you have other networks like YouTube where you can try to communicate with channel alters, which are not replying to comments, which is insulting. Not to mention that this is kind of the norm for many Facebook pages, and Twitter accoumnts and whatnot.

So I think that social medias broken for various reasons. It’s, lots of people use it as a one way street for promotion. Again, I don’t mind that at all, like I do the same thing with my accounts, with my posts, with my videos and everything else. But I also do interact and I also use the media as kind of equal citizen, someone who’s actually active, following other people, reading other posts. Interacting with others’ content and so on.

How Social Network Interaction Is Supposed To Work

I find it a bit weird where I’m trying to write some comments and respond to people on other posts, and there’s pretty much really no one, it’s like, it’s almost like a press release. You just launch something online and you say, hey I did this A, B, C, you can contact me, here are my contact details. Like what the hell bro, that’s social media, it’s not how it’s supposed to work.

In a nutshell again, lots of people have accounts everywhere but they don’t really use almost any of those accounts, or they only use Facebook for fun so that they just happen to see what else is going on. Not even going to touch on Google Plus, we all know what happened there, nothing.

As someone said the other day I really felt bad and I wanted to be alone so I just stop on Google Plus. But again, just a … I’m digressing, it’s really the way we use social media nowadays is not really how we were supposed to do that.

It has to be an equal process of participating and also kind of receiving information, and kind of being informed or so on. Facebook is the largest social network nowadays, even though I think that YouTube is the second largest kind of search engine, so that’s also something worth noting. But both aren’t really receiving that many interactions, even though Facebook obviously is the winner because their groups are fine, interacting with people is fine and so forth.

Youngsters Are Dodging Facebook

But youngsters, the generations that is really trying to dodge Facebook because they see it as a platform for old people. Lots of interviews say, like interviewing people aged 15 to 20 or so, they just say well I don’t really want to use Facebook, my parents are there, my grandparents are there. Like I don’t feel like sharing everything to my family, it’s like it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t resonate with them, which is kind of fine.

But what they do is they go on Instagram and SnapChat which is a completely other way of interacting with people and actually kind of expressing something, and just making some bond.

From A Networking Perspective

On the other hand from a professional standpoint if you just want to again, interact with people, just from a networking perspective, again, lots of people are looking like they claim that they’re open for networking.

They go to networking events online but they’re closed offer, you don’t have a basis for contacting those people. Like they don’t write work posts, they probably write those press releases on LinkedIn and so on. But they don’t comment on them, they don’t respond to these questions, they don’t participate otherwise.

You end up talking to the wall, I mean it’s … There’s literally no interactivity. At the same time, so there was [inaudible 00:06:28] almost a month ago, and I shared on Twitter that I’m not going to participate and lots of people say, hey, you’re going to be missed. We haven’t seen each other for a while. We haven’t interacted for quite some time, yada, yada.

I do appreciate that, and it’s nice because I also miss those people and would have some fun spending some times with them. But those are people who, again, they read my status, and I’m active there, and they never really reach out on direct message or just texting me, or asking for Skype or anything like that.

Just interact, they’re like hey really wanted to see you in person, even though we are actually here and we can actually chat, and have a conversation. I know it’s online but I mean we can jump on and hang on, or whatever, and actually have a conversation, or a call, or anything.

I Think Social Media is Broken

That’s why I think that social media is broken, it’s not supposed to work like a monitoring cue, it’s not supposed to work like a public feed of your accomplishments or your photos over the weekend, which again for Facebook and Instagram I think it’s fine.

But the rest is really networking should be done right, and currently, there’s no single medium that you’d know that the majority of people are following and using, and would be happy kind of interacting with other people. A kind of the best practice etiquette for how okay it is to interact with other people. It’s all really weird.

Again, if you go to a networking event you’re supposed, or like a conference, a meet up or anything else, you’re supposed to interact with people. You’re supposed to work with people, alongside with them, and spend time with them and what not.

So it’s there’s, no stigma around actually interact with us, but on social media it’s weird, it’s supposed to be social and most people don’t respond to comments or replies. Like I’ve had so many times actually reporting kind of seeing a blog post, seeing a broken link there, reporting a broken link and this link is left even if I have reported it twice. Just because people don’t read those emails. Not to mention that some celebrities, they do have personal assistants, and virtual assistants handling email. They actually ignore most of those emails, which is even weirder.

Ways To Actually Bond With People

So yeah in a nutshell what I’d like to conclude is keeping in touch. I do think it’s the right thing to actually do networking. When you like someone’s something, whatever it is, accomplishment, a status, don’t be afraid to just comment.

I’m actually chatting with a lot of people just sending them a message as well, like hey, I’m seeing that your business works really well, it’s evolving, really happy to see you moving forward. Just keep up the great work, or I see that someone did something, or volunteered somewhere and say, “that’s a great cause, keep up the great work” it’s really motivation.

So I’m not, I don’t want to act like life coach or something, or motivational coach, but it’s really a way to actually bond with people. Sometimes like the only way to connect, I have specific people that I chat with, and they know that they’re only active in a specific network so I have to maintain like 10 of them in order to make it work.

So yeah, if you have a social media account make sure at least your notifications are on so that you can receive messages. If you receive too many messages maybe you just need to block some people or something. But otherwise make sure you’re accessible, try to interact with other people, make some good deeds and use social as it’s supposed to.

I’m the CEO of DevriX, a team of 40, building high scale WordPress applications. So full disclosure, I’ve spent four years at the university and I still haven’t gotten my diploma. I have a few credits left and I don’t really find it to be a major priority going there, taking the final exams and basically receiving my diploma.

So just to add some context here, I work in IT and I landed my first job somewhere around the age of eleven. Obviously, it’s really hard to actually learn the job at that age so I was freelancing, repairing computers, reinstalling operating systems and stuff like that at the nearby computer service center.

Later on, I started doing translations, writing work and a bunch of other things. My first full-time software development job was at the age of 16. I was having a hard time dealing with both things at the same time, but I managed and this was really fruitful for my future career goals.

What I’m trying to say here is that I didn’t need a college degree in IT, but I’m going to discuss how valuable each college degree is in the long run for different specialties.

How Valuable Is A College Degree?

First off, college degrees are popular and the reason they’re popular is your parents have already graduated so they have a diploma. They have found work through that and this is how they bootstrapped their career.

Second, some jobs are actually asking for that sort of degree.

Third, there are some specialties that you can’t really practice without a degree, such as fields in medicine, law and other legal specialties and etc.

Fourth, there are tons of institutions that are relying on your annual fees or semester fees in order to make a living out of that. Universities that have been around for over a hundred years, that’s what they do for a living and if nobody enrolls for their courses they are basically out of business and we’re talking about hundreds to over a thousand people working in that specific institution.

So long story short, how can you decide whether a diploma or any type of university degree is valuable for you?

Well, I try to take a very pragmatic approach when assessing the necessity of a degree in the grand scheme of things. For example, what I try to think of is:
• Are there any other ways to land a job and to pursue my ongoing education without a degree?
• What are the other possible alternatives?
• How expensive is landing a degree?
• How long would it take?
• Do I have to take any other classes afterward or internships or anything else?
• What other expense are including on top of my university education like accommodation, food, other daily expenses and etc.?

And this adds up very quickly. So when you think of those and then a bunch more you can try to figure out whether your diploma makes sense for you as someone looking for career development and career growth and so forth.

For example, there are specific jobs and actually a lot of jobs it can start off with without a college degree. But sometimes you can hit a specific limit or a specific threshold in your career growth in your career hierarchy. For example in order to become our senior major somewhere or you know lend any other type of senior role you may be expected to have that university degree. Of course, if you’re expected to work in education as a professor or even an assistant professor you may be required to have that degree as well if you want to do Arlanda for a laboratory or anything like that you would still need that specific degree. So it gets a little bit complicated and it depends on what your priorities are. But in a nutshell, think of it in the following manner. Try to calculate or try to assess the job prospects for your specific degree. For example, if I graduate from something like anthropology or Egypt sciences or something like that how likely it is for me to get a job or am I going to actually work something completely different because there are no available jobs for that specific thing. I actually know people who graduate with like a rabbit sciences or again and troppo anthropology or any other specialty that doesn’t have long you know a large volume of jobs available for that specific specialty. And also people find that to be interesting and they are curious in learning that which is great but if you’re having a hard time actually learning a job afterwards or if you’re job opportunities are extremely limited it may actually translate to you working in a completely different type of job.

So, for instance, I have like just as an example of our lead QA as our office has a masters in nuclear sciences or something like that. So their base is basically being called how to create something like you know nuclear weapons or maybe I’m overexaggerating but you get the point. But there aren’t many job opportunities for that. Unless you want to work with the military and essentially engage in some kind of dangerous activity so he’s working as a Q A. And he’s quite happy and he’s leading a couple of articulate on our team.

So, in a nutshell, that kind of skill may be translatable to the type of day job that you choose to pursue another later point. For example, if you study archaeology you may not be able to go in and dig with old bones or for seals or something like that but you may find the very Neesham specific job writing for something like island or Discovery Channel or the history magazine or anything along those lines. And this degree may be of use for you with all your knowledge and all your education in that field for you to be the best prospect for that particular job. Another thing you need to consider is how likely it is for you to actually pursue that particular job and do no matter what in order to become the best at it.

[00:06:11] Because again I know people who are for example can’t start as managers in their parents organization or something like that but they prefer to for example become chefs and they work extremely hard over the course of several years then they Steinhafel master chef or something like that and they may be rejected one year after another after another but eventually they start there and they graduate and they learned a very reputable job in the cooking industry. But this means that they have work you know two times three times harder than almost everyone there in the field simply because they didn’t just want to land a random job but they wanted to become among the best in that specific industry.

So if you’re among the best in your particular specialty if you really work extremely hard over the course of many many many years you will be successful regardless it’s very unlikely that you won’t be able to find a job in your specialty. It’s just that you may kind of compete with 200 other people for five or ten different positions and this means that you really need to stand out in your particular field.

But again at the end of the day, when you take a humongous loan in order to pay off your are students that you need to consider whether it’s worth it in the first place. You need to account for how long would it take you to pay that debt off. And what are your other possible career options like can you actually start a job in the meantime. Can you save those money upfront or at least a portion of those money to invest in private education?

Some academies will boot camps for workshops or will ever be. Can you start with kind of another specialty and then try to study in your own time through game books or courses or something like that.

They’re usually more than one right part for a specific job so try to explore your kind of favorite industry as early as possible try to read case studies for other people who have been in that field try to look at those people on LinkedIn see what their job is, or they have a degree already.

You may even try to contact some of them you know most people are actually open to answering that type of questions. By humble people especially students who really want to understand the field better. So if you do that you can actually understand whether a university degree is required whether there are job opportunities without that whether you would be better off with a degree as compared to not.

But in a nutshell, there is no right and wrong answer. Again there are some specialties like if you want to become a lawyer you need to pass the bar and in most countries, there is no way around that. Same goes for doctors. You know they need to study long and hard. Then they need to be to take apprenticeships in different hospitals and not all workers nurses will ever be paid and spend sometimes five to eight years maybe even 10 in order to become actual professionals in their field. But for most jobs that’s not the case so for most jobs you’re free to choose whether your kind of ideal career path. And I know how hard it is to predict that early on at the age of 17 18 19 even 20 to kind of decide on what the right path. And what would be the possible blockers. Speak with your parents speak with other parents you know ask questions on Quora or other resources and just try to get as many opinions as both as possible.

Don’t get influenced by a single opinion or to try to educate yourself as much as possible. Try to predict how interested you are in reality by that specific job. Find people who worry that job if it’s actually of interest to you and so on. And then you would be able to decide whether a degree is needed or it’s an unnecessary expense.