No One True Way

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

For the last ten years I’ve been watching somewhere between alarm and disquiet, as conservatives went all in on: “No college! Trades!”

I’m not going to argue with you on college. I feel some great changes are coming that way, anyway, in the next ten years or so, though remember that for about ten years you’ll still need that piece of paper, though perhaps increasingly less. And ten years can mean 12 or 15 or 20. These things aren’t exact.

I think the loss of need for a college degree will only come when companies are allowed to test their own employees, and I don’t honestly know what is in the way of that, but I’d guess a forest of petty fogging rules and anti-discrimination lawsuits.

My guess is before college degrees are completely useless too, it will have to be understood that no, they don’t even guarantee the student can in fact read, much less learn.

But these things take time. Yes, at some point we’ll it “Then suddenly.” But on the way to “then suddenly” there will be a lot of “first slowly.”

And a lot of professions will always require college or its equivalent: medicine, engineering. Possibly law.

Here is the thing though, yes, the trades and manual work I impervious to challenges from AI. Yes, they really are needed. But if you push everyone into them, they’ll become as bloated as college once was. And also, some people simply aren’t designed for manual labor.

Look, I love the skilled trades in theory. But I don’t have the combination of hands and mind that would make me good at one of them. I like heavy labor, but more the kind like farming, which requires strength and endurance.

Oh, in another time when Journalism was a skilled trade you trained into out of high school, by being put on flower shows and obituaries, and the like, I’d probably have done okay at it.

Am I saying you shouldn’t put your kids into trade school? Well, no. Absolutely, if the kid has the type of talents and inclination for it, it is a way to make a living.

However, don’t go thinking it’s the One True Way. For most of them, in the end, it’s still working for someone else, and furthermore I expect in the great innovation wave (if we can avoid giving power to the leftists for ten or twenty years, at least) of the next century or so, most of those professions will be automated or otherwise rendered obsolete.

In fact that is the most important thing for your children — for everyone’s children — in the next few years: They must be prepared for a world in which innovation changes everyone’s lives and work at a rapid clip. Which means that they need to be fast and nimble on their feet.

It is the most important thing, not just for them, but for the nation.

Look, both tech and the current innovation climate means we need a lot of… small entrepeneurs. I’m going to lay down my dust right now that we’re going back or at least going towards — I don’t know how much of it was a pipe dream back then — that beloved standby of late 19th century and early 20th century science fiction: the genius in his garage, making something that turns the world on its head.

The combination of information on the internet — all of humanity’s knowledge at our fingertips — and increasingly affordable and accessible automation is making this possible as never before, or at least not in the last 100 years.

I know a lot of you are homeschooling kids and I approve of this. And if you’re doing that, you’re uniquely placed to give your kid the most important last finishing touch: Encourage them to start a business when they’re about sixteen.

What the business is doesn’t matter much. It should be something that interests the kid at that time, but it doesn’t mean it’s their lifetime vocation. Whether that’s 2-D printing, beading, computer repair, it really doesn’t matter at all. Whatever is within your means to stake out (I have a dream. We’ll see how this year goes. But I’d like to start $500 grants for kids to start businesses.)

It doesn’t matter if the business never makes more than allowance-money. And it doesn’t matter if it fails.

It matters that it be taken seriously, and the kid should be encouraged to do so, and to learn to establish his business as a legal entity, to keep accounts, to calculate prices, to figure out how to promote, to create business plans.

That and the experience of working steadily towards a goal is what the kid will take from having run a business. That and understanding that “the one thing” isn’t a thing. that you’re not FATED to do this or that. That the future is not written in stone. That you can fail and fail and fail and still come out ahead, as long as you get up once more than you were knocked down. Understanding themselves and the variety of their raw talents, and the limits of what one can do with sheer talent and work, the play of luck into even the most carefully planned business, etc. All of this will be invaluable to the kid so when they’re launched into the world they won’t be afraid to be entrepreneurs and innovators. If they end up getting a chance at that. And we need entrepreneurs and innovators by the score.

And what if they end up wanting to go to college? Well, let them, and help them in the measure of possible. Having learned how to run a business won’t hurt them in that.

However, don’t shy away from civics, history and politics. If the kids end up in college, they’re going to be submerged in a lot of crazy ideas. Make sure they know those are crazy, even if they have to parrot them for a while to get a grade.

Don’t send your kids down the “one true way.” I actually only know half a dozen people who are working in the field they studied for. And some of us you have to apply a lot of latitude. I’m sure my professors would be shocked if they knew what I’m doing now. (Given ages, most of them are dead. Which is probably for the best.)

Prepare them instead to pick paths, and to make the most of what they can do at any given time.

And for their sake, and the sake of this nation as we head to our third century? Teach them to be self-starting, self-bossing innovators, and unafraid.

It’s the best you can do.

47 thoughts on “No One True Way”

  1. Well said! Also teach them to never stop learning, thinking, dreaming. When you stop, you’re effectively dead. I and quite a few of my friends are at least version 8.0. The one thing we have in common is, What if…

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  2. In tech, college “in lieu of experience”, and certifications “in lieu of specialized experience” makes sense – new kids are new, at least with degrees or certs you know they have the paper knowledge. But when I see a job listing of “requires a Bachelor’s degree and 20 years of relevant experience, or instead, 25 years’ relevant experience”, what _possible_ utility is a 20-year-old Bachelor’s degree in high tech?! Everything in it is out of date on the details, and anything not out of date in the concepts you _should_ have picked up in those 20 years.

    The death of credential-worship cannot come fast enough.

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    2. One of my brothers doesn’t even have an associate’s degree. (Mostly because that particular place played silly buggers with his pre-requisites and he decided that was enough.) He’s been in IT—actually leading IT—for decades. At the same place. At one point, he was trying to apply elsewhere (after he’d had a few decades under his belt and, oh yeah, was teaching at the community college), and they wouldn’t even consider him because he didn’t have a degree.

      Utterly ridiculous.

      And let’s not forget the impossible requirements that they use so they can slot in an H1B because “nobody here was qualified.” You’re not going to get death of credential worship until company HR departments get axed.

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      1. “played silly buggers with his pre-requisites“

        –

        I ran into that. Got lucky. Mostly timing. Period when department heads could override the gate-keepers.

        “You didn’t declare a minor.”

        “Forestry Mgnt”

        “Forestry isn’t offered at this university.” (Not incorrect.)

        “Already have a bachelor’s degree in Forest Mgnt from state rival.”

        Department Head: “Qualifies.”

        Just one example. Had others I prevailed with too. But this was the mid/late ’80s.

        I caved on “Statistics” VS “Biometrics”. Sigh (easy A at least). The difference? Latter spent two or three weeks learning Statistics terms and math. Spent the rest of the term applying statistics to, well, biometrics growth models and biomass/acre statistical analysis based on sampling. That was just the term on Biometrics. Doesn’t count the rest the degree.

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    3. Heck by the time I retired, I was 12 years out of date for current programming trends. Most the tools I was using were 14 years behind the release dates (never upgraded, not once). Most, only because one (minor) coding target hardware went obsolete, twice. There I had to keep up (kind of – superficially, because the software being used on the device, was super simple). Emphasis on I was current. After I retired, that piece was farmed out to the company that provided the hardware.

      Over the last 10 years (erk, been 10 years since I retired!) haven’t bothered to ask how the two companies handle the integration portion that I’d automated. Which I’d automated because that was the manual steps that users kept mishandling. Went from “*Again?!?!?!?” to rare (as in, “um, let me check on that.” Translation, “how’d you screw that up!”, it was that rare. This is beyond the “end users can mess anything up, clever.” Translation 2: “I need to figure out what went wrong and prevent this ever again, from anyone, if I can.” Which was often their IT made unadvised hardware permission changes, so their IT had to be read the riot act, politely.)

      (*) If you know. You know. If you don’t know, you haven’t experienced software users from programmers support.

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  3. yes, the trades and manual work I impervious to challenges from AI. 

    See, I have to disagree with this. All I have to do is look at what Elon is already demoing with the Optimus chassis. He’s proposing that it will have the capability to serve as a nurse for the elderly and disabled. Construction, plumbing, and electrical work doesn’t require any more physical capability and reasoning than that.

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    2. “Construction, plumbing, and electrical work doesn’t require any more physical capability and reasoning than that.”

      Dude. Seriously.

      I defy Elon to design a machine that can paint a house. Not just apply the paint, mind you, it must do all the repairs and patching too. No spilling or over-spray please, I want nice crisp lines and nothing stuck to my hardwood floors. Good freaking luck.

      Realistically I’m still waiting for a humanoid that can carry 4 pints of beer down a flight of stairs and not spill any more than a not-very-bright 19 year old.

      Or clean a bathroom. You know, where the bathroom is actually clean when it’s done?

      Or even walk from the house to the barn and back without falling down. If it can retrieve my cane while it’s out there, that would be a miracle.

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      2. Or even walk from the house to the barn and back without falling down. If it can retrieve my cane while it’s out there, that would be a miracle.

        These are miracles which already exist. The walking may still have some bugs; I don’t follow humanoid robotics closely. But finding and retrieving a cane is dead simple.

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      3. “4 pints of beer down a flight of stairs and not spill any more than a not-very-bright 19 year old.“

        –

        Transporters?

        An aside. I can’t do that.

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    3. Ever work in a Trade? Those trades? Sheeesh.

      Do you set out to offend the hell out of folks with seemingly-unthought blerts, or do they just bubble out like a fart?

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  4. “The death of credential-worship cannot come fast enough.”

    Indeed. I very clearly recall my own high school years, and how it was only a handful of 30 or 40 (out of a class of 600!) who were really keen on college and the life academic. My high school still had some work-study programs for those who wanted to slide into various blue/pink collar trades. But honestly, most of the kids just wanted one thing from high school — out!

    I did get the degree in English lit, which essentially meant that I could readily write grammatical sentences, and spell most of the words correctly – which worked out well for all the stuff I wound up doing afterwards. I could also do research … and most importantly, in the long run – teach myself new skills by cracking the instruction manual and playing around with whatever it was; a new process, or bit of equipment.

    There’s a lot to be said for intelligent tinkering in the garage…

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    1. “I could also do research … and most importantly, in the long run – teach myself new skills by cracking the instruction manual and playing around with whatever it was; a new process, or bit of equipment.”

      Really, that should be a statement in every resume, and the only pertinent one in there.

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  5. Certifications are a curse on Humanity. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

    Those who can’t teach are the fubar nimrods running the certification exams.

    Welding certification before the government got involved:

    -run the weld.

    -xray the weld.

    -if there are no voids or inclusions, you pass, go make money. If there are voids, the guy laughs at you for being an idiot, and tells you to go run the weld again but this time watch what the f- you’re doing.

    Welding certification now? 6 month course on weekends. Led by some guy who can’t make a buck pipelining, because he’s too slow.

    Don’t talk to me about “certifications” in physical therapy, there will be too much swearing. What a freaking clown show.

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  7. I’m not going to argue with you on college. I feel some great changes are coming that way, anyway, in the next ten years or so, though remember that for about ten years you’ll still need that piece of paper, though perhaps increasingly less. And ten years can mean 12 or 15 or 20. These things aren’t exact.

    And, like “wear a suit,” there will be folks demanding it 50 years after it became a sign of having no idea what is going on.

    And they won’t even quote ‘A relic of a more refined age’ as they do so.

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  8. I was offered a free ride through college from my uncle. I declined. Everything I hated about high school I could only see being worse not only in college but in any job for which college would prepare me. The politics, the irrational rules and needing to deal with stupid people.

    I worked at so many things that when I sit and try to make a list I keep remembering new ones. One job I quit after a half hour. One job I quit because I was the only choice to be manager and I refused.

    The trades are no refuge for stupid people. In politics or work with only subjective judgement of your work such as art and economics you can fail repeatedly and still stay employed. In the trades, such as a machinist your output either meets spec or the customer declines it and you get fired. The plumber’s pipes hold the water in or you have water dripping from the ceiling. Or worse. I knew a company where the man didn’t inspect airplane parts. He just signed off on them and slept most of his shifts. He ended up in prison when his part fell off a Navy plane due to not being heat treated. It had no indent for hardness testing and the serial number pointed right back to him. Other trades such as electrician it is obvious how being stupid can kill you or somebody else. Fail to ground something correctly…zzzzzt.

    However, there is a persistent attitude from management that the tradesmen they employ are inferior and it shows in the working conditions. An example is in the machine trades the office was often non-smoking while the shop was smoking. Often they didn’t care WHAT you smoked. There was no lunch room or it was grubby and depressing, because you know – that’s probably how these people lived at home. Isn’t it? When that is fixed a lot more quality people chose the trades. Especially women. They are smart enough to refuse to work in dirty, noisy environments.

    I agree about starting a business. I had my first business at about 13, selling 15¢ cans of worms to the fishermen. A few examples, I had a plumbing business, imported precious stones, imported machinist’s tools, and even a window washing business. The window washing was very educational. I’d have thought you could train a monkey to wash windows but I had a man too stupid to wash windows. I was shocked. I still don’t know what society can do with people like that. That business taught me a lot about customers who won’t pay, too.

    I worked as both a car salesman and a Realtor briefly. I found that many people in those jobs don’t really want to work. As a car salesman I had the most sales every month because I was in the showroom. Others had to get their hair cut, their nails done, dry cleaning to pick up or anything but be at work.

    Working for myself or others, I never worked at anything for more than five years, except writing books. You must be prepared to change. You also need to learn when to abandon a failing business before you run through all your funds.

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    1. Son worked for a company that drug tested (stay away from poppy seed based products before) before hire, and random tested a percentage of all employees, quarterly. They stopped testing when you-know-what went legal in the state. Son said, “It showed.” He bailed for a smaller company that tested. He was also recruited into non-line custom work; which means he didn’t have to worry as much about others and their lack of safety procedures.

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  9. In my life, I have had many jobs. As a pre-teen, I mowed yards for neighbors.

    Then I got a paper route. I delivered newspapers by bicycle. It was handy that I had a good sense of balance and could throw papers accurately with either hand.

    I played in a rock band. I performed manual labor. I worked in a box factory.

    I painted houses and did minor repairs. This lead to carpentry, which lead to cabinet making.

    None of these were my life’s work.

    I went to college and got a degree in Computer Engineering. (This included computer architecture as well as programming.) This turned out to be my real profession.

    I worked for a NASA contractor for nine years as a programmer, then moved to the private sector. About a year ago, the company where I worked for 25 years was bought by a larger company. On July 4th, 2025, I was retired at 72 years old. My personal Independence Day!

    Now, I want to try my hand at writing fiction.

    I have no idea what version that makes me – Ver. 12.3?

    Anyway wish me luck.

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    1. I’ve been watching the erosion of job opportunities for kids and it’s sad. No more paper routes, of course, because circulation has declined to where you absolutely require cars to do that. Babysitting? Hah. 16+ and infant CPR-trained at a minimum. Mowing yards? Oh, they’ve got a landscaping crew for that. And even in my area, which doesn’t automatically seem to assume that kids on the street means you need to call CPS, you’ll see posted complaints from people assuming they’re up to trouble. (Okay, the kids popping bike wheelies in car lanes are being unsafe idiots, that I will grant.)

      The rules for employing youth here are also so strict that the summer camps won’t employ 14-year-olds as counselors in training, and don’t seem too enthused about 15-year-olds either. By the time they’re 16, they can be hired fully, but that’s two years of training opportunities gone.

      I look back on my teen years and marvel at all the things I did that my kids can’t. My high school senior has never been employed, though I definitely won’t fault his work ethic. (He taught himself pre-calculus out of a textbook the summer he turned 14—and passed the challenge test with a perfect score.) It’s going to be interesting. (That’s the one that is going to college for engineering, and we are in scholarship application season. Most engineering scholarships start in the sophomore year—understandable, given students finding out it’s much harder than they thought.)

      Anyway. I’ve told him, all else fails, apply at the post office and walk all day. I could honestly see that working.

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  10. I may have made a comment to an effect elsewhere.

    1. unlike many youngsters, I am embittered and resigned.
    2. I’m resigned, more or less, to the chance that I will have to do a lot of iterations on inventing an occupation for myself.
    3. Probably will use some labels already known, and these are ones where you kinda had to do contents of sub-occupation a bit yourself anyway.
    4. (Almost certainly I have been creating the problems for myself, with disordered optimisms and pessimissms. )
    5. Anyway, I am fighting myself, and causing problems for myself.

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  11. The government makes it almost impossible to start and successfully run a small business, especially in Kalifornia. ☹️ The taxes. The fees. The regulations. The insane hoops to be jumped through. It’s all enough to drive you out of your tree.

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    1. The hoops to jump through to insure as a contractor that you are a contractor. Especially if you have one major client. I get it. Employers got their hands slapped, hard, over their abuse of gig work. Even these days, they try. They should get their hands whacked, from orbit, for what they pull. But if an individual wants the work to be gig work, not employee, then don’t force it. FWIW, I tried gig work, as a programmer, for all of a nanosecond. No. Nope. Curse on that. But that is me. Never mind that as an employee, I was as much on my own doing the work I was doing. Nope. No. Curse on gig work. Don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’m retired.

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  12. The issue with pre-employment testing is the Supreme Court case Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971)
    The Court unanimously ruled that any test that disproportionately excluded blacks was a Title VII violation whether or not the employer intended to discriminate – as was any other facially neutral rule that resulted in discrimination (i.e. disparate impact).

    Until Griggs v Duke Power is overturned employers put themselves at risk if they try to test competency pre-hire – and could possibly be sued even for post-hire testing unless they can prove that what was tested for is directly related to job performance

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    1. Perzackly. “Disparate impact” jurisprudence stemming from Griggs makes the testing approach perilous. I gather it’s not impossible that there are avenues/cases in the pipeline that could lead to overturning of Griggs, but I can’t assess the odds.

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    2. In some states *coughNewYorkcough*, even confirming that applicants meet race/sex/age-blind physical baselines is discriminatory if it affects EEOC hiring quotas. Firefighters should be able to do what is needed to put out fires, no matter if that includes climbing onto roofs, carrying and using a heavy saw to cut a hole in said roof, or dragging and then manning high or medium-pressure hoses. Except … yeah. Ditto passing written (or oral) tests about fire science and safety.

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    3. Notably Griggs was complaining about a requirement for either a high school diploma or passing a test ( an “IQ” test) to qualify for employment – the testing route at Duke Power was intended to give applicants who had not graduated from high school an alternative path to be eligible for employment. Arguably given HS graduation rates by racial classification in the 1960s and ‘70s, the “win” in this case made things worse for the individuals supposedly being “protected” by the Warren court, as dropping the alternate testing path and just requiring HS graduation was under the ruling fully legal.

      The whole “disparate impact” fluff that came out of this and other rulings, where any variation in results is proof of discrimination, is the real evil, and I have only heard of a few cases that might let the current Supremes alter that.

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  13. Ugh! Not enough coffee!

    When I saw the title, I was reminded of one Liberal author who in her books had the phrase “No One True Way” regarding morality/religion.

    It made me think that it could also be phrased as “No Wrong Way” regarding morality/religion. [Sad Smile]

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      1. She isn’t that Crazy and her heroes would go after assholes who did that sort of thing.

        No, it was just how my crazy mind takes that phrase.

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        1. The “No One True Way” was how she handled different, mutually -exclusive religions coexisting in a single feudal framework.

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  14. And for their sake, and the sake of this nation as we head to our third century? Teach them to be self-starting, self-bossing innovators, and unafraid.

    It is insufficient to believe that the public schools got one or two things wrong in an otherwise good and noble endeavor; people must recognize that they were entirely evil in their very inception. They were created specifically to lobotomize these traits from young minds and render them fit only to follow orders.

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  15. I’m almost 55. I have a degree, two actually if you count what I wasted time and money on in the mid-late oughts at what proved to be a glorified diploma mill. Never did me any good. Put me in debt for the second attempt. Anything I tried to learn, the jobs got disappeared, either automated or offshored. Degree did me no good.

    I don’t know how common that is (outside of the junk “studies” degrees), but it certainly puts me off the whole thing at this point.

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  16. Touched on by a previous commenter, but having a youngster deal with government regulations and taxes at an early age would be a way of inoculating them somewhat against the Marxist economics they would encounter in college, should they choose that route.

    Especially if their idea for earning money is met by a “No you can’t do that because of regulation” from local government, or an HOA Karen.

    That shock the first time you realize how much of your earnings are skimmed up by government can be an eye opener.

    All would be educational and preparation for entering the real world

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  17. My business degree checked a box that got me my Commission. And it got me in the door for interviews at several jobs (again checking the box on their forms). Never used it as such.

    Other than as a door opener, it’s biggest value was teaching me that I had no interest in going into the fields that actually required you to have that particular degree (as opposed to a check box) Finance, marketing, accounting…

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  18. Re establishing small startup businesses as a legal entity: Yet another thing the Formerly Golden Overly Avaricious State frells up, as the annual fee for maintaining an LLC in California is $800, waived only the first year.

    Other states I have checked it’s on the order of $25, often only the first year to register, and it’s often waived below a certain income threshold.

    And no, you can’t just establish your LLC in another state and get around it, as California requires “foreign LLC” (which definition specifically includes LLCs registered in other states) to pay an $800 annual “foreign LLC registration fee” to do business in California.

    Now a real business can likely absorb this, but a little garage side gig startup could very well find that and all the rest of the stupid fees and licenses enough of a barrier that they just won’t bother.

    Which is below the notice of our Sacramento Overlordlings. Gotta get more of that sweet, sweet cash.

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  19. Lawyering requiring a degree is a recent thing, relatively speaking. “Reading the law” is a term referring to a would-be lawyer studying law under a judge or practicing attorney. The future lawyer still had to pass the Bar Exam. But a JD degree from a law school was not required. It was considered a perfectly legitimate way to become an attorney. Calvin Coolidge was one of the attorneys that got his law license this way. I believe some states still allow it, though not many of them. And it’s rarely done these days. I’m confident that the ABA doesn’t like it, though it’s rare enough now that they likely don’t give it much thought.

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