Going by a certain story 2 years ago, their concern should be that they're overqualified for Meta.
It doesn't help that gmail, which is the only serious direct competition to outlook, straight up doesn't do "folders" and instead goes with markers. So you can't really just put a filter that drags all the 100 low-priority alerts in what would count as a first degree abstraction of "place where things are sorted into". No, there are two layers of abstraction between point A and B of things, sorter and sorted things. The result? Muggles can't recognize the heck you're describing and refuse to even acknowledge the possibility.
> It doesn't help that gmail, which is the only serious direct competition to outlook, straight up doesn't do "folders" and instead goes with markers.
While true, unless I'm mistaken, markers (I assume you're referring to tags) can be nested to provide a pseudo-folder hierarchy, and with proper filters you can remove the "inbox" tag and have the mail only show up under the specific tag.
TBH I don't fully mind it, it lets you classify an email in multiple ways (eg "See Later" as well as "Work related").
Tags are great but I still want my folders. Also doesn't help that the way google describes some things is unnecessarily complex or confusing.
For example, removing an email from the inbox requires archiving it. In most other applications (WhatsApp, Signal, Outlook, etc) archiving usually results in the email being placed in a specific archive folder that isn't readily accessible through the UI. At least not to the same level that normal emails are.
People in my work and personal life experience do not understand the concept of labels in a Google inbox and misname them folders 100% of the time. Google allows you to drag-n-drop emails "into" labels like you would files in folders conflating the issue even more as the logic to automate this behaviour with a filter isn't leveraged. Even the layout of a default inbox is setup in a way that the average user has difficulty understanding what happens when an email drops off the "front page" of their inbox.
They can be nested, the one thing I have never been able to figure out though is how to get alerts of receiving a message while also filing away in a sub folder. You get one or the other in outlook, as a result I rarely check my work email anymore cause I either get the fire hose of spam or miss everything entirety because it's going to a folder and not passing along an alert about a new message.
Gmail still has perfectly functional filters that can be set to auto-apply a label and skip the inbox. They may be called "labels" now, but they still function just as they did when the UI called them "folders"
I partially solve this by using Thunderbird on my laptop. When I get emails on my smartphone (on the Gmail app), they unfortunately all go to the inbox. But the moment I open Thunderbird, it nicely organizes them for me.
Yes, every now and then I think I should try it on Android as well, but still have to do it. It would be great if there was the possibility to sync filters across devices, in a similar way of using your Firefox account to sync extensions. Do you know if this is possible?
If a CS graduate can't figure out some simple gmail labels and filters then they should not be awarded that degree. Plain and simple. It's not rocket science.
And there are no other students at any college other than CS students? I'm not sure why a biologist or a literature student would need to be au fait with Google's admittedly fairly unfriendly email management setup.
Digital literacy is important to every field. Email filters are not some arcane computer science concept, they are the modern equivalent of filing physical mail into the right folder/pidgeon hole/inbox/whatever.
Biology is a great example because of just how important digital record management is to experimentation in the field.
Many relative to the total set, no. But enough to know writing it down isn’t going to cut it. Most datasets I’ve seen are xls, hdfs or csvs nested many directories deep. Not exactly for those who can’t manage an email filter. Without getting into the processing of it either
Most of my students, across all disciplines, don't have basic competence in Word or GDocs, software they've been using for years. It's weeks to teach them how to appy headings
I understood your comment perfectly fine. I'm asking which graduates of which colleges you were referring to. It looked like you were generalizing about US HS and colleges. If so, plenty of other countries' HS and college education systems work better, so your comment doesn't extend.
> I understood your comment perfectly fine. I'm asking which graduates of which colleges you were referring to.
They are referring to MOST graduates of MOST colleges. This is a deliberate overgeneralization about the nature of post-secondary education meant to highlight how it's frequently viewed solely in terms of completion rather than with regards to any skills or knowledge gained from it.
Your comment stated that college doesn't add much to a person's employability. (If you had wanted to be less obfuscatory, you could simply have said "a [HS] education is already adequate qualification for many jobs; college doesn't add much").
That was your claim. (I don't think your claim is correct of many OECD countries' colleges, but it was the claim you made.)
You then replied to J-Kuhn to say that they had misunderstood your comment by (mis)paraphrasing it as "Students attend college to become qualified to work."
Not really. The comment of yours that started the lack of clarity is this double-negative, and 0/2 of us who responded to you here found it useful:
> Most graduates aren't really qualified to work anywhere that they couldn't have worked before going to college in the first place.
The double-negative could be read both ways: "Most HS grads aren't really qualified to work anywhere and college doesn't add much" or "a [HS] education is already adequate qualification for many jobs; college doesn't add much". So we apply Occam's razor and since the [U-5] unemployment rate for [US] HS grads is << 50%, conclude you meant the former. But the comment was still needlessly obfuscation. Even if we assume which country and education system you were talking about.
Conversely, it's a little weird how I ignored your lack of clarity and didn't point it out so starkly, then you reduce the interaction to this ping-pong. I don't intend to overflow the stack on this.
I know that I used a double negative, I meant to do that. Not everything is meant to be written and read the exact same way. That was the particular style of sentence I chose so you can just deal with that and you don't need to keep pointing it out.
Stop being abusive. Your original double-negative comment lacks clarity, it can be read in two completely opposite senses. It would better for you simply to have clarified it (and next time be clearer in the first place). People here brought that to your attention but all you do is attack them. That's on you not us. If your stylistic choices make your writing incomprehensible, then don't use them. That's all.
Put it like this: it was an interesting discussion before that, and looks like people expected you would simply clarify your meaning (like most of us do when we're being unclear), so the discussion could proceed. Not go on all-out attack.
You know that most students aren't computer science majors?
Have you met the average community college student who doesn't even own a laptop but does all of their work on their phone? Gmail doesn't even allow you to create or manage filters from their phone app or mobile web interface.
Exactly what is in their field of study, nothing more. That's a huge part of the problems created by treating academia as a degree mill mandatory to get a job able to feed yourself instead of a place only for those truly interested in actually studying a subject.
Most managers I've met, struggle with setting up email filters, and have to ask tech support to do it for them. These students will be qualified just fine.
I'd hope/assume that any Computer Science students would be able to do this, but most Biology/Education/English/Art students probably couldn't.
I mean, anyone smart enough to attend university could probably figure it out if they really wanted to, but there are hundreds of other useful things that they could learn too. There are only so many hours in the day, and given that most students don't get that many emails, I can hardly blame them for not wanting to prioritize learning how to filter emails.
(I personally have over a hundred lines of Sieve filters, but I'm definitely not a typical student)
This is a brilliant reply. I shook my head at the original and laughed hard at your perfectly reasonable question.
It reminds me of an old joke my father used to say about jobs with virtually no interview (fast food, etc). He called it "The Mirror Test", as in if you hold a mirror up to the person, does it fog up? If yes, you are hired!
Anywhere. I straight up don’t check my email at work. If people need me they have to teams message me to tell me they emailed me. Don’t have time to sift through all the bullshit generated emails. Jira, GitHub, confluence, servicenow, workday, etc. amounts to an incredible amount of junk I just can’t be bothered with.
>Setting up custom email filters is beyond the capabilities of most students?
Yes. And most of the general population. They can do it once they know it exists, most people just are not aware it is a thing at all.
>What are they learning?
Here, their "major" as you say in the US. Someone in econ, biology or even CS is not going to learn Outlook rules. Maybe IT or business will have a sentence on it.
As a ugrad, and later a PhD student teaching, everything is explained the first day. If you can figure it out you just fail the class (or go to office hrs to get help, etc).
As an associate professor, I do explain things the first day, but I am certainly not permitted to fail students as a consequence of not checking their email daily.
Even if they didn’t hand in an assignment at all, without any reason provided, I’m required by regulation to offer them a second chance to pass that assignment.
The students’ rights are quite strong here (Northern Europe), which I generally support, but it has some downsides.
Interesting. I remember very strict rules on turning in programming assignments (as a student, and later TA). On time, printed properly, in a specific envelope, labeled as specified in the right location.
