In the 18 years that I have worked for the state, I have found that they like to hire retired Bell Heads.
Bell Heads are the life long employees of the telephone company. They are called Bell Heads because they have learned how the telephone company operates and they comply with all of its rules and regulations.
In many respects, the telephone company operates like the military. And, like the military, there is the right way, the wrong way and the military way. Or, in this case, the Bell way.
The first thing to be noted about the telephone company is that they prefer that you are not highly educated. A college degree is highly frowned upon.
First of all, a college degree means that you have a quantified education and a quantified educations means that you are a commodity in the job market. In short, a degree in Engineering from MIT says a whole lot more than a non-degree with 10 years of engineering experience with the phone company. The degree is quantifiable. The experience is not.
Second, because a degree is quantifiable, you could end up having more education than your boss and that is not good. The last thing that a Bell Head boss wants is for his employees to be smarter than he is. After all, if the employee is smarter than his boss then maybe the employee should be the boss.
In an effort to dummy down their employees, the phone company restricts the amount of education that you get for doing your job. Instead of giving you an Ohm Meter and showing you how to measure resistance on a cable, they give you meter A and tell you that the cable has to read between 7 and 10.
You don’t have to know what you are measuring, all you have to know is that if the reading is between 7 and 10, the cable is good. Knowing how to use an Ohm meter is a skill not needed for the job and a skill that will make you more valuable to another employer.
Now, this is not to say that the phone company won’t hire someone with a degree. Obviously, they do need some people with college degrees. It is just that the vast majority of their staff do not have college degrees and the phone company prefers it that way.
In short, the phone company wants their employees to be totally dependent on the phone company for their jobs. A college degree means independence.
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This was one of the more insightful posts I’ve read in a while. I continue to find comments very useful however. They’re almost like an accuracy validator. Once you read through them and slice out the junk you’re left with some very helpful additions to the original post. Ideally the post’s author would then post an “update” message to the post noting any corrections found in the comments.