July 6, 2015 at 10:39 am
I agree with Steve, though it's certainly difficult today to get a foot in the door without the piece of paper. That was not always true.
I have a bachelor's degree, which was largely a waste of my time and my parents' money. The most valuable item I've received from my college education was the opportunity to meet my now-husband. I'm sure that if I had attended when I was older and not so burnt-out on full-time education that I would have appreciated it more. But I was so eager to "start life" that I married, started a full-time job as a programmer and bought a house before I finally earned that blasted piece of paper. My degree is in Mechanical Engineering (BME). I don't think I've ever used anything that I learned in college in my career. The "general education" courses required in engineering are very lightweight. My communication skills were honed in high school and hardly exercised in college. I remember college English chiefly for the visceral dislike that I still retain for "A Portrait of a Lady."
My husband spent his early college years teaching himself to program the Macintosh (back when the C language was bleeding edge and most Mac programs were in Pascal) at night while he slept through the day (and his classes). He left college (obviously), continued to develop his programming skills independently and worked in retail. His entry to programming as a career came at Sears when he attempted to sell a Macintosh Performa to a customer who was eyeing it with the paternal attitude of a Macintosh aficionado. That person happened to employ a small set of Macintosh programmers and happened to need a junior Mac programmer, though he was not looking to find one at Sears. My husband has been in professional programming ever since. He did get the piece of paper eventually. I admit to using fatherhood to blackmail him into finishing his degree. Since I was at home with our infant daughter during the dot-com bust of 2001, I asked him what would happen to his family if he were laid off and his lack of a degree made finding another job impossible? That did it. He spent five years finishing the piece of paper in the evenings. His degree was never anything more than the ability to check the "degree" box on a job application.
On the other hand, I've had the dubious pleasure of having to train several recent Computer Science graduates who lacked fundamental programming talent. I remember one of them especially. She had no ability to program whatsoever and could not be trained to do so. She fundamentally did not understand how computers work. Her only real skill was complaining, which she did fantastically. If she didn't like what one level of management said, she went up another level with her sob story of being under-trained and having no help to do her very difficult job because people were mean to her. The company sent her to weeks of training in PowerBuilder, after which she couldn't figure out how to disable a button on a form. I wish I were making that up or exaggerating it, but I'm not.
I'm not surprised that graduates can get a CS degree without fundamental talent. I have a very poor ability to visualize and solve problems in three dimensions, but I have a BME. I would be a disaster actually working as a mechanical engineer. I didn't discover that little problem until my senior year in my capstone mechanical design courses. Since I scraped a D in those, I graduated anyway.
Programming is more of a trade than a profession. An apprenticeship program would do a better job of weeding out those who lack talent while teaching marketable skills and providing a "piece of paper" for the HR department.
July 6, 2015 at 11:19 am
Stephanie Giovannini (7/6/2015)
I agree with Steve, though it's certainly difficult today to get a foot in the door without the piece of paper. That was not always true.I have a bachelor's degree, which was largely a waste of my time and my parents' money. The most valuable item I've received from my college education was the opportunity to meet my now-husband. I'm sure that if I had attended when I was older and not so burnt-out on full-time education that I would have appreciated it more. But I was so eager to "start life" that I married, started a full-time job as a programmer and bought a house before I finally earned that blasted piece of paper. My degree is in Mechanical Engineering (BME). I don't think I've ever used anything that I learned in college in my career. The "general education" courses required in engineering are very lightweight. My communication skills were honed in high school and hardly exercised in college. I remember college English chiefly for the visceral dislike that I still retain for "A Portrait of a Lady."
My husband spent his early college years teaching himself to program the Macintosh (back when the C language was bleeding edge and most Mac programs were in Pascal) at night while he slept through the day (and his classes). He left college (obviously), continued to develop his programming skills independently and worked in retail. His entry to programming as a career came at Sears when he attempted to sell a Macintosh Performa to a customer who was eyeing it with the paternal attitude of a Macintosh aficionado. That person happened to employ a small set of Macintosh programmers and happened to need a junior Mac programmer, though he was not looking to find one at Sears. My husband has been in professional programming ever since. He did get the piece of paper eventually. I admit to using fatherhood to blackmail him into finishing his degree. Since I was at home with our infant daughter during the dot-com bust of 2001, I asked him what would happen to his family if he were laid off and his lack of a degree made finding another job impossible? That did it. He spent five years finishing the piece of paper in the evenings. His degree was never anything more than the ability to check the "degree" box on a job application.
On the other hand, I've had the dubious pleasure of having to train several recent Computer Science graduates who lacked fundamental programming talent. I remember one of them especially. She had no ability to program whatsoever and could not be trained to do so. She fundamentally did not understand how computers work. Her only real skill was complaining, which she did fantastically. If she didn't like what one level of management said, she went up another level with her sob story of being under-trained and having no help to do her very difficult job because people were mean to her. The company sent her to weeks of training in PowerBuilder, after which she couldn't figure out how to disable a button on a form. I wish I were making that up or exaggerating it, but I'm not.
I'm not surprised that graduates can get a CS degree without fundamental talent. I have a very poor ability to visualize and solve problems in three dimensions, but I have a BME. I would be a disaster actually working as a mechanical engineer. I didn't discover that little problem until my senior year in my capstone mechanical design courses. Since I scraped a D in those, I graduated anyway.
Programming is more of a trade than a profession. An apprenticeship program would do a better job of weeding out those who lack talent while teaching marketable skills and providing a "piece of paper" for the HR department.
Same for me. My college experience served to a) make friends, b) drink, c) jump through hoops for professors. Plus, I learned one valuable thing from it: what kind of personalities/egos I would run into in the real world. The professors ranged from those who wouldn't interface with students outside the classroom, to those who were cool and treated you as a peer, to the arrogant professors who wore red boots and talked egotistically about how much their PhD was so much better than a JD or EdD.
And yeah, I went to school with *and* worked with people who got their homework/work done for them and had little, if any, programming skill.
I wish I'd taken a job I was offered as a senior in high school and gone to program Pascal in Oklahoma City. With the way it works now, I could have had my employer pay for furthering my education as I moved up the ladder. As it is now, my BS in Computer Science and Mathematics means little if I have no certifications...like the certification or the college degree means whether or not I'm well versed in a particular technology.
I know I sure didn't get my SQL or VB skills from my university education. That was all self-taught at the school of life.
July 8, 2015 at 2:36 am
I liked this essay on the subject of not dropping out:
https://medium.com/essays-by-kern/don-t-drop-out-ed0e8d14e22d
I guess it is saying don't do bad courses, and appreciate the value of intellectual rigour of any discipline. Live your own life and do not try and follow what someone else has done.
On passion I'm tending towards Scott Adam's viewpoint - it's bullshit:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102964918511/follow-your-passion
It may of course be a marker for talent, i.e. you enjoy doing things you are good at. I frequently hate computers passionately - I do like solving the problems I need to solve effectively however.
July 8, 2015 at 8:14 am
call.copse (7/8/2015)
I liked this essay on the subject of not dropping out:https://medium.com/essays-by-kern/don-t-drop-out-ed0e8d14e22d
I guess it is saying don't do bad courses, and appreciate the value of intellectual rigour of any discipline. Live your own life and do not try and follow what someone else has done.
On passion I'm tending towards Scott Adam's viewpoint - it's bullshit:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102964918511/follow-your-passion
It may of course be a marker for talent, i.e. you enjoy doing things you are good at. I frequently hate computers passionately - I do like solving the problems I need to solve effectively however.
You don't necessarily have to be passionate about a job to be good at it. I'll admit I've been in positions where I was considered one of the better performers, received award and recognition, yet I secretly despised the job, thought it was boring, and had my resume in the hands of multiple recruiters.
I've also seen folks who were genuinely passionate about their job (to the point of being annoying), but at the end of the day they just weren't exceptional or even average at it. These are perhaps folks who attempt to motivate themselves by falsely believing they were somehow destined to do a particular line of work, when in reality they are better suited for something else entirely.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
July 14, 2015 at 10:55 am
A few more thoughts here.
I'm not saying college is a bad idea. I'm saying that I'm not sure it's what I'd recommend for someone interested in entering technology. The ROI is certainly a large part of this and it's one thing that I hate about the rush to profit for so many US universities. I fundamentally think education shouldn't be about profit.
My oldest wants to teach. College is really required for him, though his teaching education can occur at many colleges, and the value of what he gets should be weighed against later burdens. It doesn't make sense for someone looking to teach to rack up $200k in debt at Stanford or some private college.
My middle kid wants to be an engineer. College certainly provides a basis or foundation he'll need in industry. It would be hard to get started in that field without college, but I'm not sure that's the case for someone that wants to program, administer systems, or work as a DBA. I think some fields are fundamentally different in that they require (in general) lots of basic knowledge.
My daughter (right now) wants to be a journalist/photographer. I think college is a tossup here. She could certainly learn some skills in college, and get a breadth of other knowledge that would serve her. However there's also a struggle to deal with the cost. She's an athlete, so it might be moot, but for the general person that might want to pursue something similar field, is it worth it to spend $200k for friendships and some sheltered growth? It's a hard question.
call.copse (7/8/2015)
I liked this essay on the subject of not dropping out:https://medium.com/essays-by-kern/don-t-drop-out-ed0e8d14e22d
I guess it is saying don't do bad courses, and appreciate the value of intellectual rigour of any discipline. Live your own life and do not try and follow what someone else has done.
I agree in some sense, but someone at Cal that's picked by YC is an outlier. Just like the people picked for Thiel grants, they're likely to do fine and succeed no matter what. The friendships matter, there are certainly some valuable skills and chances to explore and learn, but they're expensive now. Lots of similar experiences can be had by engaging in a community. Part of the failings of modern culture is we don't engage with our neighbors, we don't debate and discuss, or learn well from each other. We tend to go into hibernation, and we tend to work too hard in the US. There is life outside of work.
On passion I'm tending towards Scott Adam's viewpoint - it's bullshit:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102964918511/follow-your-passion
It may of course be a marker for talent, i.e. you enjoy doing things you are good at. I frequently hate computers passionately - I do like solving the problems I need to solve effectively however.
Jack Reacher says he's a wealthy man. He has everything he needs. He lives by buying thrift store clothes every week and wandering from job to job around the country, staying where he can. It's a fictional character, but it says a lot. Wealth isn't money but satisfaction with where you are.
Let's not confuse success with money. I think Adam's does that a bit. Certainly you need to be successful enough to survive, but the more I live, the more I find people that make little money, but the enjoy their lives. Is it better to make $150k as a successful IT worker or $50k training horses? My wife would say the latter.
I think following passion makes sense, but not blindly. It also needs to be a bit pragmatic. I've love to play baseball for a living, but I have to temper that with my skills. If someone wants to be a painter, that's great. As along as they understand that they may need a second job or need to live with less money.
I certainly wouldn't advocate someone to pursue a career for money, but I think it's worth leaning towards something you enjoy and derive satisfaction from. Also understand your passion. Lots of people think the love X, but doing x every day isn't always as exciting as it is when it's a hobby.
Perhaps separate from pursuing passion is doing something you hate. If you hate working with numbers and taxes, don't be a CPA. Those jobs you hate will suck the life from your life. You'll be miserable, and that is far, far worse than choosing to pursue some passion that has little chance of helping you survive in the world.
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July 14, 2015 at 1:18 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (7/14/2015)
A few more thoughts here.....
....
Let's not confuse success with money. I think Adam's does that a bit. Certainly you need to be successful enough to survive, but the more I live, the more I find people that make little money, but the enjoy their lives. Is it better to make $150k as a successful IT worker or $50k training horses? My wife would say the latter.
I think following passion makes sense, but not blindly. It also needs to be a bit pragmatic. I've love to play baseball for a living, but I have to temper that with my skills. If someone wants to be a painter, that's great. As along as they understand that they may need a second job or need to live with less money.
I certainly wouldn't advocate someone to pursue a career for money, but I think it's worth leaning towards something you enjoy and derive satisfaction from. Also understand your passion. Lots of people think the love X, but doing x every day isn't always as exciting as it is when it's a hobby.
Perhaps separate from pursuing passion is doing something you hate. If you hate working with numbers and taxes, don't be a CPA. Those jobs you hate will suck the life from your life. You'll be miserable, and that is far, far worse than choosing to pursue some passion that has little chance of helping you survive in the world.
To me those points look like wisdom, not just thoughts. I reckon they are excellent advice to anyone thinking about what to take up as a career and/or about how to approach it.
Tom
July 14, 2015 at 3:52 pm
Thanks, Tom. I was hoping for just making sense, but if it's wisdom, than I hope it helps someone.
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February 15, 2017 at 9:37 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Wednesday, July 1, 2015 9:11 AMnick.dale.burns (6/30/2015)
...Reflect on your own first years in industry. Did you possess the necessary technical skills from day one? Are you still in the same field / specialty area? Or, has your career taken unexpected twists and turns that have required you to adapt and learn quickly? Why then should we expect current graduates to come out as technically-skilled in specific areas? I would encourage a return to the philosophical ideals of higher education, the development of critical awareness, open debate and creativity. These are the skills that we don't have the time and luxury of developing once we enter the business world. NickNo issue with you disgreeing. It's a valid view. My point is that I think lots of higher education is of dubious value to the individual, though perhaps more value to society. However I also think education is moving faster. My kids learn far, far more than I did in lower and secondary school. However I also think they're tested more (too much) with the emphasize on measuring and scoring schools/teachers more than students.My complaint is less with education, but more with cost. It's far, far too costly, IMHO, to attend university. We could argue about what can be done there, but the fact remains that I think someone entering technology fields is better off in life by getting to work than school.Would you argue that people that have never attended university, plumbers, electricians, tradespeople, make the world worse? They're missing out?It's a tough subject to discuss and understand.
Were you possible assessing the format and coming to the conclusion it is outdated? Given the cost and the benefit then maybe. I would like to see a more theoretical focus (like the current University of Brighton degree - my first Alumni - rather than like the Staffordshire University curriculum - my second Alumni). The sandwich year is supposed to give the student a flavour of how a role works in "real life" (and employers a taster of the student). If we want to train programmers "post A-Level" in UK terms (i.e. 18+) then this can be achieved in one academic year. I could do it with the 10 hours-ish a week lecturing and tutorial time. I have done it to some degree as an Associate Lecturer for the Open University. We are cheating both students and businesses by failing to satisfy both requirements in order to support the new academic business.
Currently, I think that we offer students the worst deal: job training that they have to pay for themselves taught over a long period. It isn't even good job training in general. And it certainly isn't academic.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
February 15, 2017 at 9:49 pm
P Jones - Wednesday, July 1, 2015 1:12 AMAs an IT pro and graduate, I've been involved in the recruitment of programmers and the very first requirement on the job spec. is a degree or HND or equivalent level qualification in a relevant discipline. Candidates without were rejected straight away and HR would not allow them to be even considered.
Interesting. What are the disciplines of degrees that you allow and what do you consider to be an "equivalent level qualification in a relevant discipline"?
--Jeff Moden
February 16, 2017 at 2:19 am
Mickey Stuewe - Wednesday, July 1, 2015 11:36 AM... One is computer theory. I think this is lacking in people who haven't taken computer classes. This is something that needs to be learned in order to write efficient code and to pick up concepts quickly in meetings. It can be learned outside of college, but some people don't think they need it. I think this was most evident when ASP first came out. I saw SO MUCH spaghetti code from developers with no coding theory in their background. While computer language changes, the basic theory is still the same. Recursion, modularization, set theory. These are all static. How and when they are used changes...
So often lacking in candidates and colleagues. It doesn't require a degree to know these but I thing that it is required to know these.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
February 16, 2017 at 4:00 am
David.Poole - Thursday, July 2, 2015 11:19 AM...Bill Gates dropped out of university education as did Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg...
However, the first three of these were not the real technical founders. Their business partners often were: Paul Allen (did 2 years of a computing degree before dropping out), Bob Miner (maths degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Steve Wozniak (computing degree from University of California, Berkley).
Also, much of the principles of software development are covered in the first two years of a degree. In the UK, at least.
The question really is whether they got value from the parts of their respective degrees. To which I don't know the answer.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
February 16, 2017 at 6:09 am
Reading back through this set of comments is interesting. It does seem to boil down to the belief, by those who have degrees in CS, that the only true path to a successful IT career is through having a CS degree.
OK. That worked for you. Cool. However, others have different life experiences that lead them to different conclusions. Evidently one of the things that is not taught in college is having an open mind.
----------------------------------------------------The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood... Theodore RooseveltThe Scary DBAAuthor of: SQL Server 2017 Query Performance Tuning, 5th Edition and SQL Server Execution Plans, 3rd EditionProduct Evangelist for Red Gate Software
February 16, 2017 at 6:52 am
Grant Fritchey - Thursday, February 16, 2017 6:09 AM...Evidently one of the things that is not taught in college is having an open mind.
OUCH!!!
To be clear, as a graduate I appreciate my education but do not see it as essential. What I do see as essential is some of the knowledge that I just so happened to pick up there. The best of it was not from a degree course anyway.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
February 16, 2017 at 7:06 am
The culinary industry has a similar debate over the merits of a diploma. Do you need to graduate from culinary school to be a good chef? Maybe not, but if everything you know about cooking you learned from your parent's or working at the same restaurant for ten years, then you're probably not as well rounded on the fundamentals as someone who was formally trained.
Likewise, without a CS degree, if you have spent your entire IT career in the server room as a DBA, then your IT perspective is limited, unless you do a lot of reading and tasking outside the box. Needless to say, those of us who hang out here on SQLServerCentral do a lot of outside the box reading and networking. We educate ourselves on a wide variety of topics every day. But this requires more discipline and raw talent than what most high school graduates may have. Going to university provides a guided framework for learning that probably works best for most folks wanting to enter IT, even if it's not technically required for the more gifted and resourceful.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 16, 2017 at 8:09 am
Grant Fritchey - Thursday, February 16, 2017 6:09 AMReading back through this set of comments is interesting. It does seem to boil down to the belief, by those who have degrees in CS, that the only true path to a successful IT career is through having a CS degree.OK. That worked for you. Cool. However, others have different life experiences that lead them to different conclusions. Evidently one of the things that is not taught in college is having an open mind.
+1000 😉 I call it the "Ring Knocker Effect" named after a military "tradition".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Military_Academy_class_ring
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130601112114AAAns6R
--Jeff Moden
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