[OT] destroy all software (was Programming language WATs)

Jonathan M Davis jmdavisProg at gmx.com
Sat Jan 21 18:11:19 PST 2012


On Saturday, January 21, 2012 16:27:05 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> That reminds me: There's a *LOT* of people who told me "If two equally good
> people apply for the same job, and one has a degree and other other doesn't,
> the one with the degree will get the job." They always seem to think that's
> convincing, but there's three problems with it:
> 
> 1. That's a fairly contrived scenario.
> 
> 2. So...what, it's a $100k, 4+ year **tie-breaker**?? Sounds like a collosal
> waste to me.
> 
> And probably most importantly:
> 
> 3. If you take all that time and money that would have gone into a degree
> and put it into building *real* skills and experience instead wasting it all
> on taking exams, cramming for exams instead of *actually* learning,
> homework assignments instead of *real* projects, etc., then you'd have
> something far better than a tie-breaker: You'd *be* the better candidate,
> by far. (And hell, if the other candidate is a middle-class white male,
> you'd have *far* less debt and could undercut the them on salary while
> *still* ending up with much more spending money.)

The main problem is getting past HR. Sure, if you could get into a real 
interview with real programmers, you could show that you know what you're 
talking about, but without a degree and/or a lot of experience on your resume, 
there are many companies where HR will filter you out before you get far enough 
along to prove that you know anything (and in some companies, the lack of a 
degree is probably still enough for HR to filter out your resume, even if you 
have quite a few years of professional experience). So beyond whatever you get 
in terms of education, the degree often makes it possible to get past HR so 
that you can actually interview and possibly get the job.

Now, I totally dispute that college is a waste of time. You're going to learn 
a lot at college - at least if you go to a college that's worth anything - 
especially if you _want_ to learn rather than just trying to pass the exams. 
There's a lot to be gotten out of college whether it's required for a job or 
not. The issue IMHO is whether what you get is worth the cost, not whether 
it's actually valuable.

But I don't really want to argue the issue, so I guess that I should shut up.

- Jonathan M Davis


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