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How Important is a Well-Known CS Degree?
syynnapse asks: "I've been interested in computer science since my mother taught me how to program in QBASIC when I was eleven, and I've wanted to be a developer ever since I learned C++ in AP Computer Science while in high-school. Now I'm in my sophomore year of college studying CS at a state university that isn't particularly known for its CS program, but I'm quite happy and personally think I'm learning plenty. My father thinks otherwise, and the deadline for transferring successfully is approaching quickly. What chance do I have in the real world with a not-so-prestigious degree? Am I likely to be learning what's important? Am I looking at a series of awful jobs if I don't transfer?"
I honestly don't think it matters much. I imagine there are a few organizations that it does matter to, but I think those are few and far between.
...or equivalent experience.
The most important thing in the market today is experience. Go look on Monster or any of the other sites right now, and you'll see one phrase quite a bit -
In other words, a degree is a bonus now rather than a prerequisite if you have talent and experience. If you have no experience and no big certifications, then a degree is something (and perhaps the degree from a bigger school could help a little), but the jobs available to you in this boat are not all that appealing for the most part anyway.
The great jobs go to those with solid experience, and for those people (and the people hiring them), the degree they have is considered decoration rather than the meat of the resume.
Perhaps this is different in the development field, but I doubt it; I'm coming from the infosec side of things and I imagine things are much the same for programmers.
In short, degrees and certifications are "get you in the door"-oriented credentials; the big jobs rarely go this breed of applicant.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
Here's my general rule on quality of college:
Unless you want to go for an ivy league type of degree (MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, etc.), as long as the college offers a strong program, where you go to school has ZERO effect on your life after your first job. I went to a average school (Cal State University, Chico), and got average grades. (3.0 average). I found a good starter job when I gradiuated, and started progressing on *merit* after that. Now, I am in a top design position at a huge networking company, and no one looks at my degree. When I interview people, I never look at the college, other than to verify that they got a degree.
The only caveat is if you want to get a high profile degree from a top of the line college. All the Phds I work with come from top drawer schools, and went to top schools from the bachlor stage on. It is more of a pedigree at that point, and it clearly matters.
Go to a school that has a good CS program, has energetic professors, is fun to live in (you can't beat Chico), and just do your best. Once you get a job, your accomplishments will distinguish you from the rest.
I am sure to be flamed by people who went to well known schools and swear by it, but none of the people I work with who have BS desgrees went anywhere recognizable. It is all about how you perform.
Good luck!
Todd
I have a CS degree from a state university that's not especially known for it's CS department.
I graduated in 2000 and didn't find the degree to be a hinderance at all. Granted this was at the tail of the bubble, but I was hired ahead of a Purdue and a U-Wisconsin graduate, both of which I'd consider to have far superior programs.
Why? First, because I interviewed well. I was able to interact with my future bosses and coworkers, I didn't lie on my resume, and I was eager to learn. Second, because I had relevent experience gained while I was a student. I found that working as a programmer for the campus IT department 15 hours/week and volunteering as a lead sysadmin for a student government / organization webserver to be far more relevent to the job then anything I learned in class.
Since that first job, I've found references and contacts to be the key to getting other interviews and offers. I don't feel like a state-U degree hurt me at all; college is what you make of it so learn to socialize, volunteer or take a part time job relevent to the field you want to work in, and concentrate on getting a good broad education. Take liberal arts classes and business classes, etc.
If you are learning, stay exactly where you are. You don't want to discover how horrible it is to attend class after class, year after year, and be learning nothing. I'm currently studying at a well-known university that's crashed a probe into Mars. But reputation and content are two very different things. As long as you're learning, stay where you are.
Besides, your university credentials are mainly useful in getting your first job. After that they are more interested in your previous jobs. So at worst an unknown university will just add one stepping stone on your career path.
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They make Counter-Strike Degrees? sign me up!
Remember: *Learning* is what's important here, especially when we're talking about an undergrad degree -- I went to a small state school where there were 10-20 people in my classes and I recieved a much, much better education than my peers who went to large universities. Why? Because I could walk into my professor's office and spend an hour talking to him about class material, advances in computing or the state of the industry or whatever.
In my experience, the sort of jobs you'll get with an undergrad degree tend to value understanding and skill over who your degree is from -- if you can do the work, you're their person. If you're going to a job that requires a graduate degree, well, you can go to a high-profile school for your grad work, eh?
Aside from all of that, I've learned the hard way that you should follow your instincts. Follow yours on this one and stay put.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
this allowed me to get a job at the best convenience store in the state. Highly recommended!
well i mean if you go to podunk community college, then year it may. but any major college, you will be fine.
i had one of the worst graduating GPA's in my CS class, but i managed to get one of the best jobs out of college. why? becuase of what i knew and what i did on my own time.
college simply teaches you how to teach yourself. if you are basing how you will do off how you do in class, then you are in for a suprise.
if you can teach yourself the new technologies and get your name out there somehow, you will be set.
but then again i am planning on getting out of the tech field in 2 years so take it for what it is worth.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Seriously, take a look at my resume (http://www.codesweep.com/about.cfm) you will see that there are plenty of interesting jobs on it (and I haven't throughly revised it in awhile, I could state more). While my college degree is a footnote at the bottom. While Cal Poly Pomona is a good school, it doesn't matter based on what's more attractive, the work or the school.
Bottom line: Find a good (even if cheap) job NOW. Failing that, grab an open source project at http://www.sourceforge.net and contribute something to get your name on the developers list. Something, anything for your resume besides a degree (whether Ivy League or State U) is paramount to a good job. If you can accomplish this, it won't matter if your degree says "WTF Coding University".
...in bed
It does matter for your first job.
Unless you know somebody, it's hard to get in to the truly cool jobs. Most companies only recruit at a relatively defined set of universities, generally where the founders and a few of the early employees came from. Which means you have to seek out companies more if you want to avoid being a coding grunt.
Once you are out for a bit, it matters far less.
Oh yeah, and a good CS degree is not about being taught. It's about being tortured into learning because your professor is really bright but can't teach. So he gives you hard tests and you have to teach stuff to yourself in order to pass. At least, that's the shared experience amongst most of the grads from top-10 CS schools that I've talked to.
Gentoo Sucks
Something I wish I had known.
Youre not in college to get a degree.
Youre in college to get a job. Which normally means you need an internship or some useful contacts for when you get to the work world.
Most good employers don't have to hire someone with out experience, people want to work for them. So get some experience soon!
If your dad's willing to pay the application fee,why not apply to a few top-tier schools? If you don't get in, you get to stay and continue enjoying yourself. If you do get in, you've already got everything you've learned already, plus you get to put the shiny new school on your resume.
The question of whether you should transfer or not is one you make AFTER you get accepted.
I would recommend you don't transfer to a slightly better school. If it's not top 5, I'd stay where you are.
I've been interested in computer science since my mother taught me how to program in QBASIC when I was eleven
No you haven't. You may have been interested in computer programming since age 11, but you didn't even know what computer science was, let alone have any interest in it.
Not that there's anything wrong with this; the world needs plumbers and electricians (and computer programmers) as much as it needs writers, mathematicians, and computer scientists. But this is one way the well-recognized undergraduate computer science distinguish themselves from the programs at the College of Upper Podunk. A good university will teach computer science, and expect you to work out how to write code on your own; a bad university will teach you how to program, and not even admit that there is anything more to learn.
Decide what you want from your years at university, and pick your university accordingly.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Asking a questions like this on slashdot is pointless.
People who have a CS degree from a well known school will say "most definitely!" so they can justify their own.
People who have a CS degree from Arkansas Community College will say "not really" because they got a job just fine with theirs.
People who have a computer-related degree from DeVry will say "nope" because they have a bottom-rung tech job.
People without a degree will say "most definitely not" because they have a job based on experience.
I'm trying to hire three developers, a project manager, and a business analyst where I work. We ignore the degrees they put down, unless it's for the pm spot where a MBA from anywhere will work. Some of the applicants have a BS in CS from places like Berkeley, but it doesn't really matter because they got it ten years ago...with an emphasis in cobol.
Having a degree on your resume will just help it get through the automated resume grabbing filters big companies use when fielding hundreds of applicants.
Oh, and I don't have a degree.
I have virtually no formal CS training, other than a fortran class in college. I'm pretty much self-taught, working with computers since I was 8 in some capacity or another. My formal background is in Biology Education, though I quickly discovered that teaching high school biology wasn't for me.
What led me to my current position was a lot of persistance and being able to demonstrate that I was a smart, capable person. I started as an entry level programmer (mostly hired to teach the occasional Access class), caught the whole "web application" wave, and ended up in a well-paying position some eight years later.
The trick in many cases is just getting in the door. For that, being able to say you're certified with a particular skill or have a degree is good enough. Once you're hired, the key is to show that you really know your stuff and can make your customers happy.
I have staffed up quite a few R & D departments in my years and I can honestly say that a degree only means something on the 1st job you get when you have no experience. After the 1st job its all the relevant experience sections on the resume that gets them an interview. I am usually more interested in the actual interview and the answers to the technical questions than I am with the resume itself. In fact the best programmers I have met either didn't graduate, or didn't take software engineering is school at all. I am a Human Machine Interface and Design major I have been programming, designing UI's, and managing programmers of over 10 years now. I taught myself to program on my C64 as a kid in the 80's, and read an Amiga book on C in 1985. I have been programming daily ever since, and will usually hire a motivated self taught guy like myself over a 4 year degree if the interview shows him to be more knowledgeable.
If you have a rich relative offering to pay, and you can go to MIT without going into debt, then yeah, of course you should transfer. But if, like most of us, you're going to pay for college, you should choose the best accredited undergraduate education that will leave you financially stable (read: debt-free) afterward.
You'll hear lots of people telling you about the value of name schools, the need for "networking" and other such hoo-hah. And often, they'll try to convince you that it's worth $30,000 in debt to get a top-tier undergraduate education. Don't buy it.
Remember -- at the undergraduate level, most schools will teach you the same things (oftentimes, from the same books). So why pay out the nose for an education that can be obtained for a fraction of the cost of a top-tier university?
Save your money, keep yourself out of debt, and you'll have more options later on. That's doubly important today, where Punjab's willingness to work for 30 cents an hour will almost invariably trump an expensive diploma....
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
I vote with staying where you are, if you're happy there.
I was in a similar situation; my school wasn't terribly noted for engineering, so after 2 years my mom convinced me to transfer to Virginia Tech. The biggest reason is that I was looking for a co-op job and no one would hire me from the previous university.
VT was very different from my old school. It did seem like the program was a little better academically, and the school definitely had a much better intern/co-op department which made it much easier to find internships. Also, I think the big name on the resume does help a lot in your first job or two; this may be more important now with the terrible job market than it was when I first got out of school in '98.
However, I paid a terrible price for the change. First, it was much more expensive. My family wasn't exactly rich, so while I was doing ok at my first school, where I paid in-state tuition, costs went up greatly at VT, leading me to build up a large debt in student loans. Secondly, and possibly more importantly, I never managed to build a network of friends at VT like I had, and lost, at my first school. Being a not-terribly-outgoing person, I had a very hard time finding any new friends at the new school; I found that I believe that most relationships are made in one's freshman year, when you're living on campus and everyone is new. After everyone's been there a few years and has a circle of friends, it's not so easy to break in. And maybe it's just me, but the engineering students at Virginia Tech seemed to be a bunch of snobs compared to the students at my old school. Not having many friends in college isn't bad just because of the social aspect, but those relationships can also be rewarding to your career: look how many companies were started by people who were friends in college.
So, in summary, if you're happy where you are, don't screw it up. Personally, I don't believe in making changes to anything unless there's something wrong, or there's something else that's obviously better in sight. I don't see any posts here so far in favor of big-name schools (unless maybe you have your sights set on politics).
In most cases the degree does have significant weight, and given two people who are more or less equal, the guy with paper will win.
Not to mention the degree will get you past the HR department.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Very few people, employers or otherwise, care about where you got your degree. All they care about is that you have it. There are times when an MIT or Harvard degree will carry more weight, but they're the exception, not the rule.
Doubt it? Try this little experiment. Your post implies that you're somewhere in your teens, which probably means that you've had at least a few different doctors (pediatrician, dentist, and GP, at the least). Do you know where any of them got their degrees? Do you care? Probably not... all you care about is that they did get an education. And these are the people whom you entrust with your health, your well-being, and potentially even your life. For most of the rest of society, it's the same way.
I disagree completely. I have yet to be involved with an interview where the degree was a deciding factor for anyone and I've been in this business for 16 years. It ALWAYS comes down to experience and how well you do on the technical interview. People underestimate technical interviews. Here's how the decision is typically made in my experience:
60% Experience (this is what gets you in the door)
39% Interview (this is what gets you hired)
1% Piece of paper
Nobody puts weight on the paper because everyone knows that schools do not prepare programmers for the real world.
About the only exception I could see to the 1% rule is if you come from a particularly prestigious institution like MIT, CalTech, etc. That said, people who come from institutions like that usually do very well in the interview because they are ultra-geeks. In any event, since the percentage of the population coming from those places is extremely small, it's not really a factor.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
While making an impression is important, having a "big name" degree is not as cracked up as it is made to be. Others here have suggested getting real experience in a co-op program. That is probably the most important thing to look for in a school. Schools with good partnerships can provide you with real-world experience which will open more doors.
Almost as important however is the which path within the IT world do you want to pursue. If you're looking to do more than code then finding a school with an IT department within a school of business might be helpful. If you want to specialize in graphics then look for a school with a good program involving fine arts or engineering.
So don't get downhearted about being at a so-called "second-tier" school if that school offers unique or interesting paths to follow.
I went to a small state school and my first job was at a Fortune 50 company! I've transformed that into a very good upper management job at a well-known international company in less than 10 years.
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
Having a degree from a big-name school will help you in two cases: getting your first job, and if an employer ever has to choose between you and an equally-qualified and equally-likeable applicant with a degree from a less-prestigious school. The first hurdle is one you only have to go over once and which you will get over one way or another, and the second is not terribly likely to happen.
I don't have a degree, and I'm the most senior and highly paid developer at my company. I won't tell you that not having a degree hasn't hurt me -- it has, mostly by making it much harder for me to get that first "real" job, and obviously, there are some companies that won't consider me. But I also do a lot of the hiring around here, and I can tell you that I don't pay too much attention to where new hires got their degree; I pay a lot of attention to prior work experience, code samples, references, and demeanor during interviews. I've worked with some people with degrees from prestigious schools who were terrible programmers and horrible coworkers, and I've worked with great programmers who were fabulous to get along with who had two-year degrees from local community colleges.
If I were you, I'd stay put. Of course, if your dad is going to foot the bill for a fancy school, you might consider it. Otherwise, the massive burden of student loans for that sort of thing might be a lot more trouble than it's worth.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I disagree.
:) ) tends to be much more pragmatic and about ability rather than titles. But I've worked with recent immigrants from various places where that is not the case -- I saw an excellent potential employee turned down because his degree was from a "second-rate" university.
I'm not saying your wrong about your experience, obviously, but I have been on both sides of the process and have seen degrees make a big difference. I've seen people with great experience lose out to people from the "right institution."
Here're a few reasons:
- Some institutions, particularly service-related companies, are vain about the statistics they can cite. I worked with a Big Consulting Company once who had a VP who would frequently state that over 25% of their employees had PhDs from Berkeley, Stanford, or MIT. I asked him what their GPAs were as a joke, but he took it entirely seriously, and told me he could find out. For companies and people like that, the image is as important as the education. Their product is design audits, system reviews, etc, so they're essentially selling confidence to other companies. They sell to upper management, not the engineers, so easily-recognized indications of quality (i.e., reputation) are important.
- Insecure hiring/HR people. It's like the old "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" mentality. It's a defensive mechanism.
- It's cultural, too. Certain cultures put more emphasis on titles and institutions than others. American culture (whatever that is
Also, people's prejudices come out in the hiring environment. University degrees are easily verified, while experience may or may not be.
And experience can be a slippery thing, too. I hired someone once who gave an outstanding interview and who had amazing knowledge of Unix development. This person turned out to be very talented, but unable to follow directions at all, or even perform the job requirements. It wasn't a lack of ability, it was an unwillingness to work with the requirements that our client had imposed. A university degree here would have been a good thing -- it indicates that someone is capable of, for want of a better phrase, being compliant and going along with the bullshit that jobs unfortunately often require. Being talented and knowledgable is not enough. You have to be able to deal with and compromise with people who are less talented, situations that are not ideal, and, as you call it, the real world.
Anyway, that's my take on it. Yes, experience is very important, but I wouldn't overlook a good degree as a tool for getting yourself hired.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
In practice, most jobs'll look for certifications and maybe a degree as an afterthought. They're not interested in your actual knowledge, they're only interested in not being held accountable if you don't work out.
Lastly, you're going to get rotten jobs, whatever education and certifications you have. Most jobs are rotten. Especially in IT, where most companies are plain stupid. Many IT specialists and generalists stick with getting a well-paid job, rather than a useful and/or productive one. There are exceptions (eg: my current employer, where a number of key people read Slashdot) but for the most part, if you want an intelligent job, you need to work for yourself.
Oh, and stay out of the military, if you possibly can, even if you sacrifice Government jobs, loans, etc. IT professionals are snobby in their own way and have far stronger ties with intellectual pursuits than grunt work (with the exception of hauling servers and running cables, though you'll notice most IT staff "let" other people do such stuff, especially in public). Also, whenever there's a call-up of reserves (as at present), businesses lose out big-time. You can't get useful work from a person fighting in another continent. Nobody is going to hire you, if they think you'll cost them more than you'll make for them.
Also, many intellectuals and many higher-end IT professionals tend to be left-of-center, non-conformist and don't follow rules (without a major internal struggle). Exactly the opposite of what most militaristic and Government-oriented organizations want. In IT, you're there to get the job done, and if the rule book gets in the way, too bad. In something like the military or the civil service, you're there to follow the rules to the letter, even if that means nothing gets done.
My advice: Get the degree (and if you can get sponsored for a Masters, even better) but don't go for a PhD. Even if (and it's a big if) you get paid more for it, the cost of the degree and the cost of not earning for those extra years will often make it pointless.
After you've got your degree, get a certification. The program itself is likely to be pretty useless, but the scrap of paper at the end of it is worth a lot of money and improved job opportunities.
Don't get a student loan, unless you absolutely have to. Sponsorship is generally a better bet, doesn't charge interest, and the demands aren't quite so obnoxious. Businesses looking for new graduates and looking to expand in the medium-term will very likely be willing to consider some sort of deal. (eg: internship over the summers, plus a guarantee that they get first-pick on whether to hire you, after you graduate, in exchange for contributing towards the costs.)
A more dangerous path - but it's worked for some - is to ignore the whole degree/certification approach. Become famous or infamous for something so spectacular that even the most dim-witted of Human Resource people will know you're in the news, even if they don't know why. Few can pull this kind of an approach off, and several of those have spent years or decades in prison (eg: Kevin Mitnick) but those who succeed often get the Really Big Money. Those who fail will never move beyond minimum-wage jobs and will eventually die in obscurity and poverty. It's about the same kind of risk as staking not only your entire life's earnings but all potential future earnings as well on the lottery.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Data point: At my Fortune-100 company, I have interviewed many candidates. I have never seen a candidate without a degree of some kind. Dunno if HR is just tossing out resumes without degrees, or people without degrees just don't bother applying.
Also, I assume some minimal level of compentency from someone with a degree. I never assume that someone with a degree from an Ivy League is better than someone with a degree from East Podunk City University. I have mysterious ways of finding out candidates' skill levels :)
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
In my opinion it depends entirely upon the type of job you're looking for. The computer field is rather messily divided between techies and intellectuals. It's a bit of an open system, with people migrating in both directions, and considerable overlap, which disguises the fact there there are, in fact, two camps.
Degree or no, fine school or barely adequate, you're going to start life as a techie. Welcome to the help desk, cubeville, or low-end development. Your geek-badge and a love of white-collar slavery is your passport to this world. And thus begins the journey. . .
You will gain experience, confidence and skill, and begin to be promoted. You will (hopefully) gain a reputation in your chosen fields, and garner the laurals of a job well done. You begin to plan a career path. Somewhere around Sr. programmer (substitute DBA, Network Admin. or Sys Admin as appropriate) something unexpected happens.
You see, at the upper end of "applied technical knowlege" there is a fork in the upward path. The broad road leads to middle management, and God help the poor souls who venture there. The narrow path leads to "think tank" positions.
It's true, most large companies have one or more senior geeks doing funded research, planning strategy, or generally dispensing wisdom on demand. They really do exist, but you don't see them because they live in the nice office building in corporate headquarters not in the programming shack.
Here's the important bit. These guys are hired for their brains, and to join the club you need to have the sort of broad-based understanding the almost inevitably comes from a top-notch college education. A B.S. gets a distainful sniff, but the doors gape wide for the ivy-league Ph.D's, and may open for an M.S from a solid school with a bit of persistance.
The self-taught crowd will howl and cry that it's not fair. They can program as well or better than their pedigreed peers, they have probably built an open-source terminal emulator, and they've labored in the same trenches, side by side for years. However, in reality, very few people teach themselves calculus, computer theory, materials science, economics (and don't forget ettiquite) with the level of rigor demanded by these positions. This is where the four, six or eight years of studying that "useless theory" becomes useful, even necessary.
I'm a self-taught techie with several certifications, facing this division. I'm 40 years old, and a Sr. DBA for a large firm, making a good salary -- end of the techie line. I've been courted for managment positions, which I don't want. I've got three B.S. and one M.S. degrees in various sciences, all from good schools, but no C.S. degree.
Over the past two years I've taken several C.S. classes from a good school - algorithm analysis, advanced data structures, automata, etc. I'll probably get an M.S in a few years, and maybe a Ph.D. after that, but more importantly, I'm learning all the little details that differentiate a computer scientist from a competent techie. There IS a differance, after all.
We have a winner. Where you go to school matters! The better the school you go to the better chance you have of getting a good entry-level job in your field which, in turn, jump-starts your career IF, and ONLY IF, you take advantage of this opportunity. Where you go to school is NOT a permit to rest on your laurels for the rest of your life. (Unless, of course, you dropped out of Harvard and started a small software company in Redmond, WA...or whereeverthehellmicrosoft was founded.)
Also, college is not a vocational school. College is an evironment where people hone their skills at critical thinking and reasoning (and socializing, but that's a different discussion.) You choose your vehicle to do this by picking a major that INTERESTS you. I know quite a few English and History majors that were pulling in $100,000+ per year two years out of college as analysts for Wall Street firms.
Where did I go? The College of William and Mary.
What did I major in? Chemistry.
What do I do now? Not Chemistry. I'm in IT and do project management for large, global infrastructure projects.
While where you went to school won't necessarily get you the job, it will improve your chances of getting your resume looked at.
Granted, I never really leveraged where I went to school, even for my first job.
--Mike
I got my degree in CS from a state university. The most important thing I did for my career during my !4 years in school was sign up for the internship program. I interviewed at 4 large code-mill-type insurance companies and 1 state agency. I ended up getting a job at the state agency and thinking that I wasn't a good enough programmer to get a "cool" web programming job at Aetna or ING. For the most part that was true as is the case with many recent CS grads. CS doesn't make you an out of the box coder. Once I learned the technology I needed to solve business problems, I was on my way to my current job as a statistical analyst/programmer. I solve problems and CS was important for me because I did't have an innate ability to do this otherwise. Some would argue, and quite validly, that experience is key and I have to agree with them. So, stay where you are, land an internship or co-op or volunteer to write some apps for a non-profit, and you will be on your way. The average cs/programmer/code monkey changes jobs so many times that it is important to note that it is the last one that you have that will matter, not the first. Put yourself in a position to choose that last one and make it something you love to do and are compensated well for. I think you are well on your way right now.
--Always, I mean never..., No I mean always check your references.--
It seems like most of my classmates I've kept in touch with are software engineers, yet none of us majored in computer science. We have a philosopher, linguist, biologist and geologist among us. The dot.com boom, bust, and outsourcing fad seemed to pass us by.
I took some "trendy" courses in the business school (Course XV) and core theory courses (Course VI-1). The former long became obsolete, while the latter are still useful.
However, once that door is opened, the rest is up to you. That is, 1) your work experience, 2) the rate you adapt and learn, and 3) your attitude and personality.
I am in a Fortune 500 internet company (market cap = US$50B) and everything I learned about technology (SQL, OLAP, datawarehousing) I learned on the job.
Caveat: I am not a programmer and my degree is a BS in chemisty and Asian Studies.
(Liberal arts grads can go blow).
These are not hard and fast rules but the reason I'm being so stringent is that there are still lots of monkeys out there who think they can code (you would not believe the number of "Java programmers" I've interviewed who can't write an equals method). I don't have time to interview everybody. So, a good CS degree at least suggests the candidate has some formal training in analytical thinking and weeds out those who jumped on the dot-com gravy train in the late nineties.
[BTW, I don't have a CS degree but a good physics degree from a good University. Despite being in the industry for nearly 10 years, I sometimes wish I had that CS degree...]
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
While the source of the degree (and sometimes the degree itself) likely matters little, a college with an excellent CS program is more likely to prepare you and teach you useful things you didn't know you needed/wanted to know.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I do not have a degree.
I have been working without interruption for 15 years now.
And I have interviewed and be part of interview processes in many occassions.
The reaity is that the context is king. In some places they could not care less about your university degree or the school you come from.
In other places they did actively filter people from well known universities. In yet other places it was the other way around.
The only thing in common is that people had to demonstrate they knew their field, and the only case in which many places got really punctillious was in assesing skills (ridiculously complicated tests).
Very rarely you have two guys that, once properly assesed, score equally (if you are assesing the candidates properly that is, if you are just fooling around, then yes, paper may win, but I have seen in several occasions managers that lived to regret such carelessness).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Just a little side note: I went to a university known for having a good business and data processing curriculum. I took my first job writing in an obscure language for outdated mainframes. After about 2 years, I thought I'd look for a job doing what I really wanted to do, and the conversations with recruiters usually went like this:
Me: I'd like to start working as a game developer/engineer/etc...
Recruiter: Well, I see you've got many skills listed on your resume. But, what experience do you have as a developer/engineer/etc...?
Me: (sheepishly) Well, none - but it's something I'd really like to do. I've done some work on my own and read up on the subject quite a bit.
Recruiter: Well, that's nice and all, but my clients are going to want someone with solid experience... Would you be willing to take a job writing in COBOL instead?
You see, my mistake was twofold:
The perception problem is very real. If you stay at a lackluster school, you will neither get a good education, nor have a good career - at least not without a great deal of effort. Having a few years in an given technology tends to pigeon-hole your career prospects, and you might find yourself unable to find a position doing what you want to do if you don't get in with a good company right after graduation.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Computer Science is a very young discipline compared to other engineering disciplines. This explains why there are so many computer scientists / software engineers who do not have a degree, did not go to college and yet have highly successful careers. This is characteristic(sp?) of young disciplines. Ignore it.
CS itself is getting older, more mature. People are starting to understand that just knowing how to hack doesn't quite cut it (always). In short, going to a college and getting a degree in CS never hurts (as opposed to not getting one, not opposed to getting one in some other engineering field).
If we agree to the above - ie we must get a degree in CS or EE or math or something related, we question where we must get it from. College degrees are not pieces of paper that open the door to getting a fat job. This is one of the perks for sure, but there are others. They open the door to contributing something for the betterment of humanity (by doing original research), they open up your mind by forcing you to interact with peers who are often better than you. No matter what your job, you will fall into a mental rut as compared to school. A school is only as good as the students that study there. The students are what makes the MITs and Stanfords of today - not the professors. If the professors were getting sub-par graduate students to work with or sub-par peers they'd leave.
This is why it is absolutely essential to try to go to the best possible school you can go to. You will get exposed to things that you never were exposed to. You will learn new things from both professors and students alike. You will take part in activities that will challenge your mind in multiple dimensions - something quite unparalleled in the "real" world.
And you never know - you may want to do research for life. You may want to go on for a higher degree. In all these cases, the better school always wins. You can get by with going to a lower school - in fact you can "get by" with not going to school at all. But our purpose in life is not to just "get by". The whole point is to do something great - something that you can point your finger to 50 yrs down the line and say "I did that and changed they way people think / do something". Always strive for the best.
That's little dick syndrome. The "real worlders" always think that experience is the only teacher. I'm not a huge fan of the non-degree folks I've worked with. Some are very good. The majority have wacked out egos because they don't have a concept of the field as a whole, just their little piece, which makes them overestimate their knowledge and ability. The ego thing is also because of the inferiority complex they have because they didn't go to school. So they sit around and poo-poo school and all that book learning that the kids have, slap themselves on the back for not going that dead end route.
I've also worked with fresh faced grads that couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. Or have the first job ego: "I produced something that actually works, I'm awesome!" And anyone who uses goto in anything but the most brain dead of situations gets a swift kick in the junk. I don't give a shit who the person is, someone is going to have to read that code, goto generally doesn't help.
The school you go to....
- undergraduate - doesn't matter .
- graduate - matters, especially for an MBA
- PhD - is everything
Hope that matters.RoundTop
What have we learned from the real world but that the truth between two options is the grey compromise?
Experience will trump education on a job-by-job interview, but consider what happened in the post-dot com boom, you NEEDED a CS degree. They wouldn't even consider you otherwise, unless you had a direct inside connection.
In times of plenty and demand for workers, education pales to the immediate need for experience, because they can always hire someone else if you don't fully pan out.
In times of lean, when companies need good people to fill their positions, they can be pickier, and you'll be interviewing against people with equivalent experience, and they will be more thorough with the evaluation. That's when education comes into play.
As a CS major (bachelor's only, not an ivory-tower PhD) who has dealt with many a non-CS IT worker, the difference in ability between those who took Computer Architecture, Algoritms, and Operating Systems versus those who just learned C or C++ on the job or in a night class is huge. Unfortunately, it's difficult to communicate on a resume, but on an actual ability standpoint, it will resonate, and that will build you a local network of people that respect you, and that will get you future jobs.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.