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How Valuable is a Minor in Computer Science?
DenmaFat asks: "I'm an IT person finally finishing my BA (in Psych) at a big state U. For a few dollars (and about a semester) more, I can also minor in CS. I'll probably do it anyway, because I love the subject matter, but I'm wondering what the value of a CS minor is in the job market. Are there any CS minor holders who can speak from experience on this one?"
Having 5 years of experience matters more than what the exact degree is.
That said - having something that says CS on your resume will get you through a lot of HR screens. Remember for each job a company posts, 100s of resumes come in. They might phone screen 4-5 candidates and bring in 1-2. The job of your resume is to get you from the door to the phone screen.
Once you are past the HR droid - your degree doesn't matter, your technical skills do... And trust me - I can tell if you have what I am looking for, and I don't care if you have a minor in CS, a partial degree, or a degree in animal husbandry.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
This comes up on slashdot all the time. As a relatively long time (15+ yrs) non-pointy-haired boss who hires developers, the degree does not matter as much as the person. Some of my best programmers barely finished secondary school.
Common sense, the ability to work with others *gasp*, work habits, and organization skills are more important than the quality of a piece paper you bring into my office. We can teach any other skills that are required if someone is passionate enough about technology.
You should look into studying human factors engineering/human-computer interaction. Having both psych and CS/programming skills makes you pretty quickly employable, especially if you have a master's. Good luck.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
"For example, just about every engineer can hack out a FORTRAN or C program, but almost no CS people can do engineering."
and "hack" (as in done blindly with an axe) would be an appropriate description of the way many of them "program".
Trust me. I've seen code from people with what you call "real degrees"
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.