Are You a Blue-Collar Or White-Collar Developer?

jammag writes "Some developers have gone to four-year universities, where they've also studied subjects like history and sociology, while other coders go to vocational schools and focus purely on writing great software. So why, asks a longtime developer, is there a stigma attached to not having a four-year degree, when 'blue collar' coders might be better trained? Why does the software industry keep emphasizing this difference — and generally giving better pay to four-year grads? Isn't being a developer about real skill level, not the piece of paper on the wall?"

Comments

Re:Algorithms

[pgmrdlm]

bull shit

Why is it that the fresh out of college individual has to be taught real life experiences by the person that is nothing but a VoTech graduate with 10 years experience. Why, because experience counts more.

Most individuals fresh out of college will WASTE more time trying to apply the most complicated answer they learned from school then just get the fucking job done. 9 times out of 10 I can give you a dirt cheap solution that solves ALL the fucking problems and have it done in half a day. Where some over priced fucking College graduate will spend 2 weeks performing analysis which he gives in his perfectly correct documentation. BUT HE STILL NEVER RESOLVED THE INITIAL PROBLEM.

The BEST coders I ever met were the ones that were in a particular business all their lives and then moved over to the tech side. The college boys and girls were fucking idiots that never gave a shit about what was best for the business.

I'll take someone with business experience any time over some school boy/girl who's daddy and mommy sent to school to get the fuck out of the house.