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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?"
I wear a T-shirt.
"Isn't being a developer about real skill level, not the piece of paper on the wall?"'
It's really a game of social status, education does NOT ensure someone is smarter or more skilled, it only ensures that, that person had the persistance or was a very good cheater.
Persistance and skill are often confused, the education system is really about handing out status to attempt to justify who gets jobs over who doesn't merit be damned. Anyone who believes education is not mostly about social status is not very bright.
Stopped reading here: "I noticed one of the guys who was all over the tech conversation was all of a sudden very quite." Quite what? Please put some effort in! Seriously ... ugh :(
I went to college, then to graduate school for a PhD, then did a postdoc, now run a research group.
Maybe I'm too picky :(
In my experience people who have gone to vocational schools do not have the same background in algorithms than do people who have gone to four year schools. They do not have as expansive of knowledge in data structures and sorting algorithms and the like. There are many jobs where optimizing is important and knowing which algorithm has the best run time in O() notation can be important. They may know Java, but that doesn't mean that they can code just as well. Just because someone knows how to use a typewriter doesn't mean they can write a book just as well as an English major.
If you're a hardcore code monkey, sure, the university experience might not help you that much - but it's my experience, that it's a good idea for a coder to be able to relate better to other areas of a business, and this is where the general knowledge of the longer education might come in handy.
and yeah if u did your job properly in a good school , 4 years does matter in the way u approach a problem. not neccessarily coding skills or the best way to hack a one liner, the approach and bigger picture is as important or if not more -S
Oh come on, since when did blue collar ANYTHING get paid more than the white collars?
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
The short answer is "no." But by the very nature of asking if there is a stigma attached to something you're suggesting that there is.
Like - "Do you find that there is a stigma about work ethic attached to young men with mohawks?" I have just implied I believe there is and are asking for corroboration.
I don't care what experience someone has as long as they can write great code. Google on the other hand however won't hire you unless you have a Masters or PhD.
.. but have somehow managed to break through the stigma, now working in an environment where most people have at a minimum a bachelors degree...
And as much as I hate to admit it.. I really regret going the vocational school route. While I always felt I could code as well or better than most uni grads (mainly because I got into it as a hobby long before making a career of it) I've found myself deficient in the algorithm and math stuff.
Now, in most programming jobs this isn't going to matter.. I just happened to land in one of the few jobs that is heavy in the maths. I've managed to "bring myself up" to the required level and found success.. but I think it would have been a lot easier if I'd gone the uni route.
Maybe the job requires more insight into the everyday world and it's origins than just that which can be gained from frequenting Second Life ? There are benefits to understanding the situation in which the software will be used that are only possible with experience. We all hear about how user participation is vital to making good software, but we are users too. Maybe having a good grounding in other subjects gives an insight in how to program for them. It is possible to be a good "blue collar" programmer, but only if you've got the life experience as well as the leet coding skillz.
PS. I am a blue collar programmer.
I'm a hardware engineer. You want a real engineer for some design and most analysis tasks. History and sociology don't play a part, but dedication to the profession and experience with the underlying principles behind observations are key. A two year grad, or technician, is typically very good for a subset of design, along with a whole bunch of data acquisition.
I imagine code to be the same. If you want high level stuff, architectures, in depth analysis, a full discussion of repercussions of coding choices, a 4 year computer scientist or software engineer is called for. If all that stuff is already laid out and you just need someone to type in a pile of code to do a well defined task, a 2 year would be great.
It's not necessarily the stuff learned in the extra 2 years, but the level of person it takes to invest in their future like that. The 4 year colleges provide a different group of people to "run with" and compete against. College is rarely about the classes, although they're necessary and grades are the common barometer, but it's about the friends made and the level of competition -- you need to compete with people to learn better practices.
Of course, there are prodigies who can do excellent work with self teaching, but separating them from the chaff (and overcoming their egos) is rarely worth the time in my experience.
Well, probably because computer science is one of the few places where you really go from build to design. Sure it happens that a construction worker becomes a civil engineer or architect, but it's not something that happens by itself. In most lines of work you'll often end up with people doing it some weird way because they've never learned that sort of thing, you can see it in computers too with people that never learned any design patterns and decided to invent their own - mostly poorly. Sure, proven experience beats all but if I was choosing between someone that's learned the theory and has a little experience versus someone that's been busy writing low level procedures all that time it'd be a tough call. If I could have both I'd probably ask the guy with the academic background to draft it and ask the other to sanity check it. Code can be "ugly but works" and it's not really important, people don't touch it much unless they're changing functionality. There's no such as "ugly but works" design, then it IS an ugly design that'll come back to haunt you again and again.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I think the difference in the words "developer" and "coder" are important to any argument made - If all you need is someone who's job is only to write code, then yeah, a coder is a coder. However, if you need someone who is familiar with algorithms, theory, life cycle management, requirements engineering, etc., then you probably would want someone with a four year degree. Granted, even then there is no promise that the person knows more if they are a coder/degree holder, but generally the person looking at a stack of resumes will see that one extra accomplishment, and it very well might make their decision that much easier.
Seriously, those aren't questions in the summary. It's a bunch of statements. When you frame your "questions" the way the summary did, there's not a whole lot for anyone to say. There's nothing else for me to say except to refute the basic premise of what the summary laid out.
I went to a four year college and got my degree in CS. My college is actually very prestigious but for its humanities, economics, and other non-CS related fields. I went there knowing that because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do when I started college. With that said, I did studied a lot of humanities and non-CS subjects because they interested me and my college encouraged me to explore. Nonetheless, I did study computer science rigorously, especially in the more theoretical areas such as graph algorithms and triangulation/localization algorithms. The way the summary is written, it made it sound like people like me don't know what a big-O notation means or what a pointer is. That's really unfair. If someone mistreats you because of your two year degree, the right approach isn't to denigrate people with four year degrees.
I've been in the industry for a while. The times when the degree matters is when the recruiter go searching for candidates. They search for skill sets but also for specific groups of schools when hiring interns or new college grads. Why? It's based on the perception that those who go to prestigious schools tend to be fairly intelligent because the schools themselves do a good job of weeding out bad students. It doesn't mean all students from those schools are good nor does it mean people who go to two year schools are bad. You have to think of it in terms of probability and inference. With that said, schools pay a role mostly when hiring for NCGs and interns. For experienced candidates, we usually don't even bother look at that. In fact, most candidates put that information last on their resume and we glance at it at most. The most important part is the ability to solve problems and write good code.
BTW, the article itself is pretty horrible. It doesn't even say anything of value. It's just a bunch of guys arguing and being judgmental. Grow up.
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Isn't being a four-year grad about having gone to college for four years, not the piece of paper on the wall? Like you said, they study other things like history and sociology.
[1] once observed: the best way to select a candidate is to throw all the CVs (american: resumes) into the air. The one(s) that stick to the ceiling get hired. After all we want "lucky" people working here.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
This is the kind of story that will bring out the worst in Slashdot. It has it all:
Slashdot, what the hell happened to you? You used to be interesting and hot, but you gained 400 lbs and started smoking crack. You've really let yourself go. I don't think I can do this anymore. It's hard to say, but I don't love you anymore.
People who have a university degree are generally more likely to be smarter and more skilled. No, it's not a guarantee; there are plenty of stupid people with degrees out there and there are plenty of really smart people out there without degrees. But what is a guarantee is that if you get a roomful of people with degrees and compare their skill and ability to a roomful of people without degrees, all other things being equal, the people with degress will do a better job.
Also, keep in mind that rare is the job that is only about coding. When I was a developer, my job also entailed things such as writing documentation, holding training sessions for other developers and users, basic accounting and budgeting, and so on. Non-coding things I learned in college while earning my degree are useful skills that I do use today, not just how to write some subroutine. Yes, even social skills you seem to have disdain for come in useful, because I actually work with other people, not just holed up with a computer.
Persistence is a skill. By completing your degree, you have demonstrated that you are willing and able to achieve success with long-term projects, including handling things that, at the time, you might not be overjoyed in having to do. You've also demonstrated the ability to learn new things to at least some minimal degree (no pun intended) of competence that might be outside of your familiar bubble of knowledge.
A college degree doesn't just demonstrate what you've learned, it demonstrates the ability to learn. If I'm hiring someone, I certainly want them to be able to do the job I hire them for, but I also want them to be able to quickly and effectively pick up new things that I might have to throw at them someday.
I'm not saying that a college degree is the most important factor in hiring. Personally, I'll value experience any day. Given a choice between hiring a 10-year veteran of something versus someone who has only been doing it a year or two, I'll take the veteran any day no matter who has a college degree. But a college degree is important. If experience is more-or-less equal, I'd take the college graduate over the non-graduate every time.
I'm a blue collar developer but I had some CS in college pursuing a degree in English. Somehow I managed to BS my way into a graduate class on computing theory which I have to say was the most valuable education I've gotten in my life. Even if you do not get a degree, you will be richly rewarded if you make an effort to educate yourself.
I would recommend:
a) learn classic data structures. learn binary trees, learn hash tables. throw away the pre-built collections you get and try building them yourself. You'll gain a better appreciation of what your libraries do and a real sense of which might be appropriate.
b) learn some formal information theory. Learn what Big O notation means and understand the difference between O(1) O(n) O(logN), and so on. If you want to be a real snob, try and learn some set theory, at least relational algebra, and then you'll really get a grip on how to use a relational database effectively, and understand why things are the way they are.
c) I would highly recommend dabbling in assembly language. Writing snippets of code in assembly language is not that hard. You just have to be organized about what you do and keep track of things yourself.
d) If you want to get into it a bit more, it would not hurt to read Turing's classic paper where he defines the Turing machine. The thing about Turing and indeed, a lot of the foundational papers by the greats in computer science, is that they are remarkably readable.
e) Have a crack at an NP complete problem, just write a code to solve one, then ask yourself why, it is so ridiculous, and then read up on that.
f) Try and do a little bit with fractals. Write a mandelbrot set generator... Everyone does it.
All of those things are great things for any developer to do. Indeed, whether you finish college or not, your education in computer science should be a lifelong thing. Like any field, challenging yourself with problems solved and unsolved will not only make you a better programmer, but also, to some degree, a better human being. Your formal training is only the beginning of your obligation to educate yourself, lifelong.
This is my sig.
As would realising that nowhere is one word.
All developers are blue collar. Programming is the IT equivalent of brick laying, it's a trade, not a profession.
Professions have legal status; Doctors, lawyers, accountants have to be certified and approved.
Deleted
Generalizations. The foundation of rational decision making with limited information.
I think blue collar and white collar is a poor analogy in some ways but I'll use these labels as the article has.
It's not a perfect system. There are some wonderful blue collar developers out there and there are some crappy white collar developers. This is like any other situation where you're trying to sift through garbage to find gold, and yes most developers of either type are garbage as it's a young chaotic discipline that is poorly practiced. The task is monumental and you need to take any statistical boost you can to lower your odds of failure. So managers use things like 4 year degrees and certification, and world of mouth and interview and 100 other things into account trying to limit the field. Does that mean they throw away some great candidates or underpay/value others yes but it's the only strategy they believe is available to them given the amount of garbage out there? Sure. I would in fact argue that our selection techniques are so inadequate that most places ensure they're going to have below average IT because it is about limiting risk of failure in most places. Additionally since most developers are crap you're getting below average developers from a pool who's average sucks (even the really smart ones have so many issues such as being arrogant about their ideas, being socially inept with the customer, not wanting to consider time and money as part of technical decisions, believing if they didn't invent it it's useless, etc)
That said, I do think that the GOOD 4 year degree does serve one important function in CS. It teaches how to think at a conceptual level about problems rather than just coding/programming where as training generally just teaches you the mechanics. Hence hiring good developers with a classical style education has it's benefits in that it increases your odds of finding a conceptually talented person who may one day serve as an architect or senior developer. None of this says a person who doesn't have a classical education can't do this just that fewer do.
Our field is not the first to have many of these questions asked and it won't be the last. It's the classical difference between education and training. Education is supposed to teach you how to think while training is supposed to teach you what to do (or think). Our education is broken and has become mostly training instead of education unfortunately which leads to the value of an education being lessened and sometimes nonexistent and hence conversations like this arise. That doesn't mean that there isn't some seeds of education still buried in there and that does give the 4 year graduate a statistical advantage across a large sample of them.
So I guess it comes down to the following. Would I use it as a measuring stick on which person to hire into what job? Probably because I can. In the absence of an exceptional candidate (and by definition exception doesn't mean every slashdot member who thinks they are the heir to Donald Knuth) for a job I think requires conceptual level thinking and problem solving I'll take the statistical boost.
On the other hand I don't think I would use it in any way to manage performance of those I had hired. At that point I believe I have far more relevant data related to actual job performance and an unlettered developer who shows he is much better at the conceptual pieces has a much better chance of filling my next open architect role than a lettered developer who is unproductive, bad at conceptual thinking, or just all together useless as a practical matter and the current state of our educational system will ensure I get my fill of those guys too. I'll also get my fill of "I learned it myself and I'm better than those who didn't" cowboys too and they're usually just as bad as the others. In the end you do your best in job hiring but the real place you have leverage is in performance management, training, and culling of folks after the hire and managers who don't understand this are setting themselves up for failure..
I don't have a four-year degree, in CS or anything else. Most of my time working as a programmer, I've worked with people, most of whom had degrees (usually CS or math or physics, sometimes something else). There was a time when I was a team lead, and both people working under me had degrees.
I never found it to be a problem for my career, or when interacting with my teammates. Judging by everything that I've seen, the general perception in this industry is that good experience and knowledge always beat formal education.
There isn't much you learn in university that you can't learn by reading books.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Give me someone who can understand systems beyond just lines of code on a page. I come from the systems arena. It surprises me the number of CS students, with 4-year degrees, that can't set up a simple web server. I've had the best luck with folks who had a 2 year degree, had worked as a technical grunt for a couple years, and then are going on for a 4-year degree. They tend to have the right combination of experience and motivation. For whatever reason, they seem to enjoy toying around with systems, and when they learn something in the class room they can apply to their job, they're excited.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I don't have a degree or 2 year certificate or anything. And yet I've been doing software development for the past 30 years. I'll never work as an employee for large companies or governments but then I couldn't stand the culture anyhow. I learned to program at the local college while in high school on punched cards. Programming is a passion.
I am in my later 40s. I have been in "high tech" since the early 1980s.
I do not have a degree.
I built my first computer in the 1970s.
I learned the concepts of computer science from an old navy programmer in high school. (in the late 70s)
When I entered the software industry, computer science was considered a math. In many ways, it is just an expression of a series of non-linear calculus equations, only with a different set of languages to express it.
I wish the industry were heading in a different direction, but stupid people who think a degree means "learning" have infiltrated the profession. Here's the problem: 25 years ago, you had to be smart and know your shit to work in the industry. Smart people understand that learning is a personal process and no piece of paper can substitute for innate curiosity and a drive for learning. It is the stupid people who barely get through college, barely retain anything they've learned, but managed to acquire a diploma, think, like the strawman from the wizard of oz, that they are now smart. It is these people that become the gatekeepers in the industry. It is the childish and oblivious value they put on the meaningless diploma that harms the industry. Smart people who know what they are doing are passed over for frat boys. The more of them there are in the industry, the more the industry will tend to go in that direction.
It should be sobering that most of the most meaningful developments in computer science have come from smart people who never learned anything about computers in school.
When I interview guys from supposedly good technical schools, and ask them how hash tables work or what a "call gate" is, I get a blank look and the response: "Why do I need to know that?" Anyone that has ever uttered that phrase, "why do I need to know that," is an idiot and should not work in any profession that requires knowledge.
When I was younger, computer science was the science of solving problems on actual computers. It is an interesting science as "real" computers have limitations. Understanding the limitations and operation of the computer allowed you to come up with interesting algorithms. The most used algorithms of our time have come from this type of thinking. These days, you'd be hard pressed to find a computer science grad that actually has any sort of clue about how real computers work. They don't understand why there are signed and unsigned integers and think that pointers are "bad."
So, blue collar or white collar? It doesn't matter. The idiots are running the industry. Moronic MBAs are coining buzzword phrases like "AGILE" development, and generally making the software industry a hopeless idiocracy.
This is an over-simplification, but take a look at the cognitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy. It lays out 6 "levels" of learning: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The reason universities require classes like calculus and liberal studies for a computer science degree is they strengthen your abilities in the higher aspects of learning: analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. 2 year degree programs focus primarily on knowledge, comprehension, and application.
Does this mean those with 2 year degrees can't be competent, even exceptional programmers? Not at all. Most day to day programming work doesn't require more than application, with a little into analysis for debugging. Additionally, those with 2 year degrees are often better than university graduates in those areas for a specific toolset, because they've spent more focused effort on it. These are the people we all know with encyclopedic knowledge of APIs. They know every little detail of the standard libraries they use. They know every little compiler quirk along with its workaround. They often code faster than university graduates because they don't have to look as much up.
Ironically, it requires good evaluation skills to see the value of the top three levels of learning. The things you learn in calculus or anthropology don't help much in just applying knowledge of a specific toolset to a specific set of requirements, which is what we spend most of our time doing, but it does help tremendously in the ability to answer questions like, "Would google's new programming language be a better fit than what we're currently using for our next major project?" or "Is this the best way to implement this algorithm?" It's also beneficial when you have to teach yourself a new technology that wasn't covered in school.
Of course, there is significant overlap between the two groups, because schooling is only one factor in one's education, but that's the general difference.
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I'm as old as dirt. When I went to college, there weren't any computers available. By the time I got to grad school, colleges were enamored with computers. I actually took a course in BASIC in grad school, something they MAY do in Elementary School today--or not. I learned BASIC via punched cards where ">" was "GT" but, hey! (It was a CDC 6000, same computer as BG used as a teenager.) I thought it was SO COOL!!!! So when the Commodore PET came out I held fire, and when the Trash-80 came out (I loved the wafting plymers of its smell) I just waited, and when the Apple ][ came out, I splurged and by the time I got rid of it, I had spent $7,000 on it with the CP/M card, and all that stuff. And when my boss said, "I think we ought to investigate computers," I humbly suggested an Apple, and she gave me $5,000 to do it. The rest, as they say, is history. I bought one of the first IBM PC's, and by the time I retired, I had purchased several minis and probably on the order of 700 PCs. Also, I might add, I paid my mortgage writing about them for 20 years.
I say this to give background. The point is that when the computer revolution happened, I was there. I lived in it and I loved it, but I was largely self-taught. No one else had a computer at home, and so when our business needed to 'automate,' I was salivating at the head of the line saying "Me! Me! Me!" Who else could they possibly have chosen? Besides, by that time I had learned some Pascal, some dBase, some Fortran and COBOL, not to mention Visicalc. I did the CNE shtick just to try to keep up. And I did. I put in our first Frame Relay Ethernet network, then went to the class to see if I did it right. So that's how I became an IT guy.
But nowadays with the background I had, I could NEVER become an IT person because my industry, when they need an IT person, recruits for one with that amount of knowledge in education. This is simply the maturity of the industry. The same thing happened with electricity, with airplanes, and with any number of fields that simply did not previously exist. They turned from hobbies into professions. Once there was enough background material and a 'recognized body of knowledge' to turn IT into a profession, we folks who learned by doing and pulled ourselves into the field with our bootstraps, and, if I may say, BUILT IT FROM SCRATCH, became outmoded. As someone said, "any profession is a conspiracy against the laity."
I consider myself very lucky to have been able to participate in this field. When I first started there was a computer on one desk: Mine! By the time I retired there were twice as many computers as employees. My work here is done. I am grateful to a lot of people, including BG, for making my career possible. I am now happily retired with no network responsibilities at all, but still addicted to /.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I got a Commodore 64 around 1983, and got a modem soon after. I learned BASIC on it. In 1989, a friend of mine had a dial-in account on a local university's Unix and I began calling that. I always had Unix access since then. I began a job as a Unix Systems Administrator in 1996, at which time I began learning some Perl, and later, some PHP. In 2000, I had a lot of free time and sat down and shored up my C knowledge more than I had already.
In 2006, I went back for my CS degree. I have learned a lot that I had not learned in the proceeding 23 years. I learned C++. Despite all my experience, I had no idea what a constructor was before taking a C++ class. I learned Java, to where I have sent implemented patches to some major free software Java programs. I learned assembly language and programmed in it. I learned computer internals, DeMorgan's Law and how to create a two's complement binary calculator with AND, OR and NOT gates. I learned about big-O notation. One of my teacher's is an old-timer, and he really showed us how recursion and back-tracking could be used on a whole host of programs - it was really impressive how powerful these tools can be on a whole host of problems.
I have interviewed people, and have been interviewed, dozens, maybe hundreds of times. The world is full of programmers and administrators who know the basics of how to code, and only learn minimally when they have the job. Once in a while you meet people who really want to understand everything and almost seem to actually understand everything about what we're doing. Amidst a whole bunch of interviewees they really stand out - if they are somewhat normal and seem like they'd do the work, they're almost a guaranteed hire.
Also, on the other hand, do you want to look at yourself as a wage slave who knows the minimum to get by, or a craftsman who understands his work, even if he happens to be a wage slave? You can get caught in a trap of thinking that spending time learning is only benefiting your boss, but really your bosses will win either way, if you just consider yourself a cog in the machine, they've won in another way. People should take pride in their craftsmanship, even if the management doesn't.
As someone who has taken both a 4 year CS degree at a University and gotten a 1 year certificate at college I can offer the following perspective.
It depends on the school. The university I attended wasn't exactly well known for CS, but I think did a decent job. Some with more of an emphasis is CS will defiantly do better, while others will be much worse. College or vocational schools whatever you call them, are they same way. If you go to one that its focus is CS, it will likely be pretty good, if it isn't, well it will likely be very very bad. It depends of people. People are different, some are smart, some are not, others are lazy, and some have good work ethic. A 4 year degree gives at least some reassurance to an employer that the person is not dumb and lazy. It is by no means a sure thing, but it will weed out a lot. A challenging college or vocational school can do the same thing, in a short period of time, but I would say that you would have to know specifically which schools, and they would be few in number.
I found personally that University taught me how to write good code correctly, and college taught me to write code. Mind you the college was not a CS college. They were concerned about memorizing syntax (C++ and VB in this case) and getting your code to work than anything else. In university I might get marked for how optimized my code was, or if I used things like recursion properly. They also stressed the little things, like commenting, documenting, and planning (though I remember like many making my pretty little charts AFTER finishing the program). In college, so long as it worked there were pretty happy.
So I don’t see anything out of the ordinary that people with 4 year degrees generally get paid more or hired more than people that don’t, its pretty common sense. Does that mean that they are better at coding? That depends on you definition of "better at coding". That also assumes that all they ever want you for is coding. If they are looking for someone for the long term, as a company asset it is one thing. If they are looking for someone to fill a "job" then that is something else entirely.
Anyway, I think everyone should do both, though I know that can be a tall order.
If the information is too limited the decision is fallacious.
Hasty generalization...
An inductive generalization can be valid but there has to be enough information for it to be considered so.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
they cant define their place and use in modern business structure, they cant tell you exactly how reliable are their methods, there arent even any widely accepted and practiced accurate methods to use in that field.
instead, they invent various stuff to justify themselves, apart from the salary handling job they do. one of these is the hirings. because this 'department' lacks valid tools, the foremost thing they rely on is the 'education' history. they determine 'requirements' to be eligible. degree from this, degree from that, this much experience, that much shit. in the end they end up refusing usable employees, and stacking up on 'career' people, who take their own careers and their own personal standing more important than anything else.
a friend of mine here, a software engineer himself, had just completed the year 2000 transition for the systems of 2nd biggest insurance company, and then set out to look for another job. he applied to the nation's largest insurance company. the company's it manager went berserk - he was exactly what they were needing ; there was only a month till year 2000, much work to be done, and the person who he was interviewing (my friend) was the person who did exactly what he needed just a few days ago.
BUT.
the insurance company belonged to a big bank. and, the human resources department they were using was the bank's. (it was central to all subsidiaries). so, as a formality, he had to send him to the hr of the bank.
but thats not all there's to it. that bank im speaking about is the largest, biggest bank in my country. and its insurance arm is the biggest insurance arm, insuring a lot of business fields and individuals.
if a single glitch happened in the insurance company's systems, due to the work not being done in time, due to the self justification needs of the MORONS in that bank's hr department, it would be a major crisis in the country, causing god knows how much damage. leave aside the public image of the insurer and the bank.
in another similar example, just look at microsoft. they value degrees, titles, credentials there. that's part of their company culture.
and look at how this works for them. look at the innumerable, half assed done stuff in their products, as if the programmers just wanted to do the bare minimum to get through the tasks, and get their salary and promotions. and look how this is working for a lot of our friends, relatives and our business circle, where their products are used.
that should be a good example of a monolithic, dinosaur minded, old corporate culture hampering everyone including themselves.
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It's an absolute fact that not having a 4-year degree will keep you out of some programming jobs. But, it's quite likely that those jobs it will keep you out of, are ones you would want to be kept out of in any case.