Zoho Don't Need No Stinking Ph.D. Programmers

theodp writes "When it comes to tech academic credentials, Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu has The Right Stuff: a Ph.D. in EE from Princeton. But Vembu has eschewed Google's Army-of-Ph.D.s approach to software development in favor of tapping into the ranks of high school grads who would not normally go to college for Zoho. Seeing his youngest brother succeed at programming without a college degree convinced Vembu that others could follow that example with the proper training and guidance. And studying the best employees in his own company led to another epiphany: 'What if the college degree itself is not really that useful?' thought Vembu. 'What if we took kids after high school, train them ourselves?'"

Comments

Re:No degree, bad citizen

[AuMatar]

Bullshit. I've worked with high school grads over the course of a 10 year career. I've never met someone without the degree that I'd trust to change the colors on a website, much less do real programming. The fact is that 4 years of time to focus on learning instead of working is immensely valuable, and the curriculum of a decent school is going to tell you what you need to learn that the average self-taught high schooler would never have been exposed to. And quite frankly if you don't have the focus and dedication to go through college, there's no way in hell you have it to study the same thing out of college.

Now getting a degree isn't sufficient to be a good programmer- you need hands on experience out of classroom over and above your homework assignments to learn the craft. Which is probably where the myth of the high school/college drop out comes from. But its the combination of self motivated and knowledge that's needed, and you just won't get that self taught alone. What you get instead is someone who threw together a few websites or read a book or two on C++ and thinks they can program. They know the syntax, but not the foundation. Someone with the degree but not the work outside knows the foundation but doesn't have the hands one experience to apply it well. The good hires are those who have both. And the chances of finding that in someone without a degree are slim to none.