It depends on the field of study. The ones I know (including yours truly) in strongly technical disciplines such as engineering or computer science do very well indeed.:)
That said, I agree that a graduate degree should be for the love of the study, not a tool to get a job.
A "candidate" usually implies that you've passed your breadth of knowledge exams at the very beginning of the PhD program (sometimes called "first stage"). From there it's perfectly normal to take at least four years.
... strike me as an obscene amount of money to pay considering that you don't really get anything in return. Do the majority of clients *actually* pay attention to these "for-sale" certification attached to someone's resume?
When recruiting I've always been wary of those with a dozen or so "certified XXX" labels attached to their resume - I found they mostly tried to hide a mediocre technical background. A degree speaks volumes more...
Good technical people that have worked with JBoss can consult on JBoss, good technical people that have done server-side Java can consult on server-side Java, those that lack skill or background or have bought their certifications can't.
I had, in about 8 hours of preliminary work, 50% of the website and associated back-end completed and had the rest of the site roughed out for what they wanted.
Besides a plethora of reasons (e.g., they weren't being up-front with you, they worked with the other vendor before, you lacked "referenceable" experience) you leave out detail that might help suggest the cause.
From your description you whipped up a quick-and-dirty prototype - if you were to ask anyone who has been involved in full implementations, they'll tell you that the devil is in the details. In other words, wiser and more experienced heads may have noticed that you were on track to getting yourself in a heap of trouble. I've managed developers for years and have first hand experience with the fact that only a fraction of any development effort is the actual development. You have to consider the quality assurance (testing), along with the associated bug-fixing, the written specifications (i.e., design documents), the end-user documentation, the install mechanism, project maintenance staffing, technical support, etc. Software is costly for a reason.
Inexperience in estimation has flattened more startups and consultants than I can count.
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That said, I agree that a graduate degree should be for the love of the study, not a tool to get a job.
I guess terminology varies.
When recruiting I've always been wary of those with a dozen or so "certified XXX" labels attached to their resume - I found they mostly tried to hide a mediocre technical background. A degree speaks volumes more
Good technical people that have worked with JBoss can consult on JBoss, good technical people that have done server-side Java can consult on server-side Java, those that lack skill or background or have bought their certifications can't.
Besides a plethora of reasons (e.g., they weren't being up-front with you, they worked with the other vendor before, you lacked "referenceable" experience) you leave out detail that might help suggest the cause.
From your description you whipped up a quick-and-dirty prototype - if you were to ask anyone who has been involved in full implementations, they'll tell you that the devil is in the details. In other words, wiser and more experienced heads may have noticed that you were on track to getting yourself in a heap of trouble. I've managed developers for years and have first hand experience with the fact that only a fraction of any development effort is the actual development. You have to consider the quality assurance (testing), along with the associated bug-fixing, the written specifications (i.e., design documents), the end-user documentation, the install mechanism, project maintenance staffing, technical support, etc. Software is costly for a reason.
Inexperience in estimation has flattened more startups and consultants than I can count.
You won't get an answer from me. Sorry.
No need to apologize.