Some of the comments I've read here make me think that I'm living in a parallel universe. But then all I have is my own experience to go on. I got into I.T. on the tail end of the dot-com boom. I'd been coding as a hobby since the days of Z80, but after high school went into the finance industry and worked my way up to become a stockbroker.
And no, I don't have a degree and have never felt that I needed one. Even though most of my colleagues in the securities industry, and right now in the I.T. business, had degrees, my lack of a degree has never impeded my career, simply because I refuse to let it. Yes, having a degree often provides a fast-track to getting good interviews (unless I'm the guy reading your resume), but it is no guarantee that a person is necessarily better equipped to do a job than somebody without a degree. I've had just as many problem employees who are graduates as those who are not.
Anyway, I became disenchanted with the financial industry, even though I was earning a ton of money and was running a department of twenty people by the age of 28. For a few months, I took some low-paying contract work just to get my feet wet in I.T.. This worked out great for me. I ended up taking a salaried job in the systems architecture area of a major financial services company. The pay was just over half what I was making as a stockbroker, but I loved the job. I soon discovered that I had a natural flare for systems architecture, and specifically for web security concepts. I have been with the same company for five years now, and have been promoted twice during that time. I run the security architecture group, which incidentally includes graduates of some of this nation's finest schools. Given the nature of the work we do, and the extremely diverse nature of our company's technology base, my staff have to be generalists. I have no room for narrow-minded individuals who are content to be specialists in a given technology. I need people who can understand, critique and architect complex multi-platform solutions using every tool from COBOL to C#, Assembler to J2EE and VB6 to C#. As a manager, I wouldn't look twice at a resume belonging to someone who had spent ten years specializing in the same discipline. But I would look extremely closely at someone who has a diverse skillset, although I would grill them very hard on how they acquired their skills if they only have a few years' practical experience behind them. As for a degree, that's completely irrelevant to me. I trust my instincts as a manager sufficiently to judge a person's abilities simply by using solid interviewing techniques. So far, that has never failed me, although I can certainly understand the bitterness of some graduates who have invested years of their lives and thousands of dollars in a degree. The bottom line is, if I had to choose between two 25-year-olds; one with an excellent degree and two years of practical experience, and one without a degree but with seven years of proven experience, I would go with the non-graduate every time, all other things being equal.
I don't know if there is a moral to my story. But perhaps there is a lesson or two to be learned. The relevance of a degree or professional certification is generally up to the individual manager or recruiter looking at your resume. I know from dealing with other I.T. managers that there is no hard and fast rule here.
My two star performers right now couldn't be more different. One of them doesn't have a degree or a professional certification to his name, yet I hired him on the basis of raw ability and enthusiasm. He has consistently delivered above and beyond expectations. My other key person is a Russian M.I.T. graduate. Both bring different qualities to the team, but both are equally indispensable.
Take from that what you will, but that's just my two cents as one of the evil managers responsible for scanning hundreds of resumes every month.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the comments I've read here make me think that I'm living in a parallel universe. But then all I have is my own experience to go on. I got into I.T. on the tail end of the dot-com boom. I'd been coding as a hobby since the days of Z80, but after high school went into the finance industry and worked my way up to become a stockbroker.
And no, I don't have a degree and have never felt that I needed one. Even though most of my colleagues in the securities industry, and right now in the I.T. business, had degrees, my lack of a degree has never impeded my career, simply because I refuse to let it. Yes, having a degree often provides a fast-track to getting good interviews (unless I'm the guy reading your resume), but it is no guarantee that a person is necessarily better equipped to do a job than somebody without a degree. I've had just as many problem employees who are graduates as those who are not.
Anyway, I became disenchanted with the financial industry, even though I was earning a ton of money and was running a department of twenty people by the age of 28. For a few months, I took some low-paying contract work just to get my feet wet in I.T.. This worked out great for me. I ended up taking a salaried job in the systems architecture area of a major financial services company. The pay was just over half what I was making as a stockbroker, but I loved the job. I soon discovered that I had a natural flare for systems architecture, and specifically for web security concepts. I have been with the same company for five years now, and have been promoted twice during that time. I run the security architecture group, which incidentally includes graduates of some of this nation's finest schools. Given the nature of the work we do, and the extremely diverse nature of our company's technology base, my staff have to be generalists. I have no room for narrow-minded individuals who are content to be specialists in a given technology. I need people who can understand, critique and architect complex multi-platform solutions using every tool from COBOL to C#, Assembler to J2EE and VB6 to C#. As a manager, I wouldn't look twice at a resume belonging to someone who had spent ten years specializing in the same discipline. But I would look extremely closely at someone who has a diverse skillset, although I would grill them very hard on how they acquired their skills if they only have a few years' practical experience behind them. As for a degree, that's completely irrelevant to me. I trust my instincts as a manager sufficiently to judge a person's abilities simply by using solid interviewing techniques. So far, that has never failed me, although I can certainly understand the bitterness of some graduates who have invested years of their lives and thousands of dollars in a degree. The bottom line is, if I had to choose between two 25-year-olds; one with an excellent degree and two years of practical experience, and one without a degree but with seven years of proven experience, I would go with the non-graduate every time, all other things being equal.
I don't know if there is a moral to my story. But perhaps there is a lesson or two to be learned. The relevance of a degree or professional certification is generally up to the individual manager or recruiter looking at your resume. I know from dealing with other I.T. managers that there is no hard and fast rule here.
My two star performers right now couldn't be more different. One of them doesn't have a degree or a professional certification to his name, yet I hired him on the basis of raw ability and enthusiasm. He has consistently delivered above and beyond expectations. My other key person is a Russian M.I.T. graduate. Both bring different qualities to the team, but both are equally indispensable.
Take from that what you will, but that's just my two cents as one of the evil managers responsible for scanning hundreds of resumes every month.