Re: University Reccomendations

On Wed, 25 Apr 2012, Nathan Hamiel wrote:

> Honestly this model is dead. It's all well and good for people who have
> been in the workforce for quite a while, but what about future students?
> They can't get experience because they can't get hired. You can't come
> straight out of high school and get a job in technology. It just doesn't
> happen anymore. This isn't the 90's ;) What company do you know that offers
> on the job training? Those programs got cut back when the big drop
> happened. I mean, is it even possible to get an AOL tech support job
> anymore? Comcast? I'm guessing if so, the number of positions have fallen
> drastically. Our society has become much more technology savvy rendering
> much less need for positions like that which honestly did help people break
> in to technology careers in the past.

I have to say that I agree with this.  Like Nathan said, this isn't the 
90s anymore.  While I was earning my bachelors in CS from 95-99, I 
noticed that several fellow students decided that they didn't like formal 
education and dropped out to become system admins and network techs.  And 
that's fine.  They didn't have experience, but they had some raw talent 
and a willingness to learn.  And many are still working in the IT field in 
rather senior positions.

These days, I don't think that is such a wise approach to a career in IT. 
I'm sure there are IT shops out there with some need for the new tech of 
the month, but the majority are interested in the basic infrastructure 
expansion and maintenance.  Backups.  Mail-server maintenance. 
Troubleshooting.  Account creation/deletion.  Security.  IT is usually not 
the core competency of a company.  It is a cost center, like secretarial 
and janitorial services.  It is necessary, but it doesn't directly 
generate profit for the company.  IT costs the company money, so a company 
is going to minimize the amount spent on IT.

IT professionals are never happy about this characterization.  After all, 
if the infrastructure fails, the business grinds to a halt.  But, much 
like the phone company, nobody thinks much about them until service fails. 
This a the major downfall of being in the IT industry.

Back in the 90s, IT WAS a profit center for many companies.  ISPs were 
popping up all over.  Large companies were developing infrastructures for 
web business and customer interaction.  The service being sold WAS IT. 
There was a shortage of good people to fill in the niche with newer 
technologies, so anyone good enough could potentially slip in and begin 
building a career.  These days, IT services are a commodity.  If you've 
got people with bachelors and masters degrees trying for these same IT 
jobs that you are, companies are going to go with them if the cost to them 
is the same or only marginally higher.

Another thing that has bothered me for years is how people without degrees 
rail about how worthless they are and a waste of money.  I think they 
protest a bit too much.  I understand that some may have made a career for 
themselves without a degree, and that's great!  But, I think that requires 
a bit of luck in addition to talent.

I've actually been a hiring manager at a few different companies, one of 
which was in Jacksonville.  I have hired a few developers from the 
Jacksonville area that did not have degrees.  They were a little rough 
around the edges, but I spent time working with them and helping them to 
fill out their skills a little.  I've also interviewed plenty of people 
without degrees that were just plain awful.  Seriously.  Many had a 
know-it-all attitude with half a dozen unfinished personal projects and 
the "a degree is a waste of time... I'm a self-starter!"  attitude.  I did 
my best to look beyond the personality and judge their merit based solely 
upon technical ability.  They just didn't stack up very well.  They talked 
the talk, but didn't walk the walk.  And I wasted dozens of productive 
hours conducting interviews.

For those that I did hire, I spent my own time working with them and 
providing training.  I was investing my own time into their personal 
growth.  I believe that that sort of investment into a company's employees 
is very much the exception, rather than the rule.

What my anecdotes boil down to is that there are people out there without 
degrees that are VERY good at what they do.  But, they are buried among 
the large number of applicants with mediocre talent and an inflated sense 
of their own ability.  From an HR perspective, why waste all the resources 
sifting through all that when you can just use an associates/bachelors 
degree or "five to ten years experience" as a filter?

You can make the argument that HR is just being lazy and not considering 
viable candidates.  Then again, when was the last time you put up an open 
job posting and received 250 resumes that needed to be considered?  Hell, 
I was pulling my hair out over sifting through 50 of them, setting up 
interviews, and spending dozens of hours interviewing.  HR, and the 
managers that they represent, are not interested in what a unique 
snowflake you are.  They just want to put a body in a chair that can do a 
job for a minimal amount of money.

If you can get a job without a degree, awesome!

If you can accumulate enough experience that no longer having a degree is 
a consideration, awesome!

If you start your own business and it is successful, awesome!

But, if you'd like to stack the odds in our favor a little bit and make 
the process of developing a career a bit easier, consider getting a 
degree.  To any naysayers that believe that a worthless $40k piece of 
paper to bypass HR is a tremendous waste, please remember that that piece 
of paper has a non-trivial education that kinda comes along with it.  And 
if you are a self-starter that is capable of so much without a degree, 
then certainly you're taking advantage of the facilities and faculty at a 
university or college to learn lots of current market skills on the side 
while you're there, right?

Please understand that I am not a degree snob.  I'm just providing 
anecdotes based upon my experience in the tech industry in markets in 
Florida, New York, and California.  There are a lot of crap people out 
there looking for jobs.  I've seen talented people without degrees, and 
I've seen awful people with degrees.  Based upon my observation of 
hundreds of IT and engineering employees, the biggest indicator of 
future success in their jobs was the following:

Those that had a degree, enjoyed what they were doing, and had made the 
most of their time at college (side projects, internships, research 
projects, networking with others, etc.) were the most likely to be 
flexible, quick to understand new technologies, and successful in the 
long-run.


Andrew

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