Should Managers Permanently Stop Requiring Degrees for IT Positions? (cio.com) 214
CIO magazine reports on "a growing number of managers and executives dropping degree requirements from job descriptions."
Figures from the 2022 study The Emerging Degree Reset from The Burning Glass Institute quantify the trend, reporting that 46% of middle-skill and 31% of high-skill occupations experienced material degree resets between 2017 and 2019. Moreover, researchers calculated that 63% of those changes appear to be "'structural resets' representing a measured and potentially permanent shift in hiring practices" that could make an additional 1.4 million jobs open to workers without college degrees over the next five years.
Despite such statistics and testimony from Taylor and other IT leaders, the debate around whether a college education is needed in IT isn't settled. Some say there's no need for degrees; others say degrees are still preferred or required.... IBM is among the companies whose leaders have moved away from degree requirements; Big Blue is also one of the earliest, largest, and most prominent proponents of the move, introducing the term "new collar jobs" for the growing number of positions that require specific skills but not a bachelor's degree....
Not all are convinced that dropping degree requirements is the way to go, however. Jane Zhu, CIO and senior vice president at Veritas Technologies, says she sees value in degrees, value that isn't always replicated through other channels. "Though we don't necessarily require degrees for all IT roles here at Veritas, I believe that they do help candidates demonstrate a level of formal education and commitment to the field and provide a foundation in fundamental concepts and theories of IT-related fields that may not be easily gained through self-study or on-the-job training," she says. "Through college education, candidates have usually acquired basic technical knowledge, problem-solving skills, the ability to collaborate with others, and ownership and accountability. They also often gain an understanding of the business and social impacts of their actions."
The article notes an evolving trend of "more openness to skills-based hiring for many technical roles but a desire for a bachelor's degree for certain positions, including leadership." (Kelli Jordan, vice president of IBMer Growth and Development tells CIO that more than half of the job openings posted by IBM no longer require degrees.)
Thanks to Slashdot reader snydeq for sharing the article.
Despite such statistics and testimony from Taylor and other IT leaders, the debate around whether a college education is needed in IT isn't settled. Some say there's no need for degrees; others say degrees are still preferred or required.... IBM is among the companies whose leaders have moved away from degree requirements; Big Blue is also one of the earliest, largest, and most prominent proponents of the move, introducing the term "new collar jobs" for the growing number of positions that require specific skills but not a bachelor's degree....
Not all are convinced that dropping degree requirements is the way to go, however. Jane Zhu, CIO and senior vice president at Veritas Technologies, says she sees value in degrees, value that isn't always replicated through other channels. "Though we don't necessarily require degrees for all IT roles here at Veritas, I believe that they do help candidates demonstrate a level of formal education and commitment to the field and provide a foundation in fundamental concepts and theories of IT-related fields that may not be easily gained through self-study or on-the-job training," she says. "Through college education, candidates have usually acquired basic technical knowledge, problem-solving skills, the ability to collaborate with others, and ownership and accountability. They also often gain an understanding of the business and social impacts of their actions."
The article notes an evolving trend of "more openness to skills-based hiring for many technical roles but a desire for a bachelor's degree for certain positions, including leadership." (Kelli Jordan, vice president of IBMer Growth and Development tells CIO that more than half of the job openings posted by IBM no longer require degrees.)
Thanks to Slashdot reader snydeq for sharing the article.
Why are we even asking this question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody wants to pay to train, or put effort into retaining trained workers. H1-Bs are perfectly disposable and come with near zero training costs, and as an added bonus the influx of cheap labor depresses wages everywhere.
I'm so tired of our media gas lighting us.
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Have you tried actually hiring for an IT position?
Re:Why are we even asking this question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why are we even asking this question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Beyond that, recent CS grads also tend to know nothing of the practical engineering requirements.
CS simply doesn't encompass concerns like portability, maintainability, and robustness.
For the same reason, you shouldn't require a degree in physics from your electrician.
your electrician is union & has training with (Score:4, Interesting)
your electrician is union & has training with real skills + on the job work.
IT needs an union like that.
Re: Why are we even asking this question? (Score:2)
For an electrician today it's an advantage to have competence in computer networking and PLC programming, but there are many more things to know about too like which cable type and dimension that's suitable for which application and proper knowledge around 3-phase systems so you can know the difference between an Y and delta connection.
Re: Why are we even asking this question? (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, all true, none of which is part of a degree in physics.
I have seen what happens when a physicist tries to wire something...
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That's just the thing. CS is Computer SCIENCE. It is not computer ENGINEERING so it doesn't necessarily cover practical application.
So to top it off, employers are asking for the wrong thing.
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Re:Why are we even asking this question? (Score:5, Interesting)
What is a DevOps/IT job? Is it Development, Operations, or IT work? When I see a company advertising DevOps role, I know they probably do not actually understand what DevOps is about. I do see a lot of IT, Ops and even QE roles being "promoted" to 'DevOps', but that's quite off the mark. I do see a trend where the DevOps buzzword is being replaced by Platform Engineering, which is closer to the original intent.
As far as degrees are concerned ... I've seen folks without higher education degrees, or non CS degrees, being more productive and write better code than folks that did have 'proper' degrees. At the end of the day, experience, passion and common sense usually beat degrees.
Re:Why are we even asking this question? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most DevOps position basically mean "We want someone who can do anything we'll eventually need because we have no idea how to plan our positions properly, so let's get someone who we can plug anywhere. We don't want to pay for a specialist in three fields, though".
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When selecting individuals to interview we used a CS degree as one metric to assign a point value to an individual. There were other ways to get points like working in the same or complimentary position at a different department or company, or working in a position considered a prerequisite for the offering.
Once the candidates were ranked by their scores, they were contacted for an interview. This is where the hiring managers got to talk to the individuals about their suitability and knowledge base for th
Re: Why are we even asking this question? (Score:3)
The way we do it where I work is we have multiple employees interview the candidate one-on-one across multiple interviews. If just one says they don't like them, they're not getting the job. The answers they give don't necessarily need to be correct, it's more about how they try to solve problems. Their degree isn't that important.
When I interviewed for my current job, I straight up told them that my degree was just a token degree to get passed the HR filters. They weren't bothered by that at all.
Though my
Re:Why are we even asking this question? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a CS student. I can say that most CS students barely know how to program. They know the THEORY of programs, but not how to actually put code to compiler.
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Re:Why are we even asking this question? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh really? How can some dude in India who has never seen a computer get a degree and you cannot? And btw, the average H1B salary is $110k .. If H1B jobs don't require much skill why aren't all the people doing $50k and $60k jobs applying for those?
Try to hire for an IT job requiring decent skill and let me know how easy it is. And no, I've never hired an H1B for anything but I know how hard it is to find good candidates in software and hardware.
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OK genius, a company is going to pay someone who got their degree at a diploma mill a $110k salary? That's the premise of your argument?
Re: So I get that you're trolling (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think you meant to reply to rsilvergun, not me.
Re: So I get that you're trolling (Score:2)
I'm doing absolutely nothing of the sort (Score:3)
Now I would argue that there are some cultural issues between India and China and the United States but none of those come into play for the kind of code monkey
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Sure companies abuse H1-Bs, but they absolutely require training in a lot of cases. Why do you think existing employees are made to train their replacements as a condition of receiving severance pay? That training does come at a cost: the remaining pay of a worker soon-to-be-laid off, along with the churn of throwing out the H1-Bs that ultimately don't make the cut (which is why IT departments that do go the H1-B route often hire so many as replacements).
Of course not ALL H1-Bs are like that, but those are
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Nobody wants to pay to train
If someone lacks the ambition and organization to learn a skill on their own despite the mountains of available online resources, why should I waste time and money on them?
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That depends on the field you're trying to hire for. Hiring someone for security is a tricky thing, or as a former boss of me once said in frustration "good, available, no police record. Pick two".
Re:Why are we even asking this question? (Score:5, Interesting)
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We should not be requiring degree's from people unless they are:
1. In a position of making a life or death choice (eg a software used by vehicles and hospitals)
AND/OR
2. In a position of setting the direction of the software development (eg Google's "deprecation of JPEG-XL")
When it's just a bunch a random coders from around the world, not actually having to face the consequences of a decision, a lot of bad decisions are made because they don't see the point of implementing something or why something should o
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You might want to explain how you got from "demanding degrees where they serve no purpose" to "socialism", I think we didn't quite follow that mental leap.
Others would say, that non-sequitur.
Re:Why are we even asking this question? (Score:4, Informative)
H1-B workers don't complain about long hours. They don't complain about no bonus. They don't complain about no raise. They don't complain about a damn thing because if they complain too much and lose their job, they have a very short time to find a new job or they get shipped back to their country of origin. So while an H1-B starts at the same salary (in theory), they end up being far more cost effective in the long run.
Betteridge's law of headlines Applies partialy (Score:2)
So, yes and no. In some (entry) positions you should not ask for a degree (but the degree is a plus).
But in some positions (higher in the technical hierachy) you certainly must ask for a degree.
And make it very clear for non-degree holding employees that promotion path is dependant on having a degree...Say, once you reach a position were an external aplicant needs a degree, you have one or two positions before you required a degree for further promotions. So the internal employees can work for said degree i
Re:Betteridge's law of headlines Applies partialy (Score:5, Interesting)
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5-6 years in the industry is equivalent to bachelor degree
lol. In no way having just a CS degree anywhere near the level of 5-6 years of actual work experience. More like 6 months to a year. Masters = 10 years working experience is roflmao level sillyness
Re: Betteridge's law of headlines Applies partialy (Score:3)
What does 35 years in the IT industry make me?
Re: Betteridge's law of headlines Applies partialy (Score:5, Funny)
old
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Depends on the industry and technology you're working with. In a relevant field, it might make you the ultimate guru that sets his own price because there's like 5 in existence and 5,000 needed, locally alone.
In a field that's been dropped 5 years ago, all it does is make you old.
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There is no experience equivalence to getting a legitimate degree. Experience will teach you skills in your field. A degree will teach you knowledge outside your field. That being said, it's good to get experience in your field. But you are a more balanced individual with knowledge in lots of fields, but that might not make you a better employee but it might. I've been surprised how my "extra" knowledge from a decent college degree has been useful in my jobs as a programmer. I'm always surprised when
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What matters is "is it relevant"? Can your employer monetize your additional knowledge? If so, it will have value. If not, you may as well not have it.
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While I generally agree with the sentiment, the amount of time a degree "replaces" is a bit off in my experience.
Bacc: a year. Maybe two.
Master: 3 years. Probably five. Depending on field.
Experience trumps degree. By a margin and then some. The Catch 22 is, though, where do you get the experience when nobody hires you? The degree is the foot in the door. Nothing else.
Re:Betteridge's law of headlines Applies partialy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to start off backwards:
The quality of college education took a massive hit in the recent years so I expect more companies will loosen that restriction.
Well, if your country's level of education is a joke, that's a whle 'nother discussion; then obviously any discussion you're going to have inevitably ends with "don't get a degree."
But let's talk at least "mediocre education" here, i.e. essentially what you'd get, on average, around the world. E.g. my perspective is from a higher-than-medium but not-exceptional STEM university in Western Europe.
I've been doing IT development for decades, and some IT management in between. And the whole academia shebang.
To the point: every time I've had a smart person claim "I could've done a degree, but then I decided ... [not to for $reasons]", I fairly quickly (after mere weeks of working closely with them) that (1) no, they couldn't have despide being smart enough; or (2) if they had, some significant flaw they're having despite being smart, and which significantly impacts one key aspect of their work (even if not the main aspect) would've been ameliorated by a lot.
Take away lesson: beyond the obvious "being an educated person" argument (which is already good enough IMO), degrees -- the mere fact of going through the process of obtaining one -- have tremendous impact on your ability to do cool stuff. But here's the kicker: it doesn't even matter what kind of degree, as long as it's loosely related to what you do. You can have a Chemistry degree for IT, or a Philosophy degree for journalism, or a Religious Pedagogy degree for being an art dealer. It does tremendously impact the way you think, the way you see things, the way you perceive the depth and width of the problem space you're confronted with. People without degrees, sooner or later, turn blind to one whole class of problems that's actually relevant to their field.
Degree is eventually replaced by years of experience. 5-6 years in the industry is equivalent to bachelor degree. 10 years - masters. Whether or not degree is required for positions is a company policy.
"Experience" will cover only so much of what you actually require for growth beyond a certain point; because by its very nature, "gaining experience" after a while tends to lead you where you've already been; where you're intellectually comfortable. (I guess technically it is possible that experience will take you out of your comfort zone on a daily basis, but most of us -- everyone I've seen, actually -- eventually get really good at learning how to use experience to deliberately and constantly stay within their comfort zone. This seriously hampers their development.)
To give an example: one of the most productive programmers I've had the privilege to lead was spitting out features at a rate 2x of every of his peers. All that while I couldn't get him to learn more elegant principles of a decent API design or architecture -- he was willing to learn, it just didn't stick, no matter what he did. After he left the company, I got to see close hand how terrible his architectural and design choices were, in detail. It took us about two years of refactoring to move past mistakes he did, which made the code essentially unmaintainable. I still think of him as of a great programmer, but his abandoning it with "I tried doing an IT degree once, but it seemed to irrelevant and far away from practical use" pretty much reflects the striking lack of insight and talent he had in this particular spot.
I have many more such examples.
Re:Betteridge's law of headlines Applies partialy (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me put it this way: should we require medical degrees for our doctors? Should we require engineering degrees for our architects? Should we require our lawyers to pass the bar? Or should we stop lumping everything from tech support to programmer to enterprise architect to project manager to network engineer under the single header of "IT jobs"? Some stuff absolutely requires a degree. Some stuff doesn't. And in some cases you might get away with having experience be a substitute for a degree. Might an experienced nurse replace an entry level GP or ER doc? Maybe. But a surgeon? Not very likely. It is not different in IT, even if we like to pretend otherwise sometimes.
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Sounds about right, to some extent.
Let me put it this way: should we require medical degrees for our doctors?
True, if you have a brain tumour, who would you rather be operated by? A guy who has an actual medical degree and was trained by experienced surgeons or a guy who taught himself surgery in his parents' butcher shop?
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If we've learned anything in the last 3 years, it's that a surprising number of people will go with the guy who taught himself surgery ... but not someone so elite, having experience in a butcher shop. No, they'll go with the guy who "does his own research" and thus knows more than any surgeon indoctrinated by some woke university.
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Let me put it this way: should we require medical degrees for our doctors?
A nurse using a flowchart has fewer misdiagnoses than a doctor relying on memory.
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Let me put it this way: should we require medical degrees for our doctors?
A nurse using a flowchart has fewer misdiagnoses than a doctor relying on memory.
Citation needed.
I work with both nurses and physicians. They have almost completely non-overlapping skill sets. I would not ever want one doing the other's job, even with a flow chart. Ever.
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Vivien Thomas, the man who helped develop the surgery that fixed the "blue baby" problem, was not a doctor. He was eventually granted an honorary degree for his pioneering work.
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A degree just scratches the surface. I think it only shows that you can follow through. I learned more in the first year of work than all the years in school. My personal pet projects opened my eyes more.
I would hire someone who loves technology over someone with just a degree. I've been disappointed too often by certificates.
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I taught a programming class on the side a few times. It was for adults who already know how to program but need to know a new language or operating system. I had a student come in with a wallet full of certifications. He probably had 15 or 20. He had trouble understanding the concept of a variable. I don't think he'll ever be a programmer. I met others who were "certified" for one thing or another but couldn't solve a simple problem that should be part of their certification. In my mind, certificati
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But in some positions (higher in the technical hierachy) you certainly must ask for a degree.
Nah.
By the time people reach that level, either they have the skills or don't. The degree becomes ever more meaningless as someone's career progresses. Degrees are a great way of for many people for bringing them up to speed or giving them deeply specialised expertise, but not the only way.
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I don't know. If you're stuck on web services an don't like them... do you like programming in general?
My last job had very interesting work. I ended up doing very little of it because I knew enough about it to be a manager. So actual job was organisation, emotional support, writing silly presentations, sittings in meetings, telling other people what to do, stopping people getting in the way, truing to avoid bullshit business blather and other general shit shovelling. and maybe 5% coding.
Ask for the moon... settle for the stars... (Score:2)
One liner ob resume: I've ran business, departments, and staffs.
What the job candidate needs is to exceed (or meet) the employer's needs.
Ask high, accept low if no better options exist. Asking for a degree is that ask.
In the sysadmin, netops, itsec, infosec, and coding world I've found great people
with no degrees, a few of which used a graduacey equivalency diploma (GED)
instead of a "real" high-school graduation. Their work was superb and their
ability to communicate was awesome, and their work product ste
Re:Ask for the moon... settle for the stars... (Score:5, Interesting)
Its all over the place. I've tended to lean towards the degree , because it can be some insurance against some of the cargo cult thinking I see out of some non degree developers (ie "SQL BAD" , "Javascript is your best choice for servers" and other such ridiculous nonsense. At least the CS grads know what a database join does).
On the other hand I've also seen some absolutely appaling graduates. One we recently hired and I've grown to *deeply* regret (If it was up to me, he'd be gone, but apparently its not up to me, the boss seems to like the idiot) angrily demanded we replace the nodejs [not my first choice either but thats a different story] UDP server with a PHP(!!!!!) one,because "Nodejs doesnt scale", and he wrote the damn thing using process forking, SQL filled with string interpolations, and to my absolute confusion not a single for loop (He'd just repeat the line multiple times with deeply indented if statements to control flow. How THAT guy got a degree in *anything* is beyond me. Needless to say I'm constantly yelling at the guy to get his code fixed because its constantly flooding the error logs with absolute nonsense bugs.
Meanwhile our backend dev who didnt finish highschool is writing highly optimized C++ and python a, using reactive coding techniques , memoizing everywhere it makes sense and nowhere it doesn't, and the thing runs like greesed lightning.
But thats not to say the CS grads are all bad. We hired one guy to work on our ML stuff, and he's absolutely brilliant, a total magician. Just sitting at the back of the office doing weird math and writing code thats extracting the weirdest patterns out of the data that management has been able to run riot with and actually make *good* decisions. I'm not sure a non CS grad could actually do that. That shit requires maths.
This will play out the other way (Score:2)
While the US is lagging behind, Europe is slowly getting serious about IT security and IT quality. Writing software, planning, configuring and running systems, is an expert's game. My prediction is that for many of these, in particular software (except simplistic business logic) the requirements will go up and an MSc will be the standard requirement in the longer run.
It is no secret why IBM is dropping the degree requirement though: Cheaper workers. Nobody really expects quality from IBM these days, so they
Re:This will play out the other way (Score:5, Interesting)
Writing software, planning, configuring and running systems, is an expert's game.
And those things have absolutely zero relationship to a degree. Getting a degree doesn't convey any of those skills. Practical experience conveys those skills. A degree is just a long obstacle to acquiring useful skills.
I had been learning to write and structure software for 50+ hours a week, on my own time and dime, for five years before I even stepped foot into a university classroom. The university experience was a bunch of unnecessary required classes sandwiched between a bunch of useless required classes. They taught me nothing I didn't already know (except for math), but sucked a lot of money out of me.
The only purpose a degree serves is to convey to employers that you are so far into debt that you are willing to be treated like shit for years on end. That's the only thing they're looking for. Everything else is misdirection.
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If he'd gone to school first, he'd have spent several years not earning anything at all and probably accruing a significant amount of debt, the repayment of which would have eaten into his earnings for years afterwards. That's the reality for a great many people.
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Have you ever actually looked at academic code? I assure you, you'll find no security there.
For most of CS, security is beside the point and only serves to obfuscate the algorithm.
masters for an basic level 1 job = big loans for l (Score:2)
masters for an basic level 1 job = big loans for an low paying job.
Europe has MUCH lower costs and trades tracks (Score:2)
Europe has MUCH lower costs for getting the degree and trades tracks so that people who do better learning that way have an choice.
Its a shortcut (Score:3)
The fact that someone has a degree is kind of a shortcut to knowing some things about them.
They turned up somewhere for a few years without anyone forcing them to, and managed to complete a series of assigned tasks.
You would think its a pretty low bar, but thats where we're at.
Re:Its a shortcut (Score:4, Interesting)
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In fact, many of them frequent Slashdot, saying they don't need different perspectives, and they think they're entitled to make shoddy arguments because they're "one of the smart ones", as if being able to work computers makes them qualified to override experts in other fields.
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They turned up somewhere for a few years without anyone forcing them to, and managed to complete a series of assigned tasks.
Using that logic, anyone with at least four years continuous experience in a full-time job, especially a job in the same field, should be counted as having passed that bar.
Asking about college degrees is the wrong question (Score:3, Informative)
What I learned hiring programmers for 30 years (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been in a managerial position in a large software company for some 30 years. I very quickly learned a lesson: never hire software engineers with advanced degrees from Ivy League schools. They are useless.
These are the people who, when given a hard problem, seem predisposed to spend more time and energy explaining why it can't be done, why it won't work, why we should use whatever they learned in school. But I don't need a whitepaper about why the whole thing should be rearchitected; I need a damn solution for the customer. And they tend to get pissy when asked to roll up their sleeves and start stepping though code with a debugger.
One of the best, most dedicated, productive employees I ever had was a former auto mechanic who had joined the Army and taken IT courses. He didn't know a lot of fancy academic terms, but given a problem of any kind, he *knew* he could Make The Damn Thing Work with enough reading & tinkering. It was personal for him. He took pride in his work. It didn't matter that I sometimes had to show him a different/more elegant solution, once he had found Some Way To Do It.
Re:What I learned hiring programmers for 30 years (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What I learned hiring programmers for 30 years (Score:4, Interesting)
I had one guy argue against implementing oauth 2 in favor of his home-spun security solution. All the guys with CS backgrounds were saying to go with the oauth 2 approach since that was a tried and tested industry standard. His answer? "Well, make my solution a standard." Uh... No... That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.
The nice thing about hiring people with degrees in CS is that you know they've been exposed to a basic set of facts, can understand and work with complexity, and can put up the consistent, daily work over 4-5 years required to get a degree. Without the degree, you're gambling this person your team talked with over 2-3 hours has a similar set of skills. Keep in mind that developers typically have shitty interviewing skills since they're more comfortable evaluating machines rather than people. I'd rather have the engineer with the degree than the one without.
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Absolutely correct. And it doesn't matter what industry. I've hired programmers in numerous industries, including genetics, and I've never found a field where advanced degrees are a good indicator of programming ability.
I have developed a rule about degrees:
Experience is king.
A bachelor's degree is fine, but not required.
A master's degree is one strike against a candidate.
A Ph.D. is two strikes against a candidate.
Some candidates can overcome these obstacles, but most don't.
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Degree just not necessary for many IT jobs (Score:3)
Other than being a very coarse, high level and mostly ineffective filter for "smart people," I just don't see the value in requiring a degree of any type for many IT jobs. The relevant training can be accomplished with targeted vocational schooling and on-the-job training. Bring me someone who is honest, motivated, and willing to learn and I can teach them how to do the job.
Bring me someone with a degree who would rather be spending the day playing on an Xbox or Playstation all night and I'll take the motivated non-degree candidate every time.
There are highly skilled jobs that certainly need advanced education and certifications, but most IT jobs do not fit into that category.
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I'm not disagreeing with you on that point. However, there are other ways of demonstrating that level of commitment that don't involve going into a substantial amount of debt (potentially for a decade or more) so that DaaS (degrees as a service) institutions can profit from that unnecessary toil and the illusion that it somehow prepares a student for a job.
Best,
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That person with the degree may enjoy playing Xbox. But to get that CS degree, they spent nights and weekends working on homework while other people their age were out drinking and screwing. They know how to work and get the job done when it's needed.
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I'm sorry, a 6 week course does not provide the same level of understanding as a 4 year degree. And no amount of on-the-job training will cover the topics in the same breadth or depth.
First reasonable poster. Everyone else never went to college or went to a shit college.
No (Score:2)
First off, maybe we shouldn't decide what someone else's requirement for a job is? Personally, yeah I think a candidates body of work such as github repo, publications, commitment/love, and prior project experience is more important than a degree. A degree is basically the same as work experience. Though in fact a degree is often better than work experience .. unless we are talking about an extremely specific skill (drawing, 3D modelling, etc.). A lot of times you can't be sure what they did at their previo
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Candidates with work experience typically aren't out writing publications. They've been working at their employer doing whatever their employer requires.
Work does not provide the same breadth and depth of knowledge as what's provided from a good 4 year CS degree. Work involves repeated tasks with similar technologies. You only learn enough to do what you need. Developers rarely have the time to learn any one topic in-
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Work involves repeated tasks with similar technologies.
If you don't practice something you will end up forgetting it. All that stuff you learned in school but haven't used for the past 20 years becomes rather useless.
Degrees are the new license (Score:3, Funny)
Devs: "We don't need to be licensed. Besides, who is going to decide on the standards?"
Industry: "You're right, our bad, no licensing required."
Industry: "Devs should have a degree to insure minimal levels of competency."
Devs: "We don't need a degree if experience makes up for formal education."
Industry: "You're right, our bad, no degree necessary."
Yeah. More 21 yo leakers plz! (Score:3)
College may be daycare for 18yos, but it's also four years that allow the morons to announce themselves for all to see.
Trade schools perhaps can impart similar skills in a shorter amount of time, and still allow the morons to become visible.
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I agree trade school can have better results. but for certain subjects like mathematics, engineering, and hard science, a "trade school" format would be more intensive and probably cost more. I mean, the only difference between a trade school for physics and college is the core curriculum courses right? How many of those are there? Some English classes and history/literature. That stuff is a 1 year delay at best if not 6 months.
Re: Yeah. More 21 yo leakers plz! (Score:2)
Being an IT monkey does not require a physics degree. Or even a CS degree despite a number of (mostly but not exclusively for profit outfits) advertising their IT monkey credential as "computer science."
no. (Score:4, Interesting)
Full circle (Score:2)
Some of us have been doing this work long enough to remember when CS degrees were rare because they simply didn't exist at most schools.
Regardless, blanket questions like this one are rather silly. A better question IMO would be "should this become less common of a practice when hiring?" Otherwise you first need to make a compelling argument that a college degree can *never* offer any advantage to anyone.
time to rework the over all Degree system? (Score:3)
time to rework the over all Degree system?
Maybe we need to make the first 2 years into more an high school like thing (maybe at community colleges but at the HS costs and have trades be part of that)
Re: (Score:3)
Quebec in Canada has a standardized setup like that called CEGEP [wikipedia.org]. After high school they do either a kind of pre-university program or a longer vocational program, i think 2 or 3 years respectively.
I can't speak to the quality as I finished high school in the states and went straight to university, but it's definitely an interesting system.
Job offer for +5 years experience with ChatGPT (Score:2)
When managers start defining the job requirements..
Really? (Score:2)
A parable. (Score:2)
There are positions that require a degree and some positions that do not require a degree, and there are positions that require a degree + a masters.
So, let me enlighten you with a parable... Imagine you are in a company, say, a high technology comapny (after all, this is a news for nerds site). There are plenty of positions.
The people who design your "Pressice Processors", the people who design your "fullerdome" machines. Do those people need EE degrees? Absolutely! The people who assemble the "fullerdomes
All you need (Score:2)
No, they're looking at it wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)
One Rule to Ring Them All (Score:2)
Which position?
Which project?
Which customer?
Which degree?
Which school?
Yes - having a degree requirement as an absolute is stupid.
Everything else is being good at hiring.
degrees for IT jobs (Score:4, Informative)
had no degree and got a degree (Score:2)
I started my career as a software developer in 1994 without a degree. I did quit my job after 8 years to get a university degree in computer science and even did a master after that. Let me tell you, it did make a difference when I was designing software algorithm. How it was before I got a degree: 1- I thought I knew everything 2- I did know know how to learn and grow. I'm worth a lot more with my degrees than without. The reason I went back to school is because two great guys with master degrees was kicki
Problem solved (Score:2)
Aren't they all going to be replaced with ChatGPT within a couple of years from now?
My experience: experience counts. Having a degree is fine and it is not worthless or even low value. But I will take a guy/gal who is used to solving IT problems degree or no degree over any college poppy with a fancy degree.
I don't have a degree (Score:2)
Some of this reads like The Onion... (Score:3)
Let's start with the in-your-face silliness: How on Earth did we EVER get into a position where we're arguing about whether it's more important to have a framed credential on the wall or to have actual practical skills?
Then there's the tidbit that gave me my initial laugh: "there’s more openness to skills-based hiring for many technical roles but a desire for a bachelor’s degree for certain positions, including leadership". That's quite a gem when you think about it...apparently "leaders" continue to value a credential over actual skills when selecting others for leadership positions. Think about it [grin]
The entire subject, and the people involved, are loaded with assumptions, many of which seem untethered to any introspection. There's a lot of people with degrees making wild assumptions about other people based entirely upon whether they have degrees... which is remarkably dumb. It's quite ironic. It's not just degreed people assuming that people without degrees are lacking something, they're also assuming that those WITH degrees automatically HAVE those magical qualifications/skills/qualities. This latter assumption is sometimes worse. I've personally worked with people with advanced degrees who were complete idiots and half as capable as people without degrees or people with bachelor's degrees so new the ink was still wet on the diploma.
As the one linked article says: " employers often rely on bachelor’s degrees as proxies for other skills that graduates are assumed to possess". This is, of course, true in many cases, but it shows employers making very bad assumptions. First, today's colleges and universities have turned their backs on many of the traditional things that were presumed to make a well-educated person, so they're not necessarily getting the same things in a person with a modern BA/BS that their policies used to be able to assume. Second, there's not a convincing case made that those other qualities presumed to be associated with a bachelor's degree are actually NEEDED for most jobs. One thing is certainly true: having a simple checkbox for "bachelor's degree" makes life a lot easier for the HR folks when hiring, certainly it's easier than figuring out a candidate's actual skill levels and degree of motivation.
I'm on team 'yes'. (Score:2)
You don't need a degree to work in (most of) IT. Getting one is a waste of some of the potentially most productive years of your life and puts a huge financial burden around your neck.
What you should have to succeed in IT is something you're not getting in college or university anyway - social skills. It's far better today than when I started, but the IT geek with general social skills is often more valuable than the awkward weirdo who 'knows everything'. If you can discuss an issue with a client/user/v
Haha what? (Score:2)
"Through college education, candidates have usually acquired basic technical knowledge, problem-solving skills, the ability to collaborate with others, and ownership and accountability. They also often gain an understanding of the business and social impacts of their actions."
Haha. I'm laughing myself silly here. I can't stop. Send help.
very foolish. (Score:2)
Yes, there are certificates of which 99% are worthless. So, if we can get a single professional licensing going, in which regular schooling OR self-schooling, but passing more tests, would solve these issues.
In the mean time, far too many worthless coders out there pushing bug after bug after bug, after backdoors, after front doors, etc.
Stop feeding the colleges and it will go away (Score:3)
My first job was as an office clerk filling out order and estimate forms. The company offered tuition reimbursement and I took advantage of it, and I moved into IT positions internally before moving on to other companies and large paychecks.
Some may say times have changed, but a friend of mine's son basically did the same thing where he worked and moved into IT about 10 years ago. Our company not only offers tuition reimbursement but offers full access to Udemy and LinkedinLearning. I can take any course I choose to at any time. I can learn the latest fad tool without spending a dime or even buying a book.
Sadly, so many guidance counselors and college recruiters fail to note that it's entirely possible to go to college and never spend a dime by getting a job first and taking advantage of tuition reimbursement. They don't mention that many companies will promote from within without the degree BS if they have been paying for the college. I get why colleges don't want to mention that, it impacts their bottom line of fewer people gets degrees. But guidance counselors should be 100% behind students not running up huge debt if they don't have to.
Smart, self-motivated people don't need college. I'm not against people going to college if they can afford it. I'm only against spending my money when I don't have to.