On 04/25/2012 03:48 PM, Nathan Hamiel wrote:
I've read all the replies to this so far and I feel there's an angle that
hasn't been covered yet: Just go and learn this stuff on your own!
There's LOADS of *free* course materials online (Stanford, MIT, etc) that
cover whatever you could possibly want to learn.
The problem here is there is no proof. The knowledge you gain from those
free courses are useful, but not encompassing of what you would get from an
entire degree program. That's why those universities make those classes
freely available. Taking some online classes from MIT and having a degree
from MIT are to TOTALLY different things. Not to mention you miss out on
all of the soft skills, communication skills, and other useful pieces of
information you pick up along the way. A degree is much more than technical
knowledge alone. A degree says to an employer that you started something
and finished it. Which is saying quite a bit.
The problem here is that there is no proof. There's *so many*
completely useless individuals with college degrees that the degree
itself proves absolutely nothing. The knowledge you gain from some
school's courses *could* be useful, but not encompassing what you'd get
from actual experience. That's why having publicly-visible code on a
site like Github is so much better as a competence indicator. Not to
mention that while you're slaving away on coursework for four years
you'll miss out on all the real-world experience you could have received
in the same amount of time. An app or an open source project says to an
employer that you started something *real* and finished it. Which is
saying quite a bit.
If your concern is that employers won't consider you without a piece of
paper (degree), forget about it! Experience is far more important. I
don't have a degree and it has never caused me trouble in my (12+ year) IT
career.
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.
The model that is dead is the "degree == competence" model. Tuition
costs just keep going up and the truth is that it is a bubble and it
will burst. Just like the housing bubble and all the bubbles that came
before it. The less a degree is worth in the real world the less likely
people are to seek it and indeed, this process has already begun.
Enrollment of men in colleges and universities is dropping (apparently
degrees are more valuable to women).
I'm also going to call, "Citation Needed" for your statement that you
can't get a job in technology straight out of high school. Also, if
this truly is an untenable situation it has more to do with employers
not understanding their own needs in terms of what skills are required
to get any given job done. Alternatively, it is because IT itself has
made so many jobs just plain unnecessary.
Now I'm going to rant about businesses RIDICULOUS stances on job
skills: You're right that no one offers training anymore. Let me break
down the problem:
1) All over the news you see employers complaining that they can't find
enough "qualified candidates" for the IT-job-of-the-moment. Let's focus
on a real hot one right now: Hadoop. No one can find *anyone* with
Hadoop experience!
2) Ask one of said companies how many employees they're currently
training in Hadoop and you'll get a single answer: None! Training?
What training?
3) A logical conclusion one can make from this is that said companies
problem of finding employees with Hadoop experience is self-inflicted,
unsustainable idiocy.
Now tell me which college I can attend to *get experience* with Hadoop?
Oh wait, colleges and universities don't do that! But what about
classes that might feature Hadoop? Good luck with that!
There's something else I'd like to bring up. I call it the "layoff
formula":
1) Given that IT changes at an incredibly rapid pace.
2) Given that your employer is not training you in new technologies as
they enter the marketplace.
3) You will eventually find yourself out of a job with none of the
skills employers are looking for *unless* you are constantly teaching
*yourself* new tech.
So to put it another way: If your employer isn't training you to use
new technologies they consider you disposable *and* they're only going
to make the "lack of qualified candidates" problem worse for themselves.
There seems to be a decline in the quality of high school student nowadays
as well. They aren't learning the skills necessary for the workplace.
Community colleges and universities offer an environment where they can
work on projects and work with other groups of students. Then some of them
even have internship programs as well to get them some seat time working in
technology. I don't think the importance of this can be overstated.
High schools haven't changed. They're still teaching kids the same
stuff they always have... And that right there is the problem. They
haven't evolved. So while the "real world" of business has progressed,
requiring loads and loads of new, specialized skills high schools are
still focusing their attention on math and reading. The big difference
is that having decent reading and basic math skills (and maybe some
basic worldly knowledge) used to be all that was necessary for most jobs.
In addition technology has also become much more specialized. In the past
we were all generalists to a certain extent. Admins or developers roughly.
Now it's not enough to understand the core concepts they also want product
or framework specific knowledge too. "Oh it's fine that you understand
firewalling, but if you don't have CheckPoint experience we can't hire
you". "Oh you write Java, have you ever done any Spring development? Nope,
sorry then we need a Spring Guru". The number of products and frameworks
has grown exponentially from the small amount that was around when many of
us started our technology careers. It's not the same market, we adapted to
the environment and through that we picked stuff up along the way. New
students do not have that luxury.
No argument from me on this one. In fact, I think your statement here
points out precisely why employers offering job training is so much more
important than it used to be. It is also why a college degree has
become less and less useful. If all you want is specialists, the
generalist nature of a college degree is meaningless!
Certifications also help but only certain ones are "worth it". What is
"worth it" changes all the time so don't waste your time with things like
A+ or Microsoft certs (unless you really want to be an underpaid Windows or
Exchange admin =). CISSP and RHCE really do carry a lot of weight with
recruiters/HR folks.
Certifications are great, but one of the ones you mentioned
CISSP requires 4 years of verified work experience in the security field.
That's hard to get if you can't get a job, or as I mentioned previously are
just out of high school.
All that matters is that you get through to the technical interview where
anyone who even remotely seems like they could do the job will appear like
an angel of mercy compared to what typically gets through the HR
department's resume filter:
Getting through that filter can be impossible if the requirements are 4
year degree required. Let's not forget, HR people have no hooks in to
technology. All they do is translate the requirements and publish them.
It's not always so easy to get past them. In the future there are going to
be more and more of these gates particularly because of the specific
technology focus.
Nearly every job these days lists, "Four-year degree *or equivalent work
experience*." Not only that but none of that stuff even gets verified
until you're actually in the final phases of the hiring process (as in,
"You're hired! We just need to do the paperwork...").
The HR filters *are* tough to get past but the trick is having all the
necessary keywords. I'd be surprised if the HR filters even looked at
education at all.
Just to sum up, unless you have a hookup somewhere the only place for
students to go after high school for most jobs of the future is some form
of college, university, or tech school. If I were in Vegas I would have no
problem going all in on that statement ;)
If you've already published an app to an App Market and/or published
useful open source code to Github you're *way* ahead of everyone else.
Not only that but you're hireable! Last I checked "Age" wasn't on most
resumes or job listings. If you get past the HR filters the hiring
manager/team will start examining your experience and code (if
available). If they like what they see you're 90% of the way to getting
the job. Like I said, most of the people that get past HR are useless
so anyone with public code that *actually works* (LOL, I have so many
stories) will be the one that gets hired.
--
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
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