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Admin
Admin
What is a hemosphere? Did you mean the Philips Haemosphere, the cardiac catheterization monitor?
Admin
Admin
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I don't know who I hate more: the Ivory Tower snobs that usually hang out here, or the anti-degree cowboy-trolls posting here today.
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I got a call from someone claiming to be a headhunter a while back. This guy happened to have a quite thick Indian accent, so there was some communication difficultly, but I finally got him to give me a company name and address so I could check the commute.
Sure enough, at that address there was a sign for the large telecommunications company he claimed to be representing. Not too bad a commute, we can talk further.
We have a bit of a discussion, then he tells me that this company requires a unique identifier for me in order to submit my information. Thus, he'd need my SSN.
Wait, what? Uh...yeah...I don't have it right here...I'll get right back to you with that.
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Nobody cares what you think...
But I'm sure you knew that before posting your troll comment.
Admin
What about an Ivory Tower anti-degree cowboy troll post?
Degree? Yeah, I've got one. Grades? Don't ask... not bad, not great. Experience? That's what I point to. Not a great test taker, I'm a much better doer.
Admin
You need two of them to equal one airhead.
-Harrow.
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Access is a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
Admin
And let that be a warning to all you kids out there. Stay in school and maybe you can avoid the horrible fate of having to write LabVIEW "code".
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What sexist comments? Some people made a joke is all.
Admin
Yet, you couldn't resist replying...
Nobody cares what you think either, but that doesn't stop you from posting 10-15 unoriginal comments a day.
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Yes, I have a degree.
Ted Kaczynski has a PhD. Would you rather hire him?
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You beat me to it...
I've got a strong .Net background, yet I somehow ended up in a BizTalk interview because it's a line in my resume from a contract about 5 years ago... The recruiter failed to mention that they were looking for a senior BizTalk dev with only a "good understanding of C# and .Net".
Man, was that interview awkward... And short...
Admin
I had an interview like that. One of my first jobs out of school was maintaing an ASP.NET website. Sure enough on my resume I put a line with ASP.NET in it. Fast forward to several years later and I'm sitting in an interview with two guys asking me all about ASP.NET.
You can imagine my blank stares causing confusion because I was introduced as "proficient in ASP.NET".
Didn't get that job, but didn't really want it.
Admin
man in formal atire -> attire "Have you had many computer jobs" -> jobs? her rather meek inquiriy -> inquiry an expression of pitty -> pity hemospheres of its brain -> hemispheres One of you will be it's hands -> its who dropped of computer studies -> out of rumored to never had passed an exam -> to have never passed
Though you could leave the "hemospheres" typo unfixed, so that all the other comments that refer to it don't become meaningless.
P.S. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the story. Thanks for maintaining the site in the face of all the pedantic nit-picking (such as this) to which you're subjected.
Admin
In this country, there's a joke-that's-not-a-joke that states that even a janitor needs to have a Masters degree and know three languages. Just a few weeks ago I've read that because of so many Masters competing for jobs, some corporations started to require Ph.D.s.
I am damn well aware how lucky I was finding a nice job like mine despite not ever going to college. No nepotism, bribes, nor "personal favours" were involved. I just wonder when the luck will run out...
Admin
It's a filter. An appeal to outside authority.
You're in HR. You have no idea to measure someone with skill X. You have a billion resumes, all listing projects that you have no idea how to rate. You need to bring some people in for an interview. How do you start?
It also serves as some CYA. You didn't make a mistake in hiring the guy who didn't know how to open an editor. The school did in giving them a diploma.
Admin
You're a "cups half-full" kind of guy, aren't you?
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It's a way for employers to weed out the people who do not have enough focus/motivation/intelligence to make it through college. Without experience, the employer is left with your performance in college as a guide to how you're going to do at work. It becomes (hopefully) less and less relevent as time goes on, and you get more experience.
(although the intelligence part is not necessarily true...)
Admin
It was actually a 6510 (same instruction set, one or two extra features.)
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More like a "Nice, they gave me a glass that's not empty... I wonder when they're gonna bill me for it." I don't recommend that mindset, but heck, it's not like I can replace it.
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Regarding experience vs. a degree, even many jobs that "require" a degree will accept experience in lieu, often 1:1. So if you dropped out of college but you have 4 or 5 years of experience, they put you on the same level as somebody who just graduated. It's roughly a fair trade in my experience -- I was certainly faking it a lot less at 24 than at 20.
As to why the woman was there if she was so incompetent, some people just have poor ability to respond to a question calling for a decision. I was on a team that interviewed one once -- when asked how she would set up hardware for a website so as to ensure redundancy, instead of giving the correct answer (as I recall the question blatantly pointed you to the answer, along the lines of "you have 2 servers available...") or saying "I don't know", she froze up completely. But she had at least some minimal degree of skills and knowledge -- she was currently employed as a NOC monkey and took a couple of calls related to outages, and hearing her talk she certainly seemed to have at least minimal clue.
Admin
It sounds like you need to stop commenting on TDWTF and start "refactoring" code to make yourself irreplaceable... :)
I, for one, would use this site as a gold mine of examples. I'm sure Nagesh would also give you some of teh codez if you took him out for some biryani.
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6052? Are you sure? Since my Commodore Vic 20 had a 6502 and my Commodore 64 had a 6510.
As for a degree, it all depends on the person. Some people are self motivated learners and truly learn what they need to be good programmers. Some do not.
I have worked with non-degreed individuals that were amazing. I have worked with degreed people that were incompetent. But on the whole, the degreed individuals have been slightly better.
Admin
Possibly you did not go to the right school. I mean really, would you have been introduced to data structures like B+ trees and understand their performance with out some pointers? Take a peruse through some of Knuth's books or Dijkstra's. Truly, you would have understood and known to look for that stuff?
Admin
Exactly this. The cold hard reality is that when you post a job opening, you typically get resumes from far more candidates than you could ever possibly interview. Often you get more resumes than you could possibly even fully read. This is why you look for things that will let you quickly reject a resume without putting too much time into it. This is why spelling, grammar and presentation are so important, even if it has nothing to do with the actual job. It's not right, but it's the way things are. So yes, you might find a "diamond in the rough" amongst the non-degree candidates, maybe the best candidate possible, but probably not, and you can probably find a "good enough" candidate amongst the degree candidates.
Admin
Seems like you should do the math, and if you think a degree will get you more jobs, acquire said degree from either the least expensive source, or an institution you feel could provide more benefits than a line on a resume.
15 years of experience is about as meaningless as BS Computer Science, as far as I'm concerned. I've seen plenty of people who were born with a computer in their laps, and still can't manage coherent, stable code.
Admin
It depends. If I need someone that understands PHD level math maybe :-)
Admin
Then there are people broadly educated who never obtained a degree.
Take me: 220+ undergraduate credit hours from five different programs (Computer Science, Physics, Math, Geography, Electrical Engineering) but since I never completed some of the general studies requirements (never took communications, for example, nor fulfilled the foreign language requirement) I was never awarded a degree.
Admin
They're never man enough to confront people who have annoyed them in the past. I bet one of Felix's aliases was SARUMANATEE.
Admin
And you sound like someone with a degree...
Admin
Generally if I really know I don't want a role, I tell the recruiter flat out that it isn't a fit, etc., but if I'm desperate or waiting to see if something better may pan out, I'll be polite and feign interest (without actually accepting).
Sounds like he still had some hope/desperation. Also, pride doesn't pay the bills as well as a steady income stream.
Admin
There was an episode of the old Stack Overflow podcast where they discussed something I didn't know before.
There's two types of recruiters - flat fee and commission based recruiters.
Commission based recruiters are what most of us are used to. They don't get hired unless they find and place somebody. And the firms they work for usually get a cut of the person's contract. They tend to just find the people and then send them to the company to be interviewed, etc.
Flat fee based recruiters get paid regardless of if they find somebody and do not take a cut of the person's contract. They do all the interviewing themselves and just place the people at the job site. I'm not sure how some of the finer logistics work (i.e., how often do they not find someone) but on the whole I would think these guys have to do an outstanding job or else they won't be in business long.
So basically commission based recruiters are the ones we're used to and that is why they tend to be the slimy used car salesmen type. Used car salesman is one of the few jobs where you can be a convicted felon and still be hired (also on commission), so it's very logical that the people who wake up and say "I don't want to do real work, I just want to point people to real work" are commission based recruiters.
Flat fee recruiters are the admirable kind but they tend to be much more rare, although I have a hunch they're more common in other fields.
The real thing that kills me is that commission based recruiters are completely obsolete. There's absolutely nothing they do in the tech industry that can't be handled by Monster.com or some shit. Seriously, when you use a recruiter all you're doing is having someone find candidates and make phone calls. You could really just have your HR department scour Monster.com and make the calls themselves for a lot less money.
Admin
I'm sure you're a great guy any everything, but honestly, that's exactly the short of thing that would set of alarm bells at most HR departments. Nobody wants to hire somebody who can't finish what they started.
Admin
The problem with experience as a yardstick is that the markings are different for each person. Some person says they have N years of experience. They might really have N years of experience. Or they might have one year of experience N times.
Admin
To be honest, I've never heard of flat-fee recruiting and I'm sure it's more for entry level work such as office admin or manual labor (I would think).
Commission based recruiting is alive and well as many small to medium sized companies (which make up 85% of all companies) don't have the manpower to scour Monster et all. Ideally these recruiting firms should be providing other services, namely vetting you and your experience leaving only the "soft" interview questions for the actual company. I can't tell you how many times I left an interview for a senior level role and not being asked a single technical question.
Admin
Is The Real WTF Requiring a degree and getting rid of some one who may have been a perfect fit for this role?
I have worked with many graduates who have no idea what they are doing... and many non-graduates who are great!
How many people on here actually have a degree (IT Related), I dont and Im getting on just fine (By my standards anyway).
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Well, it depends. If that "appliance" is a high-quality laptop, $300 isn't so bad.
Admin
I would've said 'enquiry' rather than inquiry (although I notice dictionary.com has them as the same word, presumably one brit and one yank)...
Pitty stuck out to me like dog's balls....
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Agreed. It sort of helped me get my first job, but what I learnt in my first week (or even day there) was far more valuable than anything I learnt during my degree. We all need a baseline to start at, but even reasonably basic experience is often more valuable than that little piece of paper. I have worked with degree (and post-grad) qualified people who are absolute drop-kicks, and I've worked with "unqualified" people who are awesome (and I've worked with people in both groups who are the opposite too). I'm frightened to think that some of the people I went to Uni with (many who probably scored higher than I did in most subjects) would be let loose on the world.
I guess we've all had the lectures from new starters who insist we don't do things the way the text book says. They soon learn that text books are all beaut and fine in theory, but the world doesn't always work the way the theories assume.
We recently had someone with a VERY academic background start (I was wary from the moment I heard someone with their background had even reached interview {and I think people are starting to regret their decision now}). Almost immediately we started being given observations that we are doing it wrong, and that the text-books would do it a different way (from memory it was mainly about process) - suffice it to say, our insistence that our process has evolved because it simply wouldn't work in text-book fashion were merely fuel for a never-ending "discussion" (thankfully this person wasn't hired at a level where their opinions actually had any weight)...
Academia is all beaut and fine, but it's not the "be all" and "end all" (it's also assessed pretty poorly, in my experience). Qualifications are a reasonable measure for discerning graduates, but even if in other fields that piece of paper actually means something (and frankly, other than getting the first job, I think it's rather silly) a CS degree from 1990 is going to be different to one from 2000 (not to mention the variety of other degrees that someone could hold). The degree is a useless way of choosing between candidates; the cynical side of me thinks the only reason such criteria exists is because a lot of companies have HR doing preliminary selection of candidates - it's easy to have HR filter candidates based on specific criteria like 'has a degree' and not so easy to have them filter on more job-specific skills that they don't understand. Of course, if all they need is degree-qualified, then a degree in Politics may suffice...
There is a locally famous environmentalist who has (or had) some animal sanctuaries nearby. He is often quoted in the media as "environmentalist, Dr XXXXX, said...." - Everyone assumes he has a (doctoral) Veterinary Science degree, and the "Dr" is because he is a vet...turns out he has a PhD in Mathematics...
Admin
I have worked as a programmer for 12 years and when I was severanced out of my last job, I decided to use the severance to go to university and get the degree.
I have now learned to program in Python, learned some Linear Algebra, Calculus, and Proof techniques all of which I apparently need to know to have a degree in Computer Science. (None of which I needed to know in any of my previous positions as a computer programmer.)
The Python wasn't so bad but all this freaking MATH is killing me.
Admin
I know a plethora of idiots with degrees. I also noticed that many people got through University by having tutors and lecturers 'help' them through assignments. I don't know whether it was deliberate or not, but they seemed to have a knack of quickly become so much work for the tutor or lecturer that the easiest way to get rid of them was to show them exactly what code to write, rather than explain what they needed to do - I don't want to be working with someone who requires me to do their job for them: if I have the time to do both jobs, pay me my salary plus the majority of their salary, and kick them to the kerb - I get more money, the company saves a little money, and there is less time wasted.
I've often found that criteria on jobs is often there as a deterrent rather than hard and fast rules. Requiring a degree aims to weed out people who don't feel their qualified (probably people with bare passes in degrees and the like). People with no degree but plenty of experience might still apply, and might still be considered. Of course, you do risk frightening off people with solid experience but no formal qualification, but that makes the recruitment task a little easier. I have often applied for (and occasionally gotten) jobs where I don't really fit the criteria. So long as you can impress them sufficiently with your resume (even if it doesn't line up with their criteria) you get an opportunity to impress them face to face. It helps a lot if people who understand the skills on your resume are reading it....
It's worth remembering, that candidates want to get the best possible job that they want, while employers want to get the best possible candidate. This means that applicants will apply for jobs above their experience, while potential employers will advertise for skills well above the skills they'll actually settle for. A job that looks like it is well out of your abilities may well be picked up by someone well below your ability - simply because they apply. Basically I tend to follow the following assumptions: Degree Qualified = "Proven capable" (that's a bit of a laugh) 3 Years experience = Not Graduate 5 Years experience = 2nd, preferably 3rd job - skill in variety of technologies 10 Years experience = People ask you all the questions, and rely on you to be the intelligence Proficiency in <insert language> = Proven ability to program either in that language, or in mulitple others, demonstrating an ability to adapt and pick up new languages Flexibility/Adaptibility - will occasionally work overtime. understands that the boss may dictate the hours Expertise in <insert language> = Need to have used this language (having encountered it is not enough). Don't necessarily need to be the Master, though.
etc....
Basically, jobs are a little like playing x-lotto - It's all well and good for people to complain when they miss out, but unless you buy a ticket you have no chance whatsoever. Often, the employers themselves struggle to formalise pre-requisites and selection criteria. They know what they want, but they can't necessarily put it into print (or worse they allow HR to do it). Job ads show that they need someone, and give a very vague idea of what they want. Apply for jobs if they sound interesting, or you think you want them - by all means address the criteria that you can, but don't decide not to apply because you don't think you meet a criterion or two
Admin
Sadly, the score order doesn't necessarily reflect the good, the bad and the ugly.
I've seen people with bare passes who I'd hire and I've seen people with High Distinctions who I wouldn't hire if they were the last availble recruit on the face of the planet...