• zefi (unregistered)

    Guess none of the 'don't need a degree to code' guys is from Google?

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to Yanman
    Yanman:
    Dave:
    Jon:
    There are no blonde chicks in IT.

    Yes there are. One interviewed with us once. She looked like she'd stepped out of the pages of Playboy. The referral letter from her previous employer said something like "she's the best thing that ever happened to our IT department". Her last job was writing Windows virtual device drivers.

    They decided not to employ her because she didn't have a degree and therefore wasn't sufficiently qualified.

    (That's a true story).

    Did you get her number?

    No, after that I woke up.

    (Srsly, it did happen like that, but the rank and file didn't find out about it until she'd already left. No-one had any idea what she was like before she came for the interview, and it would have been a bit inappropriate to broadcast an announcement during the interview, resulting in a bunch of geeks with their noses pressed against the windows of the conference room).

  • Spoc42 (unregistered) in reply to java.lang.Chris;
    java.lang.Chris;:
    I love the "must have a degree" insistence of some firms. I have no formal programming qualifications, but have been programming since the age of eleven - first in 6052 assembler (Commodore 64), then 68k assembler and C (Atari ST) before becoming a professional programmer. Even with fifteen years experience in the industry, I still get turned down for jobs before the interviewing stage thanks to not having a degree!
    I get the same thing, and I've been in the industry for over 30 years. In fact, I recentlty had contact with a company that wanted my experience, and someone no more than 35 years old. Now that is someone who started early! Not to mention breaking the child labour laws....
  • Spoc42 (unregistered) in reply to ThePants999
    ThePants999:
    Having a degree myself, I don't understand why anyone insists on a degree. It was fun and all, but spending that time working would have made me better suited for most jobs than the degree did.
    I had a department head who told me he would rather have someone with 3 years work experience (me) instead of someone with a degree. The reason was, I know that I wasn't God when it came to writing a program. And I had experience with programs of more than 250 lines...
  • Spike (unregistered) in reply to lucidfox

    I've worked in Sweden for a time and found there that while it's an extremely 'progressive' society with women performing many traditionally male roles, the large company I was in had essentially the same gender balance as everywhere else. I wish it wasn't so as a more balanced group has a better dynamic. But I can only say that women seem less inclined to IT than guys.

    I think that nobody should ever be discouraged from a role by sexism, that's just a waste of talent, but it is naive to think that all roles are equally attractive to the genders (or even that they would be in the absence of all social conditioning).

  • Timo Soini (unregistered) in reply to lucidfox
    lucidfox:
    jizz:
    lucidfox:
    Franz Kafka:
    And 'There are no women in IT' is hardly a sexist joke.
    Yes it is.
    I think his point is it's not a joke...
    "Few" is not the same as "none".

    Yes it is, actually. And you know it is.

  • Justice League (unregistered)

    I think I might have a universal solution to all three of the problems:

    Problem 1: Degree vs. No Degree Problem 2: There are no women in IT Problem 3: I think these arguments are all about trolling.

    Universal Solution: People that play with computers and haunt these forums are universally immature. I can not tell you why this is the case, but I can tell you how it has caused the above problems.

    Problem 1: Degree vs. No Degree Most of the kids I went to school with had no respect for what they were learning and thus did as little as possible. The most clever of them went on to do work that required their degree--video games (as unfortunate and under-compensated as work in that field is), the FSA, and other academic disciplines. The ones who thought they were clever and spent time giggling, enamored with their own intelligence, discussing minutia with colleagues, doomed themselves to careers in business software--that which requires very few reasoning skills: just follow the patterns that have always been in place. Those who don't follow the patterns create the epic VB and J2EE WTFs that cross my eyes and are far more idiotic than anything I've seen displayed here. Immaturity kept them from REAL education, and they are several thousand dollars poorer, gaining no skills whatsoever.

    Problem 2: No women in IT Women ARE (obviously in general) more mature--eager to learn and to please the ones in authority over them. They will generally go the college path of the career. Then they encounter the immaturity of their colleagues and generally choose a different brainy discipline. Those that persist are generally the stand-offish ones. In college, the good-looking ones are worshiped (but never talked to, immaturity remember) or ignored. In both cases, the 5th-grade maturity level divides the sexes. The few that "make it" to the working world are typically very hostile from their experience. They are then seen as "overly-defensive" and avoided.

    Problem 3: Most of the folks in the above categories have too much time on their hands and spend their time trolling these forums. I am one of the damned. I was good in school. I was also immature. Now I'm stuck in b*$%ness software. But I pass the time (generally logged in as Nagesh or boog) by chumping all of you knuckleheads.

    This is my confession. This is my future.

  • Spoc42 (unregistered) in reply to Craig
    Craig:
    jnewton:
    A degree is no substitute for experience but it does effectively multiply it. I found that when I got my first real job out of college I picked up concepts a lot quicker than my colleagues without degrees but more experience.

    Bingo! You understand fundamental computer and data processing concepts and how to solve problems rather than how to cut-and-paste code from examples you found on the web.

    I find it amusing in these conversations that the non-degreed people always pipe up with the "experience is more important" and "I don't have a degree and I'm doing just fine." A person can be a complete tool with or without a degree, but I find I can explain things a lot more quickly to someone who has a more broad education than "I wrote programs on my C64 when I was eleven."

    Then there are those of us who never had a degree in programming, but learnt to program in more than one language (depending on you POV, I program in 6-10 different languages), paid their own way to get degrees as a systems analyst and as an adult educator, and go out of their way to ensure that we stay on the cutting edge. We are called self-motivators.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Jeff
    Jeff:
    Franz Kafka:
    Programming is basically applied math. The math should help you a _lot_. Or be somewhat easier due to your experience.
    Please explain. I've been programming 30 years and I see no overlap between programming and math. Never used one thing from my algebra or statistics classes, to say nothing of calculus.

    I was #1 in my (large) calculus class, so it isn't like I don't have the first clue about math.

    int i = 1;
    int j = 2;
    int k = i + j;
    

    Looks like algebra to me.

    I learned programming long before I ever encountered algebra and found that while other students struggled with the idea of adding letters together, I found it completely natural.

  • Spoc42 (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    A degree is just a filter to prove you are willing to put up with 2/4/more years of bullshit. Those who spend their professional lives swimming in bullshit want to screen out any applicants that won't lie down and take it.

    This from someone who has a Masters. For some strange reason money seems to gravitate toward bullshitters, and since I can tolerate their crap, I'm happy to take their money.

    Yeah, I learned a few random things along the way, usually not related to what the class actually claimed to teach. But ultimately I got about three weeks worth of knowledge out of six years in classes.

    The rest you can learn much better on your own. If you have any self-starter motivation at all you come into most classes knowing more than the instructor. I mean the semester project for a Masters level Java class at one of the "top schools in the country" was a data entry program (no web interface) in which you were required to create exactly four classes: one for the menu, one for the entry screen, one for the update screen, and one for delete. Anything that varied from this pattern, the instructor didn't know how to grade.

    That reminds me of an experience in the mid 80s. I was sent on a three-day course for programming CICS screens for PL/1 programs. The target of the course was to create an data entry screen over the three days. Having finished the exercise by the afternoon of the first day, I asked the assistant (there was not lecturer, only an assistant to answer questions) what he thought I should do. He suggested that I do the other 5 exercises in the book. By lunchtime of the third day, not only had I finished all the excercises, I was extending the screens into something that was actually useful.

    Fortunately, the course was not evaluated, otherwise I might have had problems because I was the only one able to complete more than the first task.

    I'm not claiming to be brilliant, but I sometimes find that the expectations of course designers are depressingly low.

  • Spoc42 (unregistered) in reply to frits4real
    frits4real:
    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.
    35 years ago, when I went to university, CS degrees did not exist. Most computing courses that did were heavily hardware-oriented, and programming was something on the side. I know this because many of my friends were taking such courses.

    I was trained on the job in a major Swiss bank that was willing to invest money in training.

  • (cs) in reply to Justice League
    Justice League:
    I think blah blah boring-stuff blah...

    ...I pass the time (generally logged in as Nagesh or boog) by chumping all of you knuckleheads...

    Holy shitsnacks, you log in as boog too?

    Glad to know I'm not the only one.

  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to java.lang.Chris;
    java.lang.Chris;:
    I love the "must have a degree" insistence of some firms. I have no formal programming qualifications, but have been programming since the age of eleven - first in 6052 assembler (Commodore 64), then 68k assembler and C (Atari ST) before becoming a professional programmer. Even with fifteen years experience in the industry, I still get turned down for jobs before the interviewing stage thanks to not having a degree!

    Probably because there are a lot of people with that story who have taught us all that self-taught programmers who started at eleven years old typically come in two flavors: rare, and lousy. You might be the rare sort, but is the guy doing the hiring going to want to risk having to sit through another interview with a boring braggart who knows far less than he thinks he knows and bathes far less than he ought to bathe? He doesn't care whether he hires you or not, he just wants to hire someone who can do the job well, with minimal pain in the hiring process. If that means filtering out people whose resume looks like yours, there's not a shit in the world that he gives about that.

  • Spoe (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    Oh, don't get me wrong: I understand that.

    I didn't complete a degree because I got a job. A job that's rewarded (and not only monetarily) me well for the last 11 years. So far, my employers don't seem to think I've a problem with not completing things.

  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to skington
    skington:
    java.lang.Chris;:
    I love the "must have a degree" insistence of some firms. I have no formal programming qualifications, but have been programming since the age of eleven - first in 6052 assembler (Commodore 64), then 68k assembler and C (Atari ST) before becoming a professional programmer. Even with fifteen years experience in the industry, I still get turned down for jobs before the interviewing stage thanks to not having a degree!

    I'd say that's a good thing; you don't want to waste your time with people who read your CV and think "no degree" without noticing that they didn't do CS degrees when you were entering the industry.

    Um... they didn't do CS degrees in 1996? On which planet was this? For reference, Stanford started offering CS degrees in 1965...

  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to C-Octothorpe
    C-Octothorpe:
    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).

    Yes, they're called temp agencies.

    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.

    If you don't have time to hire someone, you need to hire someone to take care of that for you. Wait, what? If you're actually trying to hire someone, it takes just as much work to do it through a recruiter - it's just that you end up spreading the work over a few years of semi-performing losers, some of whom attach themselves to your company like barnacles and never produce anything, and can't even be used to manage the job search to find the person you originally wanted to hire because they don't know shit from a donut without a taste test.

    Recruiters are great, though - the companies that use them end up with the employees they deserve, and they get the useless gits out of the job market so people trying to hire someone useful have fewer gits to get through. And besides, idiots should be employed too, it's good for the economy.

  • Vlad Poutines (unregistered) in reply to Justice League
    Justice League:
    This is my confession. This is my future.
    That you're a virgin?
  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to db
    db:
    When I was a student just over 50% of the introductory CS classes were female as distict from the 2% in engineering. Oddly enough I've met far more female engineers in the workforce than women in IT. Where did they all go and why didn't they get IT jobs?

    Many of them leave when they find out that their career counselor didn't tell them that they'd be in classes with the guys who spent their entire lives from the age of 11 in their room playing with their computers, only leaving for brief periods to go over to their buddy's house and play with their computers. This is actually not a wisecrack - your question is the subject of serious research, and this is actually what happens. Studies of female CS attrition typically cite the terrible social skills and grinding work-focus of their classmates, combined with the typical 5 to seven year head start that those classmates have on them. They end up in other degree programs. True story.

  • callcopse (unregistered)

    TRWTF is that this should surely be a Tales From The Interview?

  • zenstain (unregistered)

    Its surface splintered into sorry hemispheres.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Troy
    Troy:
    da Doctah:
    Yes, I have a degree.

    Ted Kaczynski has a PhD. Would you rather hire him?

    It depends. If I need someone that understands PHD level math maybe :-)

    It depends. If I need someone skilled in blowing up buildings, yes.

  • Tarl (unregistered) in reply to trtrwtf
    trtrwtf:
    Studies of female CS attrition typically cite the terrible social skills and grinding work-focus of their classmates
    And here we have the real reason women (in general) don't end up in programming careers. They think work consists of social interaction. Males think work consists of work.
  • shepd (unregistered)

    This is the real WTF:

    "This was the last stop for the well-dressed fellow, as the company insisted on a degree"

    If you are hiring based on managing to answer hypothetical questions in a fashion suitable to someone in an educational environment, rather than hiring based on experience, you will get a random selection of people, the only non-random element being that they all have the same piece of paper.

    Having a degree doesn't mean you are a good employee, and it doesn't even give an indication that you MIGHT be a good employee. Having a good work history, that DOES show you MIGHT be a good employee.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to trtrwtf

    [quote user="trtrwtfIf you don't have time to hire someone, you need to hire someone to take care of that for you. Wait, what?[/quote]

    Well, technically, you don't "hire" a recruiter. You just contract with one. When I go to the auto mechanic, I don't "hire a mechanic" in the sense of taking him on as a full-time employee. I just contract with him to do this one job.

    But more to the point: You really can't comprehend the idea of paying someone else to do a job that you don't have the time and/or skill to do yourself?

    I'm terrible at carpentry. So when I need woodwork done, I pay a carpenter.

    I don't know anything about medicene. So when I'm sick, I go to a doctor.

    I now a little about auto mechanics, but some jobs are bigger than I am willing to take on, so I go to a mechanic.

    Etc.

    Is it really that bizarre to say that if you don't have the time to deal with the whole hiring process, or are not particularly good at doing it, that you would hire a recruiter to do most of the work for you?

    In my experience what companies mostly hire recruiters for is to screen out the most unqualified candidates. You know, the ones who don't have college degrees. More seriously, if you put a want ad in the newspaper or on Craigs List or some such, you get hordes of applicants who have no idea how to do the job. A recruiter is supposed to filter all those people out and only send you a handful of candidates who meet some minimal level of qualification.

    That's not to say that all recruiters do their jobs well or perform a useful service. I'm sure many are a worthless waste of time. I've met several of them. But the same could be said about, say, programmers.

  • Spoc42 (unregistered) in reply to Jeff
    Jeff:
    Franz Kafka:
    Programming is basically applied math. The math should help you a _lot_. Or be somewhat easier due to your experience.
    Please explain. I've been programming 30 years and I see no overlap between programming and math. Never used one thing from my algebra or statistics classes, to say nothing of calculus.

    I was #1 in my (large) calculus class, so it isn't like I don't have the first clue about math.

    It was after 20 years of programming before I had to use my algebra / calculus skills in a ROI calculation. Basically, I had to translate the a complex iterative equation into something that a mainframe could understand.

  • Spoc42 (unregistered) in reply to Waldorf
    Waldorf:
    Mel:
    Craig:
    jnewton:
    A degree is no substitute for experience but it does effectively multiply it. I found that when I got my first real job out of college I picked up concepts a lot quicker than my colleagues without degrees but more experience.

    Bingo! You understand fundamental computer and data processing concepts and how to solve problems rather than how to cut-and-paste code from examples you found on the web.

    I find it amusing in these conversations that the non-degreed people always pipe up with the "experience is more important" and "I don't have a degree and I'm doing just fine." A person can be a complete tool with or without a degree, but I find I can explain things a lot more quickly to someone who has a more broad education than "I wrote programs on my C64 when I was eleven."

    Well, I have a fairly patchy education record so maybe a different perspective. I did 1 year of Uni then completed a (rubbish) diploma at a private training institute, which opened the door to my first job. At the next job, I decided to finish the degree. I don't think I work or "understand concepts" better now than I did before the degree. Although I'm glad I did the degree (where I live now, people often include their qualifications everywhere - like their doorbells), I truly, honestly don't think it's made a blind bit of difference to my work or career.

    I think people are either able to pick things up easily, or they're not. A piece of paper doesn't change that. The study for it might - in that it's practice, but then someone who studies on their own or actually pushes themselves at work can gain that too.

    Ever think, though, that might be the point? Uni may not (seem to) teach much, but it does attempt to separate those with an ability to pick things up (relatively independently) and those who can't learn no matter how hard you hit them over the head with it. The piece of paper shows you survived Uni, which implies that you have an ability to learn and adjust.

    Withoug going too far into whether it works or not, a little bird once told me that the difference between a uni and other tertiary learning institutions (we have TAFE [Technical And Further Education] around here) is that (theoretically) uni teaches you to learn while TAFE teaches you specific skills. I think what they meant, is that you might learn all the ins and outs of JAVA in a TAFE course, but at Uni you will (should) learn fundamental programming concepts that you should be able to apply to any language (eg Data Structures).

    So this means that people could be equally as competent in either, but having survived Uni they are (presumably) able to learn and adapt.

    Personally, I place very little value on those pieces of paper.

    If you haven't learnt to learn by the time you get to uni, I don't hold out much chance for you there. I had a primary school tell me that you go to school to learn to learn. Maybe that's why I enjoy learning so much!

  • Spoc42 (unregistered) in reply to Johnny works with one hammer
    Johnny works with one hammer:
    Paul:
    A degree is just a filter to prove you are willing to put up with 2/4/more years of bullshit. Those who spend their professional lives swimming in bullshit want to screen out any applicants that won't lie down and take it.

    This from someone who has a Masters. For some strange reason money seems to gravitate toward bullshitters, and since I can tolerate their crap, I'm happy to take their money.

    Yeah, I learned a few random things along the way, usually not related to what the class actually claimed to teach. But ultimately I got about three weeks worth of knowledge out of six years in classes.

    The rest you can learn much better on your own. If you have any self-starter motivation at all you come into most classes knowing more than the instructor. I mean the semester project for a Masters level Java class at one of the "top schools in the country" was a data entry program (no web interface) in which you were required to create exactly four classes: one for the menu, one for the entry screen, one for the update screen, and one for delete. Anything that varied from this pattern, the instructor didn't know how to grade.

    He who can does, he who can't teaches. Such tight requirements are the result of shit teachers who (as you point out) don't know how to assess anything else...

    What about those of us who can, and can also teach? That quote is an insult.

  • shepd (unregistered)

    Hmmm, one other thing regarding degrees being required for jobs. Since most governments pay quite a bit towards universities for students taking courses, it seems only fair that companies that require a degree for a reason other than it being required by law (eg: Engineering degree to build a bridge) should be taxed directly for requiring that degree.

    Since they are the ones creating the unnecessary demand (University was once somewhere you went for higher education, for that exact purpose. Not somewhere that trains you for a job.) they should be the ones paying for it. Not me.

    I have a feeling if it became a requirement, companies would suddenly care more about your ability to do a job than your ability to pass exams.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to lucidfox
    lucidfox:

    Where do you think the disinterest comes from? Social conditioning. I say that as someone who had to actively resist it through all her life. To learn to tell propaganda apart from neutral matter-of-fact statements. To detect and repel attempts to invade my brain with any kind of biased ideas - be they about politics, religion, or gender roles.

    Heh, don't say that too loud - the president of Harvard got canned for speculating on the subject. Seems the feminists don't want much examination of the matter - they just want to scream oppression.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Tarl
    Tarl:
    trtrwtf:
    Studies of female CS attrition typically cite the terrible social skills and grinding work-focus of their classmates
    And here we have the real reason women (in general) don't end up in programming careers. They think work consists of social interaction. Males think work consists of work.

    Not too loud - lucidfox will come after you for speculating about the differences between men and women.

  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    Tarl:
    trtrwtf:
    Studies of female CS attrition typically cite the terrible social skills and grinding work-focus of their classmates
    And here we have the real reason women (in general) don't end up in programming careers. They think work consists of social interaction. Males think work consists of work.

    Not too loud - lucidfox will come after you for speculating about the differences between men and women.

    That's not speculating, that's asserting. And, I might add, the assertion is idiotic. It's also a pretty imbecilic leap from the observations it was posted in response to.

    So what is it about your fragile ego that leads you to construct these imaginary ball-busting feminists, so you can defy them? Is it the not getting laid, or the creeping fear that you're actually not as smart as you'd like to be?

  • (cs)

    Lots of typos on this one...

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to trtrwtf
    trtrwtf:
    So what is it about your fragile ego that leads you to construct these imaginary ball-busting feminists, so you can defy them? Is it the not getting laid, or the creeping fear that you're actually not as smart as you'd like to be?

    It's not my ego that's fragile, it's the people that ride a man out on a rail for not spouting the correct dogma vis a vis women in CS. They've successfully broken the debate by making dissent impossible, so the solution will at best happen by accident.

    Hell, I got called a troll for stating that men and women approach dating differently. It's one thing to assume that the gender balance in CS is wholly a sexism thing, but it's entirely different when you start denying biological facts in the dating world.

  • fridelain (unregistered)
    "I don't know that I'll get this one though, as I don't have a degree."
    Shouldn't that be "I don't know if I'll get this one though, as I don't have a degree."?
  • (cs) in reply to trtrwtf
    trtrwtf:
    ... they don't know shit from a donut without a taste test.

    My new signature...

  • (cs) in reply to trtrwtf
    trtrwtf:
    db:
    When I was a student just over 50% of the introductory CS classes were female as distict from the 2% in engineering. Oddly enough I've met far more female engineers in the workforce than women in IT. Where did they all go and why didn't they get IT jobs?

    Many of them leave when they find out that their career counselor didn't tell them that they'd be in classes with the guys who spent their entire lives from the age of 11 in their room playing with their computers, only leaving for brief periods to go over to their buddy's house and play with their computers. This is actually not a wisecrack - your question is the subject of serious research, and this is actually what happens. Studies of female CS attrition typically cite the terrible social skills and grinding work-focus of their classmates, combined with the typical 5 to seven year head start that those classmates have on them. They end up in other degree programs. True story.

    And tying this back to the other subthread, this self-reinforcing culture -- not genetics, acquired, transmitted culture -- is a great deal of the reason women are underrepresented in many professions: the culture says "women don't do that", the professions so tagged become insular boys-clubs, the few women who do brave the storm are roundly subjected to the absolute worst behavior in order to keep them on the outs as much as possible, and the cycle repeats as it remains accepted wisdom that "women don't do well in those professions".

    Whereas if a group makes an effort not to be total prats and be accepting of the idea that women just might do as well as men at whatever, and changes their behavior to match, they often find that to also become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    This pattern repeats everywhere from business, to free-software culture, to various fandoms (there was a really awesome piece by someone a few years back basically saying "the toleration of Comic-Book Guy types in actual comic fandom is a huge reason women avoid comic book culture -- we have no one to blame but ourselves"). The danger is in thinking that a stable equilibrium is the only one possible or desirable -- these anti-women equilibria are very stable, but they can (and I think, should) be given a swift kick into the other valley on the graph, the one where women are just as welcome and productive as men.

  • Sylver (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    ...

    The rest you can learn much better on your own. If you have any self-starter motivation at all you come into most classes knowing more than the instructor. I mean the semester project for a Masters level Java class at one of the "top schools in the country" was a data entry program (no web interface) in which you were required to create exactly four classes: one for the menu, one for the entry screen, one for the update screen, and one for delete. Anything that varied from this pattern, the instructor didn't know how to grade.

    You are joking, right? I mean, come on, it can't be that bad.

  • Teacher (unregistered) in reply to Spoc42
    Spoc42:
    Johnny works with one hammer:
    Paul:
    A degree is just a filter to prove you are willing to put up with 2/4/more years of bullshit. Those who spend their professional lives swimming in bullshit want to screen out any applicants that won't lie down and take it.

    This from someone who has a Masters. For some strange reason money seems to gravitate toward bullshitters, and since I can tolerate their crap, I'm happy to take their money.

    Yeah, I learned a few random things along the way, usually not related to what the class actually claimed to teach. But ultimately I got about three weeks worth of knowledge out of six years in classes.

    The rest you can learn much better on your own. If you have any self-starter motivation at all you come into most classes knowing more than the instructor. I mean the semester project for a Masters level Java class at one of the "top schools in the country" was a data entry program (no web interface) in which you were required to create exactly four classes: one for the menu, one for the entry screen, one for the update screen, and one for delete. Anything that varied from this pattern, the instructor didn't know how to grade.

    He who can does, he who can't teaches. Such tight requirements are the result of shit teachers who (as you point out) don't know how to assess anything else...

    What about those of us who can, and can also teach? That quote is an insult.

    Exactly. Anyone who's tried to teach, and actually teach well, realizes that it is significantly harder to teach well than to do well.

  • et tu, lucte (unregistered) in reply to Mel
    Mel:
    where I live now, people often include their qualifications *everywhere* - like their doorbells
    Germany?
  • nothingwasfixed (unregistered) in reply to ThePants999
    ThePants999:
    Having a degree myself, I don't understand why anyone insists on a degree. It was fun and all, but spending that time working would have made me better suited for most jobs than the degree did.

    Having a degree myself, I don't understand why anyone insists on a degree. It was fun and all, but spending that time working would have made me better suited for most jobs than the degree did.

    FTFY

  • zefi (unregistered) in reply to Teacher
    Teacher:
    Spoc42:
    Johnny works with one hammer:
    Paul:
    A degree is just a filter to prove you are willing to put up with 2/4/more years of bullshit. Those who spend their professional lives swimming in bullshit want to screen out any applicants that won't lie down and take it.

    This from someone who has a Masters. For some strange reason money seems to gravitate toward bullshitters, and since I can tolerate their crap, I'm happy to take their money.

    Yeah, I learned a few random things along the way, usually not related to what the class actually claimed to teach. But ultimately I got about three weeks worth of knowledge out of six years in classes.

    The rest you can learn much better on your own. If you have any self-starter motivation at all you come into most classes knowing more than the instructor. I mean the semester project for a Masters level Java class at one of the "top schools in the country" was a data entry program (no web interface) in which you were required to create exactly four classes: one for the menu, one for the entry screen, one for the update screen, and one for delete. Anything that varied from this pattern, the instructor didn't know how to grade.

    He who can does, he who can't teaches. Such tight requirements are the result of shit teachers who (as you point out) don't know how to assess anything else...

    What about those of us who can, and can also teach? That quote is an insult.

    Exactly. Anyone who's tried to teach, and actually teach well, realizes that it is significantly harder to teach well than to do well.

    Those who can, teach. Those who can't, do.

    Akismet stop saying my message's a spammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

  • yes but (unregistered) in reply to Johnny works with one hammer
    Johnny works with one hammer:
    Paul:
    A degree is just a filter to prove you are willing to put up with 2/4/more years of bullshit. Those who spend their professional lives swimming in bullshit want to screen out any applicants that won't lie down and take it.

    This from someone who has a Masters. For some strange reason money seems to gravitate toward bullshitters, and since I can tolerate their crap, I'm happy to take their money.

    Yeah, I learned a few random things along the way, usually not related to what the class actually claimed to teach. But ultimately I got about three weeks worth of knowledge out of six years in classes.

    The rest you can learn much better on your own. If you have any self-starter motivation at all you come into most classes knowing more than the instructor. I mean the semester project for a Masters level Java class at one of the "top schools in the country" was a data entry program (no web interface) in which you were required to create exactly four classes: one for the menu, one for the entry screen, one for the update screen, and one for delete. Anything that varied from this pattern, the instructor didn't know how to grade.

    He who can does, he who can't teaches. Such tight requirements are the result of shit teachers who (as you point out) don't know how to assess anything else...

    Of course, what most people seem to miss about that quote, is that it doesn't say "those who teach, can't"

  • yes but (unregistered) in reply to trtrwtf
    trtrwtf:
    Franz Kafka:
    Tarl:
    trtrwtf:
    Studies of female CS attrition typically cite the terrible social skills and grinding work-focus of their classmates
    And here we have the real reason women (in general) don't end up in programming careers. They think work consists of social interaction. Males think work consists of work.

    Not too loud - lucidfox will come after you for speculating about the differences between men and women.

    That's not speculating, that's asserting. And, I might add, the assertion is idiotic. It's also a pretty imbecilic leap from the observations it was posted in response to.

    So what is it about your fragile ego that leads you to construct these imaginary ball-busting feminists, so you can defy them? Is it the not getting laid, or the creeping fear that you're actually not as smart as you'd like to be?

    Your assertion about his getting laid or not, is built of just as much straw as his ball-busting feminist, though.

  • G-man (unregistered) in reply to shepd
    shepd:
    This is the real WTF:

    "This was the last stop for the well-dressed fellow, as the company insisted on a degree"

    If you are hiring based on managing to answer hypothetical questions in a fashion suitable to someone in an educational environment, rather than hiring based on experience, you will get a random selection of people, the only non-random element being that they all have the same piece of paper.

    Having a degree doesn't mean you are a good employee, and it doesn't even give an indication that you MIGHT be a good employee. Having a good work history, that DOES show you MIGHT be a good employee.

    What's WTF about that? It's been common knowledge for decades. If it still inspires a "WTF?" now, you've been living under a rock.

  • G-man (unregistered) in reply to Tarl
    Tarl:
    trtrwtf:
    Studies of female CS attrition typically cite the terrible social skills and grinding work-focus of their classmates
    And here we have the real reason women (in general) don't end up in programming careers. They think work consists of social interaction. Males think work consists of work.

    Unless you're Doing It Wrong, most programming jobs consist of a lot of social interaction anyway.

  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to yes but
    yes but:
    Your assertion about his getting laid or not, is built of just as much straw as his ball-busting feminist, though.

    True. Your point?

  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to yes but
    yes but:
    Of course, what most people seem to miss about that quote, is that it doesn't say "those who teach, can't"

    Well, it doesn't exactly say "Those who can, do, or else they teach. Those who can't, teach, unless they do. Or they do both. Or they do neither, and they do something other than whatever it is they can't do."

    The implication is pretty clear, in other words.

  • yes but (unregistered) in reply to trtrwtf
    trtrwtf:
    yes but:
    Your assertion about his getting laid or not, is built of just as much straw as his ball-busting feminist, though.

    True. Your point?

    That straw-on-straw wars are even more futile than the regular kind.

  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to yes but
    yes but:
    trtrwtf:
    yes but:
    Your assertion about his getting laid or not, is built of just as much straw as his ball-busting feminist, though.

    True. Your point?

    That straw-on-straw wars are even more futile than the regular kind.

    Oh, sure, if he's stupid enough to take it up. But of course it's just a rhetorical maneuver designed to weaken his position by forcing him to either accept an implication of his lack of virility or to grant my ridiculous premise some legitimacy by engaging with it enough to deny it. In either case, I get to wave by virtual penis around, which helps me make my point.

    I've learned how arguments are carried on here, you see.

    The point that is being made, let's not forget, is that he's an imbecile for a) confusing, or pretending to confuse an assertion with a "speculation" (classic moron maneuver, similar to saying some stupid idiotic thing you say was "satire") b) missing the point of the studies showing that women don't stay in CS programs because they find their classmates repellent, and also because they find that there's an implicit expectation that students will have done 5-7 years of intense preparation, and also because their repellent classmates adopt a patronizing attitude towards them because they come into the program without having previously written any code c) and, as was pointed out elsewhere, believing that "work" doesn't involve social interaction, and that social interaction is not in fact a critical skill for a programmer

    So, given all of that, I can well believe that he's not got his dick wet in a long while or ever. I just don't think he'd get the time of day from any woman I know. That's irrelevant, of course, just a side note. The point is, the guy's about as sharp as a bag of wet mice, and it's fun to make fun of stupid sexist twits. And hitting them where it hurts is even more fun - this guy cringes every time his on-line persona's penile superiority is challenged, because he actually cares! Try it some time, it's great fun...

  • (cs) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    Heh, don't say that too loud - the president of Harvard got canned for speculating on the subject. Seems the feminists don't want much examination of the matter - they just want to scream oppression.
    Just a moment - let me find a place to dump all this straw you've been piling up here.

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