April 4, 2008 at 10:06 am
The 10 year old comment has some value. If you're working for 10 years and doing a good job, the degree (or military commission) doesn't matter. It might open some doors if you meet someone from that school/branch of service, but not sure it impacts your ability to get hired.
I've seen lots of people without degrees get hired for jobs that say BA/BS. It's a BA/BS or equivalent to most HR departments and once you're working for 5-10 years, you have the equivalent.
An EE degree from '74 means you have the capabilities to learn EE, showed some interest, and presumably some talent in that area. It doesn't mean you can do an EE job, just like someone that graduated last May can definitely do the job. They might know more theory about modern stuff, but I'm not sure they really know more than you. a Ba/BS isn't a vocational degree. It's not intended to make you an expert biologist/computer scientist, engineer, pastor, etc. It's intended to teach you how to learn on your own, how to tackle a long project, and how to stop being a kid.
It succeeds to various degrees in all these areas differently for each of us.
I have 2 years of Comp Sci from the mid-80s, when we used Big Iron, VMS, central printing, timesharing, etc. We worked on VMs inside there, did assembler, Fortran, etc. The stuff I've seen changed in C#, Java, etc. is syntactical. That's easy to learn. You have to work on the nuances of newer platforms, but the base stuff is the same. That's the problem I see with too many of today's grads. They expect to learn the intricacies of Java, but they don't learn the general stuff, they don't understand the basics of writing an OS, dong a sort, walking a linked list of pointers, and so they can't think laterally.
If you take advantage of it, a degree (or a military commission) teaches you to think laterally, quickly, and make do.
April 4, 2008 at 1:50 pm
I view education of any form, whether formal or informal, as the one thing that can't be taken away from you. It is an investment in yourself, and personally, I love learning new things. As such, I have amassed three degrees (BS, MBA, MS). Even with that to my credit, I still feel the best education is the one you get on the job every day...if you are smart enough to learn from it.
The biggest thing I have taken away from all of my formal education is that it has taught me how to analyze things, consider different options, see things from different perspectives, and develop solutions. This works for my personal life as well.
Like many other people have said on here, a college degree is not an end-all or some kind of panacea. I have met and worked with many talented people who had no degree, but were sharp as a tack. I have also met degreed people that couldn't get out of their own way if they had to. That is proof alone that a degree doesn't necessarily make you smarter. But if nothing else, a degree may open some doors for you. In this world of uncertainty in the job market, that alone may end up being a huge benefit.
Just my opinion. 🙂
If it was easy, everybody would be doing it!;)
April 7, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Antares686 (4/4/2008)
Johndavidson719 (4/3/2008)
schumi (4/1/2008)
So i came to the realization I wanted to focus in one general area and focus hard...well here I am. Past month I have devoted myself to becoming a DBA in SQL Server. Everyday I read and read .. Its hard...its a lot of work but it will be done.That statement right there would make me consider you regardless of any piece of paper you may have (Degree or Cert). I would rather have someone who has the primary skills to do the work before I cared about Computer Science skills (we don't need a room full of theorists writing a query). But your statement that you have devoted to becoming a DBA means you now have focus and a genuine desire to acheive. Paper means you can read a book and regurgitate the answer (whoopie), fancy paper means you may have written a paper on what you learned. If you have the knowledge and the demonstratable skills of applying what you have learned the Paper is just icing to me, looks pretty but not the real value.
Thanks, glad to know people appreciate those values. I develop a lot of them when I discovered time management/self help specialist Brian Tracy's materials. I highly recommend The Psychology of Achievement CD.
April 8, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Steve Jones - Editor (4/4/2008)
I have 2 years of Comp Sci from the mid-80s, when we used Big Iron, VMS, central printing, timesharing, etc. We worked on VMs inside there, did assembler, Fortran, etc. The stuff I've seen changed in C#, Java, etc. is syntactical. That's easy to learn. You have to work on the nuances of newer platforms, but the base stuff is the same. That's the problem I see with too many of today's grads. They expect to learn the intricacies of Java, but they don't learn the general stuff, they don't understand the basics of writing an OS, dong a sort, walking a linked list of pointers, and so they can't think laterally.If you take advantage of it, a degree (or a military commission) teaches you to think laterally, quickly, and make do.
I agree with and can appreciate all the responses I have read on this topic. Also, based on my own experience I can see the importance of degree verses experience or a combination of both. In the various interviews I had before getting my current job, the most I was asked about my degree was verifying what it is in. Most of the questions dealt with things like have you done X or how much experience do you have with Y, etc.
I also agree with what Steve has said about knowing the theories behind certain things. Now, I admit most of the time, I don't consciously remember everything from my college course, but every so often I will be working on something and remember a tidbit from some class I was in. I also think that those courses and my military experience helped me think about things differently. However, I don't necessarily think that someone has to have a degree or military experience to be able to do that - many people have the capability to develop that ability in their own way.
Ian.
"If you are going through hell, keep going."
-- Winston Churchill
April 15, 2008 at 4:54 pm
I have been told by companies that the main purpose of having a degree is that it shows your willingness to improve yourself and continue learning.
Another reason is that some companies have federal government contracts and most of those contracts require bachelor degrees. I worked for a company that had a contract with the Department of State and while I was hired for my security clearance, I was highly encouraged to get my bachelors. My company even guaranteed an immediate pay raise to anyone that got their bachelors degree and that was in addition to any yearly pay raise.
-SQLBill
April 17, 2008 at 8:20 am
I have nothing more than an associates degree. But, I also have nearly 30 years experience in IT, much of it doing SQL application programming. Degrees are not important in getting the job done. However, they are undoubtedly very influential in "getting your foot in the door" when looking for a new job.
HR folks don't know SQL from SOA or any of thousands of acronymns and technologies we use on a daily basis. They do however recognize advanced degrees and automatically move those resumes to the top of the interview stack.
Taking a closer look at degree - no degree controversy, is that people with advanced degrees have not necessarily demostrated they know all about the job at hand but they have demonstrated an ability to learn.
The key factor in being successful is not how much we know about a job from the start, but is in being able to quickly come up to speed. As the man said "no one can know everything".
Taking an even closer look at formal education, the pattern from grade school through high scool and on to doctorate degrees exists not so much to prepare one for specific job, but to teach one how to learn "on their own"!
To emphasize this point, just look at any formal PhD program and what it is the actual PhD candidate takes away with them. They learn how to do their own research, and moreover, how to properly communicate their findings to other professionals.
There are many, like myself, that had learned this early-on, and disdained the pursuit of "sheep-skins" in order to lead a "real life" and to being profesional lifetime students. One reason for working in IT, is it is a field (similar to the medical field) where one has to continully be learning new concepts or perish, as advances come faster than any one person could possibly keep up. I have always felt that if there is a point to life it is to be perpetually learning new things! And, to this pursuit, I feel I have chosen wisely!
"Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand." -- Martin Fowler
May 8, 2008 at 8:25 am
Hi,
I don't agree with this that degree is not important. I think degree is very important if you have one from good university because you do your research in that and you get the indepth knowledge of the subject.
ALIMCITP (MCDBA, MCITP, MCSA, MCSE, MCPD Web)
Basit Ali Farooq
MCITP Database Administrator
Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (Web Applications)
Microsoft Certified Database Administrator
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator
CIW Security Analyst
Cisco Certified Network Associate
May 8, 2008 at 9:56 am
With 10+ years experience, and no degree, I would consider getting a degree in something not CS related. Open your eyes to other lines of work, or even make you more valuable to companies in that line of business. The 10 years of experience should be enough to get you a DBA job.
Worked out for me anyhow. I graduated with a BS in Aeronautical Studies. Hands in the air: Who knows what that is? Yeah neither have any of my employers trough the year, except the first one that wanted someone with a computer apptitude, but needed someone with that degree. Has worked a couple of jobs where that knowledge has come in handy, but not ever been turned down for a job because I did not have a CS degree.
Personally, and I am weird in this way, I would hesitate if a resume came accross my desk that had 10 years of computer experience, then went for a degree. Kind of the same as I hesitate when people with years of experience suddenly go and get one of the MS certifications. I mean. Why? You mean you learned more from reading a help book on passing an exam than what your 10 years of experience thought you?
May 8, 2008 at 10:04 am
Anders Pedersen (5/8/2008)
Kind of the same as I hesitate when people with years of experience suddenly go and get one of the MS certifications. I mean. Why? You mean you learned more from reading a help book on passing an exam than what your 10 years of experience thought you?
What if they took those tests without reading any of the exam books? Used their OJT knowledge to pass the tests and earn the cert?
😎
May 8, 2008 at 11:42 am
I said I was weird about it 🙂
May 8, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Anders Pedersen (5/8/2008)
I said I was weird about it 🙂
I guess I find myself weird in the OTHER direction:). I have yet to go for the certs, but I do find myself regularly buying, and going through the materials. It's a bit of my checklist to "stay current": it halps me "shake the rust" off of the areas I don't use a lot, perhaps reminds me of the theory behind the practice, sometimes points to stuff I hadn't tried before, or new features that might be worth tweaking with.
Of course - I may find myself cursing at the stupidity of the book as well, so it's all an entertaining process on top of it all...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
May 8, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Oh, I read all the time. This website, SQL Magazine, various blogs, books. But last certification test I took was 7.0 Design and Implementaion.
May 8, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Now, I admit most of the time, I don't consciously remember everything from my college course, but every so often I will be working on something and remember a tidbit from some class I was in.
That's a key point - a college education gives you that kind of force-fed information that you wouldn't otherwise learn (or at least wouldn't spend as much time focusing on). I took 2 semesters of Assembly programming in college, and must have written 5000 lines of that mess. I couldn't sit down today and write an Assembly language program, and would probably fail any of the tests I had previously passed in those courses. However, because of that experience I can visualize the inner workings of an x86 processor, and can loosely translate what I'm doing at a high level into what is actually happening down in the hardware.
Tim Mitchell, Microsoft Data Platform MVP
Data Warehouse and ETL Consultant
TimMitchell.net | @Tim_Mitchell | Tyleris.com
ETL Best Practices
May 8, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I have purchased many SQL Server 2005 books (none of them study guides), partially read some of them looking for specific information as needed. I'd like to take the certification tests more as a validation of what I know than to impression a hiring manager, but if it does great!
By the way, I've been in the IT field over 30 years starting as a computer operator in the Air Force. I've learned more OJT than I learned from classes earning by Bachelors or Masters degrees, but the experience was definitely worth it.
😎
June 4, 2008 at 3:52 am
Hi,
If you have 10 years of experience then i believe there is no need to do your bachelor's degree. As when you apply for job it says equivalent experience of bachelor degree. Now you have equivalent experience already so you might not need the degree.
After all it is your choice. to be frank, you cant just take a view of 1-2 people and think like that view. It is true that some of the employer will give more important to CV with Degree and certification compared to experience. But it is also true that it will be for entry level or junior level job. Because for junior level job, employer just need person with knowledge and little experience. But for senior leve job, it is mandatory that you have good experience in real time which you have already.
Certification shows your interest and knowledge of field if some one really do it in right way.
regards,
vijay
Viewing 15 posts - 46 through 60 (of 65 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply