“A student in one of my classes told me he already had an Information Technology degree which he said has been worthless. This blew me away. I’ll try to talk to him some more to figure out why he thought it was worthless.”
He’s not completely right or wrong there, they have been worthless for quite a few people that I interact with at my current main position and at the part-time one that I cover on the weekends. They go to college for 3-5 years, spend a lot of money or get into a lot of debt only for their inexperience or wrong experience to hold them back. I will have an associate’s in Computer Information Systems (Fall 2013) and another in Business Administration (Spring 2014) but currently I only have experience in my field and certifications. That pretty much allows me to work at a payscale or two higher and to be taken more seriously on interviews. A degree can be helpful and even when combined with experience it has not been something that increases the pay greatly.
The companies just want the most competent person, after that they just train you on exactly what they want you to do and call it a day. They don’t know what they want IT or some of their CS focused roles (custom programmers) to do sometimes. At least that’s what I’ve seen and have deduced from speaking with other people. For our pay to be equal or for mine to be greater for the same position at the same place is something that would make a graduate angry. Graduates here in my section of Michigan are often shepherded towards the entry level positions unless nepotism is at play. It seems like the field truly does value actual experience more than that paper because the classes themselves are a bit of a joke. They involve more memorization of facts than actually understanding the technology. It’s the difference between the guy that knows what an ethernet cord is and the one that can design an efficient network.
There hasn’t been much flexibility taught and after seeing one clueless guy with a degree come in at my last position where I was a work lead and trainer I understood it then. Anyone can crack open a book and finish the lesson work. Anyone can cram for a test but not everyone is really learning. Quite a few people in a group I tutored just thought they would get to sit around and do nothing all day or write code in a way that they specifically wanted to do. When the reality hits that they need to change their logic to fit that of another style and to follow certain methods and to use the math that they did bad in (but not bad enough to fail) they either quite or slow down or just plain struggle. This isn’t the bulk of the people applying or working that I saw but it’s enough that it makes the hiring managers and anyone that you don’t work with directly suspicious of you despite your amazing resume and past projects.
There are so many people lying to try to get at the better paying positions. There are also a lot of people that can’t work well in a work environment or speak and act like the average computer user. Once we had a person come onto our Lead team as support specialist and he knew nothing about Macs, ARP or OpenLDAP. He also could not diagnose driver issues or basic layer 4 (routers/switches) issues. He just got there because the manager of my group was his cousin. It sucked, I had to spend so much time teaching the guy how to be a basic technician. I knew that I could never rely on him to perform any of the higher level functions of the position or to understand higher level network technologies. Idiots like that unnamed guy are the ones that make it difficult to trust the highly commoditized computer science degree’s and certifications.
There are so many classes and resources out there that are only about helping you to earn these documents, not to understand the knowledge behind them. I’d have my LPIC 1 and be in a much, much better Linux Admin/Server position if I was confident enough in my knowledge to be able to hand things when they go wrong. I could pass the first two level tests right now but I don’t have what I feel is enough information to be able to diagnose issues without checking a reference book. Heck, sometimes things can be wrong but seem entirely right, I had a guy that messed up current settings at my last position. He was slowly destroying the workstations, the were working but he had set us up for a major issue down the road. I still earn certifications and the only reason I’m able to be looked at seriously is because of my strong references and diverse background.
I participated in DAPCEP for about 6 years, did my year of vocational training at General Motors and was promoted very quickly at my first job for work performance many years ago. I’m in a decent enough position now but I had to work too hard just to prove what I know and to get to where I’m at. I’m not opposed to working but it’s a bit of an insult to be drilled/tested on the simple stuff excessively and to break people out of talking down about the more elaborate items in the beginning of any position. I’ll send you a link to my linked-in and other credentials if you want it, I know that I email you a lot. Heck, I’ve even committed some of those development sins when I tried to run into game development half-cocked about two years ago. I’m studying preparing for something more seriously now. It’s so easy to forget about the hard work you’ve perform to reach your current place in life when you start to feel that entitlement disease, that little bug that says you deserve stuff just because of who/what you are. It’s bs and it needs to be stomped out whenever any person feels it.I can certainly see how liars and charlatans would make your job really hard. At least in IT, you can prove competency. Thank goodness you aren’t a teacher.I do recall the guy I was referring to saying how he liked interviewing for an oil job better in North Dakota than in Texas. In Texas, “I don’t feel special.” Why should he? It is the headquarters of oil men so they are all concentrated here.
I wouldn’t be surprised many people making decisions of college classes based entirely on ‘feeling special’ instead of ‘marketable skills’.
This is ever more reason why the hardcore must be destroyed!
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