Re: [SAGE] Computer Sciences degrees in IT

["Jon 'maddog' Hall" <maddog@li.org>]

I found Michael's answer interesting...

On Sat, 2007-03-24 at 10:15 -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote:
> A very quick comment from the peanut gallery. As a hiring manager I  
> really give no weighting towards degrees at all.

I think many people on this list (including myself) have stated that a
college degree is not required for a sysadmin job, nor really for many
jobs.  Nevertheless, all things being equal (and I mean ALL things being
equal), if I had two people standing in front of me and one had a
college degree and the other did not, I would probably take the one with
the degree.

But "all things being equal" seldom happens, and as time goes on the
person's work experiences and work record take precedent over the
degree. No hiring manager after my first job has ever asked anything
about my university training other than one Dean who was hiring me to
teach full time, and even that was many years ago.

> The best sysadmins I  
> know either didn't go to college at all, or studied something besides  
> IT

In 1983 when we started the Unix group at Digital, there were lots of
engineers that came from math backgrounds, astronomy, meteorology,
physics and other disciplines other than CS, and they were very fine
software engineers. 

> and fell into systems work through more interesting paths.

This is the part that really puzzles me.....if they were "more
interesting paths", then why were these people systems administrators?
Were they unsuccessful at those "more interesting paths", or were they a
lot like the engineers at Digital, pulled away by the Sirens of computer
science?

I left electrical engineering and went the path of software for many
reasons, but one of them was simply being fascinated by these machines
that I could control by the simple use of "1s and 0s".  I found it "more
interesting" then, and I have found it "more interesting" each day of
the thirty-eight years I have been in the business.  I have had a
variety of jobs:

	o programmer
	o systems administrator
	o educator
	o quality control manager
	o product manager
	o technical marketing manager

and lately "Free Software Evangelist" (whatever that means).
Each one of those jobs required a different part of my training, whether
that training be the formal training I received back at the university
or the informal training I picked up as I went along.  And while I have
an interest in many things (physics, electronics, music, mechanical
clocks), I still find computers to be the "most interesting".  Of course
each to their own....

>  If I had it to do over, I'd go to college for Finance or Business, both of  
> which I feel would be far more valuable to an IT career as it  
> progresses up the ladder.

My own undergraduate degree was half business and half electrical
engineering, with a minor in CS.  Later I went on to get a Master's in
CS, but for the most part that was just taking the courses and passing
the tests.  The real CS I learned at my job, working with the rest of
the software developers.  But I was also very lucky and ended up in a
"first job" that gave me exposure to a wide range of programming issues,
and was surrounded by a whole bunch of really bright people.

As I passed through those other jobs that I mentioned, however, I did
utilize a lot of the "business" side of the degree (I think I agreed
with Ted on "Business Law", and "Industrial Psychology" was definitely a
big "plus"), but I also continued to rely on the engineering side also.

My own finding over the years is that it is typically much easier to
teach a technical person business and finance than to take a person who
studied business and finance in college the depths of technology.

In the end it still goes back to how well you can learn on your own and
apply what you have learned to your job.  You have the rest of your life
to pick up the knowledge you need, if you can do that on your own.  Some
people never gain that ability.

maddog