"Jonathan M Davis" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > > The main problem is getting past HR. Sure, if you could get into a real > interview with real programmers, you could show that you know what you're > talking about, but without a degree and/or a lot of experience on your > resume, > there are many companies where HR will filter you out before you get far > enough > along to prove that you know anything (and in some companies, the lack of > a > degree is probably still enough for HR to filter out your resume, even if > you > have quite a few years of professional experience). So beyond whatever you > get > in terms of education, the degree often makes it possible to get past HR > so > that you can actually interview and possibly get the job. >
Meh, companies like that deserve to go under as a result of gross incompetence anyway. I'm not normally an "invisible hand" guy, but I say let the those companies run themselves out of business instead of bending over backwards to help their idiocy work out. We'll all be better off for it. > Now, I totally dispute that college is a waste of time. You're going to > learn > a lot at college - at least if you go to a college that's worth anything - > especially if you _want_ to learn rather than just trying to pass the > exams. > There's a lot to be gotten out of college whether it's required for a job > or > not. The issue IMHO is whether what you get is worth the cost, not whether > it's actually valuable. > I won't deny that you can learn things in college. Hell, I'll even admit that I learned things there. I just don't think you can learn nearly as much, nearly as well, or nearly as inexpensively as you can via other means. I've had a *lot* of people tell me "You get out of college what you put into it", but even that's patently false: What you get out of it is *proportional* to what you put in, yes, but it's a miniscule fraction. There's one hell of an enormous overhead involved. To slightly modify an old quote: "If you want a plush cubicle hell and debt, get a degree. If you want an education, get a library card." > But I don't really want to argue the issue, Sorry...I couldn't help replying. :/ Don't mean to try to drag you into it.
