L' Eomot Inversé (9/13/2013)
patrickmcginnis59 10839 (9/13/2013)
Now that you have acknowleged that there weren't more appropriate fields in your more recent reply (or did you?), who then would be more qualified than say Alan Turing, Grace Hopper or John McCarthy for instance? Why does this reply look like Mr. crick would have rejected these candidates because they didn't have an appropriate set of credentials, when in fact we're now seem to be fairly well in agreement the appropriate set of credentials didn't exist or more preferrably for me, they actually had the best set of credentials to do the pioneering work they did? Ie., it reads like you would hold up Mr. crick as not preferring these eminent pioneers as able to work in the field, heck, the very field they were instrumental in creating.It's simple really. If someone tells us that they want an appropriate degree for a computing/IT job it usually turns out that they want a CS/IT degree. And if someone has a CS/IT degree, that is no indication at all of capacity to do computing or IR work, unless it was awarded by one of the exceptional universities who make a good job of Cs/IT teaching. And there is a great pile of evidence, as you obviously agree, that a lot of people did a lot of really splendid work in computing/IT at the time when they held no CS/IT degree. Given those three things, I'm going to disagree when someone tells me that the thing to look for is "an appropriate degree", or claims that relying on academic qualifications is a panacea for bypassing the untrustworthy certification problem.
Well I still amd struck that, because at the time with the work many were doing early on in the history of the industry, the sorts of degrees they had access to and did get (with notable exceptions which I can agree on), were the appropriate degrees, and additionally, now that we do have an industry that the notable folks we discussed were really instrumental in building (obviously still a young industry), we also have "appropriate" degrees available. I put that in quotes because as has been noted here and elsewhere, the degrees are leaving plenty to be desired. I would think these degrees in the field should adapt while acknowledging that theres some that think they're unfixeable.
If we are mired in the situation that CS/IT degrees leave something to be desired and certificates aren't working as many have indicated, what does the industry do? My choice is to change the degrees and certification to what extent we can, because without a track record for a candidate (assuming of course we want to provide a path for folks new to the job market), what else do we have? Sure, theres always the apprenticeship suggestion, but how much can companies afford to spend time on the intangeables, to take a few examples, maintainability, some assurance of correctness in programming operation and as all too obvious nowadays, security. Companies are notoriously shortsighted and I guess they have to be, and I worry that they're not the place to build the sort of foundation that keeps the industry from producing problem factories.
There have been times when the bane of my life was having to skim-read the great piles of CVs of deadbeat no-hopers (that's the impression the CVs give of the people they describe, although of course that may be partly because the recruitment agent has rewritten them without clearing the revisions with the candidate) sent to me by recruiting agents because they believed anyone with a degree in CS/IT must be competent.
And be honest about it: would you take on someone with a degree in Literae Humaniores (Latin and Greek literature plus ancient and medieval philosophy)? Would you take on someone with no degree at all, or with a degree in History, or French Language and Literature, or Theology? If not, you would turn down two of the people I named if they came to you with the same qualifications (and lack of fame and world-wide reputation) as they had when they first took on jobs in computing; and you would also turn down a lot of the people I worked with over the years.
I'm going to hazard a guess that most companies would have probably turned them down if they had no experience and irrelevent degrees, and I'm probably not going to beat them up for this. If at the time these folks you named had instead shown a track record in the field, then this could be a different situation (and I'm not even requiring fame and world-wide reputation), I'm a big fan of the requirement "x college or equivalent experience".
I do readily admit, these are for our IT/CS positions, and not for choosing the pioneers and originators of entire industries, although with the industry still evolving maybe even this sentence of mine is on shakey ground 🙂
I even more enthusiastically admit that I probably don't have any solutions, just a few bullets on a wishlist.
editted: to finish the post