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.
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.
Tom