IBM CEO: Hiring Based on Skills Instead of College Degrees Vital for the Future of Tech

Mega6 said:

A cert is one test. A college degree shows a breadth of knowledge and the ability to teach yourself. I am only referring to "technical degrees". Not lib arts.

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By no means am I intending to discount a college education. I am however pointing out that a having a degree in hand is anything but a free pass or voucher to start one's career of choice. In fact many desirable career paths do not require one.

FlawleZ said:

By no means am I intending to discount a college education. I am however pointing out that a having a degree in hand is anything but a free pass or voucher to start one's career of choice. In fact many desirable career paths do not require one.

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Absolutely, my degrees were just too much effort and cost for just a door opener on something I taught myself in the end anyways.

For the record, I have a degree from a top 25 university. Those defending the degree system should consider how fair it is to pay $200K for that college tuition, only to graduate and realize you can't find a job, because all the STEM jobs have been taken by some H1B worker with a cheap online degree that is willing to work for less in order to get a green card in 20 years. Is that fair?

How about the Ph.D. system? You waste 7 years of your life, being indoctrinated with liberal propaganda, focusing on one thing that has a small amount of grant money and little chance of success. Most of those that succeed graduate with the ability to 1. kiss ass 2. read/write papers 3. how to be an arrogant, asshole and put down their peers. You are guaranteed a Scientist job and will make $80K upon graduating.

Meanwhile, you could have spent 7 years of your life actually learning a multitude of skills, coming up with novel, patentable ideas, researching those ideas and creating innovative products for the world. Sadly, if you go this route, you will likely never be allowed to become a scientist without that degree and will always be a slave to the assholes above.

If companies were smart, the degree system would be ended and workers would all take aptitude tests to qualify for a position. Instead of applying the SAT to a college that will waste >=4 years of your life, teach you little, bankrupt you and brainwash you politically, why not apply that test to an entry level job? You have already spent 13 of years of your life demonstrating your skills. Most degrees are meaningless with the ease that the internet and OTJ training can teach you practical skills.

I only have an Associate's Degree, but I worked in IT for over thirty years... but 80% of tech companies won't even interview you unless you have the BS :/

One of the worst interviews I was ever on was for an oil/gas company where it was top corporate policy that every hire - for every position in the company - must have a 4-year degree. Secretaries, the mail room staff, etc. Everyone. it was totally insane there... and they paid like crap, below industry standards.

My resume ticked every single skill/experience checkbox they had for their project... but I didn't have the degree. So they hired a gal straight out of college with almost zero work experience to head up the project instead - and she screwed it all up. They then tried to bring me in as a temporary contractor to fix everything, at less per hour than the temp gig I was currently doing, so I told them to go to hell. Six months later I heard that upper management fired everyone and outsourced the whole IT department to Perot System.

I gave up on IT not long afterwards and became a baker instead... I miss the $, but not the HR bullshit

/still looking for any IT/LAN/Support job in Houston that will touch anyone over age 50
//it started gettting bad at age 40, but when you turn 50 you're an untouchable

Here's the simple solution. If you can afford the degree then go get it. It isn't going to hurt your job chances and it may help. If you can't afford the degree then try to get certifications in the areas you're interested in. Again, it can't hurt your job chances. No matter where you fall on the scale, you might be great at the job or you might be crap ... but never turn down a degree or certification if you can manage it.

Incompetent people occupy all the myriad jobs and education levels, whether PhD or GED. Competent people also occupy all those same areas. Education, or lack thereof, is not an indication of competence but an education can open doors you MIGHT want to walk through some day. But, again, if you can't afford it ... get what piece of paper you can afford, just in case.

Lumpus said:

I only have an Associate's Degree, but I worked in IT for over thirty years... but 80% of tech companies won't even interview you unless you have the BS :/

I gave up on IT not long afterwards and became a baker instead... I miss the $, but not the HR bullshit

/still looking for any IT/LAN/Support job in Houston that will touch anyone over age 50
//it started gettting bad at age 40, but when you turn 50 you're an untouchable

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Well aware of the age discrimination that exists, it's one of the reasons I've stayed in my current job.
I landed my current IT job when I was 46. I'm almost 58 now, and hope my current company stays around till I'm ready to retire.

If I ever need to find another IT job, I'll dye my hair (luckily I still have plenty).
I could easily pass for someone 10 years younger without my grey hair, but even that's getting to be too old now.

I'd also edit my resume to remove graduation dates and remove my older job experience, so it looks like I started in the early 2000's instead of the 1980's

nutzo said:

Years ago when I worked for a computer reseller, I would be sent to vendors training classes (needed to keep the certifications).
There was a person in a couple of the classes from one vendor who had virtually no hands on experience as they where a manager at their company.
When it came to the labs in the class, they where clueless, yet they where still certified in the product.

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I work with someone like this right now. Unfortunately, I have to go to them when I need answers on the product I'm using. They are the "expert" because they are certified. I've already found many things about the software they had no clue about - but, my account access is restricted. Sigh (actually, i'm ok with it - I don't want to support this product.)
Reminds me of someone else I knew years ago. She was a system administrator at a software company - she was a Windows administrator (not sure what certificates she had, but she was smoking hot...) Anyway, she asked me if we had any keyboard laying around. She was pressing ctrl-alt-del on a Solaris system and it wasn't rebooting. She thought one of the keys was bad.
I thought she was joking at first. She actually unplugged the power to the device (and killed several people logged on to the system - at least my session only had a few unsaved changes to the code I was working on.)

I find it interesting that internships haven't been brought up. Many of my coworkers all did multiple internships with our company while they worked on their degree and had a job waiting for them when they graduated. It's unfortunate most companies don't offer paid internships. It's a valuable tool for everyone involved. As an intern you get industry experience, a chance to see if your chosen field is something you are going to enjoy, and you get a summer job. For the employer you get a small return for the work the intern does, you effectively get an extended interview, and you help build a pool of candidates for future hiring.

My point is if you go for a degree make sure to also apply for internships, you will have a massive advantage when you graduate and likely be more successful in your career.

lcpiper said:

In another way, it shows that for large companies, degrees matter because of things like ITIL and those other corporate level certifications businesses like to acquire. It's mostly because of those business level certifications that companies have a glass ceiling and insist on their people getting degrees. That's how they sell themselves, by those certs. That's also why my own company wasn't happy when I dropped my CASP cert, because it reduced their numbers of higher certified and qualified people for future contracts. Sure, I didn't need CASP for what I want to do, but my company liked my having it for stuff they want to do.

It is what it is. But I'm the last guy that will go faulting someone for staying where they are happy, it's what I do.

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It's like us we needed to roll out vmware a couple years ago to our environment. So boss asked for a volunteer and I signed right on up. Now I manage all of my groups VMware infrastructure and last year I finally got my certification. Because the company wanted it they paid for me to go to the two weeks in in classroom education on the product. That's just the way it is.

Thankfully I have a company that if they want the cert or knowledge learned they will pay for the classroom training.

Grimlaking said:

It's like us we needed to roll out vmware a couple years ago to our environment. So boss asked for a volunteer and I signed right on up. Now I manage all of my groups VMware infrastructure and last year I finally got my certification. Because the company wanted it they paid for me to go to the two weeks in in classroom education on the product. That's just the way it is.

Thankfully I have a company that if they want the cert or knowledge learned they will pay for the classroom training.

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Beats the hell out of the other way, hiring a new guy with the skills you need, then letting go one of your old guys. If anyone is unsure why this is the wrong way to do it, it's because out of your 8 man IT shop, you now have one new guy and 7 old guys who all remember how you just fucked one of them over. It's not how you foster loyalty in your work force. You can sort of get away with it if the guy you let go was a slug and everyone knew it. But you still leave all your people feeling like they are expendable and that the company isn't going to put anything into their workforce to keep them current unless they sponsor other training opportunities.

Mega6 said:

So glad I took three semesters of calculus and physics. It just proves how stupid I am by how i was waiting my time and money on classes and degrees. Good thing I was smart enough to teach myself computers afterwards.

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Ha! Same here my formal education I found was worthless when I hit the job market. I left the field of my training in the mid 90s and went into the computer related field. ALL my skills there were 100% self taught and this is where I've made my living ever since.
In '89 I borrowed money to buy my first PC; was a 486SX and cost $2300. (that is like $4600 in todays money) At the time my parents were appalled I went into dept on something so frivolous. They even demanded I sent it back and get my money back. I hate to think what if I listened to them.

(BTW, I wanted to move to a IBM PC from a 8bit Atari in the early 80s but they were $5000 then. For me it as a solid block of unobtainium.)

yea the first computers I played with were when I was a wee lad (12) at my moms work when she was pulling weekend shifts to get work done. I tooled around in Dos, learned about BAS files and discovered the banana game in early dos OS installs. That lead to my first personal PC a 486sx20 in the late 80's early 90's that eventually went the way of the Dodo (it was a WWIV BBS host for a good chunk of time to be fair.) when I finally got a pentium 90. And it's been uphill or downhill or however that term works ever since.