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Degree vs Experience

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Forum' started by TheDude, Nov 17, 2018.

  1. furriner

    furriner DI Forum Adept Restricted Account

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    All I can say is, the IBM legal department will not allow managers to hire people classified as engineer/scientist without a recognized degree UNLESS they go through some long drawn out process that no manager has the time or inclination to do. I will not try to interpret the legal thinking, however, it’s pretty much the same situation with their competitors such as Dell and HP. Have people been known to be classified as exempt professional engineers without having degrees? Yes. Very rarely but it is possible. In 35 years I knew of 2. Two, out of hundreds that had degrees. A company lawyer doesn’t care how much you know, he only wants to ensure that his company will not be accused of violations. Your company may not be as conservative as IBM, HP or Dell, but the fact is, many USA companies have been sued in the past on the overtime issue for back pay and many other issues; they ARE conservative in matters of labor law, and, if a young person aspires to work for a company in a position like that, he needs to get a degree, the correct type of degree, from an accredited institution. That’s all I can say other than, an applicant’s opinion of a company’s employment policies, together with about 50 Pesos will get you a cup of coffee at Bo’s.


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  2. OP
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    TheDude

    TheDude DI Forum Patron Highly Rated Poster

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    I think I get it. They are avoiding high risk practices, which results in degree requirements by the company (not necessarily the government). Even if this isn't a "thing" in the U.S. - it still builds a case for pursuing a degree for Europeans.

    I would further add that having to work abroad also furthers this case. Company X may not require a degree, but that degree still might be required by the country which issues the visa.

    This answers my question about the relevance of "exempt status" to this thread.

    In my defense, the context has shifted though. My original track may have been different if the "son" wasn't a US citizen (though that's still an assumption) or if the subject was Filipino.
     
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  3. furriner

    furriner DI Forum Adept Restricted Account

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    Because it started out as Silliman, which infers “degrees”, and Dude didn’t like degrees, but professional degreed positions are exempt and exempt positions are the desirable ones and exempt positions require (usually) degrees. I am rather surprised that you cannot see it is a key part if the discussion, but I guess we don’t have a lot of management experience on this forum and I really don’t care one way or the other :smuglyretired:


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  4. OP
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    TheDude

    TheDude DI Forum Patron Highly Rated Poster

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    The reason he doesn't see it is because it's not a "thing" in the US. IBM, HP, etc may hire differently in Europe. The other side of the pond has all sorts of labor laws which we consider strange. And Europe thinks the US is strange for not having those laws.

    If you are looking at a developer job from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc then exempt status isn't a thing because those jobs are likely over the threshold. Though these companies also may not pay as well in Europe.
     
  5. Rye83

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  6. furriner

    furriner DI Forum Adept Restricted Account

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    Those are programmer positions, not hardware engineering. These are the jobs that the script kiddies get when their mom kicks them out if the house and they need a real job. Those are not professional positions but they can pay a lot of money. Right, there really is no Bachelor of SCIENCE degree applicable to these coder jobs. I was talking about hardware physics/engineering/ material science and the like.


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  7. OP
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    TheDude

    TheDude DI Forum Patron Highly Rated Poster

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    Okay, I was kind of with you there for a bit, but now you've jumped the shark.

    I can now see the difference in our thinking.

    Professional is another of those tricky words because it can mean so many different things.

    For me, the term is about protocols. The professional relationship sets expectations and a basic rule set which helps each side of a relationship "plug in" to conduct transactions to trade goods and services. It's an attempt at standardization. Dance moves. I work by this definition as a solo software developer.

    The term can also be signaling for an economic class and the values which go along with that class. If you believe this way about professionalism, then you probably believe the same about being a card carrying college graduate.

    This is the pivot point of our disagreements. You have asked several times in this thread why I don't "see" but now I know that's because I don't see the same striations of economic status. I could give a rat's a$$ who you are or where you came from. I only care about what you can actually do. I don't give a rat's a$$ what people think about coders relative to scientists, I only care about how useful software is in application to the problems I come up against.

    Maybe this is all just a joke and you are busting my balls. In that case, you got me because I have been replying all along.

    To the question of degree vs experience, we didn't even get to the heart of it. Your choice of school should take into account the quality of the program and the people who you will be learning under. What is Silliman's strongest program? Does the school have world class brains? That's the what and the where to studying at Silliman. If it's not something you are interested in, then look elsewhere.

    Young people today are best served by with travel and experience to the center of gravity of whatever they are interested in. If you are interested in working in the restaurant industry, then go work and study in Spain where there's the highest concentration of world best restaurants. If you are interested in the software industry, then go to SF. If you are interested in finance, then Wall Street, London or any other world class financial center.

    Wherever you go, make that proverbial first buck on day one by getting into the trenches. If you aren't doing that, then you are just playing some other game and it doesn't matter what you are doing. The practice of BS can be pursued anywhere. The Philippines is particularity strong with BS, so Silliman would be a perfect location in that case.

    Seriously? These jobs say right on the tin "Requires a Computer Science degree or equivalent experience."
     
  8. furriner

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    Sorry, I really don’t know much about the BA IN Computer Science (CS) which follows the arts track, or the ABET accredited BS degree which follows the science track, presumably more difficult, but I don’t know if it requires physics and math (ie calculus) which many students simply cannot do, I do not know if the science track has any value (presumably a hardware foundation) nor do I know if potential employers even care if applicants have a math background for coder positions. I am only familiar with the classical Bachelor of Science hardware positions required for circuit and product hardware design. There is a world of difference between designing a computer switching power supply or a digital signal processor and working on code for an operating system. Anyway, you are probably correct when it comes to software positions. For hardware, a degreed position would indicate that the candidate can design a circuit beyond simple application of formulas. Bachelor of Science people would know how to DERIVE the formulae, not just memorize them as a hard-knocks experienced super tech would do. Such a person could design linear and digital circuits for mass production from scratch, test them and make them reliable, understand mean time between failure, estimate future warranty costs, optimize them for assembly and test on the production line etc. etc.. The people who participate on or manage such projects need a good foundation of formal education along with experience, which comes later and which results in salary increases as their careers progress. But I cannot relate this to software projects and have no idea what fundamental knowledge (as opposed to “training”) if any is sought by employers. No, I am not playing you along; it’s just that you seemed to draw an equivalence to the hardware and software sides and I should have thought that out more before responding. You would be the expert on that. I have no idea if being paid by number of lines of code per day is considered a “professional” activity and I will retract any opinions I may have made on that topic. So, upon further reflection, I do not know if it is professional, or treated as “exempt” like hardware engineering, and I really have nothing else to contribute on the software side. Thank you for your interesting comments!


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  9. OP
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    TheDude

    TheDude DI Forum Patron Highly Rated Poster

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    Computer Science is a STEM degree which requires at least the lowest common denominator of science / engineering degrees. I believe this is the degree which is usually mentioned as a requirement sans experience.

    There are some universities which offer non-STEM "technology" degrees. These are CIS (computer information systems) and usually get stuffed into the business department.

    The consensus from what I come across regarding degree requirements is that you need the degree if your job is going to look like research (doing science-y stuff.) In this case, an undergrad degree isn't enough. You need to be packing a graduate degree or a reputation. This is the sort of requirement you'll see in the frontiers where companies are burning through investment dollars on product research which could hit a dead-end. Think AI, VR/AR, driver-less cars, robotics, etc.

    Of the massive numbers of jobs which Google and Amazon recently announced, most of those are likely for people writing code. This isn't the same gig as it has been in the past. You have to move fast to keep up these days. The stacks we work with are a house of cards which isn't easy to keep upright.

    I imagine hardware people are getting paid in the same ballpark as software people. I prefer software because it's more convenient to open a terminal and bang out some code. I can do that from anywhere as long as I have an internet connection. I can then deploy / ship that code as a polished product to real users from the same terminal and the same remote location.
     
  10. furriner

    furriner DI Forum Adept Restricted Account

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    In the medical electronics and IT industries, most engineers have only a bachelors degree. Almost nobody has an MSEE or PhD EE. More common might be a BSEE with MBA for people interested in middle management or above. This is for “product development” of, for example, blood cell counter products (in my medical industry experience) or servers and midsize computers (IBM). “Research” is another matter. That is where you find the highly degreed physicists working on projects like superconductivity and (so I understand) quantum computers and I don’t think with my credentials I could have landed a job at those locations (other than specifying capacitors).



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