RE: Experience vs College Degree

["Mark A. Manske" <mmanske@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It depends on the companies you are talking with, I know of many IS managers
that only went through tech college (1-2 year AA degree), they learned their
managerial skills the hard way and mostly at smaller companies, say between
100-300 million per year in sales.  The big boys want the silly piece of
paper,
and I have worked with some people with that piece of paper, please - give
me
someone who has been shot at a few times in the trenches instead of someone
who has just been back at base playing with toy solders.

It really comes down to who you want to work for, and how you feel you can
overcome their requirements (if need be) or if you would prefer to shoot for
the big dogs earlier in your career, then a BA/BS would be required.

I know it is only the opinions here on this list of basically the
solders in the battle each day, you may be better off asking the
question point blank at the IS/VP's of companies that are about the
size that you would be looking to work at.

HTH
Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
[mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Justin Houchin
Sent: Friday, June 28, 2002 12:45 PM
To: Midrange-l
Subject: Experience vs College Degree


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I know this is off the topic, but I need to ask the programming
community. I am 21 years old and have been programming in RPG and E-RPG
for about 1.5 years. I  love it! But I do not have a degree. My question
is do you all feel that I could get turned down for a job over someone
that has a bachelor's degree? This has never happened to me but I do not
want it to ever happen. I am very seriously thinking about starting back
to college at night to get my bachelors in CIS. This is a very hard
decision to make because of the amount of money it will cost to go to
college. That is why I'm am trying to see if job experience would
triumph over a degree. Please give me some pros and cons on this
situation.

Justin Houchin
Programmer and Web Developer
ReliaTek, Inc
justin@reliatek.com