They don't work for my firm, they work for a I.T Professional services firm with a big government contract.
Degree vs Experience
- Thread starter Verbium
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They don't work for my firm, they work for a I.T Professional services firm with a big government contract.
Hey all i'm saying is experience is not correlated to talent or ability. And as you put it, I know some duffers(They even admit to their friends, they even brag about not doing any work) but they don't get fired. I bet they are quite good at talking themselves up at interviews as well, since you tend to get on with them. Yes it does annoy me, but their my friends so i don't really do anything about it.
Did your wife get where she was through vocational qualifications or academic, just curious.
experience gives you the ability, if you have talent then you learnt to do it without having to do a degree on it. i'll give you an example and its myself, i cannot sit there doing courses or being educated by a teacher/lecturer, it doesnt work and i cant take it in easily. so i self teach and im now multi talented in many areas. i get given jobs on my ability to do the job and not on the bull that most people come out with at an interview.
i laugh at people that think having a degree makes them clever.
A degree does not make you clever no, nor does experience. I would never hire someone on basis, that they have 3 years of c#, they have PROVE ability with some outstanding work. Experience alone does not allow one to prove ability.
A relavant example to I.T vocational work could be:
A MCSE with 5 years of experience could have been doing basic admin work for majority of his time, then apply for jobs setting up Active Directory in corporate environment then complete fail at the job.
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![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
For that level of work I agree, I doubt most computer science graduates want a career under an IT technician anyway.
These threads go round and round in circles because we just get people in lines of work where vocational skills are more important thinking that applies to all walks of life.
A degree is useful. Experience is useful.
They are both useful at showing different things at different stages of a career.
Might as well ask what is better, shoes or sports trainers
Most sensible comment yet!
Soldato
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Experience is always better than a degree, (in my trade anyway)
Too many Uni grads with the they think "they know it all" attitude.
Too many Uni grads with the they think "they know it all" attitude.
[TW]Fox;18742521 said:
Thats because they do...
There are jobs that require an academic degree specific to them, take BetaNumeric's mathematician for example. However, in the vast majority of occupations the advantage that having a degree gives you could easily be replaced and in many cases be better addressed by Apprenticeships or Vocational/Professional qualifications.
There is too much emphasis on having a degree, any degree whether it is relevant to the occupation you choose or not and too many occupations that once did not require a degree now do which has devalued the degree somewhat.
Increasingly there are industries that are moving away from graduates and recruiting directly from A-levels into their own training schemes, this includes professions such as Engineering and Accountancy.
[TW]Fox;18742521 said:
No offence mate but the is no area of the IT trade where having a degree in writing reports is more important than actually knowing something about the industry or how to do your job, if your going into this industry all a degree will do is get you a low end starting job from where you can gain the experience needed for the high end jobs.
The amount of extra time/work needed to go from A levels to degree is not worth it when you could get a job with the A levels, work your way up, and be preferable to an employer over somebody who has just shown up with a degree. imho if its the IT trade your interested in a CISCO or MS qualification would be much more valuable to you than a degree.
Thats because they do...
There are jobs that require an academic degree specific to them, take BetaNumeric's mathematician for example. However, in the vast majority of occupations the advantage that having a degree gives you could easily be replaced and in many cases be better addressed by Apprenticeships or Vocational/Professional qualifications.
There is too much emphasis on having a degree, any degree whether it is relevant to the occupation you choose or not and too many occupations that once did not require a degree now do which has devalued the degree somewhat.
Increasingly there are industries that are moving away from graduates and recruiting directly from A-levels into their own training schemes, this includes professions such as Engineering and Accountancy.
You've already proven yourself to pretty academic once you have done a-levels at high standard anyway. KPMG requires 320 Ucas points as i know.
This will sound snobbish no matter how I couch it but if you should decide to move away from being a technical specialist and go down the road of management within your trade, Director etc you can (not always to be fair) find the degree is the only thing stopping you from hitting the glass ceiling.
I wouldn't say that A levels are specifically of a high academic standard tbh.
Good luck getting proper(I.e Not hack & slash VBA)developer job with without degree mate, it can be done I've seen 1 or 2 jobs that don't require it. I agree it probably doesn't require it however.
Most really good CS grads from oxbridge/imperial (I.e Not me) go into investment banking. Some can go on to be quants applying machine learning & AI Skills.
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Experience > degree definitely and in my last 3 jobs I've walked over people with degrees.
However, my whole attitude towards young people with degrees changed a couple of years ago with the people who were put with me.
I found myself being 'jealous' of the way they thought and did things and my administrator was doing stuff before I'd even asked him.
It's a shame that he had got a Masters in Finance but was earning 14K just to live but it has now given him 'experience'.
However, my whole attitude towards young people with degrees changed a couple of years ago with the people who were put with me.
I found myself being 'jealous' of the way they thought and did things and my administrator was doing stuff before I'd even asked him.
It's a shame that he had got a Masters in Finance but was earning 14K just to live but it has now given him 'experience'.
So how do you explain that I have no degree and a quick poll in the office today indicated that one two of our directors have a degree.
How many directors of the FtSE100 have degrees I wonder? and I would hazard a guess that they are in the minority.
The majority of FTSE 100 are eton educated types with degree from the likes of oxbridge. There was article on it in economist about class discrimination.
I don't have great grades, i went to a mediocre uni, i got mediocre a-levels. Its a dose of reality what people really need to see, when i realised a lot of my russell group friends were landing 32k jobs straight off at accenture. I had to get a okish job.
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Associate
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320 UCAS points is not bad but its not stellar either. Unfortunately A levels aren't the best at splitting people by academic ability. 40% of people who sit a maths A Level get an A. That's why top universities ask maths applicants to sit additional exams like STEP.
I know a number of people working in investment parts of banks and they are always on the look out for people with high level mathematical skills, going so far as to email people doing PhDs in mathematical areas who they think might be interested in such stuff. They are experiencing something similar to what I mentioned before, that people with 'just' a degree in maths often don't have the skills to cut it in practice, partly because more and more people are doing degrees they never would have done 20 years ago, due to poor grades. Pushing 50% of the population to go into higher education results in 'grade inflation', a job asking for a degree 20 years ago might ask for a masters now.
As I said there are exceptions but thanks to assurance and quite frankly, educational discrimination these opportunities aren't readily available. You know yourself I'm sure from first hand experience how degree types love to look down on vocationals.
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In your area, sure.
A good friend of mine works for Accenture. He is now on a fantastic salary despite being reasonably young - if it wasn't for his degree, he wouldn't even have got through the front door. He's just disproved your theory - he certainly didnt get a low end starting job. He walked straight out of uni onto the sort of salary many of us here will never acheive. There is more to IT than being a technician, I'd imagine.
I'm not saying it isn't possible to do well without a degree - of course it is! But sometimes, it can be very useful.
It's very difficult to get an objective viewpoint because for obvious reasons those without a degree will want to convince everyone you don't need one anyway and those with a degree will want to convince everyone that you are nothing without one.
The truth is somewhere in between the two.
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