[olug] Finally, geek for a living

[Dave Hull]

Quoting Bill Brush <bbrush at unlnotes.unl.edu>:

> As much as they suck, everyone starts at the helpdesk.  That's where you
> "earn your spurs" so to speak, and it weeds out the people with the real
> aptitude for the job from the people who just think it'd be kind of neat to
> work with computers and make a lot of money.

<Annecdote>Most of the people I know working in IT without degrees started at a
help desk or in computer retail somewhere. Their ability to see a need and
apply a fix (often a trivial fix) either by documenting processes, developing
automated processes for previously labor intensive tasks or otherwise improving
the bottom line has opened the door to bigger and better things for them.

According to most folks I know who are responsible for hiring, the ultimate
combo is someone with both great experience and a degree in CS, EE, Math or
some other hard science degree (the one exception, perhaps, being Philosophy
with an emphasis in logic, but that's a stretch).

Having now worked with a few of these people who have lots of great experience
and the paperwork to back it, I think I'd look for the same types of people.
Most of the untrained masses I know, don't care about Big O notation for
algorithm analysis, etc.
</Annecdote>

I recently read Paul Graham's (http://paulgraham.com) article where he stepped
on some toes by saying (I'm paraphrasing) that a company that hires Python
programmers is likely to get smarter programmers than a company that hires Java
programmers. He later expounded on this, saying (again, paraphrasing) that
because there are fewer companies looking for Python programmers, most people
looking for a job are going to learn Java because it will pay the bills, but
people who take the time to learn a more esoteric language like Python are more
likely to be the types of people who love programming and technology.

I think there's something to that. Paul Graham also strongly believes that
programming in Lisp can change the way one thinks and thus make one a better
programmer. <Annecdote>Most non-degreed programmers have never even looked at
Lisp code.</Annecdote>

This is not to say that one has to be formally trained at a university to know
anything about algorithm analysis or to learn Lisp, etc. But it seems far more
likely that a person with a related degree will have been exposed to such.

--
Dave Hull
http://insipid.com