The question of whether a Computer Science degree is necessary when hiring an IT professional came up recently. Or is it simply the skills and experience that we are after? Or should we hire tech-savvy business majors who show the required aptitude? Let’s take a look….
When I was going through University there were no full Computer Science degrees on offer. Am I really that old? At the University of Wales in Cardiff in 1975, the best I could find was half a degree in Computer Science with the other half degree being split between Physics and Applied Mathematics. They started the University’s first full degree program in Computer Science in 1976.
We would use PDP-11’s with the latest disk technology – removable platters the size of a pizza that would store, wait for it, one whole megabyte! Those were the days when we had access to an ICL mainframe using languages like Algol W and COBOL. We would run our “batch” jobs on cards placed in batches in a tray, hence the name. An operator would run all the jobs through the machine every hour, sometimes only to return a compiler error. We learned to check and re-check our code in those days! We also learned to number our cards in case of the dreaded dropped batch.
I really enjoyed my Computer Science studies at college. I would use my COBOL skills to program fantasy cricket games using randomizing routines. I thought I was really cutting edge. One of my projects was to prove if a published gambling system would actually pay off. I proved that if you had unlimited funds then indeed the system would work, but concluded that if you had unlimited funds you shouldn’t be gambling. That pleased the professors and taught me an important life lesson without losing a penny.
While the degree program was excellent and provided valuable grounding in computer technology across multiple platforms, I didn’t really apply my skills until I entered the workplace. Here is where I discovered true business applications and the urgency to the organization of a functioning system. A few call-outs at 3am and suddenly the accuracy of my work took on a whole new meaning. It’s difficult to teach “business critical” in a college environment. Having said that, it did nurture a sense of discovery and creativity before being exposed to the real world.
If you asked me how many colleagues I have worked with have completed Computer Science degrees then, truthfully, I would not be able to even hazard a guess. And I have worked with many great IT professionals in my career. That points to the answer of the big question – it clearly does not matter. What matters are the skills, experience and aptitude of the candidate.
Just ask Bill Gates.
Cheers
Brian
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