I’m taking a break from the CCNA/CCNP lab series for today to take a look at a couple of career-oriented topics. And since I don’t hire anyone, it’s time for a survey as well… and you’re the hiring manager.
So, here’s the hullabaloo. (Man, blogging can be freeing comparing to cranking out a book – hullabaloo would never get past the editors at Cisco Press.) Anyway, Network World published some articles today about careers and the relevance of Computer Science (CS) degrees. Here’s one about whether CS degrees matter any more, and here’s another stating most of the positives about CS degrees today. Regardless of your thinking about whether CS degrees are relevant in 2009, it makes for some interesting reading.
So, let me start by taking a paragraph to talk about my own experience with a CS degree – hopefully it’ll have something to do with the topic at hand.
First off, I must admit that the first thing these articles got me thinking about was my own time getting a BS in Information and Computer Science (BSICS) from Ga. Tech. Even back then, you could truly geek out, get curious about how stuff worked, and get pretty deep even with a Bachelors degree, with 30 courses in-major required for graduation. (It used to make me laugh when my buddies at the OTHER in-state schools had to take less than 10 in-major classes to get their degrees… but maybe they really did end up with a broader educational base, or at least they learned a few more drinking games than me. Anyway…) It was the good old days of waiting in line for klunky VT-100 terminals to get into the Cyber, waiting 20 minutes on printouts of compiles, going there (regularly) at 4AM to avoid the lines… at least I missed the punch cards at our school by just 1 year. And then, hallelujah, we even got IBM PCs before I skedaddled… did a project modeling the performance of 10 Mbps Ethernet under different load, proving with simulators that the bend in the curve happened around 30% utilization with shared Ethernet. Had some cool professors, some not. Mainly, learned a lot, had a lot of fun.
There’s no way my career success happens as it has without my own CS degree. Without it, maybe I’d have had different success, or even more success, but it certainly shaped my own career. Believe it or not, I still occasionally write something for a book and think “wow, I first learned that in college”.
So, how does all this all link in to something that matters to “us”? Our time together in this space focuses on Cisco certs, how to get them, geeky details on some topics, the practical stuff for getting prepared in less time with less $$$. For most of us that read/post here, you’re not at a point in your life where you’re thinking “do I get a degree? A CS degree even? (Is that a poor assumption on my part?)
So, let me pose a couple of questions, and get your opinions. Although I write a lot, I don’t hire a lot (1 part time guy – Masters degree and 1 Cisco cert, since that’s the topic of the day), so let’s hear what you think.
Here’s question 1, with survey. You’re now the boss of your group. You need to hire one person to fill a job. Imagine any such job, even your job (there’s a vacancy now that you have a new job, right?) Anyway, three candidates. They are all EXACTLY EQUAL in terms of the applicability of their REAL SKILLS for the job you’re hiring them for. (Why? I want to drill down on other differences.) You are also not Cisco nor a Cisco partner. Then, the three candidates are different as follows – which would you hire?
Why? You can tell me what other criteria you’d use to pick between them, but only if you think two or more tie on the above. (Of course, you can really post anything you want, but you know what I mean.)
Question 2 is open-ended. Say you get one shot at a wish from a genie. In this wish, you have to change to be 32 years old, with a CS degree, with 10 years IT experience. You’d have no IT certs, you’d have had lots of interesting fulfilling work, and relevant experience. Do you take the wish? And why?
OK folks, fire away – let’s get this hullaballoo started.
