Education vs Experience
Is always necessary to have a high degree to start working in one particular sector? Computing is always one of the most studied careers in university, but never had the same rights (or competences) as architecture or some other engineering degrees, at least not in Spain.
For all of you that don’t know how things work in my country, there’re a lot of people occuping IT positions with high degrees but never related to computing: biology, maths and physics are the most common degrees inside IT companies, some others has a IT degree but also some others like me, we have 2–3 years private courses related to programming and having knowledge of analysis, with some experience we can be even better compared to those that passed 5–6 years in university, and why’s that?
The main problem is in IT is that you must be always recycling and learning new languages, platforms, architectures, but usually universities never adapt the topics to the modern age. Today, inside a world always related to object oriented programming, they keep teaching some old languages like ADA or Pascal (last one anyways is ideal to start before changing to C or C++).
I learned directly using C and Javascript: the client side library is perfect to gain experience about how to use objects inside a browser and then, you can continue using Java or C# if you prefer the Microsoft side or being into the design mode using new Javascript frameworks like AngularJS or NodeJS.
In Spain families care more about having a high degree, but never consider the fact that maybe you’ll never work and have a career in that topic, losing some precious years that you could use instead in knowing something more practical. I know people that never started working until being 30 years old (or even later), so they must wait several years to gain experience and settle a bit.
My country has one of the bigger unemployment rates between young people between 18 and 30 around Europe: part of spanish people prefer to leave school-institute to work in construction positions and create fast money, not caring about the future, and now they have 35–45 years old without job, studies and future.
Education is basical to form a person if this XXI century, but, as we see examples in USA about studying costs: people get debts even before they start working, but that’s people do: society puts into pressure to do something with your life, only achieved completing a degree: that’s the only solution? hell no!
I started working in IT when I was 21 (now I’m 36), never had a high degree but I compensate this with my whole experience, related to my first article put yesterday, about having a high degree to work in USA, seems it’s possible to obtain a work visa having 12 years working in same sector, but you need a company to sponsor you, and that’s the big question in this topic… Having a big education career is more important than experience? At the moment seems so.
They forgot that’s not the only solution to work into IT, Europe reduces the requeriments to obtain more technical people to adapt applications and services to the new age, inside Europe no one will ask you about your education to obtain a position (not the first requeriment to match), I think the big fear United States has is about to change that so more “aliens” will enter the american soil, but I think they need to fix that a little bit if they want to fill all the necessities they have, not only big companies needs new people, today everything is related to Internet, IT is not only related to create startup companies.
I don’t think that will change really soon, but seeing that more and more companies are creating new offices around the world, maybe that’s the only solution to people that wants to get out the continent: enter into one of those in Europe and relocate to USA, even if that’s something temporary, but at least live it instead of keeping enclosed into your country and not knowing how some other people actually work. Reality and desire not always match.
