[LRUG] Important to be a graduate? (was Re: Code samples: To do or not to do)

[Matt Kydd]

It's important to have a degree - although I don't believe it's very
relevant where you got it - or what subject (although a top uni is
always a plus).

Having a degree may not be critical to getting your first job (for
instance a Rails shop may give more merit to OSS contributions)
however as you go forward in your career not having a degree is a
gaping hole in your CV - plus you're insane to miss 3 years of late
mornings and cheap beer.

MK

2009/4/8 Tim Cowlishaw <tim at timcowlishaw.co.uk>:
>>
>> On 7 Apr 2009, at 16:53, Sebastian Komianos wrote:
>>
>>> So, the question is: If you are not
>>> interested in becoming an academic, does graduating from a top-15
>>> university give you extra points in comparison to someone that graduated
>>> from a university ranked, let's say, 35th, but who has other work to
>>> demonstrate as well?
>
> I graduated with an almost totally unrelated degree from an almost entirely
> non-notable  art  college in the suburbs, and have worked full time as a
> programmer for the last two years, as well as holding down a few regular
> freelance clients for a while longer, after graduating in 2005.
> I think i've been lucky - the first company to employ me as a developer
> unquestionably took a big gamble in hiring me, and i learnt a lot from some
> *very* clever people while i was there. YMMV, but I think in general,
> prospective employers are more interested in demonstrable programming skills
> and knowledge than a particularly specific formal set of qualifications.
> Providing evidence of these skills and knowledge is the tricky thing to do
> without a relevant degree or previous work experience however, which brings
> us right back to coding tests and github accounts :-)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tim
>
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