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- Path: news.seanet.com!usenet!not-for-mail
- From: banshee@seanet.com (James Moore)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: Difficulty hiring people with C++ experience.
- Date: 7 Jan 1996 15:22:36 -0800
- Organization: Seanet Online Services, Seattle WA
- Message-ID: <4cpkjs$fem@kisa.seanet.com>
- References: <hNOHm5-.gs678@delphi.com> <4con3u$a24@news1.usa.pipeline.com>
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-
- >On Jan 07, 1996 03:27:51 in article <Re: Difficulty hiring people with C++
- >experience.>, 'gs678@delphi.com' (Glenn Smith) wrote:
- >>Someday I will find the time to get a BSCS, since without it most
- >>interviews may go badly. How does someone like me (programmer
- >>nerd) land a job that let's me use OOD without the BS CS label
- >>required?
-
- Once you have professional experience, my experience has been that no
- one cares what your degree is. I did Celtic studies rather than
- computer science, and while almost everyone will ask me how I got into
- programming, no one has thought it a problem. Possibly they might ask
- a few more specific technical questions in an interview, but I don't
- think I've ever had an interview where I couldn't convince the person
- across the table that I knew what I was doing. My guess is that
- around 20-30% of the people writing code don't have engineering
- degrees, so other people are pulling it off.
-
- I don't know how much this applies to not having a degree at all.
- There are some people out there who don't (some very good people, in
- my experience), but they're pretty thin on the ground.
-
- Getting experience is the hard part. Most people discount personal
- projects quite a bit - coding in a professional environment is a
- slightly different kettle of fish. My method was to get a job doing
- technical support, and then move into engineering in the same company.
- You're much more likely to get a shot at engineering if you can
- demonstrate that you've got more than a few clues, and they can give
- you small projects before you move into full-time engineering, or you
- can just hand engineering bug fixes to approve rather than sit around
- waiting for them to be written for you. Tech writing has similar
- potential.
-
- Also, keep in mind that programmers tend to be very expensive. If you
- can find a small company that needs programming work, but can't really
- afford it, you may find that the experience will compensate for the
- --
- James Moore
- banshee@banshee.com
- http://www.seanet.com/Users/banshee/index.html
-