...it shows that you're dedicated enough to spend 4 years of your life to get a piece of paper, which shows that you're less likely to be the type of person who will quickly jump ship.

My experience belies that assertion quite handily. I don't mean to imply that I think that those with degrees are inherently unreliable, or anything even remotely similar. What I mean to say is this: It's relatively easy to obtain a degree during four or more years spent living on Daddy's generosity, as contrasted with gaining substantially the same knowledge of one's chosen field, within or without academia, while coping with the struggles of the real world.

Several years ago, I had an enlightening experience. I'd landed a fairly large and technically complex project, and subcontracted some work out to two programmers with whom I had no previous experience. One was self-taught, the other sporting a Ph.D. in CS, with a Masters in mathematics for a kicker. I had to ride the latter like a rented mule to finally get some incredibly sloppy code out of him, which I then delivered to the self-taught guy and asked him for his opinion. Within minutes, he gave not only the title and page numbers of the text from which the code was mostly lifted, but pointed out the logic flaws in the more or less original contributions. The project continued without the Piledhigher.Deeper, and the self-taught individual not only persisted, but he rose to an even higher group of challenges and performed admirably.

In reply to Re^2: Suggestions for radical career change? by gloryhack
in thread Suggestions for radical career change? by bigmacbear

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