
'Hidden' economy in Silicon Valley built without advanced degrees - bifrost
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_23424656/hidden-economy-silicon-valley-built-without-advanced-degrees
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jandrewrogers
I did not realize this was a 'hidden' part of Silicon Valley. It is one of the
unique strengths of Silicon Valley (and the tech industry at large). People
both overestimate and underestimate the value of an advanced technical degree
in Silicon Valley.

On the overestimation side, you can work at the most extremely technical end
of the spectrum without a relevant degree _if you are good enough_. You can be
named an IBM Fellow without completing high school or do some of the most
advanced theoretical computer science research without a degree. I know of
several examples. The idea that a degree is _required_ for this is nonsense
even if it certainly makes it easier. Additionally many slightly more mundane
jobs require a high degree of intelligence but the skill can be learned by a
sufficiently motivated individual.

At the same time, most people are not that good. And in those cases, a degree
helps considerably. People have a tendency to overestimate their own abilities
so they do not really know if they are good enough to get on without a degree
until many years after they enter the workforce, at which point that knowledge
is moot.

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akiselev
This isn't just a phenomenon within Silicon Valley. The National Association
of Manufacturers research found that manufacturers in everything from
aerospace to pharmaceuticals can't grow their companies because they can't
find the trained workers. America has outsourced the push button jobs and now
all that's left is the easy service jobs, which are too high in demand even
now, and the high training/education jobs which suffer from far greater an
information asymmetry about how to get into the field, get good salaries, etc.

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anuraj
Education is a signal of quality, which in the absence of other credible
signals is the one to fall back to. If you are an Edison or a Tesla, it may
not matter to you.

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wisty
Yes, there's lots of jobs in IT which require skills, not degrees. And SV
requires _more_ degrees than the US average, because the average SV programmer
isn't plugging in cables, installing Windows, or fixing their company's simple
PHP site.

It's just the daily "education is overrated, but still useful if you pick the
right degree" HN article.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
> because the average SV programmer isn't plugging in cables, installing
> Windows, or fixing their company's simple PHP site.

A good number of programming jobs in Silicon Valley _are_ actually _closer_ to
"fixing the company PHP site" on the complexity spectrum than many people
would like to acknowledge.

Just because many companies have developed a recruiting process that tests for
knowledge that is most likely to come from a computer science degree doesn't
mean that, at the end of the day, a good percentage of said companies
generally have little more than one or more mundane CRUD applications that
need to be extended and maintained.

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quanticle
I wonder how many of these are of the "Computer Science B.Sc. or 'equivalent
experience'" sort. In theory, you can get those jobs without a degree. In
practice, acquiring the "equivalent experience" is nearly impossible without
the degree.

~~~
pjscott
Really? I'm one of those people who didn't get a CS degree, but I learned a
lot of CS stuff; I learned it because it was interesting. People have put a
lot of effort into making CS accessible to anybody who wants to learn. There
are textbooks sitting in public libraries which can teach you, in well-written
straightforward language, far more about CS than most CS graduates ever
remember. There are people on the internet who know amazing things, and will
share their knowledge gladly. Hell, people stick entire books online, just
waiting for you to read them.

It's easier to get "equivalent experience" in CS than with any degree I know
of, and has been for some years now. This is a beautiful thing; let's at least
acknowledge it.

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icebraining
There's equivalent experience and "equivalent experience". The latter is what
HR departments actually consider valid.

~~~
ollysb
HR departments are infamously bad at hiring developers. In this case having a
degree will help you get a job at a corp but that doesn't make you a good
candidate (of course you might be as well, they're just not going to be able
to tell the difference by your degree).

~~~
icebraining
I know, my point is that quanticle was talking about the latter, and pjscott
replied with the former.

You can get equivalent experience without college, but it's still hard to get
what the HR departments consider "equivalent experience". The two views are
not contradictory.

