They wanted a person with experience for the openings but they wanted to pay starting out wages…so they’d eliminate those of us without expereince and then those with the experience didnt’ want to take the jobs for the lower salary. I’m blessed that I have a wide variety of experience now….looking back and taking the longer view of my career (if you can call it that….I call it that wacky collection of jobs), I can see how my experience has been gained. The thing is–you also have to be open to things once you get the job. You can’t just get into your niche and hope to stay there forever….branch out, learn new things, always be learning and evoloving. Don’t make yourself indespensible in just one area..yes, it’s good to be great at your primary job, but having a variety of assetts and skills to bring to the table is a good thing. I survived a ton of layoffs at one job beause I ws good at my primary job but I was never afraid to learn more, take on more and do those with the same zeal and vigor that I did my original job…

Furthermore, comparatively to the amount I learned during personal research and projects like the one that got me the job, school was a waste of time. My coworker is an English major dropout and writes better code than I do.

The majority of my IT experience came from my field of work. In fact, I can’t even attribute any of my knowledge to school at all. Perhaps that is why I never finished. Nor does it matter, because I am still employed and can perform my IT duties better than anybody else I know. Perhaps I am better off since I don’t have trillions to pay back in student loans? Anyway, the IT field changes so quickly, how valuable is a degree in IT from ‘99 gonna be in a few years? My former boss had a PhD in IT from the 70’s. A PhD!!! And he doesn’t know the first thing about modern computers!!!

The problem with comparing education in the IT field is that the book answer, or the ‘Microsoft’ answer doesn’t always apply in the real world. Theory, diagrams, the OSI model, just don’t fly when real problems arise. Sometimes the answers come from your own experience, or from the experience of your colleages. This kind of knowledge doesn’t come from classroom experience. The other problem that I have with education is that it is also full of other crap that isn’t relavent in the real world. Classes that are general education that don’t provide any knowledge value to your field of expertise. And the fact that the majority of colleges are full of Liberal professors that pass their agenda onto the students just sickens me. Yeah, stop telling us why the corporate and Capitalist world is evil when we’re gonna be working as part of it when we graduate! Maybe if professors had a real job… Ugh.

There is no guarantee that that expensive piece of paper will land you the job. If there is any truth in employment, it is this: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

I guess the argument for both really depends on the job at hand. But for the IT field, if I were the employer, I’d choose experience over education every single time. It may be bias, but I am living proof.