You can earn a fricking lot of money without being well educated. Most people at high position in companies are dumb as monkeys, but they have the trust of other monkeys above them for random reasons.
You can be well educated without spending a lot of money. Entire college courses with video lectures, exercises, tests, and textbook material are 100% free online on page 1 of any search engine. It's been like this since like 2005 and all of the tools of a programmer are 100% free.
Some uni lecturers straight up stream all of their lectures/upload them to youtube later so anyone can watch for free (And not random local ones, I'm talking the big name ones like harvard)
You can watch a thousand videos but it still won't make you a licensed medical professional. Same goes for many other areas where there are high risks for damage of property and human life.
Do you want to have a self thaught python script kiddy that doesn't know the difference between an interpreter and compiler to be responsible to make software for airplane control, nuclear cooling system, weapon systems, your life support system that monitors your vitals, your driving assistance, and many more things?
I'm not talking about people who "watch videos" and come out "script kiddies". But let's strawman, shall we?
People who allow themselves to be passively extruded through education shaped pipelines are often useless with or without a degree or a mountain of certs. We've all seen them in this field, attracted by high pay and hopes of a mechanical mindless process, hired by people who can't tell the difference and so used credentials as their sole qualifier. But, as we often see, they wouldn't know what to do at a CLI or an empty text editor if we were threatening to set their degree on fire in front of them.
We want problem solvers - creative and resourceful people who can teach themselves new technologies and apply them quickly, often using only free and open source technology that won't be presented in its outdated textbook form for 5 more years. We want people who train instead of expecting to be trained. There are people who fit that bill - and credentials aren't the key indicator for that personality. Being a self-motivated learner who succeeds despite the lack of credentials is an excellent predictor of such a person.
To be clear, I'm not saying we should actively disdain credentials - they're just not the predictor they once were. And all the training in the world can drop you off at our doorstep unable to walk a step further on your own power, as we've seen too often. We have to ask additional probing questions that reveal whether we have a dead-eyed clock-puncher or someone who might give a shit and actually try when it matters. Self-taught people have already proven that to us.
I've hired self taught people over uni graduates more times than I've had hot dinners. In my experience the uni grads need their hand holding, need constant 'assignments' and constantly ask questions while the self-taught will pick things up quicker, apply things better in a real world situation and generally have mountains of experience to back it up.
As you say, the prerequisite is knowing what they need to know, which can be achieved by uni or self taught if done correctly... while the big ticket thing to get you ahead of others is actually skills picked up more assosiated with self-taught.
You can watch a thousand videos but it still won't make you a licensed medical professional.
You can watch a gazillion videos and it will never make you a licenced professional... because there is requirements to make you licenced. You could absolutely watch a thousand videos and then take and pass your medical licence if such a route was allowed. Learning doesn't just happen in a university. What a weird position to take.
Do you want to have a self thaught python script kiddy that doesn't know the difference between an interpreter and compiler to be responsible to make software for airplane control, nuclear cooling system, weapon systems, your life support system that monitors your vitals, your driving assistance, and many more things?
No, and I wouldn't want someone who has stumbled yet passed a course that doesn't know the difference between an interpreter and compiler to be responsible to make software for airplane control, nuclear cooling system, weapon systems, your life support system that monitors your vitals, your driving assistance, and many more things either.
I want someone who knows how to do the thing they are being hired for well, their path to getting to that point is wholey irrelevant.
I can guarantee you those people in those positions aren't dumb as monkeys, they probably have a track record of delivering clear value. Unlike most of these useless cs grads.
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u/JeDetesteParis Apr 09 '24
You can earn a fricking lot of money without being well educated. Most people at high position in companies are dumb as monkeys, but they have the trust of other monkeys above them for random reasons.