3 ms·

I've worked with a fair few different people over the years, I've never seen a correlation between a CS degree and skill. I'm biased in some ways as someone wi

I've worked with a fair few different people over the years, I've never seen a correlation between a CS degree and skill. I'm biased in some ways as someone with a philosophy degree, but I've easily run rings around CS grads, and seen some who have absolutely no capacity to program. Most of the non-cs programmers have A degree, just not a CS degree. Often technical, I've known chemistry degree, engineering, architecture. I think you're right in guessing that it's your culture pushing out the good non-CS grads rather than they're better. Be interesting to hear if you do the typical American white-boarding algo nonsense that YAGNI. This generation might be different as CS became an obvious choice for the sort of people that may previously have chosen a wider range of subject. I think it's a shame as ultimately I see a CS degree as a waste of time, I've studied the concepts myself thinking myself deficient and never actually found any value to the lessons apart from intellectual curiosity.

nemetroid 6y ago
> I think you're right in guessing that it's your culture pushing out the good non-CS grads The parent post didn't mention computer science.
- panzagl 6y ago
  As another humanities degree undergrad they really let the side down, didn't they?
stinkytaco 6y ago
I wasn't necessarily referring to CS, but the parent comment was, so I get where you are coming from. It does reveal how our biases in this area impact our views, however. I suspect most industries that are hiring doctors, engineers and scientists will not take anything less than a college degree, preferably an advanced one. I think we find this discussion acceptable in CS because it's a field where the stakes for failure are relatively low, rigorous testing is possible and -- most importantly -- self training is possible due to the accessibility of tools. This isn't the case if you are building a bridge or performing a medical procedure. In those cases you likely want every advantage you can muster to weed out candidates, whether that's fair or not.

nemetroid 6y ago

> I think you're right in guessing that it's your culture pushing out the good non-CS grads The parent post didn't mention computer science.

panzagl 6y ago
As another humanities degree undergrad they really let the side down, didn't they?

stinkytaco 6y ago

I wasn't necessarily referring to CS, but the parent comment was, so I get where you are coming from. It does reveal how our biases in this area impact our views, however. I suspect most industries that are hiring doctors, engineers and scientists will not take anything less than a college degree, preferably an advanced one. I think we find this discussion acceptable in CS because it's a field where the stakes for failure are relatively low, rigorous testing is possible and -- most importantly -- self training is possible due to the accessibility of tools. This isn't the case if you are building a bridge or performing a medical procedure. In those cases you likely want every advantage you can muster to weed out candidates, whether that's fair or not.