Most IT Workers Don't Have STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math) Degrees 655
McGruber writes "The Wall Street Journal's Michael Totty shares some stereotype-shattering statistics about IT workers: Most of them don't have college degrees in computer science, technology, engineering or math. About a third come to IT with degrees in business, social sciences or other nontechnical fields, while more than 40% of computer support specialists and a third of computer systems administrators don't have a college degree at all! The analysis is based upon two job categories as defined by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics: network and computer systems administrator, and computer support specialist."
Most can't do their jobs (Score:0, Informative)
Most can't do their jobs
And then there's me... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not particularly fond of statistics like these -- because the people who put them together usually insist on qualifying "college degree" as only meaning four year degrees or greater. I have an Associates degree, (and yes: it's in the IT field) but nobody seems to really care about that so-called "minimal" level of effort.
Not that it matters to me anymore at this point... I've been in the workforce for long enough now that a Bachelor's degree would not by itself get me anywhere close to my current salary... nor would it even get me any meaningful bump in income alongside my current work experience. If you wait long enough, such things pretty much become moot.
Re:They pretend (Score:5, Informative)
Because in all those professions you can kill people (directly or indirectly) if you screw up because you don't know jack about your profession.
Re:"Computer Support Specialist" (Score:2, Informative)
Just because there's a lot of 'em doesn't mean they're all good.
Just because someone has a degree doesn't mean they are smart.
Just because someone doesn't have a degree doesn't mean they aren't smart.
Did you have a point???
Re:This says more about the categories... (Score:5, Informative)
The truth is, most "computer support specialists" & "network administrators", & "system administrators", and I am one, are technicians, not engineers. Even some of the IT guys with "engineer" in their titles are really technicians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technician [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer [wikipedia.org]
And that's okay. Well, except for inflating the importance of the the job by adding "engineer" to the technician's title.
Technicians are important. Technicians keep technology running. Being a technician is a noble pursuit.
Engineers take what the researchers have discovered and create the technology, technicians deploy the technology and maintain it.
Re:Personally (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Personally (Score:3, Informative)
Re:As someone who runs an IT company (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm a non-degree slacker (Score:5, Informative)
I've got a degree. It didn't teach me a damned thing about IT, but I've got the degree. The degree helps get your resume through the HR drones, though, but not much else.
Re:Personally (Score:4, Informative)
Our company's HR department posts the jobs, filters out the resumes, and passes only the ones forward that meet the job requirements we list as well as their fairly generic criteria. They also do some kind of pre-screening work, although I don't know what that is. That stops us from wasting our time weeding through a hundred applications from people who apply for any job, people who can't spell our company's name correctly, or those who claim "25 years Java experience." (Unless the resume was from James Gosling himself, that would be a hell of a thing to claim.) It's the managers and senior technical people in the departments who do the final interviews and make hiring recommendations. Over the last few years, I've only gotten a few "duds" from HR through this process - most were great candidates that I recommended we hire. This system works really well.
You might argue that we'll never hire the guy who is really smart but doesn't have a degree. And you'd be right - we won't even see his resume. It turns out that doesn't matter, because we still get a lot of very good people anyway, and I'm happy to work with any of them.