Re: ANNOUNCE: Vacant Job Positions

In article <4fic66$aqk_at_news.cais.com>, Nikolay Dichev <cdsipbs_at_the-hermes.net> wrote:

>I could not agree more. There are several ways to get a good 
>professional background, the most structured one - UNIVERSITY. Of course you 
>can learn the same thing by reading books by youself. However the chances 
>are you will miss something or just do not finish the book (ask me about 
>it).
>

Course instructors may also miss things. There is no guarantee that the person teaching the course has expertise in the subject matter. Motivated, self-directed study is at least twice as time-efficient as taking a course.

>There is another point to be made here. When we are looking for new people
>the most important thing is - can they stay on the top and continue
>learning as the business changes.

Exactly.

>Everybody can take a few classes and become a wiz in one product.

If that were true our salaries would be a lot lower. Actually relatively few people are able to achieve mastery of even one moderately complex programming language (like C++ or Ada). Most simply continue to apply the same techniques they do understand (usually the ones learned in that first FORTRAN programming course) over and over again regardless of the problem or language.

>But tomorrow this product will change or will
>be gone forever. And then the real question is how trainable are your
>people.

Right.

>Going through a university prepares you for things like this and
>assures the employer (with some probability) that you can evolve as the
>business evolves.

I am not aware of any university that makes such a guarantee regarding their graduates.

--
Kevin Cline
B.S. Math CMU 1979
M.A.S. Telecommunications SMU 1998


-- 
Kevin Cline