If you're applying for a position at a company that has HR minions guarding the gates to the hiring manager, then yeah this is great. If you're being hired by an individual with development experience this isn't likely to cut a lot of ice.
Here's why: several of the best developers I've ever met do not have degrees. Some didn't even bother graduating from highschool. I've worked with many developers that had degrees from name brand schools that couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map. Everyone I know in industry has had similar experiences.
"having a position in a well known company"
This at least gets you some name recognition and opens the doors to quality networking opportunities, but there's no guarantee that Name Brand Corp. didn't make a hiring mistake when they brought you on in the first place, so again, time for some healthy skepticism from the hiring manager.
"receiving a prize recognized in the industry"
Either this kind of opportunity is so rare that it's effectively out of reach for the overwhelming majority of developers in $industry_segment OR it's a valueless rubber stamp (see also: MS certifications).
"Unless you're talking about internet marketing positions, these are the things that really matter to an employer."
Your talking points imply that you define "employer" as medium to large corporation with a formal HR department and it's hiring practices stuck in the 90's. Typically a great gig if you're into grinding B2B middleware code for industry median pay and two weeks vacation. If that's what you're into that's cool I guess.
Compare/contrast an experienced FOSS contributor for a well-known project. Fending off recruiter calls and getting cold called for consulting gigs three or four times a week is the norm. Tech interviews are typically pared down to seeing if your personality will fit with the rest of the team because they already know you can code.
Resume? No thanks. Show me your code and then let's have a beverage and chat.
>> Resume? No thanks. Show me your code and then let's have a beverage and chat.
What is this hipster hiring? Give it 10 or 20 years bud you'll be singing a different tune or afraid to try to get hired as a coder and just pulling manager duty 3 or 4 levels up in the middle quietly re-assuring yourself that you could code and get a job in that new language eebbityfribitz ... if you really wanted to.
So you assert a couple pieces of paper that contain a view of someone's career from 30,000 ft (assuming it's even accurate) is some how preferable to being able to download, run, debug and in general interact with a potential hire's code? If you say so.
2nd assertion, that at some point in the next 10 to 20 years I'm going to run into some unspecified difficulties with the hiring process, resulting in me shifting career tracks to management? Would you mind unpacking the thought process behind all of this?
You'd be dead wrong about that. I spent the first 10 years of my career watching MCSE after MCSE consistently mismanage all manner of network and server infrastructure, frequently having to go behind them and clean up their mess.
That doesn't mean anything, you could have worked for a contracting company that only dealt with acute problems where MCSEs just happened to be involved, i.e. selection bias.
Comments
"having a degree from a top university"
If you're applying for a position at a company that has HR minions guarding the gates to the hiring manager, then yeah this is great. If you're being hired by an individual with development experience this isn't likely to cut a lot of ice.
Here's why: several of the best developers I've ever met do not have degrees. Some didn't even bother graduating from highschool. I've worked with many developers that had degrees from name brand schools that couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map. Everyone I know in industry has had similar experiences.
"having a position in a well known company"
This at least gets you some name recognition and opens the doors to quality networking opportunities, but there's no guarantee that Name Brand Corp. didn't make a hiring mistake when they brought you on in the first place, so again, time for some healthy skepticism from the hiring manager.
"receiving a prize recognized in the industry"
Either this kind of opportunity is so rare that it's effectively out of reach for the overwhelming majority of developers in $industry_segment OR it's a valueless rubber stamp (see also: MS certifications).
"Unless you're talking about internet marketing positions, these are the things that really matter to an employer."
Your talking points imply that you define "employer" as medium to large corporation with a formal HR department and it's hiring practices stuck in the 90's. Typically a great gig if you're into grinding B2B middleware code for industry median pay and two weeks vacation. If that's what you're into that's cool I guess.
Compare/contrast an experienced FOSS contributor for a well-known project. Fending off recruiter calls and getting cold called for consulting gigs three or four times a week is the norm. Tech interviews are typically pared down to seeing if your personality will fit with the rest of the team because they already know you can code.
Resume? No thanks. Show me your code and then let's have a beverage and chat.
>> Resume? No thanks. Show me your code and then let's have a beverage and chat.
What is this hipster hiring? Give it 10 or 20 years bud you'll be singing a different tune or afraid to try to get hired as a coder and just pulling manager duty 3 or 4 levels up in the middle quietly re-assuring yourself that you could code and get a job in that new language eebbityfribitz ... if you really wanted to.
So you assert a couple pieces of paper that contain a view of someone's career from 30,000 ft (assuming it's even accurate) is some how preferable to being able to download, run, debug and in general interact with a potential hire's code? If you say so.
2nd assertion, that at some point in the next 10 to 20 years I'm going to run into some unspecified difficulties with the hiring process, resulting in me shifting career tracks to management? Would you mind unpacking the thought process behind all of this?
I'm gonna guess you have zero experience with Microsoft certifications in any form or scope beyond the online banter-mill.
"Isn't likely to cut a lot of ice." I've heard that before...is it from "Mad Men?"
You'd be dead wrong about that. I spent the first 10 years of my career watching MCSE after MCSE consistently mismanage all manner of network and server infrastructure, frequently having to go behind them and clean up their mess.
Item the 2nd: haven't seen Mad Men, couldn't say.
That doesn't mean anything, you could have worked for a contracting company that only dealt with acute problems where MCSEs just happened to be involved, i.e. selection bias.
Except I wasn't working for a contracting company. I was working for clinical research organizations and a multi-national pharmaceutical company.