I know you re-stated it, but I disagree with the first statement. I believe there is a correlation. The strength of the correlation can be debated, but in my experience, a degree is a positive signal when hiring someone to be part of a software engineering team.
Note that I didn't just say software engineer. In my book, technical skills are only part of the equation, but the ability to communicate well, operate well within a team, etc. are also very important and in my experience, going to school helps prepare people for this kind of work.
In the end, a degree or lack thereof only becomes a significant signal if there isn't enough real-world experience on the resume.
I disagree with you. I also disagree that you learn social skills in college, you learn social skills in grade school. You don't learn social skills in college, by that stage you either have them or don't.
You learn technical skills in college, yes, but I disagree that hiring a software engineer team purely based on having a CS degree will result in the best hires.
I would hire entirely based on real world experience. If you have none, I don't care if you don't have a degree too me you are about as useful as someone applying with experience as an accountant.
If you sit in school and then go home and spend the rest of the night reading a text book and don't code any open source projects or make something for your portfolio, you really shouldn't be part of a software team. You should either be in a lab somewhere or a teacher, as you are only interested in learning about the topic, not applying it. Anyone who is actually interested in the topic will come out of school with experience in something (internship, hobby, etc).
You disagree with me because you completely misinterpreted what I wrote. Potentially I think that the world 'correlation' is being misunderstood here. I implied nothing about the strength of the correlation. I only said I believe it to be a positive one.
I am not talking about "social skills" in terms of hello, please, thank you, etc.. I am talking about the soft skills of working in a team with other technical people to achieve a common goal, working under tight timelines, with pressure, and thriving under such situations. This is not an innate skill that you learn at a young age. I'm nearing my mid-thirties and still coming across new team dynamics.
By no means did I say that a degree means someone will perform well in such a situation, but in the absence of all other information, I consider a degree a positive signal in this regard.
Put another way, you are chosen to hire an engineer to work on your team. I give you two "buckets" filled with millions of people from which you can randomly select one person to join your team. You know nothing about these people except that in Bucket 1, everyone has a CS degree and in bucket 2, no one does. You know nothing else.
Which bucket do you pick from?
p.s. statments like this "If you sit in school and then go home and spend the rest of the night reading a text book and don't code any open source projects or make something for your portfolio" make it sound like you didn't go through the degree experience, because that sounds nothing like what most undergraduate-level educations are like. Sure there is theory, but it's a lot more hands-on than you're making it sound.
I agree with you that he's overstating the case a bit. There is obviously a correlation between a degree in CS and good Engineers, but it's important to realize that there are great Engineers who don't have one as well. I think he's making the argument that the sign of a healthy organization is an openness to looking for talent in unlikely places. If that's his point, then I think we agree.
I worked on group geography project in 12th grade. Did I gain skills that would help me be a productive member of a software development team? Maybe a little, but we mostly goofed off and begrudgingly did enough to pass. My senior capstone in college on the other hand definitely did help me gain some of those skills.
I did Computer Engineering, but I assume they're similar. I think most post-secondary educations are filled with a lot of team-based projects (RTOS was a memorable one from my past). I certainly had team projects in high school but of course they weren't at the same technical level, with the same caliber of people.
It's not the only way to get that experience though. As I mentioned, if someone has several years of real-world experience working in industry, with positive recommendations to back up that they're good at what they do, then degree or no degree becomes more of a moot point.
It's the cases when there is not enough work experience, or diversity of experience, to paint a full picture, that one might factor in the presence of a degree.
kohanz is not saying that college is the only way someone can learn teamwork, or that college is a prerequisite to teamwork skills, but merely that college is positively correlated to such skills.
Wasn't the case for me. We had several courses that were team efforts, and the typical method was to determine a shared team score, and then let individual scores deviate by a small margin (+- 2/20 at most) from that, based on the professor's appreciation of your individual contribution in the team.
Exams made up part of our marks, but projects factored in as well. One could certainly achieve a passing grade while being a terrible team-player, but it generally was not a successful strategy.
I'm currently getting a software engineering degree and I got multiple class where we had 50% of graded teamwork and you needed to pass them to be able to pass the class. Even if you got 100% in your exam, if you failed your teamwork, then you fail the class.
As a CS student I took roughly 50% CS courses/50% Software Engineering courses. SE is a much rarer degree, I think. At least at my alma mater SE courses were exclusively team based - teams of 3-5 for every course from start to finish - whereas I'd have difficulty recalling a single CS course that was team based. If my SE courses were representative, I would think a SE degree would be a very positive signal for working in teams. CS I'm not so sure, the strength of CS was the actual science/math/theory.
Many smart guys have a degree but they're not smart because of the degree, it's just that they were smart to begin with but decided to finish their degree for one reason while other smart people decided otherwise for another reason.
Having a degree doesn't make a good engineer or a programmer: it just doesn't prevent that either.
Note that I didn't just say software engineer. In my book, technical skills are only part of the equation, but the ability to communicate well, operate well within a team, etc. are also very important and in my experience, going to school helps prepare people for this kind of work.
In the end, a degree or lack thereof only becomes a significant signal if there isn't enough real-world experience on the resume.