[CS-FSLUG] WOW!! This guy has it RIGHT!!!

[Fred A. Miller]

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CTO CONNECTION: CHAD DICKERSON                  http://www.infoworld.com
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Wednesday, May 4, 2005

THE IT TALENT "CRISIS"

By Chad Dickerson

Posted May 03, 2005 5:00 AM Pacific Time

If recent empirical and anecdotal evidence is any indication, computer
science is about as trendy with college students today as phone-booth
stuffing and pet rocks. According to a recent survey from the Higher
Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los
Angeles, the number of freshmen indicating that they plan to major in
computer science declined by more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2004.
Industry luminaries such as Bill Gates are pushing the U.S. government
to lift limits on H1-B visas to meet the perceived shortage of IT talent
in the United States. Is the IT talent sky falling? I don't think so,
because I feel the importance of a computer-science degree is
overstated.

Although some of the great technologists I've known came equipped with
computer-science degrees, I've worked alongside just as many who
leveraged interdisciplinary training and on-the-job business experience
to build high-quality software and systems. I've worked with philosophy
majors for whom a basic development best practice such as source-code
control was second nature, and I've worked with computer-science majors
who seemed genetically predisposed to implementing uncommented
production code hidden away in their home directories. The common traits
of the great developers I've managed are inventiveness, rapid learning,
creativity, persistence, ability to communicate, a passion for
technology, and deep technical knowledge. If I had used the
computer-science degree as a nonnegotiable litmus test in hiring, I
would have missed out on some top IT talent with all of these traits in
abundance.

Perhaps the stated lack of interest in computer-science degrees among
freshmen has nothing to do with interest in IT and is more reflective of
aggressive self-teaching, an approach to lifelong learning that seems to
be essential to career success as an IT professional. When I was a kid I
enjoyed writing programs in Basic on the Commodore VIC-20 I shared with
my brother, and later we ran the books for our successful lawn-mowing
operation from my dad's Kaypro. By the time I got to college, my
interests shifted to studying literature, and computers took a backseat
as I threw my energies into Shakespeare and James Joyce. My interest in
computing re-emerged in my first job after graduation when I realized
that writing software to automate some of my day-to-day tasks would save
me time and effort. I started thinking more broadly and began using
technology to solve larger problems in my department and then my company
as a whole.

I eventually decided to take computer-science classes, which served as a
practical and helpful foundation, but I largely taught myself. With the
Internet, open source, and overnight delivery of books from Amazon,
access to the required tools to drive a self-paced computer-science
education has never been more transparent. Much of getting things done
in corporate IT involves communication and working effectively within
teams, disciplines for which most traditional computer-science
curriculums offer little explicit help.

I would encourage anyone to pursue a computer-science education. But the
lack of a computer-science degree won't doom you to irrelevance, nor
does it mean a better-educated candidate from Palo Alto, Calif., or
Bangalore, India, will edge you out of the job market. Just ask Bill
Gates, who is still a few credits shy of graduation.

Chad Dickerson is CTO of InfoWorld.

-- 
The only bug free software from MickySoft is still shrink-wrapped
in their warehouse..."