Small tech company founder, still the guy who hires and manages the engineers. Just some background.
I used to think that Google's desire for graduate degrees was sort of elitist and not necessary. I've changed my mind, and here's why.
I work in a woodshop as a way to relax and have found an analogy for the education thing. I've come to believe that a well educated mind is sort of like a well organized shop; a self educated mind is like a messy shop.
There is no judgement intended, both neat and messy shops can produce excellent work, just as a self-educated person can produce just as good work as a formally educated person.
The difference is speed. At the risk of stretching the analogy, in a neat shop you can find tools quickly and make things quickly. A formally educated person uses the education to quickly make choices about how to solve problems whereas a self-educated person has to rederive a lot of those choices.
I've personally witnessed this in engineers that have worked for me and I'm moving towards wanting formally educated people. If you want to do well in the tech industry, I'd strongly urge you to get a formal education and cover the basics. If you have a CS degree and pointers bother you, you got a crappy degree. Ditto for basic language design, compiler design, OS design.
Just my two cents and you should probably ignore it because while I have a masters in CS, I also have a messy shop :)
Small tech company founder, still the guy who hires and manages the engineers. Just some background.
I used to think that Google's desire for graduate degrees was sort of elitist and not necessary. I've changed my mind, and here's why.
I work in a woodshop as a way to relax and have found an analogy for the education thing. I've come to believe that a well educated mind is sort of like a well organized shop; a self educated mind is like a messy shop.
There is no judgement intended, both neat and messy shops can produce excellent work, just as a self-educated person can produce just as good work as a formally educated person.
The difference is speed. At the risk of stretching the analogy, in a neat shop you can find tools quickly and make things quickly. A formally educated person uses the education to quickly make choices about how to solve problems whereas a self-educated person has to rederive a lot of those choices.
I've personally witnessed this in engineers that have worked for me and I'm moving towards wanting formally educated people. If you want to do well in the tech industry, I'd strongly urge you to get a formal education and cover the basics. If you have a CS degree and pointers bother you, you got a crappy degree. Ditto for basic language design, compiler design, OS design.
Just my two cents and you should probably ignore it because while I have a masters in CS, I also have a messy shop :)