Quote:
Originally Posted by FenwickHockey65
Here's your problem right there.
You got your job 19 years ago. You've been in some sort of management role for 15 years now. Today's job market is completely different. I can tell you for my position with state government, a college degree is required. I think the only loophole around it is a ridiculous amount of experience (talking 10+ years in the industry) or military service.
The days of "Oh I just walked in and asked the guy for a job, and I've been working there for 20 years now" are pretty much over. It's all about how well you can pack your resume and who you know.
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It depends on your industry and what your skills are. If your skills are in high enough demand and you know what you're doing, you can get a job without a college degree. Especially if your competition has done p*ss-all with their time in education and are simply "degreed idiots".
The following story was very influential in the way I go about hiring software engineers:
http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2014...ky-people.html
Now here's the trick: There's a 30% deficit in qualified software engineers and ~50% of those who enter computer science drop out or fail. Of those left, only a small percentage will ever add up to quality material.
With a market like that one can argue that spending your time online learning everything you can about how to be a top notch engineer is a better use of your time and money. It's the path I took, but I have to warn you: It's not for the feignt of heart. REAL commitment is necessary to go this path. You will always be fighting to get that much better, and for some people it will never be enough. You must be willing to take severe criticism, say thank you, and come back 10,000x stronger because you extracted useful information from what was intended to be a put-down.
That being said, if your chosen industry does not have a qualified candidate problem then your competition is much stiffer. A degree may be a very important point of competition.
There's no right or wrong answer here. Simply that you either have to understand the market you're entering or you have to roll the dice. If you do understand the market, you can make smart decisions about how to approach entry and enployment. If you don't understand it, a degree is the best way to roll the dice that exists today.