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Jersey/Samueul -

I'm not a network guy (I write software) but my experience in the tech industry has shown that a disproportionate number of the skilled engineers I've worked with have not had a college degree. There's just something about this industry that draws creative, hard-working people, degree or not. When it comes to hiring people I look at personality first, experience second, and then at some point I might glance at a candidate's education. It's really not that important, as our industry moves so fast that what you learned in college was obsolete the day you graduated. I suspect it is like that in a lot of fields, but in tech it's pretty obvious when someone is falling behind the curve. It seems that a lot of the grads I've worked with have a reluctance to learn new ideas or new languages. I don't have a degree, but if I did I'd understand where they are coming from. No one wants to spend 4 years and an assload of money only to find that in the real world you can compress that 4 years into about 1 year of hard work in this industry. I'm 28, I have no degree, I earn a great living and I co-own my own software company. Shit, it's not like I'm mowing lawns anymore, I worked my ass off to get here and I'm not taking it for granted!
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