My view on IT/CS degrees

Turgon

A degree in IT or CS will help you as so many people work in IT these days in one capacity or another and an IT related degree can only help. Non IT degrees do not preclude employment however, I have a degree in History although that was seventeen years ago.

One of the problems here is people getting hung up on the dollar value of an education when it offers in itself far more than the possibility of simply earning more money.

Education is a valuable part of your life and personally enriching on many levels beyond a paycheck. There is another thing though and that is these discussions seem to highlight a belief that this degree or that certification or this 'n' that combination is some kind of game changer for your career. It isn't. Yes having degrees and certifications has helped me clinch some openings over the years but primarily it was what I had *done* or was felt to be capable of *doing* that got me on. This is an important point. Today lots of people have degrees and certifications and many seem hellbent on obtaining more and more. What about the *work* you are either already doing or intend to do?

Be careful of heading down the well trodden path expending time and energy only to position yourself the same as 50000 people in your state who simply 'want a better job'. Who doesn't and how many hundreds of thousands of people are busy getting qualified to try and obtain that? I would offer it's actually more and better quality experience in the field people should be fighting tooth and nail to obtain as opposed to taking on more qualification commitments while they tread water at work.

Every job once you get it has the potential to offer you useful experience, experience that you can gilt edge with papers. But experience is the main thing.

You should be using each day at work to try and get into more meetings and work your profile so you are engaged in more work that is perceived as essential, valued and ideally commercially important to your department and company. That way you acquire over time not only degrees or more certificates, but impressive experience to help you get on within your company or elsewhere. If your job provides slack time where you either watch TV or study for exams it might be time to tell your boss things are slow and offer up all those fantastic ideas you have to *really* accelerate your career.