Is a degree better to have, or is experience? This may be a very gray area these days…
Sure, in some cases, having a degree is 100x better than experience. Take the medical profession for example… I would rather have someone who went to school then someone who learned from reading books in their spare time.
But when it comes to todays technology careers, I believe that the balance is shifting. More and more kids give up their dreaded outside play time to sit inside and learn PHP, Flash, and how to put their face on someone else’s body. Most kids start at around 10 years old doing this, then by the time they graduate high school, they have been spending almost 7 days a week playing around with this stuff.
That is 8 years of experience.
I have been doing it for 13 years. Now, if I go into a job interview for a graphic design job, or a web design job alongside some recent college graduate who has only ever designed since they went to college (we’ll say 4 years), who will get the job?
Not me, that’s who. How do I know the result of this scenario? Because I have dealt with it dozens of times over the past few years. It happens to many other people as well. Are there exceptions to this rule? Sure. Are they rare? Damn strait they are.
I am currently unemployed, and barely scraping by right now, less and less every month. Yet someone who has been doing what I have for 1/4 of the time is out there making $40,000 a year while I do one freelance job every month at less than half the quality.
To me, this seems like discrimination (no, I’m not a colored person or a woman). See, I can’t afford school. So, since I can’t afford to go to college, I can’t get the job I can already do. I know of several other designers facing this bureaucratic bullshit…
One of the guys who taught me how to write CSS, he has a great job as an assistant manager at Burger King.
