[quote=esmith]
We don’t have a single Ph.D. on our team. We had two Ph.D.s in the past. Both of them turned out to be incompetent at writing the actual code, one got into a conflict with management, the other was let go due to being relatively useless. I participated in many interviews of prospective applicants. The overall level of practical skills of Ph.D.s is quite appalling.
[/quote]
Something I’ve complained about for years is what I call “degree inflation”.
More and more people are pushed into Masters/PhD programs that shouldn’t be and therefore dilute the pool of talent, so to speak. So the letters themselves simply mean less now than they used to.
There are also many people that stay in school simply because they don’t know how to do anything else. Hence the lack of practical skills, or even the ability or desire to learn them.
Myself, I always wanted to be a system/network/security analyst/engineer. I followed the path that felt right at the time and have been modestly rewarded for it; despite not having much of a formal education.
I’ll comment that in my particular area of expertise, computer security, many of the big name talent has no formal education at all. Some are even high school drop-outs.
