E-SPEAIT Week 8

I remember in school I was told that you need to study hard to get good grades. Then those good grades help you get into universities where you can get a degree and all the companies are looking for a person with a degree. Something about degrees is that different universities have different credibility. For example studying Law in Tartu University or Tallinn University. I learned that law firms strongly prefer people from Tartu more than Tallinn. But it appears that those degrees might not be all that powerful, especially in IT. More and more people are self learning different programming languages and overall knowledge needed in the field. This is all thanks to the internet. Before the wide spread of the internet I believe it was not that easy to research a field that interests you and also gain enough knowledge that you could become a professional. Yes, there are always books, but I think it’s not very comparable with the internet. Nowadays tech companies are hiring people who might have a degree in a completely different field, but have self learned and gained enough experience to be suitable for the position. This won’t work with every field though. I could trust a programmer who learned from the internet to make me a program, but I couldn’t trust a doctor who learned from watching YouTube videos. So, in that way IT field is easier to get into and also continue in that career path. While experience and education are valued, it’s also important to have social skills. Ability to teamwork and communicate with others in an appropriate manner is something to not look over. You might have excellent knowledge, but if you are difficult to speak to or not cooperative you might not get chosen for the job. Communication is the key in most things, so the person who might not have that much experience, but comes across as a social person , could get that position. While the need for a degree might be a changing aspect, I believe that IT is a place where you could become an expert through self learning.