believing they have a degree is useful for telling clients who specifically sometimes ask about the degrees of the people they’ll be working with
I used to work for a company that provided programming consultants for the US military and for defense contractors. The hourly rate we could be billed out at was entirely dependent on highest degree attained, so PhDs could be billed out at the highest rate, followed by Masters, then Bachelors of Science and then Bachelors of Art. It didn’t even matter what field your PhD was in, so my company was chock-full of useless people with advanced degrees who got put onto every project and told to just stay home. The worst thing was when they insisted on showing up and doing something.
Desperately. And it’s a decent gig, or at least it will be until they decide AI can do it, at which point we’re going to get a bunch of flattened children.
I’ve had a job sorta like that where I was paid more to do the job and given better hours than some people with more relevant coursework just because I have a degree and they didn’t quite have one. Like, I wasn’t gonna complain and I was actually quite good at my job, but it had nothing do with the “BS” in my resume. No one was totally incompetent at the job at least.
They eventually switched to paying primarily by relevant experience primarily rather than degree level, which seems like a better predictor of being good at the job from what I’ve seen.
I used to work for a company that provided programming consultants for the US military and for defense contractors. The hourly rate we could be billed out at was entirely dependent on highest degree attained, so PhDs could be billed out at the highest rate, followed by Masters, then Bachelors of Science and then Bachelors of Art. It didn’t even matter what field your PhD was in, so my company was chock-full of useless people with advanced degrees who got put onto every project and told to just stay home. The worst thing was when they insisted on showing up and doing something.
Are they hiring?
Desperately. And it’s a decent gig, or at least it will be until they decide AI can do it, at which point we’re going to get a bunch of flattened children.
I am a useless person with a PhD…
I’ve had a job sorta like that where I was paid more to do the job and given better hours than some people with more relevant coursework just because I have a degree and they didn’t quite have one. Like, I wasn’t gonna complain and I was actually quite good at my job, but it had nothing do with the “BS” in my resume. No one was totally incompetent at the job at least.
They eventually switched to paying primarily by relevant experience primarily rather than degree level, which seems like a better predictor of being good at the job from what I’ve seen.