Computer science degrees overrated

The recent article about the demise of Scott Thompson, CEO of Yahoo! serves to highlight the fact that degrees in computer science are massively overrated and, like degrees in Business Studies, they only serve to fill out the CV to get you to something better.

I can honestly say that I have never met a raw graduate of Computer Science who was good for anything in a commercial programming job. Everything important in that field comes from experience after some period of learning has been finished. Likewise, no good company would appoint a raw business studies graduate as a CEO right off the bat.

People are penalised too much today. Even blatantly lying about a CS degree is something that many many job applicants do. What should really matter is did the guy do the job better than anyone else available? More fundamentally, can they do the job at-all?

Being harangued out of a great job by a smart-ass hedge fund manager is ignominious indeed.

I urge anyone who has dirt to dish on Daniel Loeb, perhaps a disgruntled ex-girlfriend, perhaps a high-school teacher with a story about his personal habits, to dish that dirt to the world in the hope that justice can be done when something insignificantly embarrassing pulls his world out from under him.