A while ago some colleagues and myself were discussing our backgrounds and some interesting points came up. The Lotus Notes space seems to have a lot of degrees other than Computer Science related. I for one am am perfect example. I went to school for Culinary arts. Yes I wanted to be a chef when I grew up!
I know of a master cabinet maker who is a fantastic Admin. I know another person who studied to be an archeologist. So who has the most offbeat education? Spread the word this could be a fun discussion
Chef John
Studied business technology, didn't finish. Did real estate for about 7 years, found myself selling my computer skills to other agents, more than I sold real estate. Transitioned to tech support, and ended up the Lotus Notes Developer for the tech support company. After 10+ years I'm pretty darn at it.
ReplyDeleteTim Paque, Software Engineer
I majored in Latin American Studies at Swarthmore College, which was a mix of history and poli sci and such. My most notable involvement with computers at Swarthmore was having the dubious honor of being the first person every convicted of a computer related offense by the Student Judiciary Committee. That was enough to get me hired by the computer center where I worked for the next few years. I graduated with a BA, but software development just seemed more entertaining than graduate school, so I got a job doing that and never looked back.
ReplyDelete@Ben care to share the offense? :-)
ReplyDeleteDouble major in philosophy and finance who dropped out after 18 months to take a job at the company later known as Relavis.
ReplyDeleteI have a degree in Mathematics And The Social Sciences. That's one degree, with one major, not two. I did an honors project using directed graph theory to study whether power relationship theories from the field of social psychology could be applied to analysis of international politics.
ReplyDeleteThis is not a new phenomenon. When I was working in the programming dept. of a major Dutch corporation 30 years ago (yes, that's three zero) I had among my colleagues:
ReplyDelete- a student of Arabic (decided after two years to go for a different career)
- a former astronomer (quit his university job)
- a former biochemist (same)
Mind you, it was that time in history in which no formal IT education existed. For many it was a world to step into with a bit of a pioneer's spirit.
By the way, myself, I quit my studies in electronics and decided to go and work for the company as a programmer, enrolling in their internal training program (as I said, there were no formal IT studies back then).
My undergrad is in Accounting, my MBA in International Taxation, spent 2 years working on Broadway and trying to get into the Music biz.
ReplyDeleteUnlike Ben, I wasn't caught by the school, but did end up virus cleaning(wonder how they always had viruses the day I needed a computer) the library ones so I always had computer time :-)
Gave it all up when I was brought into Bankers Trust and this "New" product from Lotus called Notes was coming soon, well we had R2 but needed R3.
I don't have a degree, I went to the school of hard knocks.
ReplyDeleteEnded up at IBM doing 1 day a week at college and 4 days at IBM, working on things liks PROFS, OfficeVision and OS/2
@Carl Tyler I think I sat behind you at that school.
ReplyDelete