The mere possession of a degree is no guarantee of ability. I look for track record using the skills and ability to work well with the current team when interviewing a candidate. The ability to quickly master a new technology is also key. The CS field moves very fast. Business and industry are constantly pushing the next meme or fad. If you're not ready to embrace and exploit the opportunity, you lose.
Exactly. I have worked with lots of CIS/IT people who couldn’t do the actual work. They just thought it would be a conduit to management.
We lost a student worker who had written a critical system in PHP and Perl. We had no one with any experience in the language so I got stuck with it. When I finally learned it, they outsourced the system.
Now our ERP is throwing Groovy and Grails over the wall at us. I’m getting a reprieve by doing all the PL/SQL coding.