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We often discuss the merit (or necessity) of having a formal degree in technology. This story is another installment in that debate:
The Department of the Interior's computer systems played a major role in the breach of systems belonging to the Office of Personnel Management, and DOI officials were called before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday to answer questions about the over 3,000 vulnerabilities in agency systems discovered in a penetration test run by Interior's Inspector General office. But there was one unexpected revelation during the hearing: a key Interior technology official who had access to sensitive systems for over five years had lied about his education, submitting falsified college transcripts produced by an online service.
The official, Faisal Ahmed, was assistant director of the Interior's Office of Law Enforcement and Security from 2007 to 2013, heading its Technology division. He claimed to have a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and a master's degree in technology management from the University of Central Florida—but he never attended either of those schools. He resigned from his position at Interior when the fraudulent claim was exposed by a representative of the University of Central Florida's alumni association, who discovered he had never attended the school after Ahmed accepted and then suddenly deleted a connection with her on LinkedIn.
TFA emphasizes the falsification he did of his credentials, but there seems to be heavy insinuation that lack of degree = lack of ability.
Official Submission
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @12:17PM
Until they get hit with a massive data breach and you find out all the stuff that should have been done, but wasn't.
You mean like the security issues you hear about from companies that require degrees? Right. Or was that all the doing of liars? Having a degree != being competent; not even remotely. There are many competent people who have degrees, and many competent people who don't. Same with incompetent people.
Top universities post all of their curricula online and even post their lectures. There are many cases where self-education is easily possible, and programming and Computer Science are a few cases where it is. Formal education doesn't magically have ownership over knowledge. It's simply a means of getting an education. Don't be brainwashed and believe the nonsense that there exists no other means of getting an education. This isn't about being able to look things up on Google or StackExchange; it's about actual education.
I agree that lying is generally bad, but it's also true that employers requiring degrees when they aren't necessary is far worse. It creates a situation where people who are desperate for jobs and yet do know what they're doing have to possibly go into crushing debt so they can get whatever degree the employers want. This also has the effect of turning colleges/universities--places where education is supposed to be the primary focus--into mere trade schools people go to to impress employers; real education suffers. So don't be all that surprised when you see people lying. Employers have created a situation where some people have deemed it necessary.
Or at least have the honesty to admit you are a dishonest person if you are going to pull that kind of shit.
Anyone who claims to have never lied is very likely a liar. Therefore, everyone is a dishonest person to some extent. I'm not so much trying to defend this lying as being good as I am rejecting the excessive vilification of people who simply wanted a job in a crazy corporatist world.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Jiro on Friday July 17 2015, @02:21PM
That's like saying "looking both ways before crossing the street != not getting in an accident. There are many people who looked both ways and still got in an accident, and there are many people who didn't look both ways but didn't get in an accident".
Just because two things aren't equal to each other doesn't mean they can't be associated with some level of probability. Hiring someone without a degree is a greater risk than hiring someone with. It is possible that either one could be competent or incompetent, but not equally likely.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @02:49PM
That's like saying "looking both ways before crossing the street != not getting in an accident.
More silly analogies that 'nerds' seem to be so fond of. I get your point.
Hiring someone without a degree is a greater risk than hiring someone with.
Prove it, and without merely lumping together absolutely everyone without a degree as if they're some coherent group. I can see why that is done, but the thing is, employers should be actually evaluating employees *anyway* to see who is the best for the job. Merely filtering by degree is extremely lazy and likely indicates a very bad work environment. I'll state that, in all likelihood, a less superficial work environment is also a higher quality work environment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @03:14PM
As someone who their online degree in chemical mathematics again, I fully agree with what you say.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 17 2015, @08:50PM
In my experience, having a degree is not a sign of increased competence in IT. That said, it is an indication of the ability to do a lot of silly things for no benefit other than approval of the authorities. It also tends to indicate a certain amount of wealth, and membership in certain social groups.
OTOH, if you go to a *GOOD* college, you will at least be exposed to, and temporarily learn, many important things that it's easy to skip over. Perhaps some of the now have decent classes on systems administration, but I'm not at all sure that I'd bet that way.
FWIW, I have taken a high school drop out who was motivated and somewhat skilled in math...he was an astrologer, and actually calculated the charts...and taught him to be a competent professional programmer. Admittedly this was decades ago, but he retired from a successful career. When I was learning practically nobody had degrees in computer science and the term IT hadn't been invented. I found the college courses I took to be a sound basis...enough that I could learn from Knuth's books. But I've always been a somewhat academic person (though not a good student at college). The astrologer was much more practically oriented, and soon switched into a management track, and retired as a department head of a small company, where I retired as a professional programmer.
All that said, do note that he was motivated. His original motivation was to increase the accuracy with which he calculated his charts. As a programmer he also wanted to do a good job. And as a manager. This was, I think, the most important factor. Another was that he was quite intelligent. I doubt that he ever became as skilled a programmer as I did, but he did become well above average. (And I may be biased in favor of myself.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday July 17 2015, @08:24PM
Anyone who claims to have never lied is very likely a liar. Therefore, everyone is a dishonest person to some extent. I'm not so much trying to defend this lying as being good as I am rejecting the excessive vilification of people who simply wanted a job in a crazy corporatist world.
And anyone who claims that anyone who claims that they never have lied is very likely a liar is also very likely a liar, so it is not true that anyone who claims to have never lied is likely a liar, which means that it is likely that they are not. Or, they are a Cretan. Everybody knows this.