Re: Edinburgh, Scotland: PHP Developer Position

On Mon, 2007-06-18 at 10:08 -0400, Brad Bonkoski wrote: > Jochem Maas wrote: > > Edward Kay wrote: > > > > ... > > > > > >> But the advert is for a GRADUATE developer ;) Whilst your messages to this > >> list show you know a lot about PHP, I doubt you've managed to fit a degree > >> in yet :) > >> > > > > What does a graduate php developer earn in Scotland? and is it > > the the piece of paper that's important or is it a reference to the > > general skill level (personally I don't see much direct corellation > > between academic capabilities and practical coding/sysadmin skill). > > > > just thinking out loud guys :-) > > > > > This is always beat around...and my 2 cents are that all the "piece of > paper" is worth is showing you have a certain level of commitment needed > to complete the degree program (important for any job), and that you > have the ability to learn. Granted...there are always exceptions to the > rule... > > Plus, at least in the US, it [a degree] always opens the door for more > money! ;-) Things I learned to do while obtaining my B.C.S. degree: 1. Time management - how to maximize partying time while still getting projects done on time. I used a "night before" philosophy that incorporated the all-nighter strategy. This particular approach isn't for everyone. I found 2 litres of cola and a bag of Viva Puffs were helpful at alleviating night-time drowsiness. This strategy can also work for studying for exams. 2. Efficiency - due to many hangovers there was a great need for better efficiency in the learning process. To decrease the requisite time needed to absorb information it was necessary to not bother showing up to class since reading the textbooks was much quicker than listening to the sleep inducing drone of the professor (who in many cases was practically reading from the textbook). An added bonus is you don't need to weep through the ignorant questions that are almost guaranteed to be raised throughout the class by students who didn't do any reading at all. Textbooks also often had nice little chunks of source code and margin tidbits that the professor expected you to read anyways). I must add though, there were some exceptionally interesting professors that made the showing up worthwhile, my favourites were the distributed and parallel programming courses. 3. Networking - I found branching out to the artsy disciplines to be quite invigorating. For some reason the distribution of women to men in these areas are much more condusive to relationships. I also learned some other networking stuff but that was course work. Another good area for networking was the campus pub... I had an especially delightful time one night when all the tutors for my 4th year algorithms course were present and I whupped their butts at pool >:) 4. Independence - all the drooling keeners never wanted the partying type in their group when group projects were mandated. As a result you often learned how to do everything yourself -- the night before of course :) 5. Budgeting - how to pay off a student debt during the dot com bust days. This mostly involved not doing what was done during the years of studying... aka partying :/ It took me 6 years to pay off 70k in student debt *lol*. For me going to university was a little bit about getting a piece of paper and a lot about having fun and meeting people (I met my wife there). One thing that I think is helpful about university is that it brings a lot of smaller pieces of the greater picture together in a useful and cohesive manner. Cheers, Rob. -- .------------------------------------------------------------. | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | :------------------------------------------------------------: | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | `------------------------------------------------------------'