Re: Good testers
"When first starting out a degree gives you some credability but after a period of time (probably around 10 years) an employer should place a low importance on accademic qualifications and concentrate on actual business experience."
It all depends on what you need. If you want someone to write good, or exceptionally good code, then experience is important.
If you want someone to tease out user needs and add the things an end user doesn't think of to a set of specifications, role experience and industry/application familiarity are extremely valuable.
If you need someone to look at a problem and realize that the requested solution is not in fact possible, you need someone with an understanding of different types of algorithms and near-algorithms on a fundamental level and a working grounding in computational complexity. At this point, very few people without a degree in computer science or applied mathematics is going to have that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
