It's still all about mad skilz

I occasionally get questions about employment requirements in the tech industry or in the games industry specifically. Some come from relatives or friends, some come from people that come across my blog, others from speaking events.

In the past, I've said that while a college degree helped, it wasn't a requirement, and that it was more about your skill set and what you've accomplished. In the past couple years though, I've waivered on that, as more and more people, especially at the larger companies, tend to not look past the "no college degree" point.

So I was really tickled to see that Jenna over at JobsBlog posted this gem today, throwing down the tech challenge gauntlet, where they'll mail programmers a programming challenge and give them one hour to mail back a response. And I quote:

• Are you a Master Coder?? Here is your chance. For one week (starting today), I will send you a coding exercise, and your results will be personally evaluated by a team of engineers. No more worrying about if you have the right title, degree or job ... just proving your core smarts will have us rolling out the red carpet.
• ... and if you are the dragon slayer of syntax and you impress my team with some high performing, elegantly written code, I am happy to post your name/picture here (with your permission of course) and name you the Grand Master. (Oh yeah ... and if you want a new job you can likely get that, too.)

I think it will be fun for people to participate even if they aren't job hunting! (did you hear that, programmer/readers? Yes, it was the slap that resulted in that gauntlet-shaped red mark on your cheek!)

Anyhow, it's nice to see that there are still some folks at MS that beleive that, at the end of the day, it's the skills that matter, not the letters after your name.