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Education vs. Experience
By The Gunny
Which is more important for your career? Education or experience? One of the most important nuggets I gained in my education wasn't in the text books. This nugget may well keep your career from ever stalling, too.
(Thousand Oaks, CA -- Feb. 14, 2006) -- Many have argued that a college education is more important in your career than experience. An advanced education provides much depth in a given subject area and offers proof to a future employer that one has the tenacity and discipline to stick to an advanced four-year curriculum long enough to earn a degree. Such employees may very well have the discipline and good work habits to enable them to succeed on the job.
Many others have argued just the opposite, that experience is more important than education. There's vital information that isn't ordinarily taught to students in college, yet every worker needs in order to succeed in the business world: how to get hired for the good jobs, how to apply one's knowledge and skills effectively, how to get along with bosses and coworkers, how to prove that one is more valuable than the salary one is being paid, et cetera.
But it's critical to have both well-rounded experience and a solid education. Job seekers who have both a proven track record at a certain job and a college education have an edge against other candidates because these traits give confirmation to the would-be employer that the individual can handle the job, successfully complete further training when necessary, and probably succeed in higher level positions of responsibility in the company when job vacancies become available. These are the potential employees that most employers try to target, and who have the best chances to get the job.
In evaluating my own education and experience, there are key points that have served me well in my career. There's one key point in particular that I'd like to share with you, for even if you graduated from the same schools as I have or have worked at the same companies as I have, I doubt you had this invaluable nugget of information passed on to you. I'm thankful for the education and experience I've had because I know just how valuable this nugget is.
It's been a few years, but I'll try to relate as best as I can an experience I had during my education when I was a young Marine. It's not verbatim, but I'll fill in the blanks in my memory so that you can get the gist of it.
My first love is aviation and I took a course in airport management offered by one of only two universities in the United States that granted bachelor's degrees in my major. As luck would have it, the instructor happened to be the airport manager of the sixth busiest airport in the world at the time, but he took time out of his extremely busy schedule to "give something back" to his alma mater so that students whose future careers in aviation might have a taste of what it was like to manage a busy airport. The course was given on weekends in San Diego, and if you've ever spent much time in San Diego, you know that this is a Navy town. Of 46 students, 38 were sailors, two were married to sailors, five of us were Marines, and one was married to a Marine. The sailors were stationed in San Diego, while the Marines were stationed at Camp Pendleton and drove to San Diego on weekends for classes. We were all either in the military or in a military family. Not one civilian was in our class. I suppose that the civilians were too busy enjoying the splendid weather and exciting things to do in San Diego to spend their weekends in a classroom, but most folks in the military at that time didn't have the luxury to go to school on weekdays, or even on weeknights because of our duty schedules.
On the last afternoon of the last class, we took the final exam. As each student finished, he handed in his exam and left the classroom. Just before the last few students finished, the instructor poked his head outside and told us to return to the classroom in ten minutes because he had a test for us.
Test? What test?!! All of us students looked at one another incredulously. We had just taken the final exam. What other test could he have in mind?
Ten minutes later we all returned to the classroom and took our seats. "I know you're all in a hurry to get out of here and enjoy what's left of the weekend now that this course is over," he began. "And I need to catch my plane to the East coast so that I can go to work in the morning, too. But I have one more thing that I want to teach you before I leave. Some of the most important things I learned in school weren't from the text books or the lectures, but from what instructors and fellow students shared of their experiences. Does anyone here know what The Wharton School is?"
My daddy was a CPA, so of course I knew. I raised my hand and the Marine's wife raised hers. Apparently her daddy was a CPA, too. We both looked around. No one else had his hand up, so the instructor gave a short explanation.
"The Wharton School is a business school where students learn to run organizations, particularly large corporations and government institutions. Within their curriculum, they cover case studies of successful business practices and failed business practices. Even though you aren't students of The Wharton School and this isn't part of your regular curriculum, you are going to get the benefit of one of their case studies.
"Once upon a time there was a large company whose name shall remain anonymous, but whose initials are G.E. The company hired many engineers straight out of college, and one of these young engineers was named Scott. Scott was not a graduate of MIT or an Ivy League school. He was a graduate of a state college's engineering program, but he had a very high GPA in a solid engineering school and looked very promising, so the company hired him as a junior engineer.
"It soon became evident that Scott was brilliant and a very hard worker. Nearly every project that he was assigned to was finished ahead of schedule. Several of these projects were more successful than the original planned implementations, due in large part to Scott's ideas for improvements and his work on implementing his suggestions. At the end of his first year of employment, Scott's performance was reviewed by the engineering manager. Scott, knowing that he'd put in a stellar performance compared to the other new hires (and many of the more senior engineers, as well), asked for a sizable pay raise. The engineering manager rejected Scott's request because he was a junior engineer, and the percentage increase that he was requesting was normally granted to successful lead engineers. Scott received the standard percentage pay raise that the other new hires received, although their paychecks were larger because, unlike Scott, they had graduated from Ivy League schools so their starting salaries and, hence, the dollar amount of their pay raises, were higher than his.
"Scott knew that he'd have to work harder to prove his worth. He had some ideas for new projects and asked if he could implement them. When he successfully completed these projects, he'd show the engineering manager that the projects Scott was the lead engineer on were worthy of the pay raise he felt he deserved. The engineering manager agreed to let Scott work on one of his ideas as a new project, but he'd have to work with another, more senior, engineer until he had more experience. Scott agreed.
"Scott developed a plan, then took it to the senior engineer who had been assigned to work with him on the project. They worked together on the project to get it started, but since the senior engineer had other projects he was also responsible for and Scott obviously had everything under control, the senior engineer allowed Scott to work on the project exclusively most of the time while the senior engineer worked on his own projects elsewhere. The senior engineer attended management meetings with the other lead engineers and gave status reports on Scott's project to the engineering manager. As each milestone was achieved ahead of schedule, the engineering manager expressed his admiration for the fast progress on an engineering project with a newly minted engineer. The senior engineer passed on the engineering manager's compliment about the project's fast progress to Scott in his summarizations of the meetings afterwards.
"Scott successfully finished the project half a year later, ahead of schedule and below budget. The senior engineer passed on to Scott the accolades that the engineering manager had of a job well done on the project.
"Scott was allowed to start another new project based upon another of his ideas, again while working under another senior engineer as the lead engineer of the project. After the initial meetings with the senior engineer, Scott ran the project all by himself, and the senior engineer attended the management meetings to report the project status. As before, the senior engineer summarized the meetings for Scott and advised him of the engineering manager's pleasure with the difficult project's fast progress.
"At the end of his second year of employment, Scott's performance was reviewed by the engineering manager. Scott, knowing that he'd put in another stellar performance compared to the other engineers, again asked for a sizable pay raise. The engineering manager rejected Scott's request because he was a junior engineer, he'd only completed one project successfully so far that year, and he wasn't the lead engineer on that project. Scott again received the standard percentage pay raise.
"Scott realized that the senior engineers he'd been working with on his two projects attended the management meetings, but neither had explained Scott's complete role in each project to the engineering manager. Scott decided that his efforts would go unrewarded unless he got more visibility and more responsibility as the lead engineer on his own projects. Scott convinced a few other senior engineers, including the most senior engineer in the department, to work with him on additional projects. The senior engineers were eager to work with Scott because they knew they could count on him to get the work done, and they'd get the same accolades from the engineering manager as the other two lead engineers had received when working with Scott. In each case, Scott requested the senior engineer he was teamed up with to evaluate his efforts on the projects and inform the engineering manager so that he could get the visibility that he needed. Each senior engineer agreed, and as each milestone was reached ahead of schedule and as Scott's ideas for new projects became realities, these senior engineers informed the engineering manager of how impressed they were with Scott's work.
"What the senior engineers had failed to do was inform the engineering manager that not only were these projects Scott's ideas, he was single-handedly running the show to produce these new products for the company. And since they were in charge of the projects, the lead engineers got the credit for the job well done.
"At the end of his third year of employment, Scott's performance was reviewed by the engineering manager. Scott knew that he'd performed superbly and again asked for a sizable pay raise. The engineering manager rejected Scott's request because he was a junior engineer, and while he'd completed several projects successfully that year, he wasn't the lead engineer on any of those projects, and none of these small projects had been 'significant' products for the company. Scott again received the standard percentage pay raise.
"Scott decided that not only did he need to be named as the lead engineer on his projects, he needed to produce 'significant' products. Scott came up with more ambitious ideas that would take several years to produce a successful product and enlisted the aid of the senior engineers he'd already worked with to convince the engineering manager that Scott should be named as the lead engineer. Each of Scott's ideas was approved as a new project, but a senior engineer was designated as the lead engineer for each project, not Scott.
"'It takes time to prove your value and move up to "lead engineer" status,' Scott was told. 'The engineering manager will come around. Keep working hard and he'll see that you're the mastermind of the entire project,' the most senior engineer advised Scott.
"Scott worked hard over the next year on the multiple projects and received numerous praises from the senior engineers and even the engineering manager. Scott continued to work alone to produce each new product, since the senior engineers who were assigned as the lead engineers for his projects had long since stopped showing up to provide guidance, even for the preliminary meetings to discuss the details of the projects. Passing each other in the hallways, Scott would give them brief status reports: 'I installed the flux capacitor this morning, and I'll be adjusting the timing chain this afternoon to accommodate the more stable flux.' The senior engineers passed this information on at their meetings with the engineering manager.
"Unfortunately on one particular project, Scott made a serious mistake. Without supervision from his lead engineer, Scott had used an inferior material that the product relied upon for its manufacture and the product ultimately failed during the testing phase. Further research and experimentation to find a more suitable material set the project back more than three months. The rest of the projects that Scott had been the 'mastermind' of had been running on or ahead of their multiyear schedules. While Scott received numerous pats on the back for his other projects during the course of his fourth year at the company, the project where Scott had used the inferior material is what the engineering manager remembered at Scott's fourth annual performance review. It reinforced the manager's belief that Scott was a junior engineer and still needed serious supervision from the senior engineers. Scott again received the standard percentage pay raise.
"Scott vowed never to make that mistake again. He checked with the senior engineers before using materials where he wasn't 100% sure of their strengths in a given engineering application. Scott continued to work hard on all of his projects and received praises for his successes at each scheduled milestone.
"Since these were all multiyear projects, they were all still in progress when it came time for Scott's fifth annual performance review. Knowing that his projects would produce significant revenues for the company when the products were completed, Scott asked for a pay raise that would double his current salary. The engineering manager rejected his request because Scott was not the lead engineer on any of his projects, but merely a junior engineer, and hadn't completed a single project that year. But since he was contributing a significant amount of work on each of the projects that were scheduled to be completed within the next one and two years, the engineering manager granted Scott a pay raise a little more than the standard percentage.
"Scott highlighted his previous accomplishments and explained the value they brought to the company. He asked the engineering manager to reconsider his request to double his salary or he would seek employment elsewhere. The engineering manager refused. Scott quit.
"When Scott didn't show up for work the next day, one of the senior managers who had been assigned as lead engineer on two of Scott's projects asked the engineering manager where Scott was, since it was very unusual for Scott to miss a day of work and Scott was never late. The engineering manager explained that Scott had quit because he hadn't been given the pay raise he requested. 'Give him his pay raise and get him back to work on my projects. I have deadlines to meet,' the senior engineer advised the engineering manager.
"Soon the news that Scott had quit his job reached the other senior engineers. There was quite a panic because Scott had been the driving force on seven of the eleven major engineering projects that the company was currently working on. The most senior engineer spoke with the engineering manager. 'Without Scott, these projects will be significantly delayed. Give him his pay raise.'
"'No way! He wanted me to double his salary!' exclaimed the engineering manager.
"'How much is that?' asked the most senior engineer. When the engineering manager gave him the dollar figure, he said, 'That's all? Pay him!'
"'No way! I could hire two new Ivy League grads for that kind of money,' replied the engineering manager.
"'Ten new Ivy League grads can't do what Scott can do. Pay him and get him back in here and stop this nonsense,' the most senior engineer told him.
"'If you think he's so instrumental in these projects' completion schedules, get me an assessment of the work done so far, the work that still needs to be done, and schedules for completion if Scott is not here to do it,' ordered the engineering manager.
"When the assessment began, it was discovered that not only were there no schematics or blueprints of any of the products that Scott had been working on, there were no project notes, either. None of the engineering leads had asked for any. They had all depended upon Scott to produce each product because the lead engineers had been too busy with their other projects, and the ideas for each of his products had been Scott's. Each lead engineer had a vague idea of what Scott's product was supposed to do and knew that each product was either on schedule or ahead of schedule, but the actual implementations had been left up to Scott entirely. The lead engineers had merely reported the status of each project at the management meetings after Scott had informed them.
"Without blueprints or project notes, it took more than a week for the senior engineers to examine each of the seven partially completed products, extrapolate what else needed to be done to create a finished product for market, and build a schedule for that completion.
"One of the senior engineers who was the lead engineer on two of Scott's projects couldn't make heads or tails of the products and declared that they were both red herrings, because it was impossible for either of the two partially completed products to do what Scott claimed they would do when completed. Each of the other five products would be completed one to three years after the scheduled completion dates, even if they hired an experienced engineer to replace Scott. Clearly, Scott was needed if they hoped to meet their deadlines for production of each of these new products.
"Two weeks after Scott quit, the engineering manager called Scott at home and asked him to come back to work at double his old salary. Scott said, 'I'm sorry, but I've already accepted a new position at another company.' The engineering manager offered Scott an even higher pay raise. 'I'm sorry, but they hired me as a senior engineer and I've been assigned as lead engineer on all of my projects.'
"'No one is going to be a senior engineer with only five years of experience, let alone a lead engineer!' the engineering manager informed Scott.
"'I am,' said Scott.
"'I'd like to see you as the lead engineer on two projects when your new company finds out that you've offered them the red herrings that you offered us. It would be impossible to produce such a product,' the engineering manager replied and named the two projects that the senior engineer had said were impossible.
"'Then you'll be surprised when you see them on the market, won't you?' said Scott.
"The engineering manager called the most senior engineer into his office. 'Scott isn't coming back. No matter, though, as we've got the actual products mostly completed and when Scott's new company tries to duplicate them they'll have to start from scratch, and they can't use the same technology because Scott can't give another company our proprietary technologies without severe legal ramifications,' the engineering manager informed him.
"'You should never have let Scott walk out the door,' the most senior engineer replied.
"'He's just a junior engineer! He's not even an Ivy Leaguer. He's just not that valuable,' said the engineering manager, who soon hired another junior engineer to replace Scott.
"Over the next two years, each of the seven products Scott had been working on hit the market within six months or so of Scott's originally scheduled release date. As promised, even the two so-called 'red herrings' were put on the market. The only problem was that it was Scott's new company that put Scott's products on the market. These products quickly gained market share because they were the first to market in their respective market niches. In every case, they were one to three or more years ahead of Scott's former company's similar products, despite the fact that Scott's former company hired another experienced engineer at nearly triple Scott's old salary when they determined that the junior engineer hired to replace Scott wasn't going to help them make their revised schedule's deadlines.
"Eventually, Scott's new company's products dominated their markets because their products used technologies that were superior to Scott's former company's products. And the two 'red herrings' had no competition in their market niches, because Scott's former company had never pursued completion of the products that were deemed 'impossible.'
"Now that you've heard this story and the mistakes that were made, what do you think the moral of this story is?" asked our airport management instructor.
"Don't be that manager!" answered one of the students.
"Uh, . . . no. While the engineering manager made significant mistakes in managing his employees, like failing to 'walk the floor' to see what was really going on, allowing his subordinates to just give verbal progress reports, not requiring documentation as part of a pass-over plan in case the employees working on a project are no longer available to complete the project for whatever reason, and assuming his lead engineers were actually running these projects. We'll cover these mistakes in a few moments, but there's an even more significant dilemma that I want you students to understand. What is the moral of this story?" he asked again.
"Don't be that engineer!" answered another student.
Our instructor smiled. "Precisely. Scott kept working for the same manager and the same company for many years, even after he had ample evidence of the institutionalized thinking that he was 'only a junior engineer' when he continued to excel and provide superior value to the company.
"I give this case study to you students because you're in the military (even spouses have to put up with the discipline and military way of life) and exhibit some of the same traits that Scott had, especially given the fact that you've spent a good number of weekends in classrooms to pursue your goal of a higher education when it would be much easier to skip it and just enjoy the benefits that living in San Diego has to offer.
"Businesses prize the attitudes and qualities that former military personnel have, like discipline and being very hard workers with a 'can-do' attitude, since failure just isn't an option in the military. You are in excellent health and won't take many sick days, especially since there's such a stigma with 'sick bay commandos' in the Navy and Marine Corps. You have an ingrained habit of always being prompt and professional, and you have other enviable work habits and work attendance records during your enlistment in the military.
"Some day you'll all be looking for a job in the civilian world, even those of you who plan to retire eventually from the military after 20 or 30 years. I want you to work hard and apply yourselves to the fullest at your civilian job, just as you have in your military career. When it comes time for that first annual performance review, see whether there's an institutionalized view of employees' worth, such as Scott experienced. If you are given the 'standard' pay raise after a stellar year of performance, you may want to look elsewhere for a job where your hard work will be rewarded.
"Large corporations are notorious for shortchanging new hires, because they don't want to waste salaries on people who haven't proven themselves to be a highly valuable asset. It may take up to two years for some managers to decide you are valuable enough to receive a high pay raise for your continued work, so if it's otherwise a good job, you may want to stick around and work hard for a second year to receive your just recognition if the first performance review nets only the 'standard' pay raise.
"If, after two years of stellar performance, you again receive the 'standard' pay raise, then I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. You are working for that manager I mentioned earlier. You need to go find another job as soon as possible. If it's otherwise a good company, you can look for another job in another department so that you can find a better manager to work for. But you may be better off to leave the company altogether and start fresh somewhere else.
"Here's where the test I mentioned comes in. If at three years you are still working at that same company for that same manager who has repeatedly failed to recognize your superior efforts and reward you, . . ." Our instructor paused and pointed to his chin. "Look at this face. It's not a pretty face, but take a good look because I want you to remember it well, . . . because if you're still working for that bad manager on your third anniversary on the job, I will come and I will personally kick your ass and yell,
'DIDN'T I TEACH YOU ANYTHING IN MY CLASS?!!!'"
I've had the misfortune of working for that bad manager twice at different companies in my career, and I am happy to report that my former college instructor has never had to come kick my ass. And now that you've read this valuable nugget of career information, he won't come up behind you, either.
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