Comment Re:In the US, business doesn't care. (Score 1) 201
If they require a master's or PhD, it's not an entry level position.
They either a) are trying to change the world with new or hard stuff and want a theory guy to guide things or b) don't know what they are doing or c) don't want to mess around with kids straight out of school who haven't figured out the corporate metagames and "git'er done" culture yet.
There's the optimal implementation on paper, given infinite time for implementation, and there's the "We have two weeks, do what you can pull off" implementation that business is usually looking for. Business values programmer time more than academia does. I know my CS degree didn't prep me for that very well.
Actual raw engineering is a bit less wild wild west than software... there are legal definitions of what a certified engineer is responsible for; i.e. if people die as a result of your engineering mistakes, it's your fault, not just some edge case bug. But the same corporate BS is still driving it, so the same stuff applies... HR is still about risk avoidance, it's just that a guy with a master's or PhD had to jump through more hoops to get to the table and thus the wheat is seperated from the chaff so to speak.
Business doesn't care about getting the best candidate, they care about getting the guy who looks like he's good enough for the money they are willing to spend on him and won't end up as a disaster. And also, some of those job postings may require a master's or PhD so they can legally justify hiring an H1-B after there is no one "qualified" to be found.