[non EU] My work permit was denied due to not having a degree. Anything I can do?

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
1
The guys coming to our place from EPFL are into machine learning analysis of anormal traffic patterns in our networking product, automatic correctness checks of programs, and other non-trivial stuff. They come with their own agenda and and some researchers who did it at EPFL first behind it, and try to apply it in a concrete product. Quite interesting for both parties.

2
Education never stops at the point of graduating. Many veterans in the industry also do research of applying machine learning even though they have only bachelor degree.

Personally I see PhD as people who did not care about money. They postpone the opportunity to raise welfare in the name of having a few more years living in academia, either because they don't care, either because they are already rich... Looking back I would not do MSc at that young age. Instead I would prefer to get well paid job 2 years earlier and seize the opportunity to learn in the evenings top notch technologies instead of boring homework when I was still young and capable of fast learning.

3
Sorry, I don't groan often but I wholeheartedly disagree with this. I know a number of folks with PhDs and plenty currently studying. They do it because they find the topic interesting and want to discover new things. They want to find solutions to the world's problems. Some truly enjoy the world of academia and plan to stay there. That's fine. Horses for courses and all that.

I have yet to meet a rich PhD student, much less one that didn't care about money. There are probably some, but they're not the majority as you imply. Most of the time they're rather broke, even as a post-doc with that nice fancy title behind their name. It takes years to catch up financially to those that start with apprenticeships and earn from a very young age.

4
It's very individual. People I know personally continued the education because they wanted to continue life as it was known... The 'life outside academia' was unknown

5

Unfortunately, it’s quite clear.

" Personal qualifications

(Art. 23 AuG)

Cadre, specialists and other qualified employees will be admitted. “Qualified employee” means, first and foremost, people with a degree from a university or institution of higher education as well as several years of professional experience. Depending on the profession or field of specialisation, other people with special training and several years of professional work experience may also be admitted."

https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/en/home…zulassung.html

6
They should go and dig roads and learn what real work is!

7
One possible way round the requirement may be to obtain recognition through a professional body, in the UK in your case this would probably be the British Computer Society, you could then become a Chartered Information Technology Professional C.ITP which is the software equivalent of C.Eng. This process can be done fairly quickly it requires an application to be completed, 2 referees to confirm your experience and an interview, with luck can be done in 2-3 months.

However I have no idea how this would be accepted by the Swiss authorities and may be worth talking to them to see if this would be acceptable, it may also be worth seeing if the company that is offering you the job can justify to the authorities why they need to hire you rather than a local, though I suspect that they may not work as they have probably already been involved in the process.

8
I am not a fan of commercial (i.e. profit-making) "universities" owned by shareholders. Many, perhaps most, are fraudulent and a large number (ITT, Corinthian) have been closed down as the US Government cancelled their eligibility for government loans.

That said, the private University of Phoenix has among the best reputations of what I would normally consider a bad lot (I would say that: I graduated from 4 of the top universities in 3 different countries). It is accredited by the (well recognised) Higher Learning Commission (see HLC's Wikipedia page)

And it does translate experience into credits for its Computer Science degrees http://www.phoenix.edu/programs/degr...s/bsit-se.html

Phoenix offers an online programme as well as classroom-taught programmes and courses.

Good luck.

9
That's one of the options I was considering. Although with current political climate you can never be sure that German passport will be as useful in 6 years as it is now.

I know this has been asked countless times, but do studying years count toward citizenship (or a C permit) in Switzerland? I've seen conflicting reports after the recent 12 => 10 year change. As I understand, as long as you get a permanent contract after graduation, you are fine, right?

10
Can you work from home?

Out sourcing is all the rage

11

Wouldn’t get him a Swiss residence permit though, being a non-EU national.

12
Home is not in Switzerland so why would he need a Swiss residence permit

13
Why don't you? World is our oyster.

14

If he wanted to work from home he wouldn’t have bothered trying to get a job here now would he?

15
The NY Times today suggests a bargain, accredited online computer science masters programme at Georgia Tech ($7,000). Perhaps there is also an affordable bachelors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/up...e-iphone-share

"A Georgia Tech computer science program at drastically reduced prices could change the way we think about the problem of college costs."