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Ask HN: Is work worth leaving College for?

• andersonmvd 11y ago
  tl;dr; it's really up to you, either way are a good way to go with some trade-off. pick what suits you best. If you're just looking for a diploma, I'd recommend you to drop it off. If you want to learn, pick a great university and embrace it. The solid base that you'll get will be worth it, but you'll spend much time and will be very tough. However, nowadays you can embrace coursera and learn on demand while studying the current market. That's what I chose for myself as I wanted to work over 'study'. I kept doing specialization over specialization and I like it. I also admire who went to good universities. Bad ones you should drop off. Unless you're a Stanford engineer, your 'diploma' today is your portifolio (github projects per say) and your network.
  • kiraken 11y ago
    Well is there a reason to finish college aside from a solid base? I mean doesn't starting early would give me head start? And aside from that, do you think that if i decide to drop school i should stick to freelancing or find a steady job?
    • andersonmvd 11y ago
      Yes, there is. If you enter in a good university, e.g., MIT, you'll know a lot of smart people which will also be good to your network. You'll also have access to smart teachers. Yes, starting early gives you a head start and you won't lose it, unless you stop studying. But study can be achieved inside a college or outside it. That's where Coursera/EdX comes in along with courses (40 hours usually) and self-studying -- but note that you're less likely to study some subjects like Math, which after some years looked very interesting to me as I wanna dive in machine learning for example. Ok, I can learn on demand, but that's because now I see a very good application for Math :D -- there is no 'correct' way to do it, just don't stop learning. I don't really know your financial conditions, but supposing that you can choose without fear, considering your age, I'd first say that you choose both! What?! Both, yes. I really enjoyed working a big company (Walmart), increase the network and saw the 'company way' of doing things. But when I got tired I switched to freelance mode. There are trade-offs. Again, there is no 'right way'. Depends on many things. The proposed salary, the freedom you are willing to give up, the job conditions x freelance conditions, how much you survive bosses ordering you around, etc. If you don't know freelance and company is interesting to try them out to see what fits more for you. The problem (actually a good problem to have) is that you have many clients as you said, and if you go to a company, you'll need to get them back again. I can't really give you a straight answers, I'm telling more about what I went through and the variables that you should consider IMHO. Btw: learned only years later, but a diploma can help you A LOT if you want to immigrate
      • kiraken 11y ago
        Well i can probably manage to hold a job while freelancing on the side. I'd like not to, but i'm still young and can take the stress and exhaustion i suppose
        • andersonmvd 11y ago
          That would mostly kill your freelance side. You'll end up exhausted in the end of the day I think, thus won't be much creative to work more. The brain just crash hehe. If at least you could work 3 days in a week to see what it is like. Otherwise don't bother, this time may come in the future. You may end up in a big project which the client allows you to use his space to interact with the company's team somehow. You will even be able to negotiate this, like a discount to use his office to see what's like more close. Just an idea.
    • anigbrowl 11y ago
      I mean doesn't starting early would give me head start? Sure...in the same way that running up the stairs gives you a head start over the people waiting for the elevator. Good as the exercise is and young and fit as you may be, that advantage will only pay off on the shortest of time horizons. You can probably beat Elevator Guy up to the 3rd floor, so to speak, but a) you won't be able to do it forever, b) you'll never be competitive over longer distances, and c) even when you do make it, you'll arrive tired and sweaty. That last one matters because a key part of business success is apparent effortlessness. Do not fool yourself into thinking we live in a meritocracy.
      • kiraken 11y ago
        You make a lot of sense. Thank you for making it more clear to me
• tylerFowler 11y ago
  I'm in a similar sort of situation. After my 3rd year of college pursuing a CS degree, I realized I was learning more on my own than I was at school. I too had started programming early on, teaching myself C++ at 14. I'm glad I went to college but after a while I felt like it had served it's purpose for me, I had already completed the major courses (data structures, software architecture, etc...) and pretty much just had courses like Compiler Construction and OS Design left. So I had an internship at a startup the summer after my 3rd year (summer of 2014) and I was immediately placed as the only developer working on a web application for analyzing our production logs. I did well and near the end of my internship I was offered a job... and I took it. So I dropped out and for a year now I've been working at the same startup and am now the lead (and only) developer on all of our web services. I don't regret not finishing school, though it's been a little bittersweet watching all of my friends graduating in past few months.. My view is that you should get all you can out of college while it's in your best interest, I just didn't feel it was helping me as much as a job in the industry would, and I'm certainly doing well enough. Not to mention the fact that most universities don't even offer a real program for full stack web development. I've even been getting a lot of interest from recruiters (on avg. about 4 positions a month for a year) despite not having a degree. That being said, something I've heard a lot from the developers I work with is that later on it could be an excuse for employers not to pay me as much. Even with this first gig I'm seeing that I'm getting paid less than new employees with less knowledge & experience than me and for a lesser position, simply because they have a degree. The approach that I'm taking is to ride out this job for a while longer and then getting another job, and if me not having a degree poses a problem in any way I'll just go and finish my degree (which will take about 2.5 more years due to a transfer after my sophomore year). I'm 22 right now so it would certainly be better for me to do it now rather than later but I'm simply not convinced yet that it will be a problem later on. It's also worth noting that I'm taking a lot of courses on Coursera and am going through the web specializations to add the certifications to my resume, which will definitely help to make up for not having a degree and are much more manageable while I'm working full time. All that being said, I'm highly interested to hear what current employers have to say about someone having ample experience/knowledge but having no degree, especially when it comes to equality of pay vs. coworkers with higher education degrees.
  • 11y ago
• timetraveller 11y ago
  That depends on your current hourly rate. What is it?
  • andersonmvd 11y ago
    That's a good question to ask upfront, I agree, but only if you're looking for financial gains. Just wanted to add that a lot more things come into play when there is a discussion of drop college x steady job x freelance.
    • kiraken 11y ago
      Yeah i agree, that's why i'm so torn and can't make up my mind
  • kiraken 11y ago
    I usually get paid per project. A landing page for 2500$ a normal static website 3000$ for 5 pages and 200$ more for each page. But if i'm working on a Frontend/Backend gig i charge 150$ per hour
    • icpmacdo 11y ago
      Where have you gotten work from while still in school? Do you do all your work remote? Do you have a portfolio available to show publicly here so I can see what kind of skill level I need to get work that pays that well? Im graduating a (Canadian) College web dev course at the end of next semester and the only work I have managed to get was some WordPress stuff that ended up being less than 15$ an hour. I am actively looking to find front/backend work that pays halfway decent right now.
    • andersonmvd 11y ago
      Great. Looking from a financial perspective, I'd stick w/ freelance given this rate if I were you.
• anigbrowl 11y ago
  You're getting job offers because it's cheaper to hire you without a degree. the day you become more expensive than a raw new graduate is the day your company revises its hiring policies and uses them as an excuse to forget about you. You don't say whether you're studying computer science or something else, but if you don't feel challenged then maybe you should switch major to some field where your skills/knowledge are deficient and there are barriers or resistance to automation and computerization. At your age I chose work and financial freedom over college (although the decision was much more complex than I want to explain here), figuring that I could continue educating myself with books and determination...which I did, but I lost out on a lot of opportunities, both economic and social, because of not having the degree or the social network you build up in college. For example, what if you decide you want to live in some other country a few years from now? A degree can make the difference between a work visa and automatic rejection. If you are very entrepreneurial and create your own opportunities by relentlessly pursuing goals and seeking out new clients, this may not be a problem for you. If you're naturally talented and your freelance jobs sort of fell into your lap, then your popularity is evanescent and you will find yourself increasingly pigeonholed over time, which will require you to adopt less efficient economic strategies. Your mention of a desire for stability suggests to me that you in the second group. Having a degree is not the same thing as being educated, but it does represent a very important type of social capital that will allow you to access a much greater range of shortcuts. Not just in job offers - you will enjoy small but significant savings on things like insurance, consumer finance and so on, the totals of which are quite significant over a lifetime. I don't regret any of the time I've invested in broadening my knowledge, critical thinking skills and so on, but I can't bank it the same way as someone who has a degree can. If I had a time machine I would absolutely go back and convince myself to do things differently, so my advice is stick it out now and reap substantial rewards later. Without it you are like the feature phone/landline user in a smartphone world.
  • kiraken 11y ago
    What you said is true, i used to just code for myself, i didn't even share that aspect of myself with anyone. Until one day i stumbled upon a contract and did it just for fun. The money was good and each contract brought me another, and since i charge 50% upfront i really couldn't say no to some of the project that were a lot of money. Which brings us to this moment in time where i'm working on 3 contracts and probably gonna not sleep this weekend to finish everything in the deadline. So that's why i asked for stability, i don't care about the money as long as its a bit close to what i'm making now. I just din't want to be working at 2am in the morning anymore. As for the original point. Yes i do agree, you make a compelling point
• throwdegree 11y ago
  Contrary to the loud signal you'll hear in much of industry, there is still a large part of it where you won't be taken seriously without a degree. If you want to work on good teams, teams that have been carefully selected, you have to be able to have been selected for those teams. I wasn't very strategic with my education (academic or self) with employment or with technologies I chose to be proficient in, and so on paper I probably look like pretty much any other high-school-educated "Open Source Hacker". People that hire me are also going to be hiring the guy that installed Wordpress for his church once, the guy that everything he writes takes geometric time and doesn't question it because he has no idea how fast computers really are, having only worked with synchronous multi-page HTML+JS+PHP "apps" running on shared hosting, etc. Nobody can tell that I'm different from these characters until after they have hired me (and after my wage is negotiated...) and I will have to work with the teams they have chosen and fix what they break. As far as I can tell so far, I'm not able to be hired on teams for which I would be a good fit ("I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member" but with bills to worry about). I've had received apologetic application rejection emails faster than it's humanly possible to have been considered - I can't even convince some (literal) HR robot to give me a chance. I've done well enough for myself despite this (I don't intend to be pitied), but I certainly do not recommend the situation. A degree is not the best filter to be able to pass to avoid this kind of fate (the best is probably social connectivity - but that can very easily be a side-effect of graduation) but it is one. Whatever you do, make sure you have many.
• rnovak 11y ago
  I think at the end of the day, you don't know what tomorrows going to bring. You may be getting job offers now, but what does that really get you? Not sure if you're in the US or not, but at least in the US, Employment is at-will in many states, especially for engineers. In many, many, many cases, I think a degree cannot hurt you, only help you. Yes, I have seen examples of people who would rather work with someone without a degree, but I truly believe those employers are few and far between. If you ever get tired of living the start-up life (you never know what tomorrow brings, what if you start a family and don't want the risks associated with freelancing? What if you just decide one day it's not for you anymore? The only thing certain about the future is that it's uncertain), a degree will get you in the door at places that offer A) Great Pensions/Retirement packages, B) Great Healthcare, and other great perks, places that you probably wouldn't even get an interview if you don't have your degree. Personally speaking, I have a great deal of respect for anyone who knows what they're doing. I've worked with people without a formal education, and those with. There's a major difference though, in that the people I've worked with who have a formal education, we have common ground. Meaning, it's much more likely that when I say the "pigeon hole principal", someone who took discrete mathematics (one of the cornerstones of CS) will remember something about it. For someone without a degree, there's a lower chance that they'd know what I was talking about (not impossible, not unlikely even, just less of a chance). Does that matter? Not a whole lot for some stuff, but in other areas absolutely. In software, I generally am not disappointed if my colleagues haven't designed something using an FPGA and Verilog, or have any clue as to the difference between x86 and x64 ISAs, but if they don't get the concept of a linked-list, or a queue, stack, or something else fundamental to computer-science, it does slow work down. If they're a javascript developer and don't know what a prototype is, or how function literals/closures work, it can slow communication down. Then again, I haven't worked much in the front-end, or even in Web. I focus primarily on desktop/server/batch/financial software, so I work in low level code, such as c/c++/COBOL and Java(debatably high-level). At it's core, engineering is the use of knowledge and the scientific method to solve problems and build cool/useful stuff. Experience builds that knowledge, and all college does is focus your experience on knowledge that a group of people believe will be useful to you, as well as on a meta-level as well (learning how to learn was really what I took away from school the most). Just keep in mind that going back is way harder than just finishing it while you're already there. You get use to the perks of being at work, and then going back to the academic life really gets harder, the longer your away (at least that's what I've found). Hope that helps, and good luck on your journey.
• atmosx 11y ago
  A degree will be very hard to pursue later, but jobs offers will continue to run in. IMHO the best solution to your problem is to try to get the degree ASAP while keeping some jobs, just enough to keep you going. College will broaden your circle and knowledge. Try to enter a research group, since you're so skilled. That might give you access to great startup ideas that can only be pursued in that environment. Also college is fun, try get some of that too. You should get the degree in order to level up socially. Will make your life easier. Any college has to give probably more than you can handle in different many different ways. Try to get all of that because ain't going to come from anywhere else. You'll have time to work, as a freelancer, an employee or do you own thing, you are only 19. Now it's time to study, focus on the studies :-)
• Mz 11y ago
  I will suggest you read a few biographies. Bill Gates and Madonna are both college drop outs. It doesn't appear to have hurt either of their careers. On the other hand, looking around me, it seems to me that more educated people tend to have a somewhat smoother experience of life. Those who were born with talent seems to take it really hard when the run into situations they aren't innately well equipped to handle. That doesn't make college the automatic right answer. I think you need to find some historical or public figures that you can identify with in some way and see how the handled it and see if you can infer if which path seems like the better fit for you personally. I can argue it in either direction if I care to (for college or against college). But that doesn't answer the question as to which is the right answer for you in specific.
  • obrero 11y ago
    > Bill Gates and Madonna are both college drop outs. It doesn't appear to have hurt either of their careers. Bill Gates was also born with a million dollar trust fund, so make sure you have a safety net and starting capital like that as well before dropping out.
• rgovind 11y ago
  College programs (ideally) will expose you to different kinds of ideas, subjects, people and technologies. It formalizes your knowledges. This means you can pursue more valuable ideas in future. Also, a formal degree can open doors to going and working abroad. I think you should seriously go for a degree. If you want to keep making money, hire a guy and give him your freelance work, share the profits.
• bearzoo 11y ago
  Contrary to what many people will tell you - a degree is just ONE of the things you go to college for. Go to college. Your at a great age, and will have experiences you will not be able to have at any other time in your life. It is worth it, it will help you grow. You can keep a client or two on the side to pay bills, etc..