> They just need to have a passion for constantly learning and solving problems. Then they'll be able to figure things out as they go, just like all of us do.

> They just need to have a passion for constantly learning and solving problems. Then they'll be able to figure things out as they go, just like all of us do. The best people can learn on their own everything college teaches. College is designed to help ensure there aren't any skill gaps. It isn't perfect, but I'd expect someone from a good university to be able to: 1. Put together a professional looking presentation. 2. Have good to above average written communication skills 3. Sit in a meeting with engineers from a different discipline and have at least some vague idea what is going on, and have less of a ramp up before they can start contributing. 4. Have an understanding of statistics and calculus. 5. Be at least familiar with all of the main hard sciences (chemistry, physics biology) 6. Have a greater than average understanding of, at minimum, the society that their college was based in. When it comes to technical abilities, 4 years of learning is going to better prepare someone than 6 months to 1 year of learning. Multiple programming paradigms help a lot as well, someone who knows just JavaScript or C# is going to have less mental tools at their disposal than someone who has programmed in purely functional programming languages, used pattern matching, and who understands what code actually compiles down to. I've hired from boot camps, 4 year programs focused on games, and CS programs. The best boot camp graduates are of course amazing, but just coming out of school they are lacking a lot of skills, and there is no guarantee that any random boot camp graduate will be able to pick up those skills (again, of course the best ones can). CS programs have no problem failing students out if they hit the C++ courses and can't hang in there. Graduates from schools like DigiPen can hang in there, but they also have huge gaps in their knowledge that have to be filled. (On the flip side, they also have skills that people with CS degrees don't have!) A student from a good CS program should be well rounded. Ideally they should be able to join a team doing low level systems programming and ramp up on embedded C just as easily as joining a team writing some sort of insane load balancing / network caching system.