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People REALLY hate college degrees on this site. I think my degree was a great decision. I've met a few decent self-taught programmers. Most are awful. Over an

People REALLY hate college degrees on this site. I think my degree was a great decision. I've met a few decent self-taught programmers. Most are awful. Over and over again the bootcamp grads and people who have never attended school end up being the worst performers on my team. A LOT of the people I have worked with who do not have degrees have bad attitudes and are hyper-vigilant about "no degree" microaggressions. I use the stuff I learned in university all the time. I didn't go deeply into debt to attend a private university, instead I worked during the day and went to school at night. There is such a massive glut of people trying to get into the entry level programmer jobs. It's an easy decision for me: Throw the people who do not have a 4 year degree or relevant work experience into the trash. I would assume that a LOT of other people are doing this.

mathgladiator 7y ago
I think a bunch depends on how people used their time in university. The typical college graduate has an advantage over the typical bootcamper. At the extremes is where it doesnt really matter because the fundamental driver was different. People focused on the job will always yield to those that are driven intrinsically (and, in a way perpetually suffer those that are intrinsically motivated as they are the only ones inventing things)
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
A lot of the people I have worked with over my thirty years working, who do have degrees, frequently come across as blinkered know-it-alls because as they have a CS degree they therefore know everything. A fair selection of whom were canned as despite great degree grade they could do little beyond make tea in the real world. The reality is just the same - most people with degrees are awful. I take issue with bootcamp being self taught - they are not remotely the same thing at all. I would probably be more suspicious of bootcamp grads than anything else - from experience of various commercial training over the years. Someone truly self taught - rather than winging it - is approaching it a very different way. Being old, most of the seniors in my early career had no CS degree or even degree at all. A fair selection of whom could give anyone in today's world a run for their money. The TL;DR of which is, of course, most applicants regardless of background will be pretty dire... Which is why hiring remains non-trivial.
tanilama 7y ago
It is easy to see why having a degree is not popular here in this forum. It is probably acting as a hard barrier for some to get a job. Thus people don't like it. Per my experience working in a big tech shop, most of the engineer-kind co-workers DO have a STEM degree. I don't think a CS degree is required in that sense, as long as the background is relevant. Only one of them came with no college degree, but he fits in well and decent in his work. Hiring is difficult as always, degree is indeed a powerful indicator. When the amount of candidates is not that tight, and the hiring process is increasingly streamlined, its importance will only grow.
- scarface74 7y ago
  How much of an “indicator” do you think my degree is from a no name college that so graduated from in the mid 90s?
- etripe 7y ago
  When it comes to interviewing, I think the biggest problem is one of biases. When working at a company in Sweden, an applicant was braggadocious about their prior experience, which was normal for their culture (as a means of demonstrating value) but not the Swedish one (where modesty is king). He was almost excluded purely on that basis. I, as an outsider, was aware of the phenomenon, but my native colleagues weren't. At another job, a theoretically inclined colleague was grilling a junior candidate on DDD and hexagonal versus onion architectures because that interested him. I had to point out that wasn't relevant at all for a fledgling programmer's ability to write a basic web API. Self-selection is a big problem, whether it be through cultural values, personal interests or the topic at hand: degrees. Let's please stick to what a degree is: an authority argument and a semi-reliable proxy for intelligence. The rest is incidental, as you can be lazy and disorganised with a degree, or possess a broad theoretical background and be intelligent without.
ggambetta 7y ago
People with no degrees hate degrees. People who can't pass FAANG interviews hate FAANG interviews. It's a defense mechanism, along the lines of "I'm not a bad student, the teacher hates me".
- innocentoldguy 7y ago
  I got a degree and graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA. I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot has been. If I could do it all over again, I would save the $60,000 and buy a sailboat.
  - dorkwood 7y ago
    Any book recommendations?
  - barbellguy97 7y ago
    What do you think about getting a Masters degree in a non-specialized field (e.g. Software Engineering and not Artificial Intelligence) while having a Bachelors degree already? I am currently at the crossroads of going into work, a masters degree or both. Am also currently an intern at a FAANG atm.
    - matwood 7y ago
      I did my masters while working. My job at the time paid for it, and there was a good school in the area. I found it fun because I was exposed to things I wouldn't have gotten exposed to in my job (programming language design, automata theory, etc...), but those things also didn't change my salary or future job prospects. If you find learning in a structured environment fun and can get someone else to pay for it, a masters may be right for you :)
  - ggambetta 7y ago
    > I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot But how would you know that? I thought I was a pretty decent programmer when I started college - I had been programming since I was 5! But a five-year engineering degree gave me some much-needed structure around the things I already knew, and filled massive gaps in knowledge I didn't even know I had.
diminoten 7y ago
Have you considered the bad attitudes you're encountering are because you think most of the self-taught programmers you've met are "awful" and that they shouldn't have been given opportunities to begin with, instead preferring to, "throw them in the trash"? Seems like you're getting out of those relationships what you put in. I've met CS grads who can't code FizzBuzz, and I've met self-taught programmers who work 1/10th as hard as I do and are 10x as productive. There's no correlation whatsoever, and the industry reflects that; the pay scale is exactly the same.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

mathgladiator 7y ago

I think a bunch depends on how people used their time in university. The typical college graduate has an advantage over the typical bootcamper. At the extremes is where it doesnt really matter because the fundamental driver was different. People focused on the job will always yield to those that are driven intrinsically (and, in a way perpetually suffer those that are intrinsically motivated as they are the only ones inventing things)

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

A lot of the people I have worked with over my thirty years working, who do have degrees, frequently come across as blinkered know-it-alls because as they have a CS degree they therefore know everything. A fair selection of whom were canned as despite great degree grade they could do little beyond make tea in the real world. The reality is just the same - most people with degrees are awful. I take issue with bootcamp being self taught - they are not remotely the same thing at all. I would probably be more suspicious of bootcamp grads than anything else - from experience of various commercial training over the years. Someone truly self taught - rather than winging it - is approaching it a very different way. Being old, most of the seniors in my early career had no CS degree or even degree at all. A fair selection of whom could give anyone in today's world a run for their money. The TL;DR of which is, of course, most applicants regardless of background will be pretty dire... Which is why hiring remains non-trivial.

tanilama 7y ago

It is easy to see why having a degree is not popular here in this forum. It is probably acting as a hard barrier for some to get a job. Thus people don't like it. Per my experience working in a big tech shop, most of the engineer-kind co-workers DO have a STEM degree. I don't think a CS degree is required in that sense, as long as the background is relevant. Only one of them came with no college degree, but he fits in well and decent in his work. Hiring is difficult as always, degree is indeed a powerful indicator. When the amount of candidates is not that tight, and the hiring process is increasingly streamlined, its importance will only grow.

scarface74 7y ago
How much of an “indicator” do you think my degree is from a no name college that so graduated from in the mid 90s?
etripe 7y ago
When it comes to interviewing, I think the biggest problem is one of biases. When working at a company in Sweden, an applicant was braggadocious about their prior experience, which was normal for their culture (as a means of demonstrating value) but not the Swedish one (where modesty is king). He was almost excluded purely on that basis. I, as an outsider, was aware of the phenomenon, but my native colleagues weren't. At another job, a theoretically inclined colleague was grilling a junior candidate on DDD and hexagonal versus onion architectures because that interested him. I had to point out that wasn't relevant at all for a fledgling programmer's ability to write a basic web API. Self-selection is a big problem, whether it be through cultural values, personal interests or the topic at hand: degrees. Let's please stick to what a degree is: an authority argument and a semi-reliable proxy for intelligence. The rest is incidental, as you can be lazy and disorganised with a degree, or possess a broad theoretical background and be intelligent without.

ggambetta 7y ago

People with no degrees hate degrees. People who can't pass FAANG interviews hate FAANG interviews. It's a defense mechanism, along the lines of "I'm not a bad student, the teacher hates me".

innocentoldguy 7y ago
I got a degree and graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA. I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot has been. If I could do it all over again, I would save the $60,000 and buy a sailboat.
- dorkwood 7y ago
  Any book recommendations?
- barbellguy97 7y ago
  What do you think about getting a Masters degree in a non-specialized field (e.g. Software Engineering and not Artificial Intelligence) while having a Bachelors degree already? I am currently at the crossroads of going into work, a masters degree or both. Am also currently an intern at a FAANG atm.
  - matwood 7y ago
    I did my masters while working. My job at the time paid for it, and there was a good school in the area. I found it fun because I was exposed to things I wouldn't have gotten exposed to in my job (programming language design, automata theory, etc...), but those things also didn't change my salary or future job prospects. If you find learning in a structured environment fun and can get someone else to pay for it, a masters may be right for you :)
- ggambetta 7y ago
  > I don't think my college education has been anywhere near as valuable to me as reading software engineering books and coding a lot But how would you know that? I thought I was a pretty decent programmer when I started college - I had been programming since I was 5! But a five-year engineering degree gave me some much-needed structure around the things I already knew, and filled massive gaps in knowledge I didn't even know I had.

diminoten 7y ago

Have you considered the bad attitudes you're encountering are because you think most of the self-taught programmers you've met are "awful" and that they shouldn't have been given opportunities to begin with, instead preferring to, "throw them in the trash"? Seems like you're getting out of those relationships what you put in. I've met CS grads who can't code FizzBuzz, and I've met self-taught programmers who work 1/10th as hard as I do and are 10x as productive. There's no correlation whatsoever, and the industry reflects that; the pay scale is exactly the same.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]