18 ms·

Do I need to go to university?

• ycombonator 6y ago
  “Educational credentials are badges that admit one to the elite class. Expect elites to struggle mightily to justify the current system.” - Naval Ravikant
• thereyougo 6y ago
  Great article. I'm sure that there are plenty of people here who went to university and also run a successful company. If any of you see this comment: If you could change the way the university tech you, what you would do?
  • AdrianB1 6y ago
    I would cut half of it. The best things I learned in college (CS) were economics, finance and statistics, it helped me a lot when I got a job as IT analyst in a sales team in a big company, being able to understand the work, purpose and environment and become a valuable contributor , not that geek that was speaking a different language nobody understood. What I would add to college curriculum today is a good project management course, up to PMP level; also for CS, an equivalent of ITIL foundation. For CS the biggest gap I see in fresh graduates are testing and performance and a more solid foundation on RDBMS: even in the era of NO-SQL and HADOOP the starting point is still understanding RDBMS.
  • clarry 6y ago
    I would abandon the whole "cram for N years and get a degree, then never again" scheme. Imo education should be a lifelong thing: available at any time, part time or full time, on-demand; for example, new requirements come up at a job and you need new skills? grab a course. want to enter a new subfield? grab a few relevant courses. got interested in something new all of a sudden? grab a course and see if the interest doesn't wane. laid off? consider taking the chance to study full time for a few months and pick up some new skills or plug holes in prior knowledge. It should be based more on voluntary interest ("I want to learn this thing!") or actual concrete need ("business is looking for someone with skill X and person Y looks like a good fit but they need to study a bit") and less on the idea that you sit through courses and exams and demos in exchange for points that eventually buy you a piece of paper.. University (or, rather, education in general) should be with us through the entire life. There are open universities that sort of go in this direction, but the last time I looked at them, it felt like they're still rather structured around getting a degree and all the bs that goes with it.
• mvind 6y ago
  I think the freedom to pursue intellectual curiosity is a thing which universities offer almost unconditional unlike jobs. This is a perk that not a lot of jobs in the real world offers. Almost nowhere else in a person's life are you given such an opportunity to invest in ones interests. But I'm biased towards going to uni, since I live in Denmark where I get paid monthly for going to university.
  • clarry 6y ago
    Yeah it depends on a lot of things. Maybe university isn't where your interests are, but you kinda need a degree and a job? I see lots of students whose life revolves around making it through courses and collecting ECTS points instead of really pursuing their interests..
    • mvind 6y ago
      Oh for sure! You can't ignore the fact that having a degree is great to fall back on. But as you go closer towards research those people start falling off.
  • oleks 6y ago
    You are not paid to go the university in Denmark. You are awarded credits by the government, and it is up to you to do something sensible with those credits. Don't waste them on needless courses! Learn that which will yield you (and the Danish government) the greatest benefits throughout the rest of your life.
    • henrikeh 6y ago
      It reads a little like your are misunderstanding what is meant by “paid to go to university”. Danish citizens receive a grant called “SU” (Statens uddannelsesstøtte), which basically is a payment from the government for being enrolled in education. It is meant to be spend on food, rent, living, books etc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_Denmark https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_Denmark
    • falkaer 6y ago
• fr2null 6y ago
  I am 18 year old, I'm already working as a developer, and they have offered me a very nice full time job offer. I have been thinking about whether or not to go to university for most of the past year. In the end, I did choose to go to university. I will be working part-time to pay about 90% of it (including housing) which means I'll have practically no debt. The main reason for me to go, was that I don't want to de a developer for the rest of my life. I think that having a degree will make a eventual career switch a lot easier.
  • sdan 6y ago
    Shopfiy intern?
    • fr2null 6y ago
      I'm not a Shopify intern. I work at a relatively small company, which is not internationally known. We are mainly a white label ISP, but also have both managed and unmanaged servers for companies and government entities which can not or will not use public cloud providers.
  • crittendenlane 6y ago
    You made the right choice. I just graduated, and can feel the effects already with my offers. More importantly, I made many valuable friendships, connections, and learned a ton of theory while publishing papers - all much harder to gain in the real world. Have a great time, and good luck!
• knolax 6y ago
  I'm really tired of the same anti-college circlejerk. Maybe programmers don't need it, but I'm not going to a doctor that didn't go to med school and I'm not driving over a bridge designed by someone that went to a trade school.
• tempodox 6y ago
  Yes, you do.
  • HenryBemis 6y ago
    1) Yes, you do. 2) No, you don't. 3) Depends. 2&3: I knew a guy, his father had sheep, plenty of them. He never bothered with Uni. He has been studying/training on seminars regarding agriculture, animal care, etc. He is set for life. He will never sit on a university theatre and keep notes. He does use technology (I remember how he was shocked when he discovered YouTube videos that exploded his mind and knowledge). He picks up the phone and speaks to vets, he talks to agriculture specialists, he watches seminars, he gets better. He stays on top/ahead of things. He never spent 1 (pick your own currency) on University, housing, (Uni) books. He stays in touch with his peers both in his country and abroad (he was taught English early on and how he sees the value of that investment). I see him though being a guest lecturer in a Uni, to speak as a professional on this/his industry, speak on his part of the supply chain, what he would expect of "Education" to provide for him (his industry) in the future, what he would like to see people do for the promotion and progress of his industry. But pay for classes? Never. So.. 2 & 3 :) Edit: typos
    • orian 6y ago
      Statistically, people with master earn more and it's easier to get a job (other options are: you get aquihired, have a shit of money; your parents have lot of great connections etc.)
      • barry-cotter 6y ago
        This is conflating the selection and treatment effects. The difference in earnings between people who would be admitted to a Master’s programme if they applied and those who actually apply and graduate is going to be far smaller than the difference between a random Bachelor’s holder and a random Master’s holder.
        • HenryBemis 6y ago
• Vuska 6y ago
  I went to mediocre uni here in the UK studying Web Development. The educational value was pretty much worthless. I learnt more in a year at my first job than three years of university. But being forced to move out and become independent was invaluable.
  • PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    Some education isn't all that useful. I had a computer-something-related class in college where we were talking about how computers were getting faster. Professor: If you think computers are fast now, it'll blow your mind that back in the 60s the NSA has computers running at 1000. Me: 1000? You mean 1000 megahertz? Professor: No, 1000. Me: facepalm I'm still paying off those student loans.
    • onion2k 6y ago
      In this case the professor was being an idiot (and meant hertz, not megahertz), but there are plenty of dimensionless quantities that can be just "running at 1000". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dimensionless_quantities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dimensionless_quantiti...
    • HPsquared 6y ago
      "Those that can't do, teach."
      • toomanybeersies 6y ago
        And those who can't teach, research.
        • BossingAround 6y ago
          And all of them are still paying off the student debt.
          • nnoitra 6y ago
• raviisoccupied 6y ago
  I just graduated (this summer). Previously I wasn't sold on university and did a year long internship with IBM in the UK. They offered me a full time 'degree-apprenticeship' in cyber security or consulting, but I instead left and studied literature at a UK University instead. I often think the biggest difference between a graduate and non graduate is three years. As an 18 year old there is no way I would have been able to withstand the culture for another three years at IBM without it significantly affecting me (positively or negatively), but at 21 I feel much more mature and ready for a career. In many cases, does University just function as a waiting room in which young people can mature?
  • person_of_color 6y ago
    Yes. And meet people outside of the tech bubble. Do you really want to be engulfed by a male-dominated IBM/Google monoculture for 4 formative years?
    • LudwigNagasena 6y ago
      >a male-dominated IBM/Google monoculture I don't see why "male-dominated" should be a problem. Statistically, I would even probably have more shared interests with them.
      • michaelt 6y ago
        > I don't see why "male-dominated" should be a problem. If you feel you need a few more skill-points in talking to women in order to find a girlfriend or wife. College is a much easier and more forgiving environment to learn that sort of thing. Of course, that's not a concern for everyone. Some people know all they need to know already, or aren't looking for a hetero relationship!
    • ghaff 6y ago
      In many cases, the best schools for engineering also have pretty uneven gender ratios. When I got an engineering degree way back when it was about 1/7 women. (It's more even these days.)
• deleted 6y ago
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• fimdomeio 6y ago
  You should have some experiences that move you out (even if temporarily) from the bubble you live in. University is a easy choice for that. If you have more experiences you will also have more ways to think about the world and more ways to deal with life and it's problems. My university experience in terms of learning could have been a lot better, but the experience as a whole and all the people I would not have met otherwise are still very valuable more than a decade after it ended.
• asutekku 6y ago
  If you have the option to go and you want to advance on your career, then there’s almost zero reasons to not go. Yes, there are some exceptions but in most places and for most people a degree is what matters, not how many commits you do have in your side projects in github.
  • barry-cotter 6y ago
    > If you have the option to go and you want to advance on your career, then there’s almost zero reasons to not go. The entire point of the article was that if you have something better to do than university and good reason to believe you can actually do it you might at least consider it. Also, three to four years of foregone earnings are a powerful reason not to go to university if you’re already capable of earning a living in your chosen field. That is very far from zero reasons, especially when you consider the professional development you can fit into those years if that’s something you value. > Yes, there are some exceptions but in most places and for most people a degree is what matters, not how many commits you do have in your side projects in github. When you’re 40 no one but bureaucrats is going to give a crap what university you went to, compared to your actual accomplishments. If all you’ve got is side projects on GitHub no one will care whether you went to Oxford or University of Southern Florida or dropped out of high school. Actual accomplishments
    • toyg 6y ago
      People don’t care that much about what university you’ve gone to, but they definitely care about the fact that you’ve graduated. Source: am 42 with no degree, and I’m surprised when my CV makes it through HR filters, because it’s so rare.
    • glangdale 6y ago
      Even at age 48, I see people getting on the inside track because they have degrees from name brand universities, including myself (I have a PhD from CMU). A degree from a good place signals (rightly or wrongly) that you were academically strong enough to get in and to finish. As for career development - 3-4 years of career development "forgone" isn't really that much relative to the sum total of an entire career. One could just as easily say that when you're 40, no-one but bureaucrats is going to give a crap whether you have 19-20 years of experience or 23. There are always exceptions - the whole "dropped out of university to found X or invent Y" thing - but 95% of people's actual accomplishments (as you so excitedly put it) are going to be a bunch of 'turned up, did pretty good' lines on a resume. All other things being equal, I'll hire the person who passed university-level calculus at a good school, thanks.
• AdrianB1 6y ago
  I had in my teams people without any college degree or college dropouts, some gave up after one year and some close to graduation. They were good developers, the only difference I saw between college graduates and the other developers was that the college graduates were less flexible and tending to apply what they learned in college to the letter, even where it did not make sense. A few days ago I was talking to one of these people doing some informal code review, he found a very formally correct explanation for a constructor that had no value in that context, something like "it is a good practice to do it because in case X it can be used for y", where x and y were completely not applicable in that code. As a recruiter I never looked too serious for credentials, knowing myself going through the college only for that piece of paper at the end, working full time and knowing a lot more from the job than what the other students learned. From my former class in college I think I am the only one practicing IT, the others too other directions, including one that was a quite successful music band leader.
  • OkayPhysicist 6y ago
    I've had the opposite experience working with a mix of uni-attendees and not. Compared to their university-attended coworkers, the straight-to-industry folk were far more likely to cargo cult design patterns, languages, and frameworks.
    • sanxiyn 6y ago
      This is not my experience at all, and people without a degree I worked with were better learners.
    • toomanybeersies 6y ago
      A bit orthogonal to the actual discussion at hand, but I've become a big proponent of cargo-culting in a pragmatic fashion. I definitely ensure that everything is done in the "Rails Way" for any Ruby on Rails code, despite not necessarily agreeing with what's considered the "Rails Way" by rubocop or general rails developer consensus. If I'm doing code review for my colleagues I'll force them to refactor their changes into idiomatic Rails code, even if it's perfectly functional code. I'm less strict on JS or other languages, purely because I lack the experience to say what's the "right" or "wrong" way. If your codebase follows a well-recognised style and pattern, it becomes a lot easier for new hires or contractors to get on their feet and start productive work than if you have some kind of brilliant idiosyncratic codebase that takes 3 months for a new hire to get their head around (as was the case when I joined my current company).
• cameronbrown 6y ago
  I'm taking the degree apprenticeship route (19 yo). From a purely educational point of view, there wasn't much University could teach me that I wasn't prepared to learn on my own, so making money and shipping real stuff is far more valuable for me. Of course, this highly depends on the individual. There is also downsides, like the fact it is a job at the end of the day, and that comes with politics as well as technical challenges. I'd again make the decision (over University) in a heartbeat.
• rvz 6y ago
  Depends on the profession. Generally if the goal is to be a qualified medical / legal professional, it is required to get a university degree from either medical school / law school respectively. Researcher? Maybe, Maybe not. But I won't be surprised if many research positions will ask for a degree. Software Developer? Not really. FAANMG SWE Job? I won't risk it if I'm not famous with 10K other people applying.
• bshimmin 6y ago
  There's also a weird flip side to all these downsides. Once you establish yourself as competent there is this kind of threshold effect where not having a university degree can suddenly start causing people to actually take you more seriously. This kind of countersignalling effect seems to be common when you do non-traditional things. I'm not sure this is a real thing unless you're, say, Richard Branson. I also can't really imagine many circumstances in which you're doing something non-traditional and you can't just pretend you don't have a degree by neglecting to mention it... and if you've already reached a level of "significance" in a non-traditional thing where someone might actually check, well, you've probably already done better than most.
• moksly 6y ago
  I think it depends a lot on where you are in the world. In my country where access to education is paid for by the government, and the state pays you $850 a month to study for 5 years once reach educations beyond “High School”, work places kind of expect you to have a degree. You can’t even really be a sales person at a supermarket if you haven’t spent a few years getting a degree, or are under the age of 18 (less pay). Crafty professions takes you through a mix of bookish education and apprenticeship for 4 years, but they too lead to a degree. Programming is one of the few fields, that isn’t packing boxes of frozen fish, where a career without a degree is possible here, and even on that field time is running out for people without degrees because so many young people have been getting them for the past decade. But that is my country, here you’d be absolutely crazy (or perhaps challenged in some way) to not finish an education.
  • wingerlang 6y ago
    Scandinavia I assume? I’m from there and I never finished my degree. The reason was that I took some time off to travel, found a job during this time and I simply have not been back since. Almost a decade now. Only recently have I looked into finishing it off through online courses but even then it is hard to motivate myself, not once have I been asked for it. I even ask recruiters and they also say I don’t need it to be hired (at least: Singapore, UK, Thailand, Sweden) and I’m talking about major companies. I can’t speak for countries other than where I am employed but here I am not underpaid due to lack of degree. I did go through 3 years of university and I do agree that the experience itself is useful (even though it might seem otherwise at times). (Edit: to be clear I’m working in software development)
• sdan 6y ago
  I'm a senior in high school and decided to. I started a startup and got invited for a YC interview(got rejected) and am onto another startup which is raising soon. Despite how much success/failure/I learn I endure, college name matters... a lot. I snuck into Nuro's open house last year and found they exclusively invited Harvard/Stanford/MIT students (I can say this because I was a minor at the time of signing their NDAs) College name matters, especially when you're starting out (which can impact where you evenetually end up... whether its working for a startup or working at a cool VC firm) In fact most of the time, the people who've said: "don't go to college" are the same people who go to Cornell, UPenn, and Stanford and probably don't realize how much of a network/presitgie gives them to get them where they are now.
  • anonymoushn 6y ago
    I went to a non-notable state school and have no trouble getting hired. I would advise people who plan to go to non-notable state schools to just go straight to industry instead.
    • karatestomp 6y ago
      Having the piece of paper, if you can get it (relatively) cheap, is very nice just to avoid ever having to talk about not having it. It's a whole conversation in many interviews (or a conversation that doesn't happen but that you'll be stressed about happening) that you can totally erase. Evening, weekend, and online classes are a thing and can be cheapish, especially if you're not going to a very well-known school (and if you're not, the name of the school is basically irrelevant, so do what's cheap). If you don't already have kids or other time-consuming obligations, working through school part-time over a few years 100% achievable while still having tons of free time. Also look into CLEP tests, as they can kill years (at part-time hours) of college credits quickly and at low cost.
  • barry-cotter 6y ago
    If you’re already decided you’re into startups the network and prestige of Y Combinator will help more than most any college. If you want the stamp of admission to the US ruling class sure, go to where the elite send their children to find someone to marry but otherwise you could do worse than committing to what you actually want instead of chasing a network.
• mrkramer 6y ago
  If you want to be an entrepreneur no you don't if you don't want to be an entrepreneur yes you do. Either you are an employer or an employee, make your choice.
• laingc 6y ago
  The anti-university sentiment on HN is absolutely alien to me. Not only did I get a lot out of my university education, but it was a totally transformative experience for me. It also enables me to do my job, and I’ve never seen anyone without a good education do it well. Yes, I get that you can be a react developer without a university qualification. This may come as news to some, but most fields bear no resemblance to writing JavaScript for a living.
  • WalterBright 6y ago
    My experience is the same. I often hear people say that a university education teaches nothing useful, that it's just learning to take tests, that the course material is irrelevant, that it's just for networking and signalling, etc. I suspect they both a) selected the wrong major and b) went to the wrong university.
    • xondono 6y ago
      And I suspect that both of you got technical degrees and work in technical fields. You are almost by definition an edge case.
      • llarsson 6y ago
        Not at HN, where this is discussed, and also not considering that the article being discussed is hosted on a github page.
        • xondono 6y ago
          An outlier in terms of the people who go to college
      • wartijn_ 6y ago
        Are technical fields really an edge case? I suspect going to a university is helpful in most STEM related fields. In anything medical or law related you don't even have to think about getting a job without a degree. I don't see how anyone can compensate an economical or business study by doing project on their own. If anything I think IT is an outlier, because not going to university and learning the subjects you would have been taught on your own might be a valid option.
• sersi 6y ago
  The author mention the visa question and I think that bears repeating, if you plan to live abroad, having a degree (preferably a master) will make getting a visa in any country much easier. I'd however recommend going to a country where education is close to free to get a degree, even if it involves losing a year learning the local language...
• cosmodisk 6y ago
  I had a discussion about this years ago and I remember a good question being thrown into it: 'what happens if you don't do it?',as opposed to 'what happens if you do it?'. For an average person, in a lot of countries, not having a degree equals to crappy jobs for the rest of their lives. Average person+ degree= slightly better prospects and maybe some easier office job.if a person is very intelligent, motivated,and is a bit streetwise,so to speak, they'd succeeded irrespectively. The main problem is that when you 18-20 years old, the perspective on the world is kind of limited,unless you grew up in a rich family doing all sorts of businesses ventures and they show you some aspects of it. Personally, growing up in small town,where pretty much nobody was doing some very interesting things,it was an eye opener when I moved to London and because of the work and the city itself, I did realise how much money there's in the world, that people are ready to pay stupid money for the most absurd things and so on. It opens your eyes in terms of what other people do and what's possible,gives you all sorts of ideas and etc.
• CalChris 6y ago
  If your own answer to your own question isn't absolutely YES then take a gap year or years. Join the Navy. See the world. When you're done with that you'll be much much more ready than if you indifferently do what you suppose you're supposed to do. But yes, you do need to go to university, a good one. And you need to graduate.
  • toyg 6y ago
    Can’t upvote this enough. I wish I had taken a gap year back then, and I will insist that my kids do it. More than a decade of schooling inevitably takes a toll, and optimizing for highschool success can mislead one’s choice for university.
• VMisTheWay 6y ago
  30 year old here, I'm considering a new degree in computer science to add to my chem Engineering degree. I have 12 years casual programming experience. My work experience has been design Engineering, which is a low 6 figure job. I also live in an area with an old industry that's getting Engineers outsourced. I'm considering a comp sci degree so I can get into embedded, or electrical engineering, AI, or pretty much any 180k/yr job. I'm okay with taking a pay cut for a few years.
  • toyg 6y ago
    I don’t think you need a degree for that sort of career shift. Just get a short training course and start building stuff and applying for jobs. University degrees are, fundamentally, a mark of status and patience: “this guy had enough money and willpower to sit through years of drudgery, so it’s safe to hire him to do the same for us”. After a few years nobody cares what the degree was actually about, particularly in IT where everything gets redone every few years.
    • VMisTheWay 6y ago
      I have projects that people consider impressive already. Here is what I've been told from various managers- >Only hire computer scientists >I don't have relevant work experience (which means taking a 60k/yr web dev job to begin my career?) >My projects are good, but I need to contribute to open source projects. The reason for the degree is to get access to high quality programming jobs rather than 60k/yr web dev. Not to mention, I imagine I'll learn everything about security and algorithms which I'm sure are weaknesses.
      • toyg 6y ago
        You can fix two of those with some solid effort in a high-profile FOSS project for a few months. As for the first, you don't want to be in an environment that values credentials so strictly, imho - it poisons the air. There is always a chance they would then say "we only hire CS from Stanford/MIT" - sometimes stuff like this is just a polite way of saying "we don't think you can cut it". > I imagine I'll learn everything about security and algorithms Algos yeah, plenty - and I agree it's where universities really make a difference (I'm weak there too, and part of the reason for dropping out, and more recently changing career, was that I'm not really interested in that part of the job). Security... eh. It really depends on the program.
• Daub 6y ago
  A huge amount of your future networking is done at uni. Also... you are more likely to marry somone you find at uni than most other institutions. That being said, a PhD is probably only required if you wish to go into teaching.
• petargyurov 6y ago
  I have a degree in Theoretical Physics. During my second year I started to realise that I don't want to stay in academia, and at the same time I started to do a lot programming. I finished my Bachelors and got a job as a backend dev. The way I see it, altough I learned a lot in uni, it's basically a "VIP" token to get yourself a job. And that's sad. Lots of companies will hire physics and math grads _just because_. They think they have "problem solving skills" - let me tell you - there are a tonne of STEM grads that do not have these skills (putting it politely) but get hired anyway.
  • WalterBright 6y ago
    Some universities teach formula plugging, and some teach fundamentals. I've worked with the graduates of both, and the former can't solve any problem that doesn't have a book answer, and they'll misapply that.
• tjpnz 6y ago
  Can't speak for other professions but as a dev I've got no regrets in getting a CS degree. There's nothing you'll learn there that you couldn't maybe teach yourself but that's exactly the point. Unless you're a gifted autodidact you'll face considerable difficulty and will likely end up skipping through the important stuff coming away with a very flawed understanding indeed.
  • clarry 6y ago
    What's the important stuff? Where do I check my understanding?
    • sanxiyn 6y ago
      I don't have a CS degree (or any degree for that matter), but I did review a CS degree program requirement and class materials. They do cover important stuffs. It's just that it doesn't take 4 years to learn them. Required classes for a CS curriculum I reviewed were: discrete math, data structure, algorithm, computer architecture, programming language, operating system.
      • GoblinSlayer 6y ago
        Error analysis is important stuff and there's no easily accessible description of it, mostly because it's not a small stuff as opposed to some algorithm.
    • llarsson 6y ago
      Completely field dependent. What is your field?
      • clarry 6y ago
        Well let's pretend I don't have a field and I'm just about to go to uni because someone on the internet said I should go there to learn the important stuff.
• deleted 6y ago
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• yawboakye 6y ago
  What’s missing from the conversation is the nature of the university. It makes this piece uniquely applicable to, say, the top 100 universities in the world. Let me throw in an African perspective, a hand grenade depending on who you ask. I’d argue that in the current economy where global mobility should be an intentional goal of any education, they (most African universities) pay negative dividends in both power in their name and quality of education. I’d rather spend my tuition on online courses offered by MIT and Stanford. So, should I go to the university? In order to be able to answer, we should ask, which university. The answer is a definite yes for the top 100, maybe until the 1000th, and a no after that: there are non-university institutions that can give you the higher quality signal you need.
  • nostrebored 6y ago
    As someone who has interviewed applicants in Africa, I would double down on this. There are certain universities that may signal quality (e.g. University of Cape Town), but a lot of universities seem to have graduates that do well in spite of them. I have lost track of the number of candidates I interviewed (and voted to hire!) who couldn't answer questions about their completed coursework, but could give in depth rundowns of the inner workings of something like embedded system software because of their extra curricular work. After a while, I could notice trends from universities that were actually teaching their students incorrect information, providing the negative dividends you were talking about. It's sad and frustrating. In an African context I think you're spot on that self taught candidates have often used their time more effectively.
• scottishcow 6y ago
  Lots of great resources here, but as mentioned in the essay signaling based on external validation is still crucial. (OP seems to have won a Thiel Fellowship, I’d assume that has a stronger signaling value than your typical college degree.) As much as I hate it, the world runs on limited resources and people and organizations have no choice but to rely on some sort of signaling scheme as a filtering mechanism.
  • sanxiyn 6y ago
    I agree, but the signal can be pretty small. I contributed to Firefox and it was good enough to be hired by web browser company without a degree. After that, work experience was good enough for pretty much anything.
• rezeroed 6y ago
  For the CV - yes. For the job - depends on the uni; many are 80% java which is pointless if you already have tech skills. Having might also save you from dwelling on "what if i had?".
• deleted 6y ago
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• zvxczvxz 6y ago
  I know incredibly smart and wise people without a degree, and I also know incredibly dumb people with a degree. A degree is not a guarantee for intelligence and wisdom, but it is most often a guarantee for vanity covering shortcomings. Almost all knowledge (and more) can be learned for free on the internet nowadays. I'ts only for a specific category of professions where a degree is mandatory. I never expect a great professional to have a degree, because the real defining quality cannot be learned at a university. You cannot express what you are not. You cannot become an Einstein by doing 5 years of university, but they love to make you believe that shit. I am not against higher education at all, but the term 'degree' is pretty worthless if you want to measure mastery.
• geomark 6y ago
  Lots of anecdotes here. So I will add mine. I did a 2 year technical diploma program and went to work as an electronics technician. I was good, got promoted fast, started fixing a lot of mistakes the degreed engineers were making. I got pretty far without a degree but eventually hit a ceiling because credentialism was strong at the company. So I went back to college, a good private college, paid for by my employer. It was hard, because I was working longer and longer hours since I was good and they counted on me, while taking classes part time. The classes I took taught very little and did nothing for me except that finally getting my degree I could break through the credentials ceiling. So...if you are going to work for a company that values credentials then you need the degree and I think it is better to go straight from high school to college instead of doing it the hard way like I did.
  • toyg 6y ago
    You were also lucky to have an understanding employer who was happy to invest on your growth. A lot of people can't get approval to do a one-week, job-relevant, practical training course, let alone sponsor years of higher education.
    • geomark 6y ago
      Very true. I had several bosses who really fought for me, both for promotions to positions that a non-degreed person never held, and for approval of educational reimbursement. Although regarding the latter, it was a defense contractor and they get reimbursed by the government for those costs. So there were really no cases where someone pursuing a relevant degree would be turned down for reimbursement.
• arijun 6y ago
  For context, the author Chris Olah is a researcher at Open AI, who I think is one of the most clear and thoughtful writers in the space. He has a lot of articles on understanding ML models, and pioneers new methods of visualizations and interactivity to improve understandability of these models. If you're interested in the field I would highly recommend reading some of his articles on his blog or on distill.pub, a publication that he helped found with the express purpose of improving clarity of ML research.
  • sdan 6y ago
    Not to mention he got the Thiel Fellowship. That right there would make a good majority of undergrads drop out (I would at least). Thiel Fellowship is basically security in the valley because of the network it gives.
    • ForHackernews 6y ago
      Isn't the whole point of the Thiel Fellowship to pay kids to drop out? Thiel is trying to prove some point about academia, but, as you say, it stacks the deck because the fellowship includes a lot of the connections and foot-in-the-door help that its recipients would otherwise get in university.
• glangdale 6y ago
  It's clearly possible to do pretty well without a university degree, and I think there's a few slam-dunk cases where you shouldn't get a degree: 1) You don't actually want to do the work to finish a degree, 2) your only options are to get an extremely mediocre degree, or 3) you will have to go into savage debt to get a degree. Then there are the exceptional folks who could do well anywhere (who, presumably, would also be the high-flyers if they went to a university). For everyone else, getting a decent degree should almost be a no-brainer. It will be useful. HR will like it, pretty much forever. The "lost years" of work experience will rapidly converge to insignificance (a point that seems lost on the folks who think that it's only university degrees become less significant as you get older). You can do a range of subjects - some of them, shock horror, not narrowly vocational (a lot of the discussion here seems to imply that the sum total of what we should learn after high school somehow begins and ends with "programming and computer science"). Further, you can do these subjects at a much higher level and with greater intensity than the whole "hey, I read a couple books on Philosophy or did the first level of Duolingo in Spanish" or some such. It should be a pleasant time where you get to try some new activities, meet a lot of people - maybe including a life partner, but maybe just good friends and some "early-adult romantic" relationships (which IMO are likely to greatly increase your chance of learning what you really want and how to get along in the real grown-up world). The whole tertiary sector is pretty messed up right now (even pre COVID), so buyer beware. Don't do a crappy degree.
  • non-entity 6y ago
    Honestly 2 and 3 are the reason I probably wont go back outside of CS (and even then, a lot of what I've seen is mediocre at best) most of the online degrees I've seen are absolute garbage. And I make too much money to he able to afford full time in-person school, but not enough to self fund a bachelors degree at what it would cost me.
• farnerup 6y ago
  From reading the title, I though this had something to do with golang being used in university classes. Is there a point to the custom of capitalizing most words in headings in English? It doesn't seem to improve legibility and you can normally tell it is a heading from the size and weight of the font.
  • sradman 6y ago
    I’m guessing that Title Case in English is a logical extension of the European norm of capitalizing proper nouns; a title is the proper noun used to identify a written work.
    • rjsw 6y ago
      This doesn't seem like a European norm to me, maybe it is done in German but I don't see it in English or French publications.
      • sradman 6y ago
        I was making a comparison between European proper nouns (like Jacques and Hans) and English title case. I was speculating why the English title case practice arose.
• dejv 6y ago
  I was born in post-communist country to the familly of blue collar workers, where nobody around me didn't even finished high school (fun fact, those more distant family members who actually had university degree or even hold profesorship position spent many years mining for uranus in political prison and then decades sweeping streets). Anyway, I already had fulltime position working as software developer since the age of 17 (it was a bit of necessity, but I also like it very much) and after finishing my highschool diploma I decided to not apply and continue working. I went to study CS at the age of 23, while still working fulltime. Being a bit older and more experienced, but also time constrained changed my perspective a bit. I was in there just to get knowledge that I decided are relevant for me, there was close to zero time to be spent on social time or taking some filler classes that might be interesting. I spent three years in university, taking all the classes that sound interesting to me in areas of math, compilers, machine learning and computational logic. At that point I depleted the pool for both bachelor and masters classes and for the rest of the time I would have to go through fillers and decided to quit without graduating. I am glad about both of my choices: both having break between high school and university and quiting early. I feel like spending time in university is very valuable for both professional and personal growth and everybody should probably took it if they can afford it, but I don't think that this is your only valid choice. It should be ok to spend few years wandering around to find what you want to do with your life instead of spending rest of your life paying for debt you acquired just because you can't see any other viable path.
• spinlock_ 6y ago
  I think apart of what has been already said, it depends on the kind of person you are. I see people with and without a degree in CS that thrive and some that do the opposite. Personally, I have been working as a software developer for the last five years. And during that time I have had a couple of phases were I suffered from some kind of imposter syndrome. I have a master degree in International Business and hence lacked some fundamental CS skills (e.g. Algos, Compilers, Operating Systems). So during the last few years I worked my ass off to learn all this stuff, because every time I read something about software engineering and it mentioned any of these things I felt less value because I knew I don't have a CS degree. I also felt intimidated by some of these topics. So, I sat down and learnt all the stuff I thought I needed to know in order to feel better. Now, after going through this period of studying in order to get rid of this stupid imposter syndrome, I feel kind of burnt out. It's funny, because I finally have the self-confidence I was looking for during the last five years, yet I kind of lost the creativity and motivation that I need in order to enjoy what I'm doing. So, I can only recommend to find out what kind of person you are. But tbh, even though I got a degree that is unrelated to CS, I'm glad I went to university. I would had been a very different person without that experience. And in the end of the day, you will have to work for a veeeery long time (well, at least that is the reality for the most of us). So, what are 3-5 years spent doing something that gives you the opportunity to experience stuff you won't be able to find at work (well, except for the sunk cost, but I reject to think about education in this way)?
• bashwizard 6y ago
  I have no regrets of not going to university. I've never been asked about my education and during the time I was an employee I've always been paid the same as people with a degree and similiar work experience. So in my personal experience a degree would have been a complete waste of time.
• bluedino 6y ago
  The worst part is when you hear people bring up the fact that "Gates and Jobs dropped out of college!"
  • imtringued 6y ago
    One could argue that this is an argument in favor of university. You can always drop out when you find a better opportunity.
• zerubeus 6y ago
  Unfortunately we are in the only profession where you have to see this question every other day, you'll never even think about this if you plan to become a Doctor an architect or civil engineer, but welcome to tech
• xyzal 6y ago
  In case you are thinking twice about getting a degree due to education costs, please take note that many European public universities offer free education even for foreigners.
• NightlyDev 6y ago
  As someone who is 27 yo and dropped out of school when already having a job offshore(oil) lined up, I certainly can agree with a lot of this. I had been doing software development for 4 years and I figured I'd rather work with that than automation and electronics. I had a side project(game) that was earning some money. Note that this was in Norway so I could have (and still can) go to university for free. My girlfriend ended up getting a masters degree in software development and is currently working in a consultant firm. She's currently tanking another masters degree in entrepreneurship, mostly for fun. I've always doubted my skills, but after helping her out every now and then I've realized that 10+ years of experience really can't be matched by going to school. On the other hand I've also learned that university is a great way to kick off your learning. Some things they're learning are things I often ended up with too, on my own, with trial and error. At least I really understand why some things are what they are because of it. I started very young and was quite successful with my first project. People has spent thousands of years(combined) actively using my first project. But even though I have done well, I still feel like I'm taken less serious than those with a full education, cause I've just created a strange game. I'm considering going to university now just to get cheaper insurance and the degree, but I don't expect I'd learn a lot of new things. But I do enjoy fiddling with stuff, so it might be fun. Do I regret it? Not really. Am I worried? Slightly, if it all falls down then I need to get a normal job or come up with something else. Would I recommend it? If you're really driven and are already seeing signs of success, sure, give it a shot.
• j0hnml 6y ago
  For me, a lot of the value in university was the experience of living independent, being thrown into a relatively unknown place with new responsibilities, and figuring out how to cope with it all. I would say that was far more valuable than the coursework itself. I went to undergrad at the typical age (18) and had the opportunity to solely focus on that. I think a lot of this question depends on your age and what you want to do. Adults going back to college won’t get this experience, and if you can self-study enough to prove you have what it takes, there are definitely diminishing returns in going to university.
• chadash 6y ago
  I personally don't really give too much weight to education credentials when I'm screening resumes. However, I'd recommend that everyone looking to be a developer go to university: A) it's a great time to get a broad education, learn from experts in many fields B) it will most likely affect your compensation throughout your life. Yes, you can find jobs without it. But if you limit yourself to jobs that don't care about a college degree, you will find your options limited. I may not care, but I know that the CEO of my company does, and that will likely affect your bonus and/or salary. Yes, there are some people whose technical skills are so good that it's obvious to the world. But most people don't fall in that bucket. Whether it's true or not, a college degree will make people _think_ you are better.
• grandinj 6y ago
  I tell all my younger friends to go to varsity and to take as many theory heavy courses as possible. Obviously, YMMV, but I find absorbing any theory-heavy knowledge alongside my day job extremely hard, whereas I can very easily more practical skills as a I work.
• bregma 6y ago
  I went to university. I did not receive any job training at university. It is not design for job training and I did not expect to receive job training. I am not a job. I am not a career. I learned two important things at university that I doubt I could have picked up otherwise. 1. I learned how broad knowledge is. I learned about things I did not even know I did not know about. Some of these things I learned in classrooms. Most I learned outside of classrooms, either through interaction with my peers or by accident while researching something unrelated in the library. Sometimes by hacking on the school computers. In high school I learned that being smart is bad. In university I learned there are people who value thinking. 2. I learned how to organize my time to complete tasks I had no personal interest in, how to force myself to work despite my dislike of team mates or organizers, and to finish by deadlines. I only wish I had learned these things before my 6th and 7th years in university, but alas. You don't need to go to university. We will always need garbage collectors and street sweepers, and remember, anyone can write bad software. Vendors continue to try to make it easier to do so.
  • jmvoodoo 6y ago
    Wow. This is shamefully elitist. No, you did not need to go to university to learn those two things. There are plenty of people that have learned them from other life experiences. Also, some of the worst code I've ever had the pleasure of reading was written by people with graduate degrees. I myself didn't graduate, because the allure of starting a company was too strong. Here I am 20 years later advising people with degrees. If you are dedicated enough and creative enough (in the hacker kind of way) you can become skilled in just about anything you want. However without a degree there are doors that are closed to you. For example the UC system will not even consider you for an MBA if you don't have an undergraduate degree. Don't even bother applying. Other private institutions will consider you but you need to be absolutely exceptional to get in. I use that just as one example. People with a degree (especially a good degree) can stroll into an opportunity that I have to work 10X harder to to get. That said, once I'm in I tend to outperform my peers simply because I'm used to a world set on "hard mode" at all times. Another thing I'm lacking are the deep friendships and connections that people who have a degree seem to have. That, to me, is the biggest loss from skipping a degree. Despite significant effort I don't seem to be able to make that part up.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  Telling people they don't "need" to go to university is an act of personal sabotage. The person giving you that advice is either an idiot, or wants to keep you in your place for other reasons. This is an urgent view. The post-hoc justifications of people who either didn't go, or people who did go but want to believe their other accomplishments are more defining - are not valuable to someone who has the means and opportunity to make the investment. The more arbitrary and meaningless having a degree seems, the more important it is to actually get one, because without one, you are subject to the even more arbitrary and meaningless barriers that it will otherwise unlock. You don't know them because you don't get to them until 10y+ after you graduate. A "degree," is in effect the degree of trajectory for the compounding rate of the value of your experience to others, where you don't see the effects until much later. Look at the rate of occurrence of non-degreed people above a certain level of financial success, property ownership, executive management, assets, and opportunity, and then compare them to the very long tail of the hundreds-of-millions other non-degreed people you are in a labour market with. The distribution of that curve looks a lot like lottery winners. Given outcomes are exponentially distributed, should you make an investment, or just play the lottery? Get a degree, or always work for people who have one when you don't. People who think education is mainly about skills and training don't understand what education is. Suffice it to say that a degree is a strategic investment. If you don't know what that means, I recommend investing in your education.
  • Dumblydorr 6y ago
    I don't disagree that degrees and college education are important, but I don't think pointing to wealthy people is good evidence. Many of the wealthiest billionaires dropped out of school, didn't even go, or didn't consider it important. There are also many wealthy via inheritance. So, looking at the wealthy is not the demographic cohort that reveals the value of higher education. The reasons to attend college are more than moneymaking. Social networking, maturation, shared experience, opportunities to expand your knowledge beyond online tutorials, college offers many interesting experiences that going straight to work will not.
    • blaser-waffle 6y ago
• Gatsky 6y ago
  University seems to just be about self-edification, but it is sometimes not about that at all, and always about a whole lot more. It is clear there are too many people going to University. It has become a status symbol, driven partly by the baby boomers who just seem to like the idea of their kids going to University, and who are wealthy enough that their kids (of which I am one) are happy to swan about getting educated for 3 - 8 years. My father's experience was very different. He was actively criticised in his family for wanting to go to University, and had to get up at 4am to haul fruit crates to pay his way. His brother who went and got a job straight out of school was considered the smart one. Nevermind that the brother later went to University and became a lecturer, which comes to my next point. When I was in University, I didn't really appreciate that it is mainly about cachet. Yes there are great experiences, you meet great people, you can be inspired, it opens your mind, you can do great work, but the thing that gets people in the door, and the thing that Universities are primarily selling, is cachet. It's interesting seeing how Covid19 interacts with this. Lots of people must be worried that their university cachet will be tainted by pandemic restrictions if they are the in the 'class of 2020'. This could be one reason for the massive number of students deferring. So if the cachet matters to you (and your future employers), yes you should defintiely go to University, there is no substitute. There are also some jobs you can't do, or even really comprehend, unless you go to University (medicine, dentistry, civil/mechanical/electrical/aerospace/chemical/environmental engineering). In one sense these degrees are worth paying for up to a point, because it actually takes a lot of effort, facilities and equipment to offer them.
• toomanybeersies 6y ago
  I don't regret going to university in the slightest in regards to my job as a software developer. I don't regret the $30k it cost me. Some days I do question if I should've become an electrician instead, but that was never an option for me growing up, it was more or less expected that I went to university. University was so much more than learning how to program a computer so that I could get a job, I knew how to that that before I started. Almost none of what I learned at university I've ended up using in my career. But it was good to scratch that intellectual itch, I enjoyed learning what I learned, which is why I chose software development as a career, even if it isn't knowledge I use in everyday life. It was also an opportunity for me to move to a new city and become an independent adult and grow as a person, while meeting and socialising with people I would've never met had I stayed in my home town or even moved to a different city to attend a coding bootcamp.
  • mywittyname 6y ago
    Why electrician? My father is a licensed (but not union) electrician and I used to work as his assistant when I was a teenager. The job was pretty boring, mostly driving to job sites, running cables, wiring them up, etc. It never struck me as an intellectually stimulating job. He had a book with a bunch of formulas in it (called Ugly's, iirc) that I would read while driving to sites sometimes, but it was plug-and-chug algebra.
    • toomanybeersies 6y ago
      I wouldn't want to be an on-call electrician, driving out and fixing ovens and light switches. Most of my tradie mates try to avoid those kinds of jobs too, ideally a job doing fit out on a large commercial worksite is what you want, office buildings and that kind of thing, even better if it's a union worksite. I've always enjoyed construction work though (electrical and other), sure it's not intellectually stimulating, but it's rewarding. Sometimes I actually regret having such an intellectually demanding day job, after 8 hours of work often I'm too mentally drained to do what I want in the evening. There's also a certain sense of satisfaction from seeing your physical finished work that you just don't get as a software developer. Working as an industrial electrician would be more my kind of thing, performing maintenance on machinery, programming PLCs, that kind of thing. Repairing equipment requires a lot of the same mental processes as debugging code, I enjoy doing both. It's a good cross between physical and mental work. The money is very reasonable, up to $50 an hour.
• idoby 6y ago
  Disagree with the overall "do I have anything more compelling to do" notion. You can have a perfectly good and valid life as a human on earth without having set foot in a university. When you decide to attend a university, you always do so at the expense or other perfectly valid things. I think everyone should go if they can, and simultaneously I think three- and four- year degrees are too long for most people. We need to establish a program to get degrees in shorter installments, say 1.5 years each. In other words, tech companies should seriously start considering hiring people with Associate's Degrees (or equivalent) where applicable, to turn this degree into a real viable option. I can take anyone with a brain from zero to working coder in 1.5 years of full-time study, including the maths. I can't speak for other fields, but for tech I'm pretty confident this will be great. Anyone should be able to sacrifice a year and a half and a reasonable tuition to be able to get the college experience. I think we can make it much more accessible.
• parenthesis 6y ago
  There are four areas in which to benefit from going to university: The academic side: the opportunity to study in depth a subject you love or that will be useful to you, from (hopefully) great academics of the field. The social side: meet people who might become your friends for life, or your future spouse. Have a rich and intense social life before career and family take over. The networking side: meet people, whether students or academics, who will be useful to you in your future career. The extra-curricular side: student journalism, debating, politics, music, drama, sports etc. Follow your hobby like never before. It might even become your career instead of your major. Obviously the four are not disconnected. But you can probably only go all in on one or two. But then the cost. You need to decide whether it is worth it for what you will get out of it (that being some combination of the four areas above).
• BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  It depends on the country. In France yes. We are still very much into Ivy League (Grandes Écoles) schools, they really look good on a CV in a large company. Sure, some startup may not care but it depends where you want to work. Look at the CVs of large French companies boards and you will see a lot of the same schools. In Germany having a higher education title is great or important. Your PhD counts.
• lspears 6y ago
  Dropping out of college was the hardest and best decision I ever made. It literally never came up that I didn’t have a degree and i started my career without debt. But have a plan and don’t drop out until you are making money from something else.
• binarysolo 6y ago
  Stanford double dropout (undergrad + grad) reporting in - one piece of anecdata: Middle class Taiwanese family of white collar parents. Went to undergrad, dabbled in a few side projects and dropped out to work at a game company, a startup as an employee, and my own startup, in that order. Learnings: found out I knew very little, and the branding/network/advice I could get from school would save me from reinventing the wheel over and over as a unvetted/newbie entrepreneur. This is hugely important and people don't assign enough value to it. For things where you need someone to hire you: you need to convince them somehow, and getting that piece of paper helps cover their butt and makes their life easier. I went back to school to have a bit of optionality. Graduated and was planning on doing grad school. Spent first quarter basically playing D&D and League and barely scraped by academically, spent a few weekends hanging out with fellow Burners at a theme camp and collaborated on a few projects. I dropped out (for good this time) and pursued them -- all of them failed in the next 2 years, but what was useful was that I learned who were the good cofounder/advisors and how this kinda opaque process worked. Hit both a good startup as an advisor/early employee, then cofounded a cashflow business that I then bought out and proceeded to run for a decade. Learnings: Knowledge and network are filled with plenty of opportunity costs -- and there's ways to make it both as a generalist and a specialist... ideally you can optimize for the intersect of what you want and what the world wants, and that ends up being the hard part. My own path was largely unplanned and opportunistic -- by hanging around an area of opportunity long enough and being ready I was able to access enough things to mildly succeed (didn't hit the stock jackpot, but I have a reasonable business). Back to the question: the article answers it in the first few paragraphs - it depends on the person but is usually the "harder way". I only took the path because I had the priviledge/luxury to chase what I wanted, despite the vague expected value.
• curation 6y ago
  The most interesting work being done today is occurring at the interface between the academy and the public. It is not the same as it was 50 years ago to learn within universities for they are merely corporate machines fueling capitalism. Any critique of that order is unwelcome ( I know I have a graduate degree with a thesis attacking 'western thought' and the centralizing of the human. But you don't have to listen to me. Just read/watch Achille Mbembe.
• jusmakingapost 6y ago
  I always read these threads and have very mixed thoughts on this argument of being for or against Universities. I believe the pros of spending four years at a college outweigh a lot of the bad (loans, bad professors, etc) but only if you know what you want to do when you're done. A lot of people go to Universities hoping to find themselves and never do.
• dcole2929 6y ago
  I think this article misses out on what in my opinion is the biggest reason to go to college for a teen and it all has to do exploration. Simply put you don't know what you don't know and at 17-18 that can be a lot. College gives you an opportunity to explore who you are and what you care about in an environment largely free of external stress (yes I know there can be stress but it's generally a lot different than "I need to provide for my family"). A lot of people are super confident in what they think their life path is until they actually encounter the steps it takes to get there. Generally we do a pretty poor job of educating young people on what different careers actually look like and what it takes to get there. There are a million lawyer and doctor shows but it's a lot harder at 17 to know that you'd actually love to study library science, or be an economist. At 17 I thought I wanted to be a sport journalist or shoot rockets into space. Turns out I had zero interest in the path to ESPN and am terrible at chemistry. Sure looking back I can totally see that computers made all the sense in the world but I didn't recognize that then. If I had bypassed college and just started working to get to one of those paths I saw for myself who knows where I'd be. This is not to say that college is the only place where you get this freedom to explore, but colleges, especially good ones certainly encourage you to explore other options. I think ideally your last year of high school would be nothing but career exploration, but failing that I recommend most teenagers go to college even if they think they know what they want to do.
  • flak48 6y ago
    Your comment is much more than this, but: just wanted to add that in a lot of places (like India) the norm is being forced to pick your major before entering college, which unfortunately negates a lot of the self-discovery that happens in freshman year. But besides the area of study / major I loved the college experience of being forced to be away from the sheltered environment of home (although college is sheltered and restrictive in it's own ways). Being able to recognize thought patterns and impulses that I always grew up with felt like being able to see new colours that I never knew existed. Also being able to make friends - I don't take this for granted.When you are in an environment where you have 10x to 100x the number of people you went to high school with, it is much easier to find someone/ somoe group that you can gel with regardless of how many ever quirks you have. After all these years, my best friends are still the ones I made in college - not the ones before nor the ones that came after. At the very least I'm grateful to my college education for making me less of an overconfident asshole who thought he knew it all, while at the same time boosting my confidence in other ways. I understand that in many countries like the US, the exorbitant cost of uni education might make what I said look like nice-to-haves and luxuries but I'm happy for a change to be born in a place where I could afford to have this experience (while recognizing that many will not be privileged enough to experience even this :( )
• hypertexthero 6y ago
  No.
• dnautics 6y ago
  anecdata, of course. The company I work for is currently hiring. As the hiring manager I have repeatedly said I don't give a damn about college education (myself not having come from a CS background in college) and repeatedly the CTO has shot me down and told me that we need to hire someone with an undergrad CS background. So here is my pithy statement: There are two paths - you can either have a CS degree. Or you can know someone and get the job that way (which is, how I - and others on the team who don't have CS degrees - got the job). Sometimes even if someone on the inside is rooting for you.
• da39a3ee 6y ago
  This Thiel-influenced not-going-to-university thing has got quite tedious. It's as if people think the only thing worth learning is coding and entrepreneurship. If all you want to learn is programming and to a lesser extent computer science then I guess you don't really need to. However if you want to learn science, medicine, law, mathematics or any other real subject then of course you should. Plus if you want to have fun meeting new friends, getting wasted, and meeting sexual/romantic partners.
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  • NikolaNovak 6y ago
    It's that last sentence that covinces me that university is obsolete or at best misrepresented as an educational experience. Getting 100 grand into debt to have fun and have sex? Get wasted? And jf I appear to be cherrypicking the second half of your post, it's because thr first half is cherry picking itself - I'll venture that fields where you Do need university stamp of approval such as medicine and law are becoming rarer and fewer compared to fields and professions where there are valid or better alternatives. This is not to say education isn't needed and awesome, or even that structured, guided, formal education isn't needed and awesome. But north American universities (and I'm an alumni of a good one) have lost their way and are far from the most efficient or effective method these days.
    • da39a3ee 6y ago
      > Getting 100 grand into debt to have fun and have sex? Get wasted? Fair enough. I spoke from a European perspective where it is in many places not at all that sort of financial consideration. > But north American universities (and I'm an alumni of a good one) If that were so then would you not be an alumnus or an alumna? Sorry.
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• tersers 6y ago
  I had a conversation with my dad about the purpose of university when I wasn't really learning anything I couldn't learn myself, and I was saddled with courses I have long since forgotten. He told me that yes, times have changed and you can learn a lot more online now than you ever could in school. But he also said that a university degree proves you can commit to something for an extended period of time, and endure its highs and lows. He told me it builds character and helps teach you how to socialize with people. Nowadays in a hiring position, I don't care too much about the degree, but I do look more for commitment to something. The interview is an indicator of socialization as well and the deciding factor of wanting to work with someone.
• Ellipsis753 6y ago
  I'm in the UK. 24 years old. Programmer. Did A-levels but not Uni. It's never been very hard to find jobs, and my pay is above average for the UK (it's £60k). Programming is pretty easy to teach yourself and it's a super employable field right now. Programmers are in so high a demand no one seems to mind if you don't have any qualifications. Would things have been better if I'd gone to university instead? Who knows? But it's super possible to be a programmer without going.
• avmich 6y ago
  > Instead of asking “Is university good?”, ask “Do I have something more compelling to do?” Unfortunately, the problem is harder. How to weight the possibility to reach the state of the art, and participate in moving that state of the art, against rather tangible possibilities or short- or middle-term gains in practical projects? The first option may lead to better long-term wins overall. It's a hard choice for teenagers, who aren't always able to even formulate the problem. I'd err on the side of getting education in all cases, while avoiding making somebody particularly rich in the process, as that's an indication of flaws in what I'm getting.
• BoysenberryPi 6y ago
  I'm in my mid 20s, dropped out of college 3-4 years ago and have managed to get an average paying development job. I would go back to college and get my degree but there are two things that hold me back. 1) Dealing with college admissions is literally one of the most frustrating things I have ever done. The IRS has given me less run around than most college admissions I talk to. 2) Money. It all comes down to money. I'm having a very hard time justifying the cost at the end of the day. With that being said, if someone comes up to me and ask me if they should go to college my answer is absolutely.
• ryanmjacobs 6y ago
  Man, props for this post and the subsequent discussions. It's eye-opening to read through everything. As a current university student, the COVID situation is awful. We're paying full tuition ($15k/year) for recorded Zoom lectures. I'm seriously considering taking a gap year. I wanted to complete research during my 4th year, but it's hard to get close to professors over sporadic interactions.
• deleted 6y ago
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• throwaway391003 6y ago
  I did a coding bootcamp in Austin TX at the age of 18, instead of going to college, and got a job right after at a startup making $40k USD/year, which became $50k USD/year in a few months after getting a raise, and then after working there for a year I switched jobs to a top tech company many of you know, and by 21 I was making $75k USD/year I got a lot of socializing at both companies, got to hang out with guys my own age and guys older than me, got to have some fun (maybe not as much as my peers in university), got to grow up, etc. I think university back in the day used to mean a lot more, and I would have enjoyed it, but now it's so watered down cause everyone goes, and political / cultural movements have made the university programs require much more effort and much less thought Just my 2 cents Edit: also, to add to this, at the same time I also learned a lot of stuff completely outside of the domain of software through books on my own. philosophy books, history books, sociology books, etc. etc. I really liked that I was able to carefully select the authors and books and topics to the ones that grabbed my eye. edit 2: oh ya! i also got a lot of fun socializing at the bootcamp too.