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I used to hold it as a point of pride being able to make it in this industry without a degree. But increasingly I find it embarrassing, and am worried about the

I used to hold it as a point of pride being able to make it in this industry without a degree. But increasingly I find it embarrassing, and am worried about the future. Particularly with the shift to remote first becoming commonplace now. What exactly is there to keep salaries from a race to the bottom at this point? With the number of young CS grads exploding, I can see it becoming a hard requirement in the next 10 years. And beyond that, the career trajectory for a mediocre IC with no degree is looking... bleak. Will I really be able to keep this up into my 50s? Probably not. I love software development but it simply doesn't seem sustainable. And the management path seems almost unimaginable for someone without even a high school degree. At the senior level, there's really nowhere to go from here. It seems like you either hit the startup equity lotto, or burn out by 40.

LeanderK 6y ago
what's an IC? Where are you working? At a large company? Maybe a change in your environment can bring new perspectives and chances.
- efficax 6y ago
  IC means individual contributor (engineer, senior engineer, staff, principal) as opposed to a management track
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
I feel the same thing as you, I think. I was never proud of it per se, but proud of how far I've gotten without one (20 years as a dev, 9 years at Google). But always felt a sense of impostor syndrome and now I feel it even more pronounced as I've started to look for work elsewhere and wondering if I'm at a profound disadvantage: middle-aged, spent a bunch of time out of the mainstream industry inside Google using non-"standard" tech stacks, no CS degree, and the industry has shifted to interviewing standards that prioritize new grads ("skill" testing algorithm/data structure questions that are far easier for people with recent CS class exposure, etc.) And yeah, management track involves a lot more politics and organizational stuff than I really want to take on, at least within Google. I could see going mgmt track at a smaller company, but without recent experience they wouldn't hire me on that path.
- jedimastert 6y ago
  > always felt a sense of impostor syndrome If it makes you feel better, I have a CS bachelor's and I still get imposter syndrome on a fairly regular basis
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    It's endemic at Google, to the point that it's a cliche. Thing about having no CS degree is, in some ways I really _am_ an impostor here, in a company where masters and phds are commonplace, in a company was founded by two academics who never worked in the industry, etc. When I first joined I was blown away by how much of Google seemed academia-like... internal conferences with poster boards, peer and code review processes like a doctoral thesis committee, campus cafes, academic publishing all over the place, etc. etc. Hell there's even the equivalent of residences (GSuites, Google managed rental properties for traveling googlers)... It's toned down some as Google has ballooned in size, but still.
  - aphextron 6y ago
    >If it makes you feel better, I have a CS bachelor's and I still get imposter syndrome on a fairly regular basis I hear this a lot. The difference is that I objectively am an impostor. I've worked with plenty of Stanford/Berkeley CS grads and can conclusively say that I am a worse programmer than them and will never be as good. My concern is that eventually the number of those people will be so great that mediocre devs will be pushed out of the market. I'm honestly incapable of passing these Leetcode/Google style algorithm interviews which are skewed towards CS grads, and that's increasingly becoming the standard for every company regardless of size.
    - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
      If you're like me you probably are entirely capable of passing those interviews -- with practice !-- and are probably absolutely fine as a programmer, but are at a disadvantage because it's not the type of stuff you've ever had to do on a regular basis. CS degrees train people to think that that kind of thing is what programming is ("why else did I pay thousands for this degree?"), and then they go out into the industry and propagate that in interview processes, and believe that failing these tests in an interview is an obvious indicator that someone is "lying" about their programming ability. The reality is that for many of us programming is a far more experimental and experential process, and I will use all sorts of algorithmic and data structure techniques but will go read or acquire that knowledge in the process of creating. It's not something I feel comfortable doing on a whiteboard in front of a person or group of people.
kemiller2002 6y ago
Why do you say that? I mean seriously, you're cutting yourself short. Getting a CS degrees is nothing more than a starting point. After a few years, it certainty won't help you progress into being a better developer automatically. Being a more senior developer is more than just knowing how to create a linked list or reverse a binary tree, and honestly the majority of places have no significant need for that understanding. It's about understanding tradeoffs between technical decisions, its about understanding business, it's about understanding when to refactor vs let it alone. A CS degree will not teach you that, and yes some places will be "snooty" and say we won't hire someone without it. Fine, screw them then. I didn't want to work for them anyway. Salaries won't race to the bottom, because 1. there is still a demand, and 2. someone from a boot camp doesn't have the knowledge and understanding that a more senior person does. Can they learn that? Of course they can, but then they will become more valuable and expect more money. Companies that hire the cheapest person possible almost always end up at the same conclusion. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Story time. At a previous company I worked with a number of smart people. Education wise, I didn't hold a candle to them. One went to a top engineering school in the U.S., one had a master's degree in CS, and one went to one of the top rated CS programs in the world. (They are all several years my junior.) All of a sudden our boss calls me in a panic, because some update that was done was failing and causing our clients to not submit data. After asking questions about what's happening, level of impact where it was occurring, I briefly look at the error log and say, "There's the problem, and this was the update that caused it." How did I know, because I smarter? No. I had more experience, I've seen more things. I've solved more problems. Their degrees didn't teach them anything about how to handle that situation. This is why not having a CS degree isn't a death knell of a career, and new people entering the field aren't either.
commandlinefan 6y ago
When I went to school to study computer science in the 90's, it seemed like most of my classmates were similar to myself: grew up tinkering with computers and had "taught themselves" (that is, read books and worked examples without being told to by a college professor) programming pretty effectively before setting foot on a college campus. I have no doubt that if I had never bothered with college at all, I could have done nearly the same work in the same positions that I've held since graduation. In fact, every once in a while on here you'll see somebody post a sort of ironic list of the things that they don't teach you in a CS curriculum: databases, networks, version control, debugging, command-line terminal usage, web security, usability... in short, all the things that you actually need to know in order to be a proficient software developer. Still, nearly everything (computer related) that I learned in my CS degree was stuff that I never would have come across on my own, like calculus, linear algebra, statistics, complexity theory, numerical analysis. It sort of "ties together" the practical stuff, but you don't need to know any of it to be effective. I'm glad I did it because it's neat stuff and a different perspective. In a way, the nice thing about having a degree is knowing that you don't know what you might be overlooking in not having one. That said... why not just go and get one now? You'll feel a little weird being 10 years older than everybody else and it'll look weird at first putting "15 years experience, graduated last year" on your resume, but you're nearly guaranteed a perfect GPA at this point. In a few years, you'll have the "checkmark" you need and you'll know what you were (or weren't) missing.
- aphextron 6y ago
  >That said... why not just go and get one now? You'll feel a little weird being 10 years older than everybody else and it'll look weird at first putting "15 years experience, graduated last year" on your resume, but you're nearly guaranteed a perfect GPA at this point. I tried. CS classes were a total walk in the park. But I simply could not do the math. I hired tutors, I quit my job and studied full time, I've never tried so hard at anything in my entire life. I bashed my head against a wall for almost 2 years trying to pass calculus, and failed it 3 semesters in a row before giving up. It's why I have the utmost respect for people with engineering degrees now.
kaiju0 6y ago
You have years of google under your belt. Thats your ticket anywhere. Find a nice regional job at a mid to small company and your golden.
mfer 6y ago
> And beyond that, the career trajectory for a mediocre IC with no degree is looking... bleak. I know a number of software developers who are sustaining. They aren't going up the ranks or down the tubes. They are happily sustaining. They do good work and are content. As we are sold that we always need an upward trajectory... it doesn't work out that way. As you get older you find there is no more up. The purpose of always going up runs out of steam. > It seems like you either hit the startup equity lotto, or burn out by 40. Is this a SV or startup mentality? Most successful startups have an average founders age at founding of like 45. It's not the young in age who are more likely to found successful startups. If you burn out by 40 it may mean you have an unsustainable lifestyle.
save_ferris 6y ago
> What exactly is there to keep salaries from a race to the bottom at this point? I see so many takes like this, but I'm not yet convinced that this is gonna doom salaries long term. I haven't noticed a difference in the recruiting communication I receive in terms of salary, and my current salary is above average. Companies would be insane to ask current employees to take a pay cut to go remote unless they want people to leave. As long as companies are focused on hiring the best people they can find, they're going to be motivated to continue supporting market rates.
st1x7 6y ago
As a data scientist without a PhD, I have a very similar feeling. You can kind of make without one for now but I have no idea how long that's going to last. Hopefully by the time it happens my experience outweighs that lack of credentials.
rdevsrex 6y ago
I'm 38 and have been asking myself this same question. I have about 4 years of experience, and with the scope of knowledge that a dev is expected to know, I feel like I need to go back to school and get a degree in CS or in something else that I can transition into another field. Software was always an outlier in professional fields, as most industries require some form of degree or certification, so I think it's good to get ahead of the curve. I star
silicon2401 6y ago
> What exactly is there to keep salaries from a race to the bottom at this point? Nothing. Based on numbers I've seen, there are probably a lot of companies out there where I'd take 75% of what their devs are making today if it means I can be permanently remote. Probably 50% if I could move freely internationally. Now multiply that by how many people are eligible once you expand your hiring range from driving distance to national/international.

LeanderK 6y ago

what's an IC? Where are you working? At a large company? Maybe a change in your environment can bring new perspectives and chances.

efficax 6y ago
IC means individual contributor (engineer, senior engineer, staff, principal) as opposed to a management track

cmrdporcupine 6y ago

I feel the same thing as you, I think. I was never proud of it per se, but proud of how far I've gotten without one (20 years as a dev, 9 years at Google). But always felt a sense of impostor syndrome and now I feel it even more pronounced as I've started to look for work elsewhere and wondering if I'm at a profound disadvantage: middle-aged, spent a bunch of time out of the mainstream industry inside Google using non-"standard" tech stacks, no CS degree, and the industry has shifted to interviewing standards that prioritize new grads ("skill" testing algorithm/data structure questions that are far easier for people with recent CS class exposure, etc.) And yeah, management track involves a lot more politics and organizational stuff than I really want to take on, at least within Google. I could see going mgmt track at a smaller company, but without recent experience they wouldn't hire me on that path.

jedimastert 6y ago
> always felt a sense of impostor syndrome If it makes you feel better, I have a CS bachelor's and I still get imposter syndrome on a fairly regular basis
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  It's endemic at Google, to the point that it's a cliche. Thing about having no CS degree is, in some ways I really _am_ an impostor here, in a company where masters and phds are commonplace, in a company was founded by two academics who never worked in the industry, etc. When I first joined I was blown away by how much of Google seemed academia-like... internal conferences with poster boards, peer and code review processes like a doctoral thesis committee, campus cafes, academic publishing all over the place, etc. etc. Hell there's even the equivalent of residences (GSuites, Google managed rental properties for traveling googlers)... It's toned down some as Google has ballooned in size, but still.
- aphextron 6y ago
  >If it makes you feel better, I have a CS bachelor's and I still get imposter syndrome on a fairly regular basis I hear this a lot. The difference is that I objectively am an impostor. I've worked with plenty of Stanford/Berkeley CS grads and can conclusively say that I am a worse programmer than them and will never be as good. My concern is that eventually the number of those people will be so great that mediocre devs will be pushed out of the market. I'm honestly incapable of passing these Leetcode/Google style algorithm interviews which are skewed towards CS grads, and that's increasingly becoming the standard for every company regardless of size.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    If you're like me you probably are entirely capable of passing those interviews -- with practice !-- and are probably absolutely fine as a programmer, but are at a disadvantage because it's not the type of stuff you've ever had to do on a regular basis. CS degrees train people to think that that kind of thing is what programming is ("why else did I pay thousands for this degree?"), and then they go out into the industry and propagate that in interview processes, and believe that failing these tests in an interview is an obvious indicator that someone is "lying" about their programming ability. The reality is that for many of us programming is a far more experimental and experential process, and I will use all sorts of algorithmic and data structure techniques but will go read or acquire that knowledge in the process of creating. It's not something I feel comfortable doing on a whiteboard in front of a person or group of people.

kemiller2002 6y ago

Why do you say that? I mean seriously, you're cutting yourself short. Getting a CS degrees is nothing more than a starting point. After a few years, it certainty won't help you progress into being a better developer automatically. Being a more senior developer is more than just knowing how to create a linked list or reverse a binary tree, and honestly the majority of places have no significant need for that understanding. It's about understanding tradeoffs between technical decisions, its about understanding business, it's about understanding when to refactor vs let it alone. A CS degree will not teach you that, and yes some places will be "snooty" and say we won't hire someone without it. Fine, screw them then. I didn't want to work for them anyway. Salaries won't race to the bottom, because 1. there is still a demand, and 2. someone from a boot camp doesn't have the knowledge and understanding that a more senior person does. Can they learn that? Of course they can, but then they will become more valuable and expect more money. Companies that hire the cheapest person possible almost always end up at the same conclusion. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Story time. At a previous company I worked with a number of smart people. Education wise, I didn't hold a candle to them. One went to a top engineering school in the U.S., one had a master's degree in CS, and one went to one of the top rated CS programs in the world. (They are all several years my junior.) All of a sudden our boss calls me in a panic, because some update that was done was failing and causing our clients to not submit data. After asking questions about what's happening, level of impact where it was occurring, I briefly look at the error log and say, "There's the problem, and this was the update that caused it." How did I know, because I smarter? No. I had more experience, I've seen more things. I've solved more problems. Their degrees didn't teach them anything about how to handle that situation. This is why not having a CS degree isn't a death knell of a career, and new people entering the field aren't either.

commandlinefan 6y ago

When I went to school to study computer science in the 90's, it seemed like most of my classmates were similar to myself: grew up tinkering with computers and had "taught themselves" (that is, read books and worked examples without being told to by a college professor) programming pretty effectively before setting foot on a college campus. I have no doubt that if I had never bothered with college at all, I could have done nearly the same work in the same positions that I've held since graduation. In fact, every once in a while on here you'll see somebody post a sort of ironic list of the things that they don't teach you in a CS curriculum: databases, networks, version control, debugging, command-line terminal usage, web security, usability... in short, all the things that you actually need to know in order to be a proficient software developer. Still, nearly everything (computer related) that I learned in my CS degree was stuff that I never would have come across on my own, like calculus, linear algebra, statistics, complexity theory, numerical analysis. It sort of "ties together" the practical stuff, but you don't need to know any of it to be effective. I'm glad I did it because it's neat stuff and a different perspective. In a way, the nice thing about having a degree is knowing that you don't know what you might be overlooking in not having one. That said... why not just go and get one now? You'll feel a little weird being 10 years older than everybody else and it'll look weird at first putting "15 years experience, graduated last year" on your resume, but you're nearly guaranteed a perfect GPA at this point. In a few years, you'll have the "checkmark" you need and you'll know what you were (or weren't) missing.

aphextron 6y ago
>That said... why not just go and get one now? You'll feel a little weird being 10 years older than everybody else and it'll look weird at first putting "15 years experience, graduated last year" on your resume, but you're nearly guaranteed a perfect GPA at this point. I tried. CS classes were a total walk in the park. But I simply could not do the math. I hired tutors, I quit my job and studied full time, I've never tried so hard at anything in my entire life. I bashed my head against a wall for almost 2 years trying to pass calculus, and failed it 3 semesters in a row before giving up. It's why I have the utmost respect for people with engineering degrees now.

kaiju0 6y ago

You have years of google under your belt. Thats your ticket anywhere. Find a nice regional job at a mid to small company and your golden.

mfer 6y ago

> And beyond that, the career trajectory for a mediocre IC with no degree is looking... bleak. I know a number of software developers who are sustaining. They aren't going up the ranks or down the tubes. They are happily sustaining. They do good work and are content. As we are sold that we always need an upward trajectory... it doesn't work out that way. As you get older you find there is no more up. The purpose of always going up runs out of steam. > It seems like you either hit the startup equity lotto, or burn out by 40. Is this a SV or startup mentality? Most successful startups have an average founders age at founding of like 45. It's not the young in age who are more likely to found successful startups. If you burn out by 40 it may mean you have an unsustainable lifestyle.

save_ferris 6y ago

> What exactly is there to keep salaries from a race to the bottom at this point? I see so many takes like this, but I'm not yet convinced that this is gonna doom salaries long term. I haven't noticed a difference in the recruiting communication I receive in terms of salary, and my current salary is above average. Companies would be insane to ask current employees to take a pay cut to go remote unless they want people to leave. As long as companies are focused on hiring the best people they can find, they're going to be motivated to continue supporting market rates.

st1x7 6y ago

As a data scientist without a PhD, I have a very similar feeling. You can kind of make without one for now but I have no idea how long that's going to last. Hopefully by the time it happens my experience outweighs that lack of credentials.

rdevsrex 6y ago

I'm 38 and have been asking myself this same question. I have about 4 years of experience, and with the scope of knowledge that a dev is expected to know, I feel like I need to go back to school and get a degree in CS or in something else that I can transition into another field. Software was always an outlier in professional fields, as most industries require some form of degree or certification, so I think it's good to get ahead of the curve. I star

silicon2401 6y ago

> What exactly is there to keep salaries from a race to the bottom at this point? Nothing. Based on numbers I've seen, there are probably a lot of companies out there where I'd take 75% of what their devs are making today if it means I can be permanently remote. Probably 50% if I could move freely internationally. Now multiply that by how many people are eligible once you expand your hiring range from driving distance to national/international.