4 ms·

Have you thought about giving up on the education part of it and just diving straight into a career? I don't have a degree, and I've found that in most circums

Have you thought about giving up on the education part of it and just diving straight into a career? I don't have a degree, and I've found that in most circumstances that doesn't matter very much at all. If you have examples of projects you've worked on and can demonstrate ability, people will hire you. I'm not going to say it doesn't matter at all. I'm sure that there are people who have passed on me because I don't have a degree, and in the early years I might have earned a little less than I should have. But I don't tend to apply for jobs that say "we absolutely require a degree" (I consider these people snobs). When I'm hiring juniors, I absolutely prefer people with 4 years experience running their own open source project than people with a degree, 100% test scores, and an empty gitlab account. I'll pick real-world experience over academic knowledge in almost all circumstances. I've met a bunch of graduates who were totally useless in the real world, and I've met fifteen year olds that I'd hire as coders over them. If you have the skills and tenacity to be able to build quality things then how "intelligent" you are doesn't really matter all that much IMO. If you can read, write, and do logic, you're smart enough to bruteforce your way through. I would argue that having a passion for what you do is far more important than raw intelligence. You say that you have worked harder to keep up with the "more intelligent" people. This will get you far. Keep doing that. But consider doing it on your own project. Go make something awesome rather than bothering with academic scores, they're pointless. Being able to say "look at this awesome thing I made" is much more valuable. (disclaimer: I'm not a data science guy and I'm giving my answer from an engineer/programmer perspective. Some of this might be different for data science. I do know that science/academic fields tends to be a bit more snobbish about degrees, for example). HTH :)

2cb 5y ago
Agreed entirely with everything you said. I have no degree but my employer saw potential and was happy to train me on the job, including guiding me through getting actual industry standard certs. I get an impression that a degree is much more of a necessity in the US than anywhere else and I’m not in the US, so that should be noted I think, but still if you have potential, knowledge, passion and a willingness to learn (they go hand in hand), and most importantly some actual real life experience, you can be attractive to the right employer.

2cb 5y ago

Agreed entirely with everything you said. I have no degree but my employer saw potential and was happy to train me on the job, including guiding me through getting actual industry standard certs. I get an impression that a degree is much more of a necessity in the US than anywhere else and I’m not in the US, so that should be noted I think, but still if you have potential, knowledge, passion and a willingness to learn (they go hand in hand), and most importantly some actual real life experience, you can be attractive to the right employer.