5 ms·

As a fortysomething I can tell you that I had a few friends who did this back in the day: Over the short run it didn't make a difference -- but in the long run

As a fortysomething I can tell you that I had a few friends who did this back in the day: Over the short run it didn't make a difference -- but in the long run it did impact some people in a very bad way. The lack of a degree often became a stumbling point mid-career: People without degrees often wouldn't be trusted for mid-level management jobs. Now if you're a solo act or working for a small company that isn't an issue -- but in a larger company (you know the ones with benefits!) it becomes a dead end. In fact I'm ashamed to admit it but I now feel at a disadvantage because I lack a postgrad degree; and what makes that depressing is that I'm a creative professional which should in theory be as "hands on" as you get in a career. I also had to say that I've watched folks with ivy university degrees have doors open to them which are often closed to others (look at the last four Presidents of the United States). Another thing for techies to think about is the fact that there's a ton of ageism in tech that nobody talks about. So yes if you're a twentysomething who can program you don't have to worry, but twenty years later even if you keep up you may not get hired. And at that point having a college degree can open up doors that might have been closed. But you say that you're the next Zuck: Well one should also keep in mind is that the natural state of startups is to fail. So even if you're brilliant, your company may still fail. In fact even if your company does well there's nothing that says that it can't go south after a few years. And if that is the case having a degree won't hurt you. Lastly I'd leave everyone with this thought: The value of an education isn't a career unless you are studying business. The value of an education should be to make you a better and more rounded person. And knowing more about the world will make you better at everything that you touch. If you want an example think about Steve Jobs learning about typography in college and how it shaped the original Mac.

abalashov 15y ago
All good advice. I agree that before pursuing this path, one should be reasonably sure (as much as that is possible) that one will never wish to do something in a profoundly credential-driven setting. However, I also would venture a guess that a lot of doors hitherto closed to non-graduates are going to open in the future, as the realisation slowly overtakes the next generation or two that universal four-year education has been greatly oversold relative to its price, at least, to the 90% of undergraduates who are going to university out of the sincere conviction that this is necessary in order to make a career in something decidedly "vocational", such as PR, advertising, real estate, insurance, accounting, etc. Markets do have a way of rationalising around these types of inefficiencies eventually, if allowed to do so. Also, if one cannot sustain a great deal of self-motivated, omnidirectional intellectual curiosity and well-roundedness as a matter of disposition, of habits of mind, then this path is probably not the right one. On the other hand, can college correct these deficiencies? I have never seen an example of schooling instilling these life-affirming traits in someone who did not already possess them in some measure. I realise that, pragmatically speaking, incremental improvement is the goal. However, you and I both know that the overwhelming preponderance of undergraduates shuffle in, through and out of college without experiencing a great deal of this ostensible intellectual growth.
- abraxasz 15y ago
  I'm not too sure about the market correcting these inefficiencies in the near future. I mean, I understand your point, and it makes total sense, but it may not be in everyone's interest to act on this. Let me give you an example. I interned in a company in France that would hire only from the top 3 engineering and top 3 business schools in France. I had friends who where very successful interns in the company, but who didn't get hired full time in the end because they came from the 4th or 5th business school. Now I've been talking about this a lot, and the main argument I heard was: HR people are just trying to cover their asses in case something goes wrong. In France (I don't know if it's the same here), firing an employee is so difficult that companies want to make sure they don't screw up when hiring. Or rather, HR want to make sure that if they screw up, nobody can hold them responsible. If they think a non-degree holder would be a good fit, that they hire him, and that this non-degree holder turns out to be not so good, then everybody is going to ask them why on earth did they bet on someone with no degree. If they stick to someone from a top school, they can still say: look, he seemed really good, he has top credentials.. it's just bad luck, we did everything possible. Someone mentioned institutional inertia above. I think that's exactly what this is about. Note: I'm not generalizing to all HR people. I've read lots of posts on HN concerning the hiring process, and it seems that people take it seriously in the startup world. My small experience in big companies tells me that it works differently there.
henrikschroder 15y ago
Two things: Another door that opens with a university degree is immigration into other countries. Most countries want skilled workers to immigrate, and the way they rate that is through your education level. I have a MSc, and even though the bulk of what I learned at university is impractical, I don't regret it one bit, I don't regret sticking with it until I got my degree. It is never too late to get a degree. When I started uni, most were straight out of high-school or military service, but there were a bunch of older people who had worked for ten years or twenty, who went back to get a degree. Some were even partly sponsored by their companies. There are advantages to getting a degree when you're in your 20s and haven't got any serious committments in life yet, but it's never too late.
- ssttoo 15y ago
  Wanted to emphasize the immigration/visa point. Several times I've seen briliant people that can't move to US to start a job because they don't have a degree.
  - nekojima 15y ago
    Immigration/work visa, even for an American, is important if they want to move or work overseas and lack a university/college degree. Generally, when I interview North American/European job candidates they must have a university education. Its a filter as much as anything, we may lose some good folks, but given the volume of applicants (1,000+ for most postings & lacking a referral) we need to filter and after five or ten years, the difference in speed of learning/training/development from a degree holder usually becomes more obvious. When I've interviewed job candidates in Asia, in particular, China, Thailand and Vietnam, I don't usually require, for low & mid level roles, a degree. In part because of education corruption & low quality, but also because many very good or great candidates don't have a "good" degree. Instead they have extensive and very positive work experience that candidates with degrees don't have. In these countries, its the work experience I value much more than education, which is more often than not quite lacking in degree holders (with a few exceptions).
maukdaddy 15y ago
I cannot up vote you enough for this insight. I'd like to add a couple of thoughts: To all the developers who think they wouldn't learn anything in college - how are your English skills? Marketing skills? Do you understand the theories behind price elasticity or scarcity of resources? Do you know enough about accounting, finance, revenue, and cash flow? How much would you benefit from a couple of marketing classes? It boils down to this: how much difference would a basic understanding of other subjects (marketing, economics, English, other languages) make on the success of your startup? What about your career in general? So much of what I learned in school, both undergrad and graduate, came from subjects where I did not already have experience. In subjects where I already knew a great deal, I still gained from learning the theory behind the practical knowledge I already possessed. I can't stress enough how much more well-rounded college makes a person.
- abalashov 15y ago
  Do you understand the theories behind price elasticity or scarcity of resources? Do you know enough about accounting, finance, revenue, and cash flow? How much would you benefit from a couple of marketing classes? I learned all that from starting a business, though I had an abiding interest in the underlying principles and came into it with a great deal of self-taught theoretical knowledge. But I agree that if it weren't in my disposition to do so, I'd have been at a huge disadvantage. It takes a certain kind of person to learn what he needs to know in spite of formal education, otherwise tunnel vision and compartmentalisation become a substantial hindrance. Bottom line: you can compensate for lack of college, but it's not a smooth ride. It takes real work. It's mostly a question of cultivating the right kind of habits of mind. Also, I have a hidden advantage not shared by most of my fellow dropouts: I come from a family of academics, and spent most of my childhood and adolescence on or near college campuses. The imprint left by the organic outcome of chronic exposure to the background radiation of this kind of ethos probably made dropping out more survivable for me than for many people.
anonymous5421 15y ago
No offense but I think your post is wrong in pretty much every respect (and I say this as someone with an ivy league undergraduate degree and nearly done with a Top 10 law degree). You say people are harmed in their careers by lack of a college degree. This may be true in some of the more traditional, salaryman-type career paths. But there's lots of people who are harmed by college/graduate school! Tons of debt and years wasted on useless degrees are a tremendous drag on people's development and growth in their knowledge and careers. And if one has a positive and open attitude, there's way better opportunities one can find than the traditional salaryman type office jobs. Also, as someone with an Ivy league degree I find your citation to "doors opening" and the recent Presidents just kind of amusing. It's true that you can go to an Ivy League school and do well and do things coming out of it. But the people going into an Ivy League school are often either 1) hard-driving people who'd do well in any setting, or 2) connected people whose families are going to make their lives easy no matter what. So it's not the school doing any of the heavy lifting in terms of these people's success. And on the flip side, there's way more Ivy League barristas then Presidents! Finally I've always found the "well-rounded person" thing to be a huge myth. I've gotten way more out of the Internet -- reading forums, learning about books, interacting with interesting people, doing online courses etc -- than I ever did in college. And not like 50% more, but orders of magnitude more. The "well-rounded person" thing is just some sort of conventional meme/rationalization for school attendance that doesn't have much content. They don't teach quality ideas in the humanities or social sciences (except maybe economics) -- so you don't really become a well-rounded person, and if you're not in some hard sciences or math program you don't really learn anything at all in general (for context, I was a social sciences major). You just become a person who's been exposed to some weird mixture of stuff taught because of Tradition, and whatever faddish developments are going on in your field. And yeah, Jobs took a typography class before dropping out. But if you want to learn stuff, there's way more effective ways than college now. Our culture has a very strong pro-school bias, though that's starting to break down (LSAT takers were down 16% this year!!) People bucking the norm like OP are a big step towards a better and more critical attitude towards education, and one which I think would help lots of people be happier in their lives.
- abalashov 15y ago
  People bucking the norm like OP are a big step towards a better and more critical attitude towards education, and one which I think would help lots of people be happier in their lives. And that, right there, is the crux of it. It's not about whether college is or isn't necessary per se; it's about doing it for the right reasons, and recognising what those genuinely are, quite apart from the incumbent force of Tradition and the very deliberate propagandistic meddling of its institutional exponents.
hobin 15y ago
"Lastly I'd leave everyone with this thought: The value of an education isn't a career unless you are studying business. The value of an education should be to make you a better and more rounded person." Note that we aren't all living in the American system where everyone does a major and takes a bunch of general courses. In the Netherlands, for example, if you major in X you don't necessarily become a 'more rounded person'. I major in math, which means that all I get is math, math, math and more math - if I wanted, I might be able to get some physics or CS courses as electives.
- untog 15y ago
  I went though the UK university system, which AFAIK is similar to the Dutch system. Despite wanting to become a developer, I chose History and Politics. It's a topic that fascinates me, and I had a great three years. I also learnt a lot about debating, teamwork, meeting deadlines, etc. etc. etc. Then I graduated and started working as a developer. I don't regret my choice.
spqr 15y ago
I turn 40 this year. In 1989 at the age of 17 I chose not to go to college. I worked as a computer consultant instead. Three years later I started my own consulting company, then an ISP, then sold it and worked for corporate America. I reached AVP then VP then CTO for two publicly traded companies. Statistically speaking, last ear I made more money than 99% of the people reading this. I'm married with great kids. Not a minute of college and that fact has NEVER - never - been brought up once.

abalashov 15y ago

All good advice. I agree that before pursuing this path, one should be reasonably sure (as much as that is possible) that one will never wish to do something in a profoundly credential-driven setting. However, I also would venture a guess that a lot of doors hitherto closed to non-graduates are going to open in the future, as the realisation slowly overtakes the next generation or two that universal four-year education has been greatly oversold relative to its price, at least, to the 90% of undergraduates who are going to university out of the sincere conviction that this is necessary in order to make a career in something decidedly "vocational", such as PR, advertising, real estate, insurance, accounting, etc. Markets do have a way of rationalising around these types of inefficiencies eventually, if allowed to do so. Also, if one cannot sustain a great deal of self-motivated, omnidirectional intellectual curiosity and well-roundedness as a matter of disposition, of habits of mind, then this path is probably not the right one. On the other hand, can college correct these deficiencies? I have never seen an example of schooling instilling these life-affirming traits in someone who did not already possess them in some measure. I realise that, pragmatically speaking, incremental improvement is the goal. However, you and I both know that the overwhelming preponderance of undergraduates shuffle in, through and out of college without experiencing a great deal of this ostensible intellectual growth.

abraxasz 15y ago
I'm not too sure about the market correcting these inefficiencies in the near future. I mean, I understand your point, and it makes total sense, but it may not be in everyone's interest to act on this. Let me give you an example. I interned in a company in France that would hire only from the top 3 engineering and top 3 business schools in France. I had friends who where very successful interns in the company, but who didn't get hired full time in the end because they came from the 4th or 5th business school. Now I've been talking about this a lot, and the main argument I heard was: HR people are just trying to cover their asses in case something goes wrong. In France (I don't know if it's the same here), firing an employee is so difficult that companies want to make sure they don't screw up when hiring. Or rather, HR want to make sure that if they screw up, nobody can hold them responsible. If they think a non-degree holder would be a good fit, that they hire him, and that this non-degree holder turns out to be not so good, then everybody is going to ask them why on earth did they bet on someone with no degree. If they stick to someone from a top school, they can still say: look, he seemed really good, he has top credentials.. it's just bad luck, we did everything possible. Someone mentioned institutional inertia above. I think that's exactly what this is about. Note: I'm not generalizing to all HR people. I've read lots of posts on HN concerning the hiring process, and it seems that people take it seriously in the startup world. My small experience in big companies tells me that it works differently there.

henrikschroder 15y ago

Two things: Another door that opens with a university degree is immigration into other countries. Most countries want skilled workers to immigrate, and the way they rate that is through your education level. I have a MSc, and even though the bulk of what I learned at university is impractical, I don't regret it one bit, I don't regret sticking with it until I got my degree. It is never too late to get a degree. When I started uni, most were straight out of high-school or military service, but there were a bunch of older people who had worked for ten years or twenty, who went back to get a degree. Some were even partly sponsored by their companies. There are advantages to getting a degree when you're in your 20s and haven't got any serious committments in life yet, but it's never too late.

ssttoo 15y ago
Wanted to emphasize the immigration/visa point. Several times I've seen briliant people that can't move to US to start a job because they don't have a degree.
- nekojima 15y ago
  Immigration/work visa, even for an American, is important if they want to move or work overseas and lack a university/college degree. Generally, when I interview North American/European job candidates they must have a university education. Its a filter as much as anything, we may lose some good folks, but given the volume of applicants (1,000+ for most postings & lacking a referral) we need to filter and after five or ten years, the difference in speed of learning/training/development from a degree holder usually becomes more obvious. When I've interviewed job candidates in Asia, in particular, China, Thailand and Vietnam, I don't usually require, for low & mid level roles, a degree. In part because of education corruption & low quality, but also because many very good or great candidates don't have a "good" degree. Instead they have extensive and very positive work experience that candidates with degrees don't have. In these countries, its the work experience I value much more than education, which is more often than not quite lacking in degree holders (with a few exceptions).

maukdaddy 15y ago

I cannot up vote you enough for this insight. I'd like to add a couple of thoughts: To all the developers who think they wouldn't learn anything in college - how are your English skills? Marketing skills? Do you understand the theories behind price elasticity or scarcity of resources? Do you know enough about accounting, finance, revenue, and cash flow? How much would you benefit from a couple of marketing classes? It boils down to this: how much difference would a basic understanding of other subjects (marketing, economics, English, other languages) make on the success of your startup? What about your career in general? So much of what I learned in school, both undergrad and graduate, came from subjects where I did not already have experience. In subjects where I already knew a great deal, I still gained from learning the theory behind the practical knowledge I already possessed. I can't stress enough how much more well-rounded college makes a person.

abalashov 15y ago
Do you understand the theories behind price elasticity or scarcity of resources? Do you know enough about accounting, finance, revenue, and cash flow? How much would you benefit from a couple of marketing classes? I learned all that from starting a business, though I had an abiding interest in the underlying principles and came into it with a great deal of self-taught theoretical knowledge. But I agree that if it weren't in my disposition to do so, I'd have been at a huge disadvantage. It takes a certain kind of person to learn what he needs to know in spite of formal education, otherwise tunnel vision and compartmentalisation become a substantial hindrance. Bottom line: you can compensate for lack of college, but it's not a smooth ride. It takes real work. It's mostly a question of cultivating the right kind of habits of mind. Also, I have a hidden advantage not shared by most of my fellow dropouts: I come from a family of academics, and spent most of my childhood and adolescence on or near college campuses. The imprint left by the organic outcome of chronic exposure to the background radiation of this kind of ethos probably made dropping out more survivable for me than for many people.

anonymous5421 15y ago

No offense but I think your post is wrong in pretty much every respect (and I say this as someone with an ivy league undergraduate degree and nearly done with a Top 10 law degree). You say people are harmed in their careers by lack of a college degree. This may be true in some of the more traditional, salaryman-type career paths. But there's lots of people who are harmed by college/graduate school! Tons of debt and years wasted on useless degrees are a tremendous drag on people's development and growth in their knowledge and careers. And if one has a positive and open attitude, there's way better opportunities one can find than the traditional salaryman type office jobs. Also, as someone with an Ivy league degree I find your citation to "doors opening" and the recent Presidents just kind of amusing. It's true that you can go to an Ivy League school and do well and do things coming out of it. But the people going into an Ivy League school are often either 1) hard-driving people who'd do well in any setting, or 2) connected people whose families are going to make their lives easy no matter what. So it's not the school doing any of the heavy lifting in terms of these people's success. And on the flip side, there's way more Ivy League barristas then Presidents! Finally I've always found the "well-rounded person" thing to be a huge myth. I've gotten way more out of the Internet -- reading forums, learning about books, interacting with interesting people, doing online courses etc -- than I ever did in college. And not like 50% more, but orders of magnitude more. The "well-rounded person" thing is just some sort of conventional meme/rationalization for school attendance that doesn't have much content. They don't teach quality ideas in the humanities or social sciences (except maybe economics) -- so you don't really become a well-rounded person, and if you're not in some hard sciences or math program you don't really learn anything at all in general (for context, I was a social sciences major). You just become a person who's been exposed to some weird mixture of stuff taught because of Tradition, and whatever faddish developments are going on in your field. And yeah, Jobs took a typography class before dropping out. But if you want to learn stuff, there's way more effective ways than college now. Our culture has a very strong pro-school bias, though that's starting to break down (LSAT takers were down 16% this year!!) People bucking the norm like OP are a big step towards a better and more critical attitude towards education, and one which I think would help lots of people be happier in their lives.

abalashov 15y ago
People bucking the norm like OP are a big step towards a better and more critical attitude towards education, and one which I think would help lots of people be happier in their lives. And that, right there, is the crux of it. It's not about whether college is or isn't necessary per se; it's about doing it for the right reasons, and recognising what those genuinely are, quite apart from the incumbent force of Tradition and the very deliberate propagandistic meddling of its institutional exponents.

hobin 15y ago

"Lastly I'd leave everyone with this thought: The value of an education isn't a career unless you are studying business. The value of an education should be to make you a better and more rounded person." Note that we aren't all living in the American system where everyone does a major and takes a bunch of general courses. In the Netherlands, for example, if you major in X you don't necessarily become a 'more rounded person'. I major in math, which means that all I get is math, math, math and more math - if I wanted, I might be able to get some physics or CS courses as electives.

untog 15y ago
I went though the UK university system, which AFAIK is similar to the Dutch system. Despite wanting to become a developer, I chose History and Politics. It's a topic that fascinates me, and I had a great three years. I also learnt a lot about debating, teamwork, meeting deadlines, etc. etc. etc. Then I graduated and started working as a developer. I don't regret my choice.

spqr 15y ago

I turn 40 this year. In 1989 at the age of 17 I chose not to go to college. I worked as a computer consultant instead. Three years later I started my own consulting company, then an ISP, then sold it and worked for corporate America. I reached AVP then VP then CTO for two publicly traded companies. Statistically speaking, last ear I made more money than 99% of the people reading this. I'm married with great kids. Not a minute of college and that fact has NEVER - never - been brought up once.