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If you're an engineer, and you drop out and you work for 4-6 years, nobody is ever going to care, or probably know, that you don't have a degree. My personal e
by nirvana 14y ago
If you're an engineer, and you drop out and you work for 4-6 years, nobody is ever going to care, or probably know, that you don't have a degree.
My personal experience was that I got a hell of a good job when looking for a summer job, and I just kept at it. I'm in my 40s now, and in my career, not having a degree has NEVER been the slightest problem. I was in such demand that I started limiting how many interviews I'd go to-- and I'd end up going to 5 interviews and getting 4 offers and a callback (on average.) More than once, a year or so into a job it might come up that I didn't have a degree and people would be surprised, but it was never a problem-- I never put on my resume that I had a degree, I never lied.
If you're an engineer, and you have talent and 3-4 years of work history, there's no detriment to not having a degree.
I don't know about MBAs, etc.
I think a lot of people go to college and maybe they aren't' autodidacts or naturally talented and for them, they have to be trained to be programmers. I know that's not the case for me, its a talent and I am mostly self taught.
But I think a lot of people with degrees develop a prejudice against those who don't have them.
They don't want to think that they wasted those four years and all that money-- and for many of them, they probably didn't (certainly that's the case for any of them who couldn't program before college-- it wasn't a waste.) But for someone like me, it would have been-- since college CS courses were pretty much a joke compared to where my ability was. (I did go to college for a couple years, but studied Physics. Much more challenging, though the money is in programming.)
So, no, I don't think anyone worth working for gives a damn if you have a degree, if you've got several years of programming experience.
Also, working with someone just out of college (not a programmer) has led me to discover that college doesn't actually train you to be an employee-- the first 2-4 years out of college is when you really learn the skills to be a professional. College is not worthless, but it is not at all, the only route.
For some people it would be a waste of money and time, and for others totally essential to being able to solve hard CS problems. Only you can know which one you are. It is certainly not a panacea.
I personally would probably give a little more weight to someone who is self taught, but of course, I wouldn't discriminate someone with a degree. I think its wrong of people who do discriminate against those who don't have a degree-- engineering is about having the skills and the mind. Look for Attitude, mental Bandwidth and the ability to communicate. Those are what matter in hiring.
- CyberFonic 14y agoI assume you mean software engineer. In other fields of "real" engineering, like civil, mechanical, aeronautical, chemical and electrical lacking the pre-requisite qualifications means you don't get the job.
- hedgie 14y ago"I think its wrong of people who do discriminate against those who don't have a degree-- engineering is about having the skills and the mind." there are certain areas of software engineering where a real understanding of the subject takes years of focused study. for example, understanding encryption requires graduate level math courses to even read some of the standards produced or understand how the algorithms work. i have never seen this happen outside of school simply due to the time restrictions of having a job preventing the full-time study necessary to reach that level of mathematical sophistication. there are other areas where similar training is necessary and pretty much exclusive to schools (think financial software engineering for traders, for whom they generally hire grad students with extremely specialized knowledge). most software engineers don't need this sort of training. but there are areas like encryption where i'm 99% certain the only training left in the world that can make you a competent professional is schooling. software engineering is an odd exception to the rule that most jobs require credentials. you can just make the product at home and that speaks for itself, where as no one will let you risk blowing millions on dumb marketing unless you have something to say you're semi-competent. self-trained software engineers are usually incredible and some of the best employees. but there are areas of software engineering where self-training is impossible that are absolutely necessary when creating certain products. lastly, if you looked at my degrees, you would ignore the fact i first learned basic in middle school on an apple IIc+.
- DanBC 14y ago> there are certain areas of software engineering where a real understanding of the subject takes years of focused study. for example, understanding encryption requires graduate level math courses to even read some of the standards produced or understand how the algorithms work. i have never seen this happen outside of school simply due to the time restrictions of having a job preventing the full-time study necessary to reach that level of mathematical sophistication I agree with you. But there are some places where that study can happen without a degree. Clifford Cocks, for example, was recruited by GCHQ before he finished his degree. I accept this is an edge case example.