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Dropping out: Is college worth the cost?

3 points by pajju 14y ago

DigitalSea 14y ago
Being a self-taught developer myself who has landed some incredibly impressive jobs including a 2 year contract with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News) as a developer amongst other awesome places, I agree with the statement of college being a waste of money. I completed high school, contemplated college but then decided to get a job instead. Every place I have ever worked at has mentioned that they prefer hiring self-taught programmers as opposed to educated ones because the passion is already there and just because you can complete college doesn't mean you can handle the pressures of a programming environment in the real world (late hours, tight deadlines, last minute issues before major launches etc). It's about damn time that non-educated programmers and non-programmers alike who know their stuff start getting more recognition and better pay to suit. I've had to work damn hard to earn the salary I do now and I know more than a lot of the other programmers here who went to college, I teach them stuff and I thought it was meant to be the other way around.
- pajju 14y ago
  Great to hear your story, an excellent answer from someone who has gone through similar experience and is also successful. (I would like you to blog about your experiences so far and document it, as I would love to hear your whole story). But I have other few questions - Isn't it really hard to convince yourself at that naive age to risk yourself to drop out of college? Going this way, the path to Success will be very hard. Can everyone sustain it? Well I don't think so. There are few exceptionally talented guys out there who did it and probability is 1 in 10M. Not all. Period. So generalizing it to everyone is not correct.
- 2muchcoffeeman 14y ago
  University is very much what you make of it. You also get the opportunity to study subjects in a way that is impossible in everyday life. I studied physics. I am a very poor physicist, but the different perspective that it gave me was in my mind worth it. Also, less education is simply not the answer.

3 points by pajju 14y ago

Being a self-taught developer myself who has landed some incredibly impressive jobs including a 2 year contract with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News) as a developer amongst other awesome places, I agree with the statement of college being a waste of money. I completed high school, contemplated college but then decided to get a job instead. Every place I have ever worked at has mentioned that they prefer hiring self-taught programmers as opposed to educated ones because the passion is already there and just because you can complete college doesn't mean you can handle the pressures of a programming environment in the real world (late hours, tight deadlines, last minute issues before major launches etc). It's about damn time that non-educated programmers and non-programmers alike who know their stuff start getting more recognition and better pay to suit. I've had to work damn hard to earn the salary I do now and I know more than a lot of the other programmers here who went to college, I teach them stuff and I thought it was meant to be the other way around.

pajju 14y ago
Great to hear your story, an excellent answer from someone who has gone through similar experience and is also successful. (I would like you to blog about your experiences so far and document it, as I would love to hear your whole story). But I have other few questions - Isn't it really hard to convince yourself at that naive age to risk yourself to drop out of college? Going this way, the path to Success will be very hard. Can everyone sustain it? Well I don't think so. There are few exceptionally talented guys out there who did it and probability is 1 in 10M. Not all. Period. So generalizing it to everyone is not correct.
2muchcoffeeman 14y ago
University is very much what you make of it. You also get the opportunity to study subjects in a way that is impossible in everyday life. I studied physics. I am a very poor physicist, but the different perspective that it gave me was in my mind worth it. Also, less education is simply not the answer.