12 ms·

You can definitely make the self-taught path work. I'm proof of that and have been working in industry for over 20 years. However, what I will say is the follow

You can definitely make the self-taught path work. I'm proof of that and have been working in industry for over 20 years. However, what I will say is the following: there are certain companies and roles which you will never be able to access. These are often times the best roles, best companies, have the most money, etc. A degree isn't just the time spent studying and knowledge -- you can do that part yourself. What's more valuable is the network and access to the alumni network of others who will hire you into their company just because you went to the same school as them. It's a big club and you won't be in it if you decide to self-study. That's the cold, hard truth. So what's left for someone self-taught with no degree? You are left with all the jobs the others don't want. You'll be flipping through the crazies, outright scams, poorly capitalized companies, or places that are already in a state of distress. VERY rarely you will find a real job that you can plan to stay at for any length of time. You WILL be paid less, and you're more likely to get taken advantage of. You will have a harder time getting multiple offers at once, because your overall demand is lower. So that erodes your position in the market and over time it will feel like you're on a completely different tract financially. You will need to work twice as hard, because finding a new job is much harder, even if you're good. You will constantly be doubted, by first yourself and imposter syndrome and next by those around you who have degrees. Make one mistake and the consequences are that much more dire. It's better than nothing, but if you have the opportunity to go to school (I didn't), do it over the self-taught route.

Eikon 1y ago
> It's a big club and you won't be in it if you decide to self-study. That's the cold, hard truth. This almost reads like conspiracy. There’s barely anything like that in reality, and the kind of network people finds at school is usually extremely weak. Otherwise, job boards wouldn’t exist.
- beej71 1y ago
  I think ones school network is what they make. Over my career I've gotten three jobs due to my school network. (It was a regular state university.) And I do think most people don't effectively leverage it.
- luckylion 1y ago
  Both your points do absolutely not mirror my experience. In traditional career paths (established company) a diploma helps a lot -- for some roles you won't even be considered otherwise. And your take on networks being useless is also strange. I work closely with people who have large and well-maintained networks, and the value they produce because of that is insane.
  - Eikon 1y ago
    > Both your points do absolutely not mirror my experience. In traditional career paths (established company) a diploma helps a lot -- for some roles you won't even be considered otherwise. For a first job? Maybe. I don’t have one and it’s barely been a talking point back when I interviewed, regardless of company size.
- IndubitableCoil 1y ago
  I highly dispute this. Networks in college are absolutely a thing and absolutely advantageous. In my experience, the network didn't come from just sitting in class, but from extracurricular competition engineering/cs teams. Competition teams certainly helped many people get their first jobs through friends referring each other or elevated exposure to employers. In fact, recruiters would often have separate hiring events for the competition teams and then have the standard college hiring event. There's also an intangible effect from being surrounded by other highly motivated and mission driven students that you gain in these environments. I am sure there is a way to get involved in similar teams outside of college, but a well situated college significantly lowers the barrier to joining these teams and almost creates a funnel for it should you choose to spend your spare time in such as team.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    >There's also an intangible effect from being surrounded by other highly motivated and mission driven students that you gain in these environments. I think that is absolutely true. But other than one thing (which was part of a class and was really great even if we didn't do well), didn't really do competition teams in any formal way other than some class groups. Certainly nothing involving separate hiring events.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  It depends on the school. I knew a few younger guys from Stanford and whatnot who were really into the idea of preferring hiring people from particular schools if not their own.
jsphweid 1y ago
Which companies are you talking about?
- thenthenthen 1y ago
  In my experience over the past 5 years in EU and Asia: Increasingly many companies wont even talk to you unless you have ‘a’ PhD. You dont need this piece of paper, but it is one hell of a life hack getting one.
  - cortesoft 1y ago
    Are you trying to apply cold? The way it usually works is that someone you have worked with before vouches for you and that gets you past that screening.
    - thenthenthen 1y ago
      Never cold.
- no_degree_a102 1y ago
  American Express, Capital One, and Canonical to name a few. Aside from Unicorn and FAANG orgs self-taught is still predominantly forbidden.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    I'm self-taught. My first job I got lucky (or the grace of God, depending on your perspective). After that, it never mattered. I had experience, references, a track record. And the older you get, the longer the track record, and the more it outweighs the piece of paper. I'm primarily an embedded guy, though. If you're doing web apps, or desktop, or games, or phones, or high performance, or finance programming, your mileage may vary.
    - no_degree_a102 1y ago
electrolusty 1y ago
I don’t mean to discount your personal experience, but I’m 100% self taught, and I’ve worked at some bougie megacorps, unicorns and startups of varying degrees of maturity. I’ve never felt like doors have been closed or that others doubt me because of my lack of education. I’ve interviewed at Google and Citadel, had an offer from Meta, etc. It doesn’t feel like anyone has denied me opportunities outright. I make north of $200k/year cash plus the equity and perks at an early stage startup. I’ve been through two exits so far. Nothing outrageous but I’m rich by most peoples standards. It doesn’t feel like lack of schooling has impacted me financially. I did start programming and doing the startup thing at 19, so maybe the early start was an advantage. I could just be mind numbing lucky. But, from my point of view, warning the up and coming youngin’s off the self taught path is a disservice.
- harrall 1y ago
  I know friends in a similar boat. Ultimately you can get very far if you are naturally talented technically and socially. But if you are normal like most of us, you are lacking in one or more areas and going to school (or attending conferences or maintaining a popular resource) can be one of those ways to shore up one of your “less natural” skills, but no step is strictly required and not everything works for everyone.
  - coderatlarge 1y ago
    “The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released data on unemployment rates for recent college graduates (ages 22 to 27). The bank found that philosophy had an unemployment rate of 3.2%, less than computer science’s 6.1%, though computer science was more highly compensated.” https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/college-majors-with-the-lowest-unemployment-rates-report/491781 https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/college-majors-wi...
    - whoopdedo 1y ago
      I expect there's some selection bias at play. If you're taking a philosophy major in college it's likely you already feel confident in your post-graduation career, so can study things that you like. Whereas if you're in a CS track it's because whether you get a job depends on getting a degree. The student studying philosophy is in school as an alternative to work. The STEM major is in school as a prerequisite to work.
cultofmetatron 1y ago
I'm somewhat sympathetic to this having been self taught myself. there was def a struggle in the beginning even getting low hanging jobs. It means you need to invest a lot of your off hours learning new stuff and getting ahead. a lot of university educated CS majors don't learn anything new after university and only put in just enough to do their job. being self taught means you need to be a lot more proactive about getting ahead of trends and being the guy on the frontlines where there isn't a whole lot of people that know a technology at all. I myself was lucky enough to jump on the javascript train before javascript ate the world. 8 years in I switched over to elixir because i saw in it the potential to be the best stack to build MVPs in. These days, I'm maintaining one of those projects as CTO and we are interviewing candidates for a position. I can tell you personally, I value what you did at your last job and your side projects more than what you did in university 10 years ago. The one issue as someone from the interviewing side is that it takes a lot of effort to actually do an interview properly. I spent a lot of time putting together a coding test to test specifically for the tasks you'd be workin on as well as doing it with our applicants to make sure they aren't using vibe coding to do a half assed job. Its worth it though to make sure we make the right hire. when you're a startup, every hire can potentially make or break the company.
colechristensen 1y ago
I don't have a degree and after the first few years no one cared at all from garage startups to the Fortune 100.
doublerabbit 1y ago
As someone who did go the self-taught route, I wouldn't say it's the route to take if you enjoy depth via academic, I dropped out of university. I'm a practical person and learn as I do, I disagree OP, it sucks you got that end of the straw. I have had it just as good as others but you just need to put the extra effort in. Yes, you do get jobs not so good as the grand but you cash in those later. The route up is just more steep but in the end you end up more valuable experience and within 15 years time you then can cash it all in for a fortune 100 company. As that's where I am and I am only in my mid-thirties You should go to college however if university isn't your thing, don't feel like your forever going to be an entry grade tech. The route is more steep but it's all worth it; just keep seeking higher jobs with every departure.
znpy 1y ago
If you worked in the industry for over 20 years and your network is weaker than a recent graduate, I wouldn’t blame it on the college, your networking game is just weak. As a college drop out, i have a few friends from university in the various big companies but none of my jobs came through them (even when i want to work in a faang: i just didn’t need it).
devwastaken 1y ago
unless youre ivy league theres no more connecting. universities are completely irrelevant to tech in modern day. people are talking about their experiences 20 years ago. now, its just expensive adult daycare. remove federal student loans and grants and the market will finally correct.
peterhadlaw 1y ago
I've been personally involved in the hiring process of our startup and I give you my word the school you went to makes no difference. In fact one of my favorite coworkers that I had an honor to work with was self taught and had a philosophy degree. In fact I've seen big school degrees go straight to heads and egos and been actively an obstacle to those folks.
tptacek 1y ago
Self taught, no degree, zero friction in the job market either early in my career (job offers on Wall Street and the startups I wanted to work with) or 25 years later; have done consulting work almost everywhere, and had offers from both big tech companies and unicorn startups. No investor has ever cared, either. The "you'll be stuck with all the jobs other people don't want" thing is risible.
- cortesoft 1y ago
  Yeah, I am very confused by this persons experience. I have never once seen anyone utilize their school network, either to get a job or to bring someone on; every time we get a referral, it is for someone who they have worked with before, not who they went to school with. I have worked with people for YEARS before i even learned that they have or don’t have a CS degree. I have interviewed many dozens of people, both as a hiring manager and a peer, and we only look at schooling if they have zero professional experience. In my experience, a degree can help you get your first job, but after that it is all about your work experience and the connections with the people you have worked with.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    And when thinking about that first job you have to remember that you're burning 3-4 years of full-time work experience on the degree. That's a lot of time to fumble around and find your fit!
    - wglb 1y ago
      Commonly true, but in my five years of engineering school, in my summer after my freshman year, I was already employed in computer programming. The rest of my school had co-op periods during which I had summer stints in computer-programming-related jobs including at Bonneville Power Administration with a team working on computer monitoring of the system, with the idea that was to lead to control of that system; a stint as a co-op student at Wayerhauser Plup Bleach plant, working on a program to model the flow of pulp through a tower measuring the dose of chlorine-based bleach, working at a medical lab with odd jobs including generating a plot of a sensor measuring tremor in a patient's hand; working at an IBM sales office writing a program to measure the proper fill of a tanker truck based on the day's projected temperature, and finally as the first full-time employee of a company producing the first computer-based commercial electrocardiogram analysis service, all before graduation. My first job, of course, was prior to all that, driving various vehicles on my Dad's dryland wheat farm in northern Montana. So I feel that I was particularly lucky about finding good co-op positions, as many of my colleagues were at less interesting gigs at Motorolla, sorting resistors by color code. (Some of these are documented at https://ciex-software.com/ https://ciex-software.com/) Coming from a very small town, University was a bigger uptick than likely for kids growing up in the Big City.
nomat 1y ago
networking is important for sure, but i think software more than most other industries (say, finance) has a much lower barrier of entry for an individual with no/low resources. a data point for your second paragraph: i play D&D weekly with a woman that got hired at google straight out of high school and worked there for 10 years.
cortesoft 1y ago
> What's more valuable is the network and access to the alumni network of others who will hire you into their company just because you went to the same school as them. This seems completely untrue in my 20 year career experience. I have hired dozens of people for both large and small companies, and networks do matter… but I have never once seen the network be from school. It is always about people you have worked with before. Even my coworkers with degrees don’t have contact with their schoolmates anymore, it is always people they worked with.
- brewdad 1y ago
  It depends on the school and often aligns more closely with something like a fraternity. I have definitely known people who got their job through a frat brother’s recommendation or literally knowing the secret handshake.
zamadatix 1y ago
I found there is some truth to this but it was almost all in the beginning and/or if you expect to be in ~the bottom half of your peer group. After those criteria pass it comes down to your overall ability to network throughout life (not just from a college) and general chance/luck (which remains a larger factor than most would like to admit). What college can give you at the beginning of a career, beyond the premise of a guided education in the field of study, is a piece of paper that says "I really did learn some relevant stuff and have the ability to follow through" before you have a chance to prove these things in the field by already having had a job in it. It also gives you an initial chance to build a network but that's true of however you manage to spend your first 2-4 years getting into the field. After that initial in-field job or two the non-educational related value of a degree falls off a cliff (and the educational portion becomes an ever decreasing slice of job specific knowledge you acquire over decades). My anecdote (that's all it is) comes from starting out without a degree and then getting a degree for the fun of it over a decade later. It's provided 0 value in any job, they've all come from references or recommendations from people I've worked with previously at this point. It was fun though, a chance to get involved with topics you wouldn't normally have a reason to touch.
yapyap 1y ago
Yeah what you said BUT there’s also big opportunities in networking I know people hate to hear it cause it sounds like a magic bullet and it does and I don’t like having to market myself either but it does work. You don’t even really need to have an alumni for networking, just a few relatively nice / ok projects, a website and some business cards and you’re off!
rkagerer 1y ago
I feel this take on it is a little over-dramatized. I empathize with the first part - connections are priceless when you're staring out - but in time you can and will build a reputation for your quality of work, interactions with (and then capability to manage) others, and achievement of results. All these can be developed at a no-name startup as well as at a FAANG. I went to university but only apply maybe 5% of what I learned there in my day job. I founded and grew a company, also worked in senior roles at others. When I interview for engineering positions, I'm much more interested in other factors than what school you went to or who you've brushed shoulders with. I recognize parent commenter's experience may be different, and give solid props for their self-taught journey. (In fact someone who can figure things out without having to be spoon fed is exactly the kind of person I want on the team).
- ghaff 1y ago
  I'd probably argue that most people don't have (personal) connections starting out. Maybe, if they didn't go to the right school or school at all, someone they know is the foot in the door. >but in time you can and will build a reputation for your quality of work, interactions with (and then capability to manage) others, and achievement of results. That IS their network for a lot of people. OK maybe there are smaller companies that are 50% $SCHOOL grads. And there are other companies that tend to bias towards a certain group of schools. But I actually think that going to, say, Harvard is a secret handshake is overstated in a lot of cases. I sort of suspect that my undergrad may have had something to do with a job at one point but the fact that I got in through a senior person who liked my work played a lot bigger role.
cedws 1y ago
I also wouldn’t disregard the experience of university itself. I went the self-taught route, left school at 16, built a career for myself to get to where I am now at 24, but I do have regrets. Going into working in an office basically terminated my youth right there and I haven’t had a social circle since. Not having debt is nice but if you can afford university both in terms of time and money, and come from a family you can fall back on, I’d say just go. Once you start work there’s no going back. You’re in the cold hard world.
Scubabear68 1y ago
I am most likely ADHD, probably in the spectrum to some degree. Tried college three times and dropped out every time due to expense, boredom, and personal issues like my father passing away from cancer when I was 21. I went into software development via tech support for a C compiler company, and worked up from there. Worked for the NY stock exchange, two top tier brokerages, several prominent Fintechs and ultimately consulting into banks and payments companies. It worked for me because I am largely an auto didact and do terribly in a school environment. The lack of degree came up only a few times, and no one has cared. At least in software development careers, degree matters very little to not at all.
- platevoltage 1y ago
  Thank you for sharing, besides losing a family member at such a crucial age (which I'm sorry you had to go through), I feel like I'm in the same group here. I'm definitely on an upward trajectory, but have been a little worried that I'm approaching the glass ceiling.
charlesrocket 1y ago
Sounds like a good way to separate oneself from a disgusting, greed-driven, and fake environment. Not to mention that for-profit education institutions have zero interest in your skill set—it's your money they want, not your success. I would probably enjoy studying CS in Norway, though.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
throwaway314155 1y ago
> What's more valuable is the network and access to the alumni network of others who will hire you into their company just because you went to the same school as them. It's a big club The size and value of this club of alums depends _entirely_ on where you went to school. Not everyone gets into MIT.
sarchertech 1y ago
I worked for several years as a software dev before I went back to school for my CS degree. I’m a much better developer after spending 3 years (already had 90 hours worth of a history degree) studying a prepared curriculum instead of bouncing around learning about whatever interested me. I think it’s possible to do that on your own but the vast majority of people will never come close. I’ve also definitely worked with self taught programmers who were better than me. But I’ve also noticed gaps they had and to a person I think they’d have been even better if they’d spent 4 years in a decent CS program.
- tayo42 1y ago
  > 4 years in a decent CS program Half of that is gen eds, another quarter is like math requirements. Then you have stuff like intro to python making up the CS part. Most of that time is wasted imo
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    You could AP or CLEP your way out of the majority of your general education classes if you're motivated. But ignoring that, a huge and often overlooked component of understanding is time. You need the entire 3 or 4 years even if technically you could cram all your CS classes into 2 (well you really couldn't because of dependencies). If you do it right, you'll have CS classes mixed in with your other classes, so that you'll pretty much always be studying CS over the entire 4 years. In a decent CS program, you'll also spend far more time on CS projects out of class than you will on homework in other classes. The average person will probably spend 75% of their total active time on CS classes. As far as intro classes go, there was maybe 1 class where I learned almost nothing and I had been programming professionally for a while before I went back. The whole point for me was to fill in the gaps of things I didn't know I didn't know.
  - dahart 1y ago
    What school are you thinking of? I’ve never met someone whose CS degree consisted of intro to Python, and I’ve been interviewing people with CS degrees for a couple of decades. Mine included a year of introductory CS (basic algorithms and data structures) in Lisp, a year of advanced algorithms & data structures in C/C++, a year of OS’s and compilers in C++, a year of computer graphics, a year of hardware and CPU design, a year of theoretical CS, a year of software engineering (with a senior project), classes on discrete math, databases, networking, computer vision, and scientific visualization. I think I’m missing a bunch there too. The math & physics requirements were super useful to this day both in my CS career and in life, and the credit hours overlapped and counted for some of the gen eds, btw, which were maybe 25% of my time. The gen eds were also very useful and help shaped my thinking, I wish more programmers were into learning for learning’s sake and understood and cared about economics, government, history, art, music, etc. Strictly vocational / apprentice / work-experience education for CS would make the field generally worse not better IMO. I value my time spent in university. If none of that is convincing, just look up the average pay of people with and without degrees. Whether or not you enjoy learning and education or feel like the time is wasted, the sad fact is that the good jobs are being given to people with degrees, by and large. I honestly thought 4 year degrees probably gave, statistically, like maybe 15% pay advantage. That would be a pretty big boost, it’s already pushing 4 years of raises for most people. However, the reality published by The Fed is that people in the US with 4 year degrees earn twice what people without degrees earn. I was blown away when I learned that. It’s probably not fair, and it doesn’t mean people with degrees are smarter or harder working than people without, but that is the surprising reality of the job market.
1oooqooq 1y ago
the network is bs. I've seen people add "list of top universities" retirement to positions just because they're from the list and like to justify it. candidate came from the regular channels, no network of any sort involved. it was more vetting good candidates because of some exec diploma buyers remorse. but in the end, your comment is perfectly correct, but not for the reason you thought.
throwaway20174 1y ago
There is something that I find very often gets lost, not in this comment but in the general conversations. There are reasons to study CompSci that have nothing to do with trying to get a job, or make yourself a better worker. Namely, it's fun! You can be a lifetime student of it and can be very rewarding. Both the practical side (programming) and delving into the mathematical underpinnings (theory) and history of computation. News articles where people tell young people, "don't study computer science" don't get it.
monkeyelite 1y ago
> You are left with all the jobs the others don't want. I don’t think this is quite right. You may be left out of the very first choice jobs at the junior level, but it doesn’t mean you’re getting the bottom portion of jobs. I’m glad I went to school, I was on the fence. It improved my career, but i also know I could have found work my whole life without it. There’s a whole economy out there full of opportunity.
efficient3823 1y ago
> It's a big club and you won't be in it if you decide to self-study. That's the cold, hard truth. But what about the self-taught club? If it’s not already big, it’s definitely growing. Honestly, I can’t see how a Columbia graduate is more likely to get hired than a self-taught kid who’s had a few pull requests merged into something like the Linux kernel.

Eikon 1y ago

> It's a big club and you won't be in it if you decide to self-study. That's the cold, hard truth. This almost reads like conspiracy. There’s barely anything like that in reality, and the kind of network people finds at school is usually extremely weak. Otherwise, job boards wouldn’t exist.

beej71 1y ago
I think ones school network is what they make. Over my career I've gotten three jobs due to my school network. (It was a regular state university.) And I do think most people don't effectively leverage it.
luckylion 1y ago
Both your points do absolutely not mirror my experience. In traditional career paths (established company) a diploma helps a lot -- for some roles you won't even be considered otherwise. And your take on networks being useless is also strange. I work closely with people who have large and well-maintained networks, and the value they produce because of that is insane.
- Eikon 1y ago
  > Both your points do absolutely not mirror my experience. In traditional career paths (established company) a diploma helps a lot -- for some roles you won't even be considered otherwise. For a first job? Maybe. I don’t have one and it’s barely been a talking point back when I interviewed, regardless of company size.
IndubitableCoil 1y ago
I highly dispute this. Networks in college are absolutely a thing and absolutely advantageous. In my experience, the network didn't come from just sitting in class, but from extracurricular competition engineering/cs teams. Competition teams certainly helped many people get their first jobs through friends referring each other or elevated exposure to employers. In fact, recruiters would often have separate hiring events for the competition teams and then have the standard college hiring event. There's also an intangible effect from being surrounded by other highly motivated and mission driven students that you gain in these environments. I am sure there is a way to get involved in similar teams outside of college, but a well situated college significantly lowers the barrier to joining these teams and almost creates a funnel for it should you choose to spend your spare time in such as team.
- ghaff 1y ago
  >There's also an intangible effect from being surrounded by other highly motivated and mission driven students that you gain in these environments. I think that is absolutely true. But other than one thing (which was part of a class and was really great even if we didn't do well), didn't really do competition teams in any formal way other than some class groups. Certainly nothing involving separate hiring events.
colechristensen 1y ago
It depends on the school. I knew a few younger guys from Stanford and whatnot who were really into the idea of preferring hiring people from particular schools if not their own.

jsphweid 1y ago

Which companies are you talking about?

thenthenthen 1y ago
In my experience over the past 5 years in EU and Asia: Increasingly many companies wont even talk to you unless you have ‘a’ PhD. You dont need this piece of paper, but it is one hell of a life hack getting one.
- cortesoft 1y ago
  Are you trying to apply cold? The way it usually works is that someone you have worked with before vouches for you and that gets you past that screening.
  - thenthenthen 1y ago
    Never cold.
no_degree_a102 1y ago
American Express, Capital One, and Canonical to name a few. Aside from Unicorn and FAANG orgs self-taught is still predominantly forbidden.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  I'm self-taught. My first job I got lucky (or the grace of God, depending on your perspective). After that, it never mattered. I had experience, references, a track record. And the older you get, the longer the track record, and the more it outweighs the piece of paper. I'm primarily an embedded guy, though. If you're doing web apps, or desktop, or games, or phones, or high performance, or finance programming, your mileage may vary.
  - no_degree_a102 1y ago

electrolusty 1y ago

I don’t mean to discount your personal experience, but I’m 100% self taught, and I’ve worked at some bougie megacorps, unicorns and startups of varying degrees of maturity. I’ve never felt like doors have been closed or that others doubt me because of my lack of education. I’ve interviewed at Google and Citadel, had an offer from Meta, etc. It doesn’t feel like anyone has denied me opportunities outright. I make north of $200k/year cash plus the equity and perks at an early stage startup. I’ve been through two exits so far. Nothing outrageous but I’m rich by most peoples standards. It doesn’t feel like lack of schooling has impacted me financially. I did start programming and doing the startup thing at 19, so maybe the early start was an advantage. I could just be mind numbing lucky. But, from my point of view, warning the up and coming youngin’s off the self taught path is a disservice.

harrall 1y ago
I know friends in a similar boat. Ultimately you can get very far if you are naturally talented technically and socially. But if you are normal like most of us, you are lacking in one or more areas and going to school (or attending conferences or maintaining a popular resource) can be one of those ways to shore up one of your “less natural” skills, but no step is strictly required and not everything works for everyone.
- coderatlarge 1y ago
  “The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released data on unemployment rates for recent college graduates (ages 22 to 27). The bank found that philosophy had an unemployment rate of 3.2%, less than computer science’s 6.1%, though computer science was more highly compensated.” https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/college-majors-with-the-lowest-unemployment-rates-report/491781 https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/college-majors-wi...
  - whoopdedo 1y ago
    I expect there's some selection bias at play. If you're taking a philosophy major in college it's likely you already feel confident in your post-graduation career, so can study things that you like. Whereas if you're in a CS track it's because whether you get a job depends on getting a degree. The student studying philosophy is in school as an alternative to work. The STEM major is in school as a prerequisite to work.

cultofmetatron 1y ago

I'm somewhat sympathetic to this having been self taught myself. there was def a struggle in the beginning even getting low hanging jobs. It means you need to invest a lot of your off hours learning new stuff and getting ahead. a lot of university educated CS majors don't learn anything new after university and only put in just enough to do their job. being self taught means you need to be a lot more proactive about getting ahead of trends and being the guy on the frontlines where there isn't a whole lot of people that know a technology at all. I myself was lucky enough to jump on the javascript train before javascript ate the world. 8 years in I switched over to elixir because i saw in it the potential to be the best stack to build MVPs in. These days, I'm maintaining one of those projects as CTO and we are interviewing candidates for a position. I can tell you personally, I value what you did at your last job and your side projects more than what you did in university 10 years ago. The one issue as someone from the interviewing side is that it takes a lot of effort to actually do an interview properly. I spent a lot of time putting together a coding test to test specifically for the tasks you'd be workin on as well as doing it with our applicants to make sure they aren't using vibe coding to do a half assed job. Its worth it though to make sure we make the right hire. when you're a startup, every hire can potentially make or break the company.

colechristensen 1y ago

I don't have a degree and after the first few years no one cared at all from garage startups to the Fortune 100.

doublerabbit 1y ago

As someone who did go the self-taught route, I wouldn't say it's the route to take if you enjoy depth via academic, I dropped out of university. I'm a practical person and learn as I do, I disagree OP, it sucks you got that end of the straw. I have had it just as good as others but you just need to put the extra effort in. Yes, you do get jobs not so good as the grand but you cash in those later. The route up is just more steep but in the end you end up more valuable experience and within 15 years time you then can cash it all in for a fortune 100 company. As that's where I am and I am only in my mid-thirties You should go to college however if university isn't your thing, don't feel like your forever going to be an entry grade tech. The route is more steep but it's all worth it; just keep seeking higher jobs with every departure.

znpy 1y ago

If you worked in the industry for over 20 years and your network is weaker than a recent graduate, I wouldn’t blame it on the college, your networking game is just weak. As a college drop out, i have a few friends from university in the various big companies but none of my jobs came through them (even when i want to work in a faang: i just didn’t need it).

devwastaken 1y ago

unless youre ivy league theres no more connecting. universities are completely irrelevant to tech in modern day. people are talking about their experiences 20 years ago. now, its just expensive adult daycare. remove federal student loans and grants and the market will finally correct.

peterhadlaw 1y ago

I've been personally involved in the hiring process of our startup and I give you my word the school you went to makes no difference. In fact one of my favorite coworkers that I had an honor to work with was self taught and had a philosophy degree. In fact I've seen big school degrees go straight to heads and egos and been actively an obstacle to those folks.

tptacek 1y ago

Self taught, no degree, zero friction in the job market either early in my career (job offers on Wall Street and the startups I wanted to work with) or 25 years later; have done consulting work almost everywhere, and had offers from both big tech companies and unicorn startups. No investor has ever cared, either. The "you'll be stuck with all the jobs other people don't want" thing is risible.

cortesoft 1y ago
Yeah, I am very confused by this persons experience. I have never once seen anyone utilize their school network, either to get a job or to bring someone on; every time we get a referral, it is for someone who they have worked with before, not who they went to school with. I have worked with people for YEARS before i even learned that they have or don’t have a CS degree. I have interviewed many dozens of people, both as a hiring manager and a peer, and we only look at schooling if they have zero professional experience. In my experience, a degree can help you get your first job, but after that it is all about your work experience and the connections with the people you have worked with.
- tptacek 1y ago
  And when thinking about that first job you have to remember that you're burning 3-4 years of full-time work experience on the degree. That's a lot of time to fumble around and find your fit!
  - wglb 1y ago
    Commonly true, but in my five years of engineering school, in my summer after my freshman year, I was already employed in computer programming. The rest of my school had co-op periods during which I had summer stints in computer-programming-related jobs including at Bonneville Power Administration with a team working on computer monitoring of the system, with the idea that was to lead to control of that system; a stint as a co-op student at Wayerhauser Plup Bleach plant, working on a program to model the flow of pulp through a tower measuring the dose of chlorine-based bleach, working at a medical lab with odd jobs including generating a plot of a sensor measuring tremor in a patient's hand; working at an IBM sales office writing a program to measure the proper fill of a tanker truck based on the day's projected temperature, and finally as the first full-time employee of a company producing the first computer-based commercial electrocardiogram analysis service, all before graduation. My first job, of course, was prior to all that, driving various vehicles on my Dad's dryland wheat farm in northern Montana. So I feel that I was particularly lucky about finding good co-op positions, as many of my colleagues were at less interesting gigs at Motorolla, sorting resistors by color code. (Some of these are documented at https://ciex-software.com/ https://ciex-software.com/) Coming from a very small town, University was a bigger uptick than likely for kids growing up in the Big City.

nomat 1y ago

networking is important for sure, but i think software more than most other industries (say, finance) has a much lower barrier of entry for an individual with no/low resources. a data point for your second paragraph: i play D&D weekly with a woman that got hired at google straight out of high school and worked there for 10 years.

cortesoft 1y ago

> What's more valuable is the network and access to the alumni network of others who will hire you into their company just because you went to the same school as them. This seems completely untrue in my 20 year career experience. I have hired dozens of people for both large and small companies, and networks do matter… but I have never once seen the network be from school. It is always about people you have worked with before. Even my coworkers with degrees don’t have contact with their schoolmates anymore, it is always people they worked with.

brewdad 1y ago
It depends on the school and often aligns more closely with something like a fraternity. I have definitely known people who got their job through a frat brother’s recommendation or literally knowing the secret handshake.

zamadatix 1y ago

I found there is some truth to this but it was almost all in the beginning and/or if you expect to be in ~the bottom half of your peer group. After those criteria pass it comes down to your overall ability to network throughout life (not just from a college) and general chance/luck (which remains a larger factor than most would like to admit). What college can give you at the beginning of a career, beyond the premise of a guided education in the field of study, is a piece of paper that says "I really did learn some relevant stuff and have the ability to follow through" before you have a chance to prove these things in the field by already having had a job in it. It also gives you an initial chance to build a network but that's true of however you manage to spend your first 2-4 years getting into the field. After that initial in-field job or two the non-educational related value of a degree falls off a cliff (and the educational portion becomes an ever decreasing slice of job specific knowledge you acquire over decades). My anecdote (that's all it is) comes from starting out without a degree and then getting a degree for the fun of it over a decade later. It's provided 0 value in any job, they've all come from references or recommendations from people I've worked with previously at this point. It was fun though, a chance to get involved with topics you wouldn't normally have a reason to touch.

yapyap 1y ago

Yeah what you said BUT there’s also big opportunities in networking I know people hate to hear it cause it sounds like a magic bullet and it does and I don’t like having to market myself either but it does work. You don’t even really need to have an alumni for networking, just a few relatively nice / ok projects, a website and some business cards and you’re off!

rkagerer 1y ago

I feel this take on it is a little over-dramatized. I empathize with the first part - connections are priceless when you're staring out - but in time you can and will build a reputation for your quality of work, interactions with (and then capability to manage) others, and achievement of results. All these can be developed at a no-name startup as well as at a FAANG. I went to university but only apply maybe 5% of what I learned there in my day job. I founded and grew a company, also worked in senior roles at others. When I interview for engineering positions, I'm much more interested in other factors than what school you went to or who you've brushed shoulders with. I recognize parent commenter's experience may be different, and give solid props for their self-taught journey. (In fact someone who can figure things out without having to be spoon fed is exactly the kind of person I want on the team).

ghaff 1y ago
I'd probably argue that most people don't have (personal) connections starting out. Maybe, if they didn't go to the right school or school at all, someone they know is the foot in the door. >but in time you can and will build a reputation for your quality of work, interactions with (and then capability to manage) others, and achievement of results. That IS their network for a lot of people. OK maybe there are smaller companies that are 50% $SCHOOL grads. And there are other companies that tend to bias towards a certain group of schools. But I actually think that going to, say, Harvard is a secret handshake is overstated in a lot of cases. I sort of suspect that my undergrad may have had something to do with a job at one point but the fact that I got in through a senior person who liked my work played a lot bigger role.

cedws 1y ago

I also wouldn’t disregard the experience of university itself. I went the self-taught route, left school at 16, built a career for myself to get to where I am now at 24, but I do have regrets. Going into working in an office basically terminated my youth right there and I haven’t had a social circle since. Not having debt is nice but if you can afford university both in terms of time and money, and come from a family you can fall back on, I’d say just go. Once you start work there’s no going back. You’re in the cold hard world.

Scubabear68 1y ago

I am most likely ADHD, probably in the spectrum to some degree. Tried college three times and dropped out every time due to expense, boredom, and personal issues like my father passing away from cancer when I was 21. I went into software development via tech support for a C compiler company, and worked up from there. Worked for the NY stock exchange, two top tier brokerages, several prominent Fintechs and ultimately consulting into banks and payments companies. It worked for me because I am largely an auto didact and do terribly in a school environment. The lack of degree came up only a few times, and no one has cared. At least in software development careers, degree matters very little to not at all.

platevoltage 1y ago
Thank you for sharing, besides losing a family member at such a crucial age (which I'm sorry you had to go through), I feel like I'm in the same group here. I'm definitely on an upward trajectory, but have been a little worried that I'm approaching the glass ceiling.

charlesrocket 1y ago

Sounds like a good way to separate oneself from a disgusting, greed-driven, and fake environment. Not to mention that for-profit education institutions have zero interest in your skill set—it's your money they want, not your success. I would probably enjoy studying CS in Norway, though.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

throwaway314155 1y ago

> What's more valuable is the network and access to the alumni network of others who will hire you into their company just because you went to the same school as them. It's a big club The size and value of this club of alums depends _entirely_ on where you went to school. Not everyone gets into MIT.

sarchertech 1y ago

I worked for several years as a software dev before I went back to school for my CS degree. I’m a much better developer after spending 3 years (already had 90 hours worth of a history degree) studying a prepared curriculum instead of bouncing around learning about whatever interested me. I think it’s possible to do that on your own but the vast majority of people will never come close. I’ve also definitely worked with self taught programmers who were better than me. But I’ve also noticed gaps they had and to a person I think they’d have been even better if they’d spent 4 years in a decent CS program.

tayo42 1y ago
> 4 years in a decent CS program Half of that is gen eds, another quarter is like math requirements. Then you have stuff like intro to python making up the CS part. Most of that time is wasted imo
- sarchertech 1y ago
  You could AP or CLEP your way out of the majority of your general education classes if you're motivated. But ignoring that, a huge and often overlooked component of understanding is time. You need the entire 3 or 4 years even if technically you could cram all your CS classes into 2 (well you really couldn't because of dependencies). If you do it right, you'll have CS classes mixed in with your other classes, so that you'll pretty much always be studying CS over the entire 4 years. In a decent CS program, you'll also spend far more time on CS projects out of class than you will on homework in other classes. The average person will probably spend 75% of their total active time on CS classes. As far as intro classes go, there was maybe 1 class where I learned almost nothing and I had been programming professionally for a while before I went back. The whole point for me was to fill in the gaps of things I didn't know I didn't know.
- dahart 1y ago
  What school are you thinking of? I’ve never met someone whose CS degree consisted of intro to Python, and I’ve been interviewing people with CS degrees for a couple of decades. Mine included a year of introductory CS (basic algorithms and data structures) in Lisp, a year of advanced algorithms & data structures in C/C++, a year of OS’s and compilers in C++, a year of computer graphics, a year of hardware and CPU design, a year of theoretical CS, a year of software engineering (with a senior project), classes on discrete math, databases, networking, computer vision, and scientific visualization. I think I’m missing a bunch there too. The math & physics requirements were super useful to this day both in my CS career and in life, and the credit hours overlapped and counted for some of the gen eds, btw, which were maybe 25% of my time. The gen eds were also very useful and help shaped my thinking, I wish more programmers were into learning for learning’s sake and understood and cared about economics, government, history, art, music, etc. Strictly vocational / apprentice / work-experience education for CS would make the field generally worse not better IMO. I value my time spent in university. If none of that is convincing, just look up the average pay of people with and without degrees. Whether or not you enjoy learning and education or feel like the time is wasted, the sad fact is that the good jobs are being given to people with degrees, by and large. I honestly thought 4 year degrees probably gave, statistically, like maybe 15% pay advantage. That would be a pretty big boost, it’s already pushing 4 years of raises for most people. However, the reality published by The Fed is that people in the US with 4 year degrees earn twice what people without degrees earn. I was blown away when I learned that. It’s probably not fair, and it doesn’t mean people with degrees are smarter or harder working than people without, but that is the surprising reality of the job market.

1oooqooq 1y ago

the network is bs. I've seen people add "list of top universities" retirement to positions just because they're from the list and like to justify it. candidate came from the regular channels, no network of any sort involved. it was more vetting good candidates because of some exec diploma buyers remorse. but in the end, your comment is perfectly correct, but not for the reason you thought.

throwaway20174 1y ago

There is something that I find very often gets lost, not in this comment but in the general conversations. There are reasons to study CompSci that have nothing to do with trying to get a job, or make yourself a better worker. Namely, it's fun! You can be a lifetime student of it and can be very rewarding. Both the practical side (programming) and delving into the mathematical underpinnings (theory) and history of computation. News articles where people tell young people, "don't study computer science" don't get it.

monkeyelite 1y ago

> You are left with all the jobs the others don't want. I don’t think this is quite right. You may be left out of the very first choice jobs at the junior level, but it doesn’t mean you’re getting the bottom portion of jobs. I’m glad I went to school, I was on the fence. It improved my career, but i also know I could have found work my whole life without it. There’s a whole economy out there full of opportunity.

efficient3823 1y ago

> It's a big club and you won't be in it if you decide to self-study. That's the cold, hard truth. But what about the self-taught club? If it’s not already big, it’s definitely growing. Honestly, I can’t see how a Columbia graduate is more likely to get hired than a self-taught kid who’s had a few pull requests merged into something like the Linux kernel.