As someone who was self-taught and then changed my degree to CS, I think one thing that shows that someone learned by themselves is that they thrive without for

As someone who was self-taught and then changed my degree to CS, I think one thing that shows that someone learned by themselves is that they thrive without formal deadlines. I see some fresh grads struggling when going to a professional environment where no professor is saying "I want <product> done by <deadline date>". I think this is why some undergrads also struggled a lot when our role became remote. Suddenly, no one went to their desks for check-ins to see how their work was doing. The code was rushed at the end of the sprint to make it to the "professor's deadline." At the same time, self-taught people generally succeeded because they are more oriented towards a "delivering when possible" and "pushing myself to learn" mentality. After 3 years of experience, I think this equals out, unless you talk about lower-level CS concepts like mutexes, big O, or something they generally don't need to know for their daily job.