7 ms·

Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

30 points by thejteam 13y ago

icatchcows 13y ago
While a degree isn't necessary to become a developer, this article makes it sound like the average person can pick up a "how-to" book and become an employable web developer in a weekend or two. If this is true, I'd worry about the quality of developers joining the workforce.
- scotth 13y ago
  It doesn't actually. Take this quote -- > To say this occupation is attainable for anyone though is a bit of stretch. It still requires some math chops and long hours of practice. > "You have to be a self-starter to go along with this," Kenefick said. "In the beginning, it was literally all day and all night, day after day, I was practicing and building up my portfolio. I'm pretty sure it's more work than going to college." To be fair, that quote is right at the end of the article.
  - adaml_623 13y ago
    Ironic that the quote "I'm pretty sure it's more work than going to college." is from somebody who only spent a few weeks at university. (Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with dropping out)
    - delinka 13y ago
      Personally, I'd qualify "...more work..." as "...more work that I enjoy, and am good at..." I don't mind doing More Work. I mind doing Useless Work.
    - joonix 13y ago
      It doesn't take long to discover that university education is an inefficient sloth, a waste of time and basically a broken system for almost all majors.
      - VLM 13y ago
        Its incredibly good at educating, and fairly efficient. Training is better off at a vo-tech. Most of the people attending just want a credential proving they are trained, its their meal ticket. They're obviously not going to be huge fans of a liberal education curriculum. Yet their employers demand credentials from educational facilities not training facilities, so the 2-yr vo-tech is seen as toilet paper. Its a messed up situation. They make an excellent product, but most of the people going don't want it, but they can't get something else because the market demands they attend. Very much like complaining a 5-star restaurant sucks because they don't have cheap hamburgers and a drive-thru, or the reverse situation.
    - icatchcows 13y ago
      I would agree with the quote, learning a skill while going to college is very challenging. I found University to be great at teaching my how to learn and giving me the fundamentals, but I'm on my own if I want to learn specific skills.
- penland 13y ago
  I think you overestimate the quality of developer in the outside, "non-hacker-news" world. Labor is always the biggest outlay management worries about; if they don't have technical experience, there are tons of small to medium sized companies that will hire someone at 20$ or 30$ an hour with no degree to bang out bad GWT or jQuery. In the enterprise ( or small enterprise ) world, when was the last time a web dev needed to write a bloom filter in Go?
  - icatchcows 13y ago
    You're probably right. I try to surround myself with other people who are passionate about what they do and are trying to become better developers. Even if someone didn't have technical experience, banging out code at a small company could be the starting point, for someone who is driven, to develop their skills and attain that six figure position.
MechaJDI 13y ago
I think a more appropriate title would simply be "get paid lots of money for working hard and being good at something that's in demand" but it's not nearly as catchy. Seemingly, what's the case in the job market is that the degree is just the minimum required whereas your catalog of work shows that you weren't just following the trend of "fast growing/unfilled computer jobs". It seemed to work for me...
ryhanson 13y ago
Sounds a lot like my situation, except I didn't drop out, I finished out the associates degree so I could take the few programming classes I wanted. It took my two years, I got a little bit of college under my belt, got a job before I finished, and was only 18 when I graduated. I think experience and skill level speak higher than a degree in this field. I have hired people that don't have a degree, because they have a nice portfolio and have the skills I need.
- CapitalistCartr 13y ago
  I don't have a degree (I dropped out of college) and I make more than that. I'm good at what I do; its not easy, and its obscure.
citricsquid 13y ago
Since then, he has worked for Percolate, Vimeo and other startups, and now, at age 25, he's earning more than six figures. Six figures is $100,000 - $999,999. More than six figures = $1,000,000+.
- jonknee 13y ago
  It's worded poorly, but it means he's making more than $100k.
  - eclipxe 13y ago
    Clearly, but that is not what "more than six figures means".
    - jonknee 13y ago
      Not technically, but it does colloquially.
    - micheljansen 13y ago
      They mean "more than the lowest amount that has six figures" (which is 100,000), but they say "more than six figures", which implies seven or more figures, e.g. 1,000,000 or more. Yay for context ;)
- SatvikBeri 13y ago
  I know it's not precise, but most people parse "six figures" as $100,000. "Multiple six figures" = $200k or more and "more than (six figures)" just means > $100k. The reason this happens is because it's often considered gauche to talk about income directly. I know it's imprecise and annoying, but it's a lot faster to adapt to the way the rest of the world speaks than to try to get them to change.
patatino 13y ago
A lot of people ask my why I never got a degree. As a .net web developer I don't wan't so spend 4 years part time (no money for fulltime) studying java, because that's what you mostly learn in our country. Edit: I maybe should add theres nothing wrong with java. It's just not my choice that's all. And in my country (switzerland) the education system looks little bit different. I started a education at age 16 as software a developer. 2 days school, 3 days work at a software company for four years. Now you add some years of experience and there you are with no degree.. and that's why I wrote my first statement
- ikkyu 13y ago
  Whats wrong with Java? I am focusing most of my time on it. Bad decision?
  - powersurge360 13y ago
    Not really. It's actually kind of funny that a .NET programmer said that because Java and C# occupy many of the same niches, which is to say, heavy enterprise-y apps. But then that may be his point, that it would be redundant for him to learn a language so similar. Java isn't a bad decision but I 100% believe you should try as many languages as possible, especially from different paradigms. Every language has something to like and most have something you can bring back to your primary language to be more productive. Happy trails!
  - patatino 13y ago
    there is absolutely nothing wrong with java. I just rather spend my time focusing on the technology I like more and I want to work with.
  - rubinelli 13y ago
    You can do the same kind of project and get the same kind of job with .Net or Java. It really doesn't add much to your toolbox, although picking up one after you know the other doesn't take much time.
  - nbouscal 13y ago
nicholassmith 13y ago
Missing at the end of the title 'as long as you're willing to work your ass off getting good at it'. There might be a shortage in the talent pool but I can't see lots of companies taking on crap devs to put bums in seats.
- TheCowboy 13y ago
  These articles seem to frequently discount the hard work part of the equation, and make it sound like anyone can pick up a keyboard and get a job. The "no degree, no problem" idea isn't backed up by my personal experience. I wish it were that easy, but I still find myself struggling to break in. I've been told by temp agencies that my associates degree is worthless here as well. I wish I had known over a year ago that the most important thing is having enough savings and time to start with so you can build up a portfolio, and disregard the sentiment that if you don't know algos then you're second-rate and don't cut it. For awhile I've been in a position where it's hard to focus on projects that would make me stand out because I'm distracted working weird hours part-time for minimum wage. While I'm getting more contract work, it still is just a trickle, and seems to be more of a distraction than it's worth sometimes. Additionally, most entry-level positions I've encountered seem to want someone who is a designer/developer hybrid rather than a developer. I live in Washington, DC, so it could just be that the market here has a enough of a concentration of CS grads and experienced developers to not need to bother with people who are junior and lack a CS background.
  - bluedino 13y ago
    > The "no degree, no problem" idea isn't backed up by my personal experience. I wish it were that easy, but I still find myself struggling to break in. I've found in a lot of companies in middle America, it's nearly impossible to get in with out a BS. Even if you know someone. The smaller companies will often take you but the pay and benefits are usually lower. On the other hand, they're more likely to have flexible schedules, allow working from home, and not have a dress code.
nbouscal 13y ago
This is not necessarily a good thing for the web development field. This is how you end up with people with large gaps in their knowledge responsible for parts of your codebase. To be clear, it is entirely possible to be self-taught and learn everything you need to know. I'm self-taught, and I like to think I've filled in most of the gaps by now. I've also worked with a few self-taught people who make me feel like a novice. However, I've also encountered numerous self-taught people, working in industry on real projects, who have gaps in their knowledge significant enough to cripple a company if left unsupervised. Things like not knowing what SQL injection is, not knowing what version control is, never having heard of unit tests, etc. College curricula in other fields generally make sure that you at least encounter every essential part of the field. Without that safety net, you have to do that research yourself, and many self-taught people don't take that extra step. EDIT: Judging from the comments I need to clarify. I'm not saying that CS programs in college teach you these things. I'm saying that in other fields, your college curriculum will make sure you encounter everything you need to.
- readme 13y ago
  >Things like not knowing what SQL injection is, not knowing what version control is, never having heard of unit tests, etc. These things are more commonly learned in the field than in school. When people don't know, teach. Don't sit there and gripe about how they might cripple the company. Your anecdotes are irrelevant. There are just as many people with CS degrees who would get stumped on one of the three things above. Web development doesn't even require a CS degree. You just need to know your way around databases, patterns, be neat and meticulous, and write code that's generally more efficient than O(n^2). After all, you admit that you're self-taught. universities are no silver bullet.
  - nbouscal 13y ago
    I've also run into people who don't know what a transaction or foreign-key constraint is, and who don't know what big-Oh notation even means. I agree that web development doesn't require a CS degree, and I agree that CS degrees don't teach you the main things you need to know. What I'm saying is that that is a negative indicator of the state of the profession. We don't have a proper degree program, so we hire self-taught people, but we don't have any standard way of determining if those self-taught people actually know what they're doing. The problem isn't with self-teaching per se, but with the complete lack of standardization. One method of standardizing a professional education is to route it through college, but as you've noted, CS degrees don't accomplish that for aspiring web developers. Another way is certifications, but we don't really have any of those either. I'm not arguing for any particular solution, I'm just arguing that there is a problem.
sanxiyn 13y ago
I don't have a bachelor's degree, but I get paid to write a compiler! How cool.
- bluedino 13y ago
  I doubt many of these self-taught guys are writing compilers. They're mostly doing CRUD apps or 'plain old web development'.
- jere 13y ago
  Neat. I'm curious how you learned compilers. Books? On the job?
minimax 13y ago
"Nobody really cares about your education in this field -- it's can you do it, or can you not?" Is this unique to software development? Like, if I wanted to break into the fast paced world of industrial fastener sales would prospective employers be worried about my undergraduate degree? My experience on both sides of the interview table has been that after a few (2-3?) years of working in a field, your professional experience counts for much more than your academic credentials. I don't think it's unique to web development.
- jonknee 13y ago
  No, but if you wanted to actually design the industrial fasteners your education would probably be questioned. That's more akin to software development.
  - sanxiyn 13y ago
    To me software development seems more akin to (say) game art design. As long as you can program (or draw) -- which can be checked by portfolio -- education is less important.
    - randomdata 13y ago
      If you have a great portfolio of designing fasteners as a hobby, couldn't the same be said of that job? To me, it is a matter of supply and demand. When the talent pool is larger than the demand for talent, there is a need to find a way to filter the hiring application results down to something that is manageable. A degree has become the defacto standard for doing that. It doesn't matter if you throw out great people with the bath water doing that, because you still have a ton of great people to choose from. Web development, and software development in general, have been through a fairly lengthy period of demand outpacing supply, leaving many companies without the need to arbitrarily reduce their application result set. That gives them the ability to evaluate all applicants as the normally would, just without the arbitrary filter to start.
    - nbouscal 13y ago
      I think you're right that we treat it that way, and I think that it's a problem. If you missed out on learning something about game art design, the worst that can happen is the game art isn't quite as good as it could have been. If you missed out on learning something about software development, you can cause significant economic damage. You can check portfolio for basic programming ability, but it's non-trivial to check for all of the other supplemental knowledge.
sabalaba 13y ago
This is the market at work. A massive demand for web development combined with a low supply of competent engineers leads to high salaries relative to the amount of time you need to invest to command such a salary. This leads to entities like Dev Bootcamp and Coursera charging to provide the necessary training, they can also command a hefty bonus for making a hiring referral. An influx of newly minted developers enter the market, prices go down as the supply curve slides to the right.
munchbunny 13y ago
Without a bachelor's degree, you can be quite a good developer. I've seen plenty of such people, but they've all had several years of self-learning and experience, often substantially more than their college-trained comrades. I wish the article would get that across - in lieu of a degree, you had to have spent years programming on your own time.
zavulon 13y ago
This reads like an article from 1997.
spankermonkey 13y ago
I'm studying software engineering and also working as a junior web developer. Realistically speaking I'd have to quit my job to be able to finish my school. The problem is, I view school as a waste of time. Teachers don't know about SQL injection and don't teach unit testing. I learn more efficiently on my own. It's scary how big gaps there'd be in my knowledge if I relied only on the stuff school taught me. The reason I applied to a developer position in the first place was boredom in school(and financial stress). At work I've been learning a lot more and IMO worked on more interesting projects than most of my class mates at their internships. It's school or work for me but I fear that lacking a bachelor's degree means I can't advance to more challenging programming positions or that nobody would hire me outside of my current company. Nothing would stop me from starting my own business tho.

30 points by thejteam 13y ago

While a degree isn't necessary to become a developer, this article makes it sound like the average person can pick up a "how-to" book and become an employable web developer in a weekend or two. If this is true, I'd worry about the quality of developers joining the workforce.

scotth 13y ago
It doesn't actually. Take this quote -- > To say this occupation is attainable for anyone though is a bit of stretch. It still requires some math chops and long hours of practice. > "You have to be a self-starter to go along with this," Kenefick said. "In the beginning, it was literally all day and all night, day after day, I was practicing and building up my portfolio. I'm pretty sure it's more work than going to college." To be fair, that quote is right at the end of the article.
- adaml_623 13y ago
  Ironic that the quote "I'm pretty sure it's more work than going to college." is from somebody who only spent a few weeks at university. (Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with dropping out)
  - delinka 13y ago
    Personally, I'd qualify "...more work..." as "...more work that I enjoy, and am good at..." I don't mind doing More Work. I mind doing Useless Work.
  - joonix 13y ago
    It doesn't take long to discover that university education is an inefficient sloth, a waste of time and basically a broken system for almost all majors.
    - VLM 13y ago
      Its incredibly good at educating, and fairly efficient. Training is better off at a vo-tech. Most of the people attending just want a credential proving they are trained, its their meal ticket. They're obviously not going to be huge fans of a liberal education curriculum. Yet their employers demand credentials from educational facilities not training facilities, so the 2-yr vo-tech is seen as toilet paper. Its a messed up situation. They make an excellent product, but most of the people going don't want it, but they can't get something else because the market demands they attend. Very much like complaining a 5-star restaurant sucks because they don't have cheap hamburgers and a drive-thru, or the reverse situation.
  - icatchcows 13y ago
    I would agree with the quote, learning a skill while going to college is very challenging. I found University to be great at teaching my how to learn and giving me the fundamentals, but I'm on my own if I want to learn specific skills.
penland 13y ago
I think you overestimate the quality of developer in the outside, "non-hacker-news" world. Labor is always the biggest outlay management worries about; if they don't have technical experience, there are tons of small to medium sized companies that will hire someone at 20$ or 30$ an hour with no degree to bang out bad GWT or jQuery. In the enterprise ( or small enterprise ) world, when was the last time a web dev needed to write a bloom filter in Go?
- icatchcows 13y ago
  You're probably right. I try to surround myself with other people who are passionate about what they do and are trying to become better developers. Even if someone didn't have technical experience, banging out code at a small company could be the starting point, for someone who is driven, to develop their skills and attain that six figure position.

MechaJDI 13y ago

I think a more appropriate title would simply be "get paid lots of money for working hard and being good at something that's in demand" but it's not nearly as catchy. Seemingly, what's the case in the job market is that the degree is just the minimum required whereas your catalog of work shows that you weren't just following the trend of "fast growing/unfilled computer jobs". It seemed to work for me...

ryhanson 13y ago

Sounds a lot like my situation, except I didn't drop out, I finished out the associates degree so I could take the few programming classes I wanted. It took my two years, I got a little bit of college under my belt, got a job before I finished, and was only 18 when I graduated. I think experience and skill level speak higher than a degree in this field. I have hired people that don't have a degree, because they have a nice portfolio and have the skills I need.

CapitalistCartr 13y ago
I don't have a degree (I dropped out of college) and I make more than that. I'm good at what I do; its not easy, and its obscure.

citricsquid 13y ago

Since then, he has worked for Percolate, Vimeo and other startups, and now, at age 25, he's earning more than six figures. Six figures is $100,000 - $999,999. More than six figures = $1,000,000+.

jonknee 13y ago
It's worded poorly, but it means he's making more than $100k.
- eclipxe 13y ago
  Clearly, but that is not what "more than six figures means".
  - jonknee 13y ago
    Not technically, but it does colloquially.
  - micheljansen 13y ago
    They mean "more than the lowest amount that has six figures" (which is 100,000), but they say "more than six figures", which implies seven or more figures, e.g. 1,000,000 or more. Yay for context ;)
SatvikBeri 13y ago
I know it's not precise, but most people parse "six figures" as $100,000. "Multiple six figures" = $200k or more and "more than (six figures)" just means > $100k. The reason this happens is because it's often considered gauche to talk about income directly. I know it's imprecise and annoying, but it's a lot faster to adapt to the way the rest of the world speaks than to try to get them to change.

patatino 13y ago

A lot of people ask my why I never got a degree. As a .net web developer I don't wan't so spend 4 years part time (no money for fulltime) studying java, because that's what you mostly learn in our country. Edit: I maybe should add theres nothing wrong with java. It's just not my choice that's all. And in my country (switzerland) the education system looks little bit different. I started a education at age 16 as software a developer. 2 days school, 3 days work at a software company for four years. Now you add some years of experience and there you are with no degree.. and that's why I wrote my first statement

ikkyu 13y ago
Whats wrong with Java? I am focusing most of my time on it. Bad decision?
- powersurge360 13y ago
  Not really. It's actually kind of funny that a .NET programmer said that because Java and C# occupy many of the same niches, which is to say, heavy enterprise-y apps. But then that may be his point, that it would be redundant for him to learn a language so similar. Java isn't a bad decision but I 100% believe you should try as many languages as possible, especially from different paradigms. Every language has something to like and most have something you can bring back to your primary language to be more productive. Happy trails!
- patatino 13y ago
  there is absolutely nothing wrong with java. I just rather spend my time focusing on the technology I like more and I want to work with.
- rubinelli 13y ago
  You can do the same kind of project and get the same kind of job with .Net or Java. It really doesn't add much to your toolbox, although picking up one after you know the other doesn't take much time.
- nbouscal 13y ago

nicholassmith 13y ago

Missing at the end of the title 'as long as you're willing to work your ass off getting good at it'. There might be a shortage in the talent pool but I can't see lots of companies taking on crap devs to put bums in seats.

TheCowboy 13y ago
These articles seem to frequently discount the hard work part of the equation, and make it sound like anyone can pick up a keyboard and get a job. The "no degree, no problem" idea isn't backed up by my personal experience. I wish it were that easy, but I still find myself struggling to break in. I've been told by temp agencies that my associates degree is worthless here as well. I wish I had known over a year ago that the most important thing is having enough savings and time to start with so you can build up a portfolio, and disregard the sentiment that if you don't know algos then you're second-rate and don't cut it. For awhile I've been in a position where it's hard to focus on projects that would make me stand out because I'm distracted working weird hours part-time for minimum wage. While I'm getting more contract work, it still is just a trickle, and seems to be more of a distraction than it's worth sometimes. Additionally, most entry-level positions I've encountered seem to want someone who is a designer/developer hybrid rather than a developer. I live in Washington, DC, so it could just be that the market here has a enough of a concentration of CS grads and experienced developers to not need to bother with people who are junior and lack a CS background.
- bluedino 13y ago
  > The "no degree, no problem" idea isn't backed up by my personal experience. I wish it were that easy, but I still find myself struggling to break in. I've found in a lot of companies in middle America, it's nearly impossible to get in with out a BS. Even if you know someone. The smaller companies will often take you but the pay and benefits are usually lower. On the other hand, they're more likely to have flexible schedules, allow working from home, and not have a dress code.

nbouscal 13y ago

This is not necessarily a good thing for the web development field. This is how you end up with people with large gaps in their knowledge responsible for parts of your codebase. To be clear, it is entirely possible to be self-taught and learn everything you need to know. I'm self-taught, and I like to think I've filled in most of the gaps by now. I've also worked with a few self-taught people who make me feel like a novice. However, I've also encountered numerous self-taught people, working in industry on real projects, who have gaps in their knowledge significant enough to cripple a company if left unsupervised. Things like not knowing what SQL injection is, not knowing what version control is, never having heard of unit tests, etc. College curricula in other fields generally make sure that you at least encounter every essential part of the field. Without that safety net, you have to do that research yourself, and many self-taught people don't take that extra step. EDIT: Judging from the comments I need to clarify. I'm not saying that CS programs in college teach you these things. I'm saying that in other fields, your college curriculum will make sure you encounter everything you need to.

readme 13y ago
>Things like not knowing what SQL injection is, not knowing what version control is, never having heard of unit tests, etc. These things are more commonly learned in the field than in school. When people don't know, teach. Don't sit there and gripe about how they might cripple the company. Your anecdotes are irrelevant. There are just as many people with CS degrees who would get stumped on one of the three things above. Web development doesn't even require a CS degree. You just need to know your way around databases, patterns, be neat and meticulous, and write code that's generally more efficient than O(n^2). After all, you admit that you're self-taught. universities are no silver bullet.
- nbouscal 13y ago
  I've also run into people who don't know what a transaction or foreign-key constraint is, and who don't know what big-Oh notation even means. I agree that web development doesn't require a CS degree, and I agree that CS degrees don't teach you the main things you need to know. What I'm saying is that that is a negative indicator of the state of the profession. We don't have a proper degree program, so we hire self-taught people, but we don't have any standard way of determining if those self-taught people actually know what they're doing. The problem isn't with self-teaching per se, but with the complete lack of standardization. One method of standardizing a professional education is to route it through college, but as you've noted, CS degrees don't accomplish that for aspiring web developers. Another way is certifications, but we don't really have any of those either. I'm not arguing for any particular solution, I'm just arguing that there is a problem.

sanxiyn 13y ago

I don't have a bachelor's degree, but I get paid to write a compiler! How cool.

bluedino 13y ago
I doubt many of these self-taught guys are writing compilers. They're mostly doing CRUD apps or 'plain old web development'.
jere 13y ago
Neat. I'm curious how you learned compilers. Books? On the job?

minimax 13y ago

"Nobody really cares about your education in this field -- it's can you do it, or can you not?" Is this unique to software development? Like, if I wanted to break into the fast paced world of industrial fastener sales would prospective employers be worried about my undergraduate degree? My experience on both sides of the interview table has been that after a few (2-3?) years of working in a field, your professional experience counts for much more than your academic credentials. I don't think it's unique to web development.

jonknee 13y ago
No, but if you wanted to actually design the industrial fasteners your education would probably be questioned. That's more akin to software development.
- sanxiyn 13y ago
  To me software development seems more akin to (say) game art design. As long as you can program (or draw) -- which can be checked by portfolio -- education is less important.
  - randomdata 13y ago
    If you have a great portfolio of designing fasteners as a hobby, couldn't the same be said of that job? To me, it is a matter of supply and demand. When the talent pool is larger than the demand for talent, there is a need to find a way to filter the hiring application results down to something that is manageable. A degree has become the defacto standard for doing that. It doesn't matter if you throw out great people with the bath water doing that, because you still have a ton of great people to choose from. Web development, and software development in general, have been through a fairly lengthy period of demand outpacing supply, leaving many companies without the need to arbitrarily reduce their application result set. That gives them the ability to evaluate all applicants as the normally would, just without the arbitrary filter to start.
  - nbouscal 13y ago
    I think you're right that we treat it that way, and I think that it's a problem. If you missed out on learning something about game art design, the worst that can happen is the game art isn't quite as good as it could have been. If you missed out on learning something about software development, you can cause significant economic damage. You can check portfolio for basic programming ability, but it's non-trivial to check for all of the other supplemental knowledge.

sabalaba 13y ago

This is the market at work. A massive demand for web development combined with a low supply of competent engineers leads to high salaries relative to the amount of time you need to invest to command such a salary. This leads to entities like Dev Bootcamp and Coursera charging to provide the necessary training, they can also command a hefty bonus for making a hiring referral. An influx of newly minted developers enter the market, prices go down as the supply curve slides to the right.

munchbunny 13y ago

Without a bachelor's degree, you can be quite a good developer. I've seen plenty of such people, but they've all had several years of self-learning and experience, often substantially more than their college-trained comrades. I wish the article would get that across - in lieu of a degree, you had to have spent years programming on your own time.

zavulon 13y ago

This reads like an article from 1997.

spankermonkey 13y ago

I'm studying software engineering and also working as a junior web developer. Realistically speaking I'd have to quit my job to be able to finish my school. The problem is, I view school as a waste of time. Teachers don't know about SQL injection and don't teach unit testing. I learn more efficiently on my own. It's scary how big gaps there'd be in my knowledge if I relied only on the stuff school taught me. The reason I applied to a developer position in the first place was boredom in school(and financial stress). At work I've been learning a lot more and IMO worked on more interesting projects than most of my class mates at their internships. It's school or work for me but I fear that lacking a bachelor's degree means I can't advance to more challenging programming positions or that nobody would hire me outside of my current company. Nothing would stop me from starting my own business tho.