I'm surprised at this. If you have 10-15 years of programming experience, why would anyone still care if you have a degree? To me, it would seem like it would matter less as you got older.
Can anyone comment or provide insight? Thanks.
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.
"I'm in my 40s now, and in my career, not having a degree has NEVER been the slightest problem. "
I know plenty of people where it has been a problem. If I'm looking at two potential job candidates with exact same experience but one has a college degree and the other doesn't, guess which one I'm going to hire?
"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. "
nice. So you are lumping in people that go to college as less talented than you. You have no proof of this.
I went to college and got a degree. I've also been living and breathing code since I was 10. Most developers that I know that didn't go to college know don't know many of the theories behind algorithms and data types. Very few, for example, built their own compiler using their own simple language. Outside of academia, this has no practical application (unless you are building your own language) and most people are too busy with work or their own personal projects to work on something like this.
"But I think a lot of people with degrees develop a prejudice against those who don't have them."
Kind of like you develop a prejudice against people that have them?
"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.)"
Right. You were too smart to finish college.
"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 isn't a trade school. Also, this is why we have internships. Most people have already worked at a few large companies by their Senior year.
"I personally would probably give a little more weight to someone who is self taught, but of course"
Because you are prejudice against someone with a degree. It's obvious throughout all of your rants.
" I think its wrong of people who do discriminate against those who don't have a degree"
You are just as bad with your discrimination.
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+.
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.
Not many, and people who go into these areas spend those years doing that concentrated study as part of their job. The distributed systems work I did years ago for a startup made me one of 12 people in the world with that level of understanding at the time... now years later when distributed systems are "all the rage" every kid coming out of college thinks they know what they're doing but doesn't actually understand it.
>i'm 99% certain the only training left in the world
You're completely wrong. College doesn't even get close to teaching the state of the art. Graduate level can get close to the state of the art in a very narrow area, when you're working on your PhD, and sometimes this is highly relevant to the profession but often it isn't.
>software engineering is an odd exception to the rule that most jobs require credentials.
Most jobs require credentials for the same reason that most hats haze initiates, and once initiated those very same people are eager to engage in the hazing. It has nothing to do with ability, it is simply a mark of having an experience. The reality is, if you jump into a startup and spend those four years building a business, you'll have far more knowledge than you would get obtaining that credential.
>but there are areas of software engineering where self-training is impossible that are absolutely necessary when creating certain products.
I've hear this lots of times but never really any good examples. And in my experience, people with college degrees do not have the level of knowledge and expertise that I did, at the same time in my career. (e.g.: 4 years in.) Worse, I think this is getting worse, as college CS programs seem to be becoming less effective over the years.
And the really state of the art stuff- you don't get in college anyway as an undergrad and if you're a graduate student you're reading the same things that people doing it on the job are reading.
That's simply not true. Your co-workers and colleagues may not know or care. Your boss and her boss may not know or care. (Although to be candid I suspect more of them both know and are at least a little influenced by it than you seem to think.) But if you're working in a large enough organization (and "large enough" is getting smaller all the time), at the very least someone in the HR department is going to both know and care. You may not qualify for a given job or promotion. You may not get paid as much as you otherwise would. You stand a moderately good chance of being caught if you try to lie about it. (Background checks-as-a-service are out there and getting cheaper just like everything else.)
I was not being silently discriminated against because I was rising faster than my peers almost all the time.
The market forces companies to do this because if they don't treat their employees well- particularly their employees with ability- then these employees will go somewhere that does.
Frankly, there's no reason to lie either. Having a college degree shows a certain timidity and inability to think for oneself, to me anyway. I'll cut someone slack for it when hiring because at that age you don't necessarily need to be that certain about yourself.
Meanwhile I got to fly to San Francisco (which was my first flying experience) and do a StartupBus hackathon sponsored by Intel and won 2nd place.
Money got really tight for awhile and then I got desperate and somehow (thanks to HN) an awesome job with a Harvard startup popped up and I've been doing that going on 6 months now. Meanwhile I got in the door of an awesome local development firm and have been doing projects with them on the side.
On top of that I stumbled into a guy looking to build out an app he had in mind and for the past two months we've been working with that on the side and just got accepted into an incubator for the summer term (TechStars in my local city.)
Now whether you drop out and never go back, or take a year off or whatever, I've gotten real world experience and have an excellent job and I'm just 18. I committed this time that I didn't go to college to doing what I love and learning all I can. That was my goal. And now it's paid off. I can't stress this enough. College gives you some connections (depending on the college) and a lot of book knowledge but I just said you know what I'm just going out there and doing it and it's worked well for me so far. I don't know how this will treat me 20 years from now, but I can say one thing, I'm happy doing what I'm doing and I try not to take that for granted.
For example:
1) Are you a developer? If so, do you ever find yourself missing the knowledge about low-level computer science? Let's say, how operating systems and filesystems are built under the covers, the internals of database systems, various algorithms that help solve problems quicker, etc. Do you see yourself working on problems that require this sort of knowledge in the future?
2) Are you a designer? If so, do you find yourself missing knowledge about various theories of UX that you wouldn't know even exist unless you'd learn them from a professor? I am not a designer, so I can't speak the vocabulary, but I am sure there's a significant amount of theoretical knowledge in the field that is not useful right away; so, I wonder, do you ever come to a point where you actually need that kind of knowledge?
Thanks.
You seem to be assuming that someone who hasn't gotten a college degree doesn't have this knowledge. I've spent a fair bit of time over the past 4 years reading hacker news. I'd say the demographic of the hacker news commentator is generally a few years out of college. At that age, I knew more about how operating systems and filesystems worked, the internals of databases, and had a bigger collection of algorithms to draw on than the average hacker news commentator does.
I'm sure there are a lot of people who get CS degrees who never programmed a computer before college, and so, for them it is like a profession that they chose, and all their knowledge comes from college. For them, it probably seems baffling that someone right out of high school might get a CS job because they wouldn't know anything, right?
This isn't the case for hackers. Hackers started hacking as soon as they were told what software (or hardware) was and that there was some mechanism that made it work.
Designers don't learn about UX in school (I don't think, maybe I'm wrong).
Part of the reason college doesn't do so well is its serving some imagined "noble" ideal of what people should learn, rather than teaching practical knowledge.
So, you avoid-- what $200k?-- in college tuition cost and instead earn something like $200k over those four years, and if you're wise, you might save half or a quarter of that.
And after 4 years you have 4 years of experience and could be a senior software developer while your peers who went to college would be still be entry level. So in the 5th year, I think you'll get a significantly better salary than a newly minted college graduate.
At least that's my experience.
I don't think skipping college is necessarily a bad choice for some people, including you, but you are exhibiting a common trait of people who've been reasonably successful irregardless of the fact that they ended their formal education early, which is that they aren't aware of the shortcoming of their understanding of the world. In your case, I'll point out that most people end up working for 30-40 years, an early lead can fade.
Also, new grads from a good CS program can start well over $50k year these days, and many of them will have paid well-under full-price for tuition.
My story: I dropped out of MIT to stay at my summer internship. However, the company tanked (this was at a finance company, summer of '08), and my team was pretty much disbanded, so I went looking for a new job. Luckily, one of my team members had just gone back to his old job where he was a manager, so he was able to vouch for my awesomeness and hire me (despite extreme reluctance -- I'd gotten told multiple times by both recruiters and other engineering folks that they wouldn't be able to hire me full-time).
Unfortunately, the company turned out to be a terrible place to work, so I quit after a couple months. And from then on out, I had a really difficult time getting a job. People would say they had a company policy saying they couldn't hire drop outs, but they'd love me as an intern, or they'd tell me point-blank that I had great technical skills, but they were worried about my ability to "commit".
After all, I was a fresh young kid with very few connections, so it'd always be some clueless recruiter deciding whether to pass on my resume or not. Maybe your experience will be different if you have better connections or if you're the type of person who can network well.
Luckily, I have a great job now, but my experience was a big shock. I'd always thought that people in Silicon Valley didn't give a fuck about whether you had a degree or not, but this was definitely not true in my case.
People look at your whole resume for patterns, not just each individual section in isolation. Dropping out can be either good or bad - it depends on what you do afterwards.
No doubt that first 4 years (when others are in college) you have to work hard- its not easy, and in many ways, college is the easier choice, as not much is expected of you (By comparison).
Those 4 years you probably want to keep any job you get and work your tail off to impress them. You can't yet be choosy.... but after those four years you will have paid your dues while the college graduates won't have.
Not going to college would have only stunted my growth and left me staring down the same potential paths. College forces you to be exposed to the world in ways that a typical job can't.
The question shouldn't be: to go or not to go to college? It should be "when?". Taking a year off to travel or volunteer is an excellent idea; going to work for some random startup isn't.
EDIT: some more thoughts:
- programming as we know it today may not exist in 20 years. The 100k+ salaries and limitless job openings won't last forever, and you may be stuck with nothing but work experience in a field that's changed significantly.
- college isn't that difficult. I'm not sure what schools you can get into (or are planning on getting into) but unless it's Stanford, MIT, or Ivy League (or other top 20 schools), you'll probably be able to build a startup on the side. If you can get into a top 20 school, go, no questions asked. A little startup isn't worth screwing up that experience.
You may be right, but I see the phrase above as code for "college graduates discriminate against people without degrees". Notice you didn't say "You'll need the skills a degree gives you". The reality is, you can get skills in a variety of ways. Most people who switch careers don't do thinks they have no skills in, they find a better use for the skills they do have.
I don't see how college forces you to be exposed to the world, as in college you're just continuing the insular educational perspective of high school. Sure, its a little broader, but its still the ivory tower perspective. Going out and getting a job and being responsible for your monthly rent is the splash of cold water.... and also exposes you to all kinds of people you won't meet on a college campus full of students and professors.
I agree with you on the year off to travel, but working for a random startup for that year would be hugely rewarding as well.
>programming as we know it today may not exist in 20 years.
If the way we know it today it doesn't exist in 20 years then you'll be no worse off than the college graduate who now has a useless degree and 16 years of experience.
>A little startup isn't worth screwing up that experience.
Until you've started a business, you don't really know what business is really like. A "little startup" is the experience, if you want to be an entrepreneur. Doing on one the side in college is fine if you want to have it go both ways.
Its only the first job out of college where they care about your grades.
2. College exposes you to subjects that you normally wouldn't be exposed to. Being an engineer is a respectable profession, but if you've never actually tried other subjects, how could you know if it's the right career for you? Or for that matter, how would you be exposed to some of the best things in life, like literature and art? Sure, you could just go to the library, but quite frankly, most people don't know what they don't know. College isn't going to make you into a Renaissance man, but a few years of courses in various subjects will help you develop into a more well-rounded person.
3. I agree that outside-the-classroom experience is essential, but working at a random startup company isn't going to expose you to anything except running a business and the narrow niche it occupies. Great stuff for learning about entrepreneurship, but useless when it comes to basically anything else. You aren't going to learn about humanism or the philosophy of science at your web 2.0 app startup.
4. You'd have a degree, which shows a baseline of competence and is required for advancement in many companies.
5. Starting a business is better than working at a little startup, in my opinion. And there's no reason why you can't do one or both while in school.
6. Not arguing with you about grades, but that's missing the point. College shouldn't be about getting good grades, it should be about broadening your experience of life. If you spent 4 years locked in a room studying engineering, then yes, you'd be better off not going.
Those people are earning less and are 4-6 years behind you on the advancement curve.
The slope of that curve depends on your ability and dedication, not a piece of paper.
The problem with autodidacts is that many don't know what they don't know and keep re-inventing stuff. Going to university exposes you to people who are heaps smarter than you and hopefully that provides motivation to learn stuff thoroughly and be aware that you might not have all the answers.
>The problem with autodidacts is that many don't know what they don't know and keep re-inventing stuff.
That's kinda silly. Autodidacts know that they don't know a lot and they search it out. They expose themselves to a lot and they seek out the smart people-- much like Steve Jobs communicating with Jim Hewlett. They don't need a university to "expose" you to things. People talk about finding new stuff at university like its some shocking and unique trait. IF you've got a local university that has some good stuff- like a particularly good department- autodidact will often go there just to learn that thing because its good, not because they need it.
>exposes you to people who are heaps smarter than you and hopefully that provides motivation to learn stuff thoroughly
Go work for a good engineering team and you're surrounded by people who are heaps smarter than you, and very highly motivated to solve difficult problems.
But I think the phrase "hopefully that provides motivation to learn stuff thoroughly" is very interesting. Autodidacts have the motivation to learn stuff thoroughly. I think most people don't. They need college to motivate them?
There's nothing more motivating than building a business.
As for your comment about Steve Jobs, he is widely recognised as an exemplary outlier. Even so, Jobs was a visionary and an exceptional leader. But without the team of very capable and talented people he would not have achieved what they did as a team!
So the real question is-- are you someone who is going to make something of yourself? Or are you going to want the safety of working for other people, where the outcome of your life was determined by someone else?
Sure its scary. Notice all the FUD being put forward here. I can tell you the reality s this-- a few years of work experience and nobody cares whether you went to college or not. Employers know that college is not the same as experience and is far less valuable.
IF you listen to others, they are always going to advise the mainstream "safe" route. This is why they don't achieve real success in life.
I've seen this often:
-- The mainstream choice is college, but you lose 4 years of career experience and instead of making money you spend it. The financial outcome is negative, but most people do it anyway.
-- Most people put their money in index funds or mutual funds and make mediocre returns because they believe they can't beat the market (but spend $50 on books) and 5 hours a year on it, and you can far beat the market. (The idea that it is even hard is silly-- but most people are convinced of it and so they tell other people that they can't' do it, or point to studies that show that, in aggregate, the result of people investing in the market is market returns (minus commissions) which conclude that they underperform the market. Well, of course, you're taking the actual market (the people in aggregate) comparing it to the market and then subtracting commissions, how can that not underperform?)
-- They buy houses in a bubble and then blame the banks when their mortgage is underwater. (I knew there would be a bubble in 2001, because of an article on mises.org ... because of economics.) "But you never lose money buying a house".
-- They live their lives in their house, limiting themselves to employers within a reasonable commute...when they could be traveling the world, and visiting a dozen countries a year. I'm doing that, and running a startup and our cost of living is less than the average household income in the USA. Yet for american to travel they think they have to run up a credit card debt that takes them a decade to pay off.
This is the real question- are you going to make something of yourself, or are you going to accept what life gives you if you just doing what everyone else does?
Would you rather be a self made failure than a coasting weak "success"?
Step out of the black-and-white world where college = follower and dropout = leader. It's perfectly possible to go to college and not be a "coasting weak success."
For many people, college is a good experience. An experience worth 100k in debt? Probably not, but that's an extreme example. Maybe college wasn't for you. But it sure seems like you've got a massive chip on your shoulder, especially with lines like "having a college degree shows a certain timidity and inability to think for oneself, to me anyway."
Part of the reason I have written at such length is that the quality of the arguments for the other position are so very, very poor. And oft repeated.
This is probably less relevant for programming than it is for other professions, but in my observations it's a huge difference.
You know what? Those same companies and bosses are so caught up in their prejudice that when they see my resume, they never notice I don't have a degree! They still hire me.
The idea you need a "degree from a good college" is silliness.
Here's the thing. Kids aren't ready for the realities of the world. So a 12 year old who brings you their drawing-- even if its crappy- you're going to tell them its great.
All thru out their lives you want to encourage them to do well, so you tell them to get good grades so that they can go to a good college and then to get good grades at their college so they can get a good job.
That first year out of school, how you do in college does affect what kind of jobs you get offered.
But college has not taught you to be a professional. College is the last of the nurseries. When you get your job, you're in the real world. Colleges let you live in dorms and let you make more mistakes but it is still a coddling environment.
When you're in college you have no idea-- because this is your life and its been your life your whole life-- what the difference is between college and the real world.
Everything you're saying there is the assumption of an unspoken privilege. I'm telling you that privilege doesn't exist in the real world. IF you hustle and can sell yourself and have good skills, these things are far more deterministic of how far you go and what you earn than having a degree, let alone what college you went to for that degree.
The standard work based visa requirements include an equivalent to a 4 year US Bachelors degree (eg. 3 years in the UK), or 4 years of relevant experience for every missing year of college, i.e. 16 years!
I advocate staying in school anyway, but this is something to consider.
But its a filter often applied when looking at immigrants. Its a shame, really, because someone with a decades experience in software development wanting to move to your country should be welcomed with open arms (and also should be the zero experience farm worker, because frankly, people build an economy when they go somewhere to work.)
I dropped out at 20 as a Junior in college. I had scholarships to school and every reason to stay but I was already working long hours on a business I had started as a Freshman and had no intention of slowing down.
We were growing, by my nineteenth birthday we had 13 employees and by my 20th I got my first acquistion offer.
I decided to take one of those offers and as a condition of it had to consult for the company I had just sold to for a while(turned out to only be 8 months).
So I made the decision to drop out and pursue this opportunity.
There are days when I regret leaving school for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I never really got to be a kid or act like my fellow classmates, however NONE of the reasons I regretted it has to do with not being about to find work I like or chase my dreams.
I recently went through the Winter 2012 YCombinator class(and subsequently left the company as well) Then was picked up by a well known company in the ruby community almost instantly and have continued to be able to find work at levels which I cannot handle.
I run a boutique consulting firm and have for quite a while. I usually do one or two projects a year that amount to anywhere from &125k-$300k. I almost always turn a few projects a year down and rarely do I ever get bored or have nothing to work on.
I think the major difference between the people disappointed they dropped out and the ones that aren't is motivation.
It does not matter how bad you want something you still have to work for it.
The people who sit with their hands on their asses and complain they did not get things handed to them get no sympathy from me.
I grew up the absolute epitome of middle class and have fought my way out of there. I make no apologies for my mistakes and I rarely give up on anything. I think its fair to say most peoples successes or failures lie solely on themselves.
EDIT: I noticed I never said my age(I'm 25)
and also when friends of mine or people who know my story ask me about dropping out or say they are considering it, I almost always tell them DON'T DO IT!
I think there is a place and a special set of circumstances for dropping out, but its not for everyone and certainly not everyone who goes that path is as fortunate as I am, much less as fortunate as Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs.
If that were true, wouldn't you expect economic and social mobility to be much higher?
Unless you're dealing with a rapidly scaling venture (like Facebook or Microsoft) I would definitely advise staying in school to get that degree.
I was hired at the end of the dot-com bubble into a technology mega-corporation at the age I should have just finished college. I dropped out of state after studying German and whatever to make money in the technology boom, and I did. Lots. For many years my career grew and I was at zero disadvantage to someone entering with a degree. In the bust, I was even at an advantage for awhile as I had key experience over anyone competing with me.
Over time however it became evident the long term growth curve of my career had a lower slope than my college educated colleges. Soon enough I couldn't move up any more. In a deep, sit-down conversation with a respected manager I was told I would never make senior grade engineer without the degree.
Now in a start-up or small shop maybe this wouldn't matter. In a Fortune 500 corp. it simply did.
Now I'm in my 30's and back in school. At least I'm enjoying it this time :)
Here's the thing:
Personally, as an employer, hiring manager and co-worker not having a degree in and of itself doesn't mean a whole lot to me. Specifically, I've hired people with professional-level jobs--the kind you usually "need" a degree for--with little regard for whether or not they have a degree. Sometimes I've hired (or promoted or given a raise to, or, for that matter, laid off) the person with a degree. Sometimes I've hired/promoted/fired the one without a degree.
But here's what I've seen:
If you're _very_ successful, it doesn't matter at all. But you need a truly remarkable accomplishment to reach that state. Otherwise it _will_ hurt you, at least with _some_ people, at least _some_ of the time.
In particular, it will hurt you with:
- HR departments when they are deciding whether or not you meet the base requirements of the position, or what pay you should receive.
- You direct managers as they fight with HR about things like requirements and pay (or if they choose to fight for these things) at both hiring-time and promotion or annual-review time.
- Supervisors and middle/upper management as they consider which employees are likely retention/flight risks, and which are not. (and therefore which are likely to get perks as an incentive for staying and which are not-likely to get those perks, because they at least a little more "trapped" in their position).
I have seen all three of these things happen more than once. I've seen really good and smart and (largely) productive people get shafted over the long haul: not because of any one major decision that didn't go their way but because of a series of little ones over a period of years--decisions where they were disadvantaged, however slightly, but not having a degree. These issues come up for at least the first 15-20 years of one's career, in my experience.
Having a degree, if nothing else, demonstrates a certain amount of "stick-to-it-iveness". I'd guess that most people forced to make a a hiring or investment decision would at least pause to consider why candidate dwong didn't complete a degree program.
Unless (a) the thing you dropped out to do is pretty obvious and (b) in retrospect that was pretty obviously a smart decision,or (c) you've done something in the interim that overwhelms these other questions then many people when faced with hiring/investment decisions are going to at least pause and consider whether you have sufficient drive/commitment/ability to overcome obstacles over the long haul.
You may be more or less likely to run into people that care about the degree in some fields, but you'll run into a least some of them in every field. You may be able to accomplish something remarkable enough that no one cares about the degree question at all, but "I founded this web-based start-up. We did OK." isn't remarkable enough. You may be able to build a career for yourself (as an employee or an entrepreneur) where the opinions of the people that care don't matter, but bear in mind that until you reach of point of literally independent wealth everyone has a "customer" of some kind that they'll need to keep happy--a boss, an investor, a board, a patron, a client, etc.
I'd think really hard about whether the thing you are dropping out of a degree program for is truly worth it. It's not the end of the world. It doesn't even really close any doors for you. But it does make some doors a littler harder to open (and some a lot harder to open). Is doing your alternative to college right now and possibly limiting your options for the next 10-20 years worth more to you than delaying your alternative for a year or two and finishing school first? That's not a rhetorical question--I honestly don't know what the answer is for you. But I don't believe the people who say it simply doesn't matter at all. There really are some negative repercussions of that decision (just as there are negative repercussions to the decision to stay in school as well). You just need to figure out if the good outweighs the bad.
I'd also think really hard about whether "dropping out" and "not dropping out" are the only two options. Can you take a sabbatical/leave-of-absence/year-off/semester-abroad? Can you moonlight on whatever you'd otherwise be doing? Can you do school part-time? Switch to a different school? Switch programs? Find a program more in line with you passions? Go all-in and finish school faster?
(There is also value in the college experience and liberal arts education, but I'll leave that argument for another day.)
As practical matter, it really is _generally_ a bad idea to simply drop out entirely. If you were my friend or my kid, I'd strongly encourage you to demonstrate problem solving skills and find a way--however non-traditional that way might be--to make it work instead.
There is no "remarkable enough" hurdle. Anyone who has real world experience has demonstrated far more ability than a degree shows. At best a degree shows some potential theoretical knowledge that someone who didn't go to school might lack.
But you started a business that did ok? That is two orders of magnitude more difficult and compelling than an undergraduate degree.
>But you need a truly remarkable accomplishment to reach that state.
No you don't. The reality is this- once you have a couple years experience on your resume, all any employer (worth a damn) cares about is that experience. Because they know college is really irrelevant to your performance as an employee. You spend 2 years writing Rails Apps and you're applying for a rails position, they're going to talk to you about rails apps, not which frat you pledged. IF you're applying for a C++ position, then they're going to want to know about your C++ knowledge, and that rails app experience shows professional work at a place that kept you around. Those 2 years of work experience (what you could have by the time your friends are sophomores) is far more valuable than 4 years of college, to a prospective employer.
>HR departments when they are deciding whether or not you meet the base requirements of the position, or what pay you should receive.
Dealt with many of these over decades, was never an issue. In fact, since most of the jobs I applied to in my career involved sending my resume to recruiters or HR departments and others clueless about engineering, you'd think that there being no degree on my resume would have been a factor. But it never was. I always- from the early 1990s to the late 2000s when I stopped deigning to work for others-- had far more interest than I could even interview at. They don't even notice you don't have a degree if you've got a couple years of experience. Maybe at government they have rules that require a degree to get a raise but you don't want to work for incompetent organizations like that anyway.
This is the reality: Screeners DON'T EVEN NOTICE YOU DON'T HAVE A DEGREE. You could call them up and say "does one need a college degree for this job?" and they'd naturally say "yes" because they wasted 4 years and 4 tones of money getting one. I always sent my resumes to jobs without regard to whether they required a degree or not. They didn't care. They just put that degree requirement there to screen out the people with no experience. Many times now they put "or equivalent experience."
The market reality is this-- four years of employment experience is more valuable than a 4 year degree.
>Supervisors and middle/upper management as they consider which employees are likely retention/flight risks
This is silly. This is just a prejudice. Hey your first year out of college I had 3 years of employment, obviously showing more time on a job than you had, so obviously less of a "flight risk". Plus if you did think someone might leave, that wouldn't be a reason to not give them a raise, that would be a reason to INCENTIVIZE them to stay!
>I've seen really good and smart and (largely) productive people get shafted over the long haul... These issues come up for at least the first 15-20 years of one's career, in my experience.
If you do happen to be at a stupid company that discriminates against employees in this fashion, rather than promotes based on performance and ability, then it is fairly easy to get a much better salary by switching to another company. And this is only a factor the first couple years out anyway.
>Having a degree, if nothing else, demonstrates a certain amount of "stick-to-itiveness".
No, it demonstrates conventional thinking. Four years of actual work experience demonstrates the same commitment, but also far more professionalism and useful training than a degree.
>I'd guess that most people forced to make a a hiring or investment decision would at least pause to consider why candidate dwong didn't complete a degree program.
You'd guess wrong. They care more about what you've done in the real world. Work experience is far more compelling than the college bubble.
>There is also value in the college experience and liberal arts education
Its a negative value in my experience. College graduates seem to be more likely to believe without thinking about things, to be unable to accept evidence to the contrary and to be more susceptible to ideology. Its like they are taught to reject science.
I see a lot of comments here about how if you know what you're doing and you're a good software engineer then you will always have an easy time finding work. This is just not true. When supply of software engineers outstrips demand in the market where you are looking for work it becomes difficult to get a job. It is during these times that you may have trouble since you don't have a degree. Also, if you get to a point where you want to advance beyond software development into a business side or management role, you may have trouble based on your lack of credentials.
The other point to understand that is directly related to your question is that as you get older you demand a higher salary. This makes it harder to get work. There are fewer jobs for people at the higher salary levels so again, your credentials may come into play more when you're 10 - 15 years in, seeking new work and asking to be paid significantly more than someone with 5 years experience.
I figured "well, we just had a big bubble crash, so there will be lots of engineers to hire and lots of cheaper office space and everything will be better starting a company in 2001 than in 1999!"
I was right, too, but wasn't quite able to capitalize on it.
I did have one experience where I was having trouble finding a job for a couple months, but for me, it was because I believed the "you need a degree" claims and wasn't applying for anything that said you needed a degree. I was applying for things that I was overqualified for, as a result, and they weren't interested in talking to me because I was overqualified. Then I just started to apply for the best jobs I could that I knew I could do- whether I had what they wanted or not-- and that turned out much better.
Also the time gained helped me learn way faster what I was really interested in, web development.
Most of my colleagues with degrees are now taxi drivers or have a regular job because even if they had a degree they lacked experience that was far more important for the employers than any kind of paper.
I had very high paid jobs and now I'm working on my own startup, in the IT world where information is very accessible and is very easy to learn without needing a middle man, you can have a very big advantage by using the time lost in college in a more productive way.
Learn on your own or by internship, experience matters the most and every year of experience matters, don't lose any.
The best reasons/excuses don't sound like "maybe college isnt for me" and more like "Someone offered me a very time flexible paid internship that will allow me to start my own business on the side, and if I don't, then most likely I'll go back to school."
If demand for your skill is soft and there are a bunch of other people with degrees competing with you for a job, it's extremely common that companies will use degrees as an initial triage criterion. In this case, you can be very hurt by not having a degree.
I'm usually involved in hiring decisions for my company, a major player in the software industry, and I don't think lack of degree is a deal breaker - but it's a red flag for sure.
[Disclaimer: I do not have a degree :)]
I got a job as a artist working at a few different game companies then went to work on a movie for disney. i turned into a programmer about three years ago.
making games was more fun than making movies, by far.
Each new job position has been through referral by peers. been at this since atari in `93, I've never been asked about a college degree once.
got a house, a cool little machine shop, 3d printer, in san francisco... not bad, not bad at all.
It seems that most of us agree that the education, skills, and networking can be found elsewhere. But there's also a decent consensus on the value of a degree.
nirvana, thanks for your input. I'll definitely consider your viewpoints and whether the piece of paper is worth it.
Exceptional people can sometimes take career risks and win. The rest of us should avoid them.
I didn't exactly drop out but I got a summer job between high school and my first semester and by the first day of classes I'd agreed to move across the country with the company that'd hired me. That was about fifteen years ago. I've accumulated a few college credits here and there since then and even took a full course load of (online, community college) classes for a semester, definitely nowhere near a degree though.
I've been everything from a low-level developer to an upper middle manager (as well as a co-founder) at small startups, mid-range enterprises and one Fortune 50 and what I've figured out at this point is that my lack of a degree can and will hold me back at times, but it frames my experience and motivations in ways that help me explain and even justify who I am in the world. (Nobody special - but it's my choice!)
The biggest negative impact, as many people have mentioned here, is the HR/Bschool-driven hiring process that virtually any established company has. Your resume will be algorithmically removed from generic candidate-pool searches. Your salary range will be capped lower than other people's. You may be offered a position, you may even work at a position for a goodly amount of time, and at some point your lack of "credentials" may cost you salary or even your position, either by way of an acquirer opting not to hire you on, or your position being eliminated and the only remaining positions requiring credentials you do not have.
So you're working harder to find jobs, getting paid less once you find them, you have no alumni network to milk, and if you know how to market these facts (to yourself as well as others) you've got a pretty good story about your dedication to your career, or your family, or whatever it was and is that keeps you from pursuing a degree. That's how I comfort myself at least.
My story is a pretty easy sell generally as far as interview discussions go - I ran a consulting company in high school that was by no means wildly successful but kept me busy when I wanted to be, the startup I took that summer job with seemed like a fun laid back place to get a little more experience before school started, and things just naturally took off for the company... that eventually was acquired, its acquirer went bankrupt, got bought a few more times, and its husk is still around somewhere. I was one of the first people laid off when the bankruptcy was announced. I was one of the youngest employees, I didn't contribute as much as my (slightly) older, (slightly) more experienced, (slightly) more tenured teammates. It was a good decision, whether that's what lead to it or not - both for me and for the company. The people I worked with there are amazing, they've gone on to do amazing things since then, and not a day goes by I'm not grateful for having gotten to work with them. Mad props to jeffiel, thuddwhir, beans and that whole crew for being my "college" experience.
The good news? I feel that way about every single team I've worked with since then. I've worked with amazing people, all of whom I chose to work for because I liked them and what they were doing, not because I felt like I needed the job or that it was the right career move. At some level they all took a chance on me no matter whether I came to them as an a bright-eyed kid or a battle-hardened street fighter. I'm always conscious of that, and I feel it serves me well in making the kind of connections that suit me personally.
The really good news though? No matter what you tell yourself it's never too late to go back and get a degree. The value may diminish over the years but at any point along the road, even if you have to go completely bankrupt and shed a lot of the responsibility you become used to, you can go back to school and leap back into the workforce if you choose.
Or better yet.. Not jump back into the workforce! There's really nothing better in life than making your own success without a care in the world for what other people think of you, your credentials, your history, whatever. Your success is ultimately your own to make. If a degree gives you the kick-start you need, great. If not - school will be there if you ever want it.
None of those people have had the success in life that I have.
Small sample size, of course, but they were more conventional people and are still working for companies, some tech companies, and are generally employees. They haven't taken the risks I have, and haven't had the failures I've had, but also haven't had the rewards either.
