jayShimada

Hi. I’m a community college graduate who’s been working in the industry for almost a year now. I’m going to start work as a full-stack developer at a new company (I’m pretty happy with the position) in the coming weeks, and had some time to reflect on my current life situation.

I enjoy making things with code and usually teach myself topics I’m interested about, and certainly love working. However, as I’m still at the age where most of my friends are attending college, and I’m quickly getting nervous if my decision to dive right into industry over transferring to a 4 year college to pursue a CS degree was the right choice for me.

I only have the vague goal of working in FAANG and building a startup (having enjoyed working to the bone at a startup as a founding dev at my last job). So, I basically have no idea what I want to do in life.

How do you weigh the decision of choosing one path over the next when both seem good options? How would you decide whether to re-enter the education system, or continue working in industry?

HN has been a uniquely intriguing window into different life/career choices in tech, and was hoping if I could glean some insight from the opinions from the people here.

Thank you.