Neither did this guy. Most of us without degrees did something similar to what this guy did; do a high dollar job for a while for a low-dollar wage, and eventually you build up enough reputation that you can get paid market rate.

>As for you, the average reader, go/stay in school and get a degree. Life throws all kinds of curves at you. At 20-something it might be cool and trendy to be a modern hippie-techie drinking latte's and coding for Google, Facebook or whoever. One day you might wake up in an entirely different landscape at thirty, fourty or fifty years of age and regret the fact that you did not take the time to complete a degree before your life got more complicated. I've seen this happen.

Serious question: What is the downside to going back to school later?

I mean, sure, if you have someone giving you free money to go to school, yeah, that might be a time-limited offer, and you should take it. All other things being equal, you should take free money. But for those of us who have to pay our own way? seems to me like it would be much easier to go back to school when you can make a bunch of money working part time.

I mean, I don't know; I haven't seriously attempted to go to school. But I can tell you that when I work part-time, my hourly rate is more than 10x what I could get when I was 17, and trying to go to school while working. My cost of living isn't much higher than it was then, either. (biggest difference, probably is that I've gotta pay for health insurance now.) - I could live pretty comfortably and pay reasonable state school fees, contracting myself out 1/3rd of the time.

So from where I stand now, in my early '30s? it looks like going to school would be way easier than it was when I was 17, and thinking I needed a degree to increase my salary above sustenance levels. But then, I haven't seriously tried to go back, so I don't know.

That being said, the actual schoolwork was way easier in many ways than during my first foray from my 20s. I had time management skills, a supportive wife and stable home situation, and years of experience in the software industry that gave me a reasonable baseline of knowledge.

Why did you decide to go back to school if your income was already that high? did you change careers? or was this just a social status/personal enrichment project?

Sure I'll never be a professor, and make decent but not top $$$, but compared to more senior people, I actually prefer what I do day to day (90% coding & research) rather than the meetings/teaching/grant writing etc that those with higher prestige jobs seem to spend their time doing.

I'm probably an outlier, and don't advise others to follow me. If I could go back in time and get the degree I would, but at the moment the opportunity cost is too high. Not just the considerable amount of money, but also the interesting new work and real world problems that I can solve now, compared to memorisation, sitting exams and redoing old problems.

From what I've seen, physics majors are more likely than CS majors to have a reasonable level of Linux competency.

At some level I am suggesting this has nothing to do with earning more money but rather being able to get a job and not loose it to someone with a degree.

I don't know the answer to this question: How many technical people work at places like SpaceX without having at least a BS? Probably few, if any. You'd have to have a pretty serious track record to get past the filters at companies like that.

I am not being elitist here. Not at all. I am merely suggesting that the reader consider want it might mean not to have a degree later in life.

That aside, your post is missing the point. Nobody is advocating for not getting a degree or saying that they are a waste.

That's fine. You are certainly entitled to that opinion. It is also clear you might not have seen what happens to older people who held well-paid jobs and now find themselves looking for work without a degree. Wear those shoes for a while before you think my comments to be harsh. I know a few of those people. It isn't pretty at all.

Perhaps "moron" is a bit extreme. It was used on purpose to elicit an emotional response. "Unwise" might have been a far gentler way to characterize it. Either way, get done with your degree as early as possible in life so that you will not have to regret it later on.

I completely disagree. You can work for Google and in fifteen years they go bankrupt because Infinootle is using a new hyperrank technique and they employ robots instead of humans. Then you remember that Google was a colossus on the early XXI century.

At minimum a degree is an insurance. Not the best but better with it.

That super cool coffee house that only employs art majors? you need to notice that none of the baristas are over 30.

In all seriousness, you are talking about middle management, and in that case, yeah, you've got a point. Class markers matter very little as an individual contributor in this industry. They matter more and more as you move into sales and middle-management. (what I find interesting is that it seems to matter /less/ when you are the actual owner. Class markers are important for impressing people when you have no actual power, but if it's your company? you can show up in a 10 year old minivan, and you are just being smart with your money.)

That is the thing; The degree is breaking down as a class marker. (that, and if you are American, I'd not put all that much stock in non-monetary class-markers to begin with. Unlike Europeans, to us? class is all about the money.)

Or, rather; the degree from a mediocre school is breaking down as a class marker. To be clear, if you are talking about a degree from Yale, I completely agree with you. If you have a chance to get a degree from yale, get it. I'm talking about the rest of us who have a choice between a job and a degree from a mediocre school. If you show up with a degree from po-dunk state and I show up with no degree? we're going to compete on our merits. (If you show up with a degree from University of Phoenix, as far as class markers go? I'm going to have the edge.)

>I completely disagree. You can work for Google and in fifteen years they go bankrupt because Infinootle is using a new hyperrank technique and they employ robots instead of humans. Then you remember that Google was a colossus on the early XXI century.

you have several issues here. First, if you can't get another job when your current company goes under? you have a huge problem. Huge. You need to focus on keeping yourself employable within your industry/job role. If that industry/job role goes away, you need to switch. But google going out of business? None of the people I know working at google have skillsets that will become obsolete if search and search advertising go away as important businesses. Programming is... pretty generalizable; many of the googlers I know were programming and solving interesting problems before google made that business model a big deal.

Having big names on your resume is great. But you can't rely on that to get you your next job... how many of us have hired someone who used to work at google on the strength of the google experience, and found the results disappointing? I have. (actually the person was a contractor, handling internal helpdesk stuff, but I was hiring for a helpdesk type role, so it seemed a reasonable match. It wasn't.)

Next? automation. Competing with machines is something we all will have to do, degree or no. As a SysAdmin, I've seen tools come out that can make handling larger fleets with fewer people significantly easier; but I've also seen fleets get significantly larger. Some would call "the cloud" an 'existential threat' to my job role, but cloud providers being what they are... this does not seem to be the case.

And programming languages are doing the same thing; you can do a lot more with less programming skill than you could 10 years ago.

(I think automating away programming has an additional problem; most people can't clearly define what they want done in prose. If anything, it's usually easier to clearly specify exactly what you want in code than in prose, even if you are semi-literate. So half the programming job is going from vague requirements to an implementation that works. This, I think, is why we are seeing a diminishing return on 'easier' programming languages... at some level, someone along the chain needs to understand what the hell they are asking for, and nice GUIs don't make that requirement go away.)

The thing is? the best (and perhaps only) weapon that we the meatbags have against the machines is our flexibility. The people who have to be shown how to do a job before they can do it? those people have already lost the battle. they are already unemployed. So training? a whole hell of a lot less valuable than it was back when you could do the same thing day in and day out.

If you want to stay employed? you need to be able to figure out how to solve the problems that the robots haven't been programmed to solve yet. This is a fast-moving target, and while school can give you a larger toolbox, from what I've seen, it leaves people with this laughable expectation that they will be trained to do the job that they are required to do.

My main point is how to bet against the unknowns. In this context having a degree increments your chances.

The future? Imagine a future where you cannot compete with robots... or worst... where you cannot compete against the humans competing with robots. Because you talk about preparing yourself against the unknowns... that's really difficult in our field because... they are unknowns and we have an overconfidence bias. May be not you, but the average people do.

I am not saying that a degree is a solution. Just that is positive to add it in the equation. And yes... if you are the next Zuckerberg don't follow my recommendation!

But a degree takes limited time and resources; why do you think a degree gets you better ROI on those scarce things than, say, writing a book? I mean, if you know a subject well, you can probably pump out one or two published technical books with that level of effort.

I mean, part of my problem is that school was, well, pretty difficult for me. from what I see, it's one of those activities where being really good sometimes doesn't make up for being really bad sometimes. It's one of those jobs where showing up on time is the most important part. It plays to all my weaknesses, so while I think I could probably pull it off, getting a degree from a mediocre school would take more effort, say, than publishing another book. I'm pretty sure the book would be better for my future marketability, even after the technology in question is obsolete.

About your personal issues with school, that's completely understandable but if you could deal with it you will accomplish a lot in your personal issues (beyond the specific degree)

Forking a little bit the main subject, I think that some stuff you see in the university is difficult to learn alone.

Really? job security? are you telling me that they are willing to hire people without degrees, but then they take the opportunity to let us go first when they have layoffs?

This makes very little sense. The hard part is getting 'em to give you a chance. After you have the job, well, it's easy enough to compete on performance.

Job security has nothing to do with it. It's about landing a job.

Also, you might feel out of place in a regular college.

Not that I recommend schooling for the sake of schooling. I'm now doing it myself at the age of 29 (nearly done), and I keep wondering whether I'm doing something wildly irrational.

So how is that working out for you? is it weird being the old student?

My guess is that I'd do much better socially now in my early 30s than I would have a decade ago, simply because my social skills are dramatically better. But, I dono. Being the old guy could be kinda weird, too. But my social skills were really, really poor in my early '20s.

According to the stats for my region, 56% of women and 45% of men start into a degree program, yet the degree attainment rate is only 25%. I find this attitude a little bit troubling when such a large percentage of the population are already trying and failing.

Given the costs – actual and opportunity – involved, unless you are certain you are in the top ~25% of students and can derive value from that expense, it seems rather foolish to follow said advice. Do what feels right for you and your situation. You know yourself better than anyone else and if you are truly doing what you want to do, there should be no regrets either way.

Look, I've also seen the opposite. I've seen PhD's who are just about worthless. I mean, not a clue. Can't connect the dots. I've seen enough of this to be absolutely biased against PhD's (sorry). Great for academic research but stay the fuck away from work where anything has to be done in the real world.

There has been a lot of research gone into what makes someone financially successful and the current line of thinking seems to be that soft-skills, like stick-to-itiveness, are the primary factors. Someone who matches the description of your acquaintance doesn't exactly remind me of someone who is has a predisposition for success. Perhaps that has been his failing in the job marketplace and not the lack of a degree at all?

Then again, I always feel like I don't know enough, though I know far more than a lot of my peers... It just depends. I tried running my own business for a while, and failed. I also worked at a director level for a while, didn't like the stress. It really depends on what you are looking for.

People need to stop treating a "degree" as being equivalent to "an education." Instead of filtering by whether someone completed years of irrelevant, understimulating general education coursework, why not look at actual past performance and work sample tests? There needs to be an option for already "educated" people to bypass the process of getting a "degree".

I did use the word educated in my last sentence, but the point I intended to convey is that instead of asking whether someone is "educated," employers and hyperjudgmental social peers should ask whether they're capable of doing their job and participating in an interesting conversation.

lol.

>" The large corporation a a strict requirement for BS degrees as a minimum, even if the degree was bullshit or unrelated. He was told they wanted to hire him but could not due to the lack of a college degree."

Sounds like a place I wouldn't want to work at.

College has been productized to a disgusting degree. If you can do it, you absolutely should not waste years of your life going to college for something dumb vs. doing what you love. You CAN be successful without a degree if you really want it.

There are exceptions though. And even for those exceptions it's not as if going to college hinders them. At most it delays what they would have done had they not gone to college.

Truth is most people out of high school don't know what they want to do. Most probably don't have any marketable skills, aren't self driven enough to succeed without the safety net of a degree and don't have anything productive they'd do otherwise. College is the best option.

However, if you're out of high school, driven and have acquired valuable skills and want to turn that into a business then you better think twice about jumping right into college.

You're right, things do get complicated when you're 30 and with kids. It's 10x harder to go back to college OR start a company OR do the peace corps.

This isn't a debate about what the value of college is (skills, connections, experience, etc.).

American secondary/high-school education, outside of schools and communities outside the norm, is horribly bad. This is the reason Americans have a reputation for being ignorant. And that they are. I would venture to say that the average European secondary school graduate runs circles around American kids. I do realize I am generalizing to a grotesque degree. However, I have had the experience of hiring and working with a number of first year college students. A few surprise you because they are outside the norm: thoughtful, respectful, inquisitive and reasonably well informed. They generally came from families that valued education and somewhat old-fashioned cultural values. The rest? Well, let's just say they never lasted very long.

College, for some, is a required level of remedial education. Kids are coming out of schools valuing drinking, partying and drugs far more than hard work, dedication, the ability to communicate, think and write.

I have seen horrible examples of non-degreed individuals interacting in the context of a professional business environment.

So, yeah, you get to 30, 40 or 50 years of age and things are very different. The cool coder with the dreadlocks and no degree might still be able to get a job. However, unless you are a superstar or run your own business you will have to go up against others with degrees during your job search. In a lot of cases you will loose, regardless of what your actual capabilities might be.

I'm not sure it is that simple. I recall a recent article that said Canada has one of the best education systems, but, if I recall correctly, 70% of Canadians fit a certain demographic. If you observed only that same demographic in the US, the students in the US actually did better than their Canadian counterparts.

It suggested the problem wasn't the education system in the US itself, but rather much deeper social problems.

> In a lot of cases you will loose, regardless of what your actual capabilities might be.

The good news for those without degrees is that high paying jobs are naturally, by the laws of supply and demand, the ones where employers cannot be picky. If you want to fight for the "bottom of the barrel" jobs, then sure, a degree is probably going to be a significant filtering device. If you're looking at top paying jobs, then outside of legal requirements, the degree isn't going to matter because employers will be happy to have found anyone with some skills.

Programming is currently in that in-demand category, and as such the incomes are high and the education requirements are low. It is kind of funny to see that people think this is something genuinely unique to programming though. It is just economics.

Hm. Why do you believe this? Because we are expected to move into management? I think most of the middle management I've worked under have had degrees, so that seems valid. But the owners? business owners very commonly have incomplete college educations. (and I've worked under more than one middle manager who has run (and failed) a small business, and then went and got a mid-life degree from something like the university of phoenix. The experience owning a business seems to carry some respect in middle-management circles, enough to overcome the shame of going to a school advertised on daytime TV.)

I see that a degree is really necessary for some.. and in some fields even more so... Most of the best programmers I've ever met are simply passionate about programming. Not about where their degree is from.

Pair that with sites like Kahn Academy and you've got a real solution for self learning.

Seems like he wouldn't have even made it to the interview phase if the BS was a hard requirement imposed from above. Are you sure your friend wasn't just rationalizing why he didn't get hired?

That said, I agree with your message -- get a degree folks...

If you are worried about the debt there are plenty of great universities which are not all that expensive. Many schools also have the option of GA/TA where your tuition will be completely or partially waived off.

I will tell you right now that having a degree will not guarantee you even get to try that one thing. Likewise, not having a degree does not free you to work on anything your heart desires. Earning a degree is one way to grow your strengths or fill in your weaknesses in a field. I can't see any situation where having a degree in any subject will make you worse off than not having a degree. It just has to be worth the time, effort, and money to the person in question.

you probably want to be a Software Engineer, and not a designer, personal assistant, or any other role.

You seem to view that as a restriction cast upon them by their degree(s). I say that they probably really like being a software engineer.