Ask HN: Do I have to have a degree to be a developer?

From a hiring perspective, I want developers who can solve problems and be great to work with. You have to prove both those points in varying degrees in order to get hired. In don't care so much whether you have a degree from Harvard.

If you are good at making web and mobile apps, there are hundreds if not thousands of startups in SF and elsewhere that would hire you. But you have to prove you're good. Luckily, programmers can prove that fairly easily by showing their work on Github, and performing well in technical interviews.

Just about everyone else in a computer science program will have been programming for years just like you. A lot of them will be better than you.

It's rarely irrational to graduate from any serious program at the best public university in your state. So, please take time to do the math for yourself. ($80k for a degree is a lot, but so is $150k of annual income for a well situated young man.)

You should also know that the world isn't as meritocratic as a voluntary college abstainer imagines.

Outside of tech startups that want to (under) pay you at this ephemeral moment of demand shock in the software labor market, there is a whole world of people that will hold your lack of formal education against you for a long time to come.

Don't be surprised if you learn something at university. Your grammar is a mess. You could fix that to start.

Granted, we don't exactly do bleeding edge research or anything, "just" web applications.

A degree makes it easier to get your foot in the door, especially at larger companies where computers screen resumes for keywords and HR is on a different floor from engineering.

A CS education will make it easier for you to learn and excel at the "hard" parts of software development. Data structures, algorithms, optimization, cryptography, embedded and firmware, OS development. You can learn those things outside school, of course. But even the first couple years of a CS program will teach you a lot about how computers work and how software is architected.

In turn, there's a lot you gain from practical experience that you aren't taught in school.

I'd say if you're happy building web and mobile apps for startups, the degree is strictly optional. If you want to dive deeper into technology, school will give you a head start.

That said, a CS degree makes it a lot easier for someone to justify hiring you for an important job, and important jobs tend to pay the best. A degree is a credential. There are other credentials you can get (certification, reputation, tenure at an important employer, etc.) But that degree will do a lot for you as a young person with no experience to get others to trust you so you can actually earn experience and overcome that particular chicken or the egg problem.

Lack of the degree will close doors that would otherwise be open to you. It will make it harder for you to get the kind of job you want. You don't have to eat a breakfast. But you'll be worse off if you don't, and you have to eat eventually. The same goes for schooling. You'll have to learn eventually. You may as well do it in an environment that pushes you through that learning at a steady pace.

I don't have a CS degree. I have a business degree, and as a programmer, I think I'm a rarity, but that degree, along with the fact that I know Python better than most of my colleagues, made me a safe hire for my employer. That's what employers like. Low-risk, safe hires. You can do without, particularly in this environment where it is hard to hire programmers, but it will make your life a lot easier if you take the college route.