11–15 of 15 posts
you do not need a degree to be successful. what you need, above all, is hard work + determination. you will be asked to explain your lack of degree, however. so your best strategy is so lead a life so successful, that your story overcomes any bias you may encounter. :>
One thing: Different countries view college degrees differently. In some, if you do not have a college degree, you will not even get considered for the job, no matter what you've done. It might affect work visas as well (some countries give a lot of weight to a college degree when assigning a priority to your application). Of course, to get stuff done you do not need a degree and examples abound about people who "mad…
One of the things I'm most worried about is that a country I'd like to work in has really different culture in regard to university than we do here. To be honest, from my perspective I've always thought US to be a country where degrees mattered quite a bit. Attending university in New Zealand doesn't seem to have nearly as much weight placed on it as it does in America, although that may just be a perception thing. T…
In pretty much all other fields, including non-startup tech jobs, degrees do matter a ton more.
I don't know if there's a good answer for this. Or rather, there are many good answers, but they depend on your personality, field of interest, motivation, etc. Personally I'm not a big fan of school because I'm really motivated to learn on my own, and in school I have to redo a lot of stuff I've done several years ago. A lot of people I've met in school don't learn anything that isn't presented to them in class, so…
My understanding of the sponsorship system is that the company has to prove that they're unable to hire someone with your skill-set locally. To do this they have to prove you have a specialized skill-set, which means either a university degree, or 12 years industry experience. I was approached by Facebook a while ago but nothing came of it as I didn't have a degree, it would be too hard for them to get me a visa. I'm…
If it means anything, one of my friends' dad is an executive at a company here, and is supposed to have a degree, but the company just kind of ignored that requirement because they felt he was the best one for the job. I'm sure there are a lot of cases where that won't happen, but in some cases it can.
One thing: Different countries view college degrees differently. In some, if you do not have a college degree, you will not even get considered for the job, no matter what you've done. It might affect work visas as well (some countries give a lot of weight to a college degree when assigning a priority to your application). Of course, to get stuff done you do not need a degree and examples abound about people who "mad…
May I ask, what are some countries in which this is the case?
If you want to work in a big corporate, then probably get a degree; less so for a startup, but I know that even in the London startup community, the opening criterion is "smart and went to a good school". Smart is more important than "good school", but the latter is often (but not always) a good proxy. If you're able to build an exceptional portfolio, then degree won't matter, but I do mean exceptional. But then the best coder I know is self taught, 22, never touched a degree and gets paid £600+ a day. If you want to do your own business stuff, then jdi. A degree won't help you much. (It'll help, but not as much as 3x years direct experience of business stuff yourself.)
Disclaimer: I have a BA, MSc and am finishing a phd (all non technical) - I'm all about the education. And yet I wish I'd gone and done more stuff, instead of studying. Go figure.