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What was the process like? Maybe they were from different major like engineering, physics, maths, biology, social sciences, humanities?
If you take CS courses, you learn from "other" in a compressed way and get some nice explanations. Also, the exams you write in courses foster the memorization and execution.
So, it's perfectly legit to learn from books/websites. But you need problem solving abilities, which is you mostly learn while studying - no matter if its CS, physics or any other subject.
The only thing you learn is problem solving:)
CS actually has very limited utility in the software engineering and web development industry at large. It's very rare that you'll need to work out the time complexity of something or pick exactly the right data structure to use.
The value is in the fact that you graduated. That fact means you had the access to resources, the intelligence, the conscientiousness, and the interest in the topic, such that you could stick that out for 4 years without dropping out. That, in the interviewing company's mind, makes you "one of us", and who'll continue that grind on the job without giving up, hence the value.
The knowledge actually has little value. As a tech lead, I'm not interested in if you know what a double linked list is. I don't use those. I care if people are going to have to routinely rescue you from stuff like an npm package version problem or setting up xdebug or your local dev environment failing. That's what actually affects getting things done.
But if I see a degree in CS on someone's resume, I know what they've successfully been through, proving their nature is a fit.
On the other hand, if you show up saying you read CS books, I'm going to ignore you unless you've got some solid show-and-tell.
You be far better of joining the "building in public" indie hacker crowd, because you'll have practical skills to show for it.
You're missing the point. CS actually has very limited utility in the software engineering and web development industry at large. It's very rare that you'll need to work out the time complexity of something or pick exactly the right data structure to use. The value is in the fact that you graduated. That fact means you had the access to resources, the intelligence, the conscientiousness, and the interest in the topic…
Labels like certification, graduation, etc. play a role only at the very first stage of recruitment. When someone lacking skills, time and/or attention is sifting through resumes. This is not the interesting part for jobs I imagine you 'd want.
Beyond that, as an interviewer I'd focus on motivation, attitude, intelligence and skills. Skills are important, but rarely does it matter where those skills were acquired.
[EDIT] and while personally I'm sure I was selected once or twice based on my diplomas, I generally find (contributions to) a nice piece of software or github repo much more convincing than some CS degree. Proof of the pudding is in the eating.
You're missing the point. CS actually has very limited utility in the software engineering and web development industry at large. It's very rare that you'll need to work out the time complexity of something or pick exactly the right data structure to use. The value is in the fact that you graduated. That fact means you had the access to resources, the intelligence, the conscientiousness, and the interest in the topic…
Well, I have a math degree, and when I interviewed for quant roles that involved coding as a secondary task I definitely needed to know what a double linked list is(along with BFS/DFS, sorting algorithms, dynamic programming principles, etc).
I think double linked list is a bad example because every single decent CS degree would have a datastructures/algorithms class that would definitely cover linked lists in a lot of detail.
I do agree with your overall point, at the end of the day saying "I read Introduction to Algorithms" has 0 value unless you have a decent GitHub to go along with it.
The blogger Scott Adams did something like this, teaching himself (so he claims) the entire MIT compsci syllabus in a year: https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2012/09/27/mit-challenge-do...