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Do Developers Need College Degrees?

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Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#191

Post by arielcamus »

TillE wrote: post #78
seoknucklehead wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With everything that's available in documentation, on YouTube, in forums, and in boot camps and other trainings, doesn't it seem like there are much more efficient ways to get the foundational knowledge that don't require four years of expensive college courses?

All the material exists in one form or another, but I've yet to see anyone put together a credible "DIY CS degree" online resource. Some day most (certainly not all) aspects of university education will be supplanted by high-quality universally accessible materials. But it's not here yet.

I think even if that existed, you would still miss one of the most important aspects of college and any other traditional learning environment: the motivational side of having a community of learners and teachers that hold you accountable and help you stay motivated.

I've just started playing with this thesis and published an article about it. I'd love to hear what you think about it: https://medium.com/@arielcamus/learn-to-build-a-backend-with...

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#192

Post by crestedtazo »

No.

A person can go from zero knowledge to landing a full-time non-entry software engineering position in 3 months. Many of my friends have done it and I am in the process of doing it right now. I just started learning in December and I am in the final stages of an interview for a Software Engineer job at Big Name Tech Company that I fully expect to receive an offer for.

Coding is the easiest and highest paying profession in the world today. Everyone should do it.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#193

Post by Kalium »

arielcamus wrote: post #190
Kalium wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're completely right! Those are all amazing resources. I would posit that using textbooks, syllabi, recorded lectures from the best schools and greatest professors, and documentation is still a form of self-direction. The learner is left entirely to their own direction, discipline, and environment. Perhaps the only thing that's changed in that list of wonderful resources since the 1960s is MOOCs. I thought of and…

> The learner is left entirely to their own direction, discipline, and environment. I think this is one of the main problems of self-directled learning and why, in average, is not nearly as effective for most people unless they are incredibly motivated. I just started playing with the idea that online collaborative learning can considerably reduce that pain and I just wrote and launched a little experiment to test it…

It's a great idea! I would consider being careful with peer instruction, however. In software it runs the considerable risk of encouraging and inculcating bad practices, which is something an instructor is often used to mitigate in classroom-style environments.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#194

Post by flukus »

hajile wrote: post #187
flukus wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are doors that close when you do not have a college degree The question then is, are those doors worth opening? Most jobs ads I see with "requires degree in CS" are for large boring companies and government agencies.

Large, boring company job used to coincide with stability. That seems to be far less true now than 25 years ago. The gig economy of today is far different than what last generation grew up with.

I'm at the stage in life where that stability is appealing. But large boring companies are synonymous with awful code bases, decades of accruing technical debt and teams of onshored developers (partly because of requirements like CS degrees). When I'm job hunting a rank "not wanting to shoot myself in the head every day" higher than financial stability.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#195

Post by jv22222 »

Kalium wrote: post #31
alkonaut wrote: post #10

Succeed personally: no. Some dev jobs obviously require a lot of foundational knowledge. I wouldn't want to have a colleague who didn't know linear algebra, simply because that's important in my field. That's not important for making Wordpress sites. I think there are things "every good developer should know" such as knowledge about how cpus work, how OS'es work, how some important algorithms work, some basic set the…

One of the much-downplayed things that degrees are more likely to indicate than personal projects is foundational knowledge. When you work exclusively on Wordpress sites, this is irrelevant. When you work on distributed systems or cryptography, then foundational knowledge gets pretty important. It is completely possible for any person to learn foundational knowledge outside of a formal instructional setting. I person…

Not having a degree, this was of the biggest issues I didn't know I didn't know. I encountered it after about 6 years on the Job.

I landed a role in a blue chip and had get a great boss who taught me the foundational theory I was missing.

I didn't ask him to, per-se, but I think he just sensed I needed it.

It made a huge difference to me as a developer. So I do agree, foundational knowledge is kind of a big deal.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#196

Post by Steeeve »

flukus wrote: post #194
hajile wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large, boring company job used to coincide with stability. That seems to be far less true now than 25 years ago. The gig economy of today is far different than what last generation grew up with.

I'm at the stage in life where that stability is appealing. But large boring companies are synonymous with awful code bases, decades of accruing technical debt and teams of onshored developers (partly because of requirements like CS degrees). When I'm job hunting a rank "not wanting to shoot myself in the head every day" higher than financial stability.

> teams of onshored developers

You prefer working with off-shore developers? That's honestly the first time I've ever heard that.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#197

Post by weq »

falcolas wrote: post #145
romanovcode wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe early in career you are correct, however after 5+ years of professional experience nobody even cares to which school you went or do you even have a degree.

This is my general experience as well. The exceptions are companies like Facebook and Google, whose hiring practices seem to really be focused on hiring people straight out of college as opposed to established programmers. Perhaps it's too broad a generalization - I haven't worked at Google - but all the companies who ape the GAFA hiring policies are indeed only interested in developers straight out of college. And I…

So they can mold them into the types of programmers they want.

ie. Train them to be corperate zombies

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#198

Post by jrm2k6 »

crestedtazo wrote: post #192

No. A person can go from zero knowledge to landing a full-time non-entry software engineering position in 3 months. Many of my friends have done it and I am in the process of doing it right now. I just started learning in December and I am in the final stages of an interview for a Software Engineer job at Big Name Tech Company that I fully expect to receive an offer for. Coding is the easiest and highest paying profe…

Define non-entry software engineering position? I really don't thing good code is easy to produce, so it is not definitely the easiest in my mind. I think there is a distinction to be made between becoming a good software engineer, and get a job as a software engineer. The first option takes more than 3 months.
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