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Tim Cook explains why you don’t need a college degree to be successful

businessinsider.com

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Re: Tim Cook explains why you don’t need a college degree to be successful

#181

Post by C1sc0cat »

sjg007 wrote: post #106
C1sc0cat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah the English Disease "Employers not wanting to pay for training" Universitys job isn't to rote teach how to code

True but then we need to treat programming as a trade.

And devaluing our "professional" Job into a lower status and lower paid one why?

Why do a lot of HN commentators fetishize "trade" skills when they have no real idea what they are talking about.

Possibly if your going to target a CS/EE degree you should have bean learning to code from 13 or 14 - in the UK you wont get to study Physics if you haven't specialised in physics and maths at the GCSE and A level.

Re: Tim Cook explains why you don’t need a college degree to be successful

#182

Post by C1sc0cat »

barry-cotter wrote: post #75
C1sc0cat wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true for all Associate Professional and Professional Jobs now. When I left School in the UK you could leave school at 16 with 4 or 5 O Levels - (Exams taken at 16) and get a Job in the Bank now its joining at 22 with a degree

I just searched bing for “banking apprenticeship U.K.” and the following banks have apprenticeship programmes; HSBC, Lloyds, UBS, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Tesco. RBS and Santander also offer them according to this website. https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sec...

Which require very good A levels to get into which would get you into a good Russell (Ivy) group uni.

Asa opposed to in the past leaving school at 16 - in US terms this is not graduating from high school

Re: Tim Cook explains why you don’t need a college degree to be successful

#183

Post by alexgmcm »

moosey wrote: post #136
tengbretson wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of "roundedness" is worth the current asking price of college. They're going to have to offer more.

Corporations should pay more of the costs of training. They get about as much benefit as we do. In the case of Apple, the company gets far more benefit from each employee than each employee gets, from a nominal perspective ($400k profit per employee). Why do we pay all of our own training costs at this point, I have no idea why. I think that the workers of America deserve the same as the workers from Europe.

In the UK we pay the costs too (although the loan system is more like an extra tax).

I think the UK is actually more expensive than the USA in many cases as almost every uni is 9k GBP per year here vs. the USA where you have cheaper public colleges and community colleges etc.

Re: Tim Cook explains why you don’t need a college degree to be successful

#184

Post by alexgmcm »

fma wrote: post #91
sanxiyn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't take four years. Most of it can be learned in a year. (Source: I did.) CS degrees teach you things like computer architecture, operating system, relational database, networking, etc. which are nice to have but optional.

The first 2 years of college is usually your core competency, including high level mathematics, statistics, and other things like ethics, technical writing...and other general education like history, foreign language to make you a more rounded education. If you do well in high school you can obtain a lot of college level general education credit and knock off a year. The last 2 years are probably more like what you d…

That's very US centric.

In the UK the A-levels we do at the end of high school cover first-year uni material and there are no general education requirements at university.

The downside is we don't have the major system either - you pick what you will study at 18 before you go and it is rather difficult to change.

I preferred such a focused system but I can see why others may not.

Re: Tim Cook explains why you don’t need a college degree to be successful

#185

Post by skinnymuch »

johan_larson wrote: post #143
commandlinefan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always got the impression that, at least in Jobs' case, he was the founder _because_ he didn't have a degree - i.e. he had nowhere else to go.

Jobs had a steady job at Atari before he left to start Apple. I seem to remember he offered the first version of the Apple I (or maybe II?) to HP while he was there, but they turned him down.

I thought Jobs was gone and it was Woz who did

Re: Tim Cook explains why you don’t need a college degree to be successful

#186

Post by rafiki6 »

rafiki6 wrote: post #73
ericalexander3 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coding test early in the recruitment pipeline. I've seen plenty of CS degrees on resumes that can't pass basic coding exercises/tests; at the same time, I've been impressed with the capabilities of new grads. I'm looking for autodidects and could care less what educational format they prefer.

So you're looking for something that's so rare it's probably a myth? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsnr.2014... I think what you meant to say is you're looking for people with passion for the field, grit and curiosity and with a proven track record of delivering. The best engineers learn from others and stand on the shoulders of giants.

No one has actually provided a counter argument. A list of 1000 over billions of humans just shows how rare this idea is. That article isn't arguing semantics, and as a matter of a fact it is showing that the truthiness of an autodidact is to be called into question given the nature of mastering a domain.

Re: Tim Cook explains why you don’t need a college degree to be successful

#187

Post by mantas »

bla3 wrote: post #128
mantas wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What visa? If I assume correctly that you're talking about US working visa.. What you said sounds much much more US-centric than anybody who ever said "don't need a degree".

More or less any visa to any country, no?

No need for a degree for an entry visa. Probably for any country. As for working permit... Lots of people won't look for one during their lifetime. Out of those who would, frequently it's not a showstopper. And many will stick to areas where they don't need a permit anyway (e.g. EU+EFTA for their citizens).
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