Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

miguelrochefort.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 387 posts

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#331

Post by dahart »

brundolf wrote: post #322
dahart wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 90% of the value of a 4 year degree (at this point) is the credential. Why do you say that, and how do you measure value? I have quite a few lifelong friends from undergrad, people I wouldn't have met or bonded with if I'd done school online. And it's not necessary to know people to get great jobs, but I feel like it helps; 4 of the 6 jobs I've had came about through my undergrad network. One of them, as a founder,…

Do you work in academia now? If so, yes, the story is wildly different for your case. > I've never needed the credential for anything but passing the checklist of requirements for my first job That's a pretty crucial piece of value! For people who don't come from wealthy families, that entry into the college-educated workforce is often the difference between poverty and not-poverty. The networking angle is an interes…

> Do you work in academia now?

Nope.

Yes, there is value of being able to get the first job. Though the value isn't really quantifiable, and it changes over time. Plus the first job typically has other requirements besides a degree, all of which are valuable for the purposes of not getting rejected before an interview. I was just curious where "90%" comes from. (I'm comfortable with it being symbolic, representing your feeling that it's a majority. I just wanted to tease that out and clarify.)

To your original point, for better or worse, incomes and lifetime earnings are statistically higher for college grads. I didn't realize the difference was as high as it is, but the Fed recently published that in the U.S., incomes are roughly double for bachelor's degrees over non-graduates, and roughly triple for advanced degrees. That means that there is a large financial value wrapped up in getting the degree, one way or another. It might have a lot to do with networking, and it might have a lot to do with the credential and social signaling. I'm certain there's some of both. But this value is definitely a must to know about before deciding to forego a degree, and probably a very good thing to keep in mind before choosing an online program over an in-person one.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#332

Post by abfan1127 »

bonoboTP wrote: post #329
abfan1127 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

going into debt in the first place is the hard way.

People say "I learned it the hard way" when in the end they lost something for eternity, went through suffering etc. Like a recovered drug addict with permanent health damage or someone who turned on the path of crime and spent his youth behind bars or something. To me it seems like you had a pretty good life, took on some debt to live even more carelessly and then matured and calmed down and channeled more of your d…

you know there are gray scales in life, right? Things can be hard without somebody dying. Marriage is hard. Raising children is hard. Those things are hard without dying, drug addiction, or other exceptionally hard circumstances.

You mention some pretty heavy consequences to learn lessons.

I'd say committing to something for 3-4 years that means telling yourself NO is pretty hard. Its not "survive being a Vietnam Prisoner of War" hard, but I never claimed it was.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#333

Post by imtringued »

war1025 wrote: post #245
abfan1127 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of more down votes, I'll disagree with you. There are certainly smarter people than me who are less lucky than me. However, its a much smaller subset than many would believe. Many claim unlucky when in reality their luck is a consequence of their past choices. They've taken risks and those risks didn't work out.

You can only get downvoted on a post to -4, fyi. I stopped caring nearly as much about being agreeable once I learned that. For what it's worth, congrats on what you did. I'm in a similar position and I completely agree that for the majority of people here it wouldn't take anything beyond stopping making bad choices.

If staying in my home country is a bad decision then nothing will change my mind.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#334

Post by Buttons840 »

jventura wrote: post #287
fayten wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you get this with students at every school. Many are just there to skate by and get a degree. The OP could also just know the material already and had no issue being able to pass as quickly as possible. This is something that is a huge benefit of WGU. Also for what it's worth I took 8 weeks doing about 10 hours of work a week on Discrete math 1 and found it very interesting. My discrete math notes is a…

> I completed Operating systems in 5 weeks with about 15-20 hours of work a week. I used Georgia Techs Udacity course on operating systems to supplement my learning. Which gives ~75h-100h, way more credible than the 15h the author mentions in the post.. My students have 3h/week of Lecture, 2h/week of labs which is about 75h of classes (15 weeks). If we add ~60h estimated time for two projects, it's 135h. It means to…

Here you say that the time spent is "way more credible" than the authors. I think it's worth noting though, that it's the same course.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#335

Post by brundolf »

dahart wrote: post #331
brundolf wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you work in academia now? If so, yes, the story is wildly different for your case. > I've never needed the credential for anything but passing the checklist of requirements for my first job That's a pretty crucial piece of value! For people who don't come from wealthy families, that entry into the college-educated workforce is often the difference between poverty and not-poverty. The networking angle is an interes…

> Do you work in academia now? Nope. Yes, there is value of being able to get the first job. Though the value isn't really quantifiable, and it changes over time. Plus the first job typically has other requirements besides a degree, all of which are valuable for the purposes of not getting rejected before an interview. I was just curious where "90%" comes from. (I'm comfortable with it being symbolic, representing yo…

Yes, the 90% was a stand-in for my subjective impression

> incomes and lifetime earnings are statistically higher for college grads

Yep. And my interpretation (possibly biased) was that, in a world where nearly all information can be found online for free, the value of college as an environment for gaining professional skills has diminished greatly, but it still gets used as a (perhaps lazy) gatekeeping signifier by hiring departments. I still think there's truth to that, but there's probably something to the networking aspect as well

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#336

Post by jimbokun »

Buttons840 wrote: post #235

I'll repost my WGU experience from another comment: I dropped out of traditional college. Last class I remember they were talking about what a GET and POST request were. I had been a professional web developer for years at that point. I felt it was a waste of time. In WGU I had a similar easy class, stuff that was "way below me". Not to worry, I passed the class in a day and stopped worrying about wasted time. I rece…

From your comments and the article, seems like the WGU model could completely disrupt the normal 4 year university experience, for self motivated learners.

Of course, if the goal is 4 years of fun social life and putting off "adult" responsibilities, the WGU approach is counter productive.

But for people who want the benefit of a degree as an employment credential, looks like this is the fastest and cheapest way to attain it, and I don't think many other existing four year colleges are prepared to compete with this model. Their cost structure doesn't allow it.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#337

Post by jimbokun »

djsumdog wrote: post #32

Almost seems like the writer treated the process like playing a video game, without all the pretty colors and sounds that give you that dopamine hit. I feel like I did get a lot out of my Computer Science degree. I got it in 2004 and I picked up a lot of stuff I don't think I would have learned on my own. I also went to a small state University in the middle of nowhere that' wasn't very expensive, and I didn't rack u…

> I know I'm just guessing, but the writer of this article seems crazy driven.

Look at the details in the article, breaking down time and money spent per course and per week. Yes, this is a person who is extremely organized and disciplined and knows how to optimize their time and effort.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#338

Post by imtringued »

dougmany wrote: post #327
greyhair wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the hardest things to explain to people. Here is a thought experiment. Lets assume that the minimum required to live in a given place is $20K. So now you have two people, one makes $30K, the other makes $40K. How much more does the second one make compared to the first? Twice as much. At $30K, you have $10K disposable. At $40K, you have $20K disposable. And someone making $60K is making four times the…

When we were looking for an apartment between selling and buying houses, I was surprised by how there is a decided floor to rent prices. Like nothing exists below a certain point. Somehow I felt we could just get a super cheap place because I thought housing price would scale with income. I was surprised when I found out it didn't. So your cost of living example holds up in my experience.

That's the result of housing shortages. Landlords can pick their tenants and since they don't run a charity they usually rent out to the highest bidder. The obvious solution would be to increase supply.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#339

Post by dnissley »

caeril wrote: post #196

I see a lot missing, here. No assembly, compilers, linear algebra, or digital design courses that you find in every other CS program. How did this courseload get accredited? (and I say this as someone who never graduated - just showing some respect for the courseload required by some of my peers, here)

FWIW, I did this program and assembly / digital design (assuming you mean computer architecture) was pretty well covered in the OS class. They use the Patterson + Hennessey book that many other large universities seem to use. That class was one of the ones that took me the longest since the only background I had was going through the nand to tetris book a few years before.

Definitely no compilers or linear algebra though. Personally, I plan on going through some self-study of those topics at some point or another, but I've had a hard time prioritizing them over what seems like more relevant material to the area I've been working in (full stack web dev).

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#340

Post by dnissley »

paxys wrote: post #43

This is interesting, but from what I have seen in the industry a CS degree is only really useful if you are starting out or are a relatively junior developer. With 10+ years of experience, an additional "BS degree from XYZ University" line on your resume is worth pretty much nothing.

WGU CS grad here (with 10+ years of experience before I entered the program). If you're in the midwest (and from what I hear, east coast) it's definitely necessary to get through a lot of HR screens.
Post reply on HN