Ask HN: Messed up my education, now 30 and regretting it. What to do?

In my opinion, if you can put in the time, I would just suck it up and go get the degree. You are still relatively young, so if you can get a degree at 35-40ish, that's still 25+ working years. Anything beyond Bachelor's is probably not worth pursing, but having the B.S. could definitely help you. I put myself through school by delivering pizza, then I got a M.S. part time while working. Yes, it was a slog, but it was absolutely worth it.

Edit: To add to this, I think working in tech industry now is very fast moving. I also put in a lot of effort to refresh & stay current. If you end up with the attitude of "it's too late to study", then you'll get left behind very quickly. Young people have a lot of free time and they catch up very very quickly.

"where I could never seem to care about the course material or putting effort into my classes"

I'm feeling this at my job now. Maybe it's better you felt it in school rather than at work. I dont want to "drop out"CB of my job since I need that for living expenses.

"But then I look around and see the cool jobs in 3D graphics, in distributed systems, in machine learning, or other "hard computer science" fields, and it feels like I will never be qualified without a graduate degree."

I have a masters. I feel this way too. I'm not qualified because I have no experience in these fields. If you're good and have side project experience in this, then you might get in.

The only thing degrees help with is not getting your resume trashed prior to an interview.

> As a result I never even finished my bachelors degree, and I'm now in my early 30s and regretting it a lot.

I'd really think carefully about why you want that degree.

> But then I look around and see the cool jobs in 3D graphics, in distributed systems, in machine learning, or other "hard computer science" fields, and it feels like I will never be qualified without a graduate degree.

Why do you feel that? What signals are you reading? Does this feeling apply across the board, or only to one or two of the fields you listed?

> What should I do?

Your title suggests that you may equate "credential" with education. I would take a serious look at that because it's far from a universal view. In fact, it may be the thing that's really holding you back.

I really wish there was an "executive" graduate degree for people like you. Executive MBA's exist for people working and wanting an MBA, I feel like a software engineering degree could work the same way.

Sure it would take twice the time, but unlike an undergrad you could study through the summer while working. Companies could even half fund this to upskill their workforce while retaining staff.

With so much education happening online, this should pre-eminently possible!

What stops you from continuing your education part time?