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Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

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Re: Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

#21

Post by sharmanaetor »

heretohelp wrote: post #19
sharmanaetor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have a college degree, it's highly unlikely that you will get into a reputed company, assuming any company is willing to hire you. This means lower experience and probably lower pay as well. So this means you will spend about 4 years not working to your maximum potential. A person who graduates will easily catch up 6-8 years after graduating. There are, of course, exceptions to the scenario described abo…

I dropped out directly into a job offer that got me off the ground in my first quarter of college. That was nearly six years ago, now I'm the CTO at my company. I think we can generally trust people to follow their gut on this, as to whether school or work is a better idea. I'd been programming since I was a kid and was overall a self-directed learner. For me, school was an immense waste of time. Books and MIT OpenCo…

Like I said, there are always exceptions.

Re: Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

#22

Post by greapfr »

I don't know how much it matters 10-15 years down the line, but it can matter very much 2-3 years later. I know people (mostly front-end developers and designers) that have been totally fine without a degree, but I personally have had a terrible experience.

My story: I dropped out of MIT to stay at my summer internship. However, the company tanked (this was at a finance company, summer of '08), and my team was pretty much disbanded, so I went looking for a new job. Luckily, one of my team members had just gone back to his old job where he was a manager, so he was able to vouch for my awesomeness and hire me (despite extreme reluctance -- I'd gotten told multiple times by both recruiters and other engineering folks that they wouldn't be able to hire me full-time).

Unfortunately, the company turned out to be a terrible place to work, so I quit after a couple months. And from then on out, I had a really difficult time getting a job. People would say they had a company policy saying they couldn't hire drop outs, but they'd love me as an intern, or they'd tell me point-blank that I had great technical skills, but they were worried about my ability to "commit".

After all, I was a fresh young kid with very few connections, so it'd always be some clueless recruiter deciding whether to pass on my resume or not. Maybe your experience will be different if you have better connections or if you're the type of person who can network well.

Luckily, I have a great job now, but my experience was a big shock. I'd always thought that people in Silicon Valley didn't give a fuck about whether you had a degree or not, but this was definitely not true in my case.

Re: Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

#23

Post by nostrademons »

greapfr wrote: post #22

I don't know how much it matters 10-15 years down the line, but it can matter very much 2-3 years later. I know people (mostly front-end developers and designers) that have been totally fine without a degree, but I personally have had a terrible experience. My story: I dropped out of MIT to stay at my summer internship. However, the company tanked (this was at a finance company, summer of '08), and my team was pretty…

I think the problem for you was not that you dropped out, but that you dropped out and then had two very short stints at employers. Hence the worries about your ability to commit. When you see a dropout followed by 4 years at the same company where he assumed several levels of new responsibility, the work experience cancels out the lack of an education: he's already proved that he can commit to a task and do well at it. When you see a dropout followed by two jobs of a couple months each, it screams "dilettante": it says that as soon as you get bored with something and the honeymoon period ends, you go looking for something else. Nobody wants to hire the latter type of person.

People look at your whole resume for patterns, not just each individual section in isolation. Dropping out can be either good or bad - it depends on what you do afterwards.

Re: Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

#24

Post by emmapersky »

For any non-american who might, at any point in their future, think about moving to the US for work, a degree is virtually essential.

The standard work based visa requirements include an equivalent to a 4 year US Bachelors degree (eg. 3 years in the UK), or 4 years of relevant experience for every missing year of college, i.e. 16 years!

I advocate staying in school anyway, but this is something to consider.

Re: Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

#25

Post by crander »

atarian wrote: post #9

I know some incredibly intelligent people who chose not to go to college after high school. But they ended up coming back in their 30's because they realized you needed a degree to move up the hierarchy. Unless you're dealing with a rapidly scaling venture (like Facebook or Microsoft) I would definitely advise staying in school to get that degree.

Example:

I was hired at the end of the dot-com bubble into a technology mega-corporation at the age I should have just finished college. I dropped out of state after studying German and whatever to make money in the technology boom, and I did. Lots. For many years my career grew and I was at zero disadvantage to someone entering with a degree. In the bust, I was even at an advantage for awhile as I had key experience over anyone competing with me.

Over time however it became evident the long term growth curve of my career had a lower slope than my college educated colleges. Soon enough I couldn't move up any more. In a deep, sit-down conversation with a respected manager I was told I would never make senior grade engineer without the degree.

Now in a start-up or small shop maybe this wouldn't matter. In a Fortune 500 corp. it simply did.

Now I'm in my 30's and back in school. At least I'm enjoying it this time :)

Re: Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

#26

Post by givan »

I was never asked for a degree or any kind of paper on interviews, all that mattered was my portfolio and my tech blog, experience is more valuable.

Also the time gained helped me learn way faster what I was really interested in, web development.

Most of my colleagues with degrees are now taxi drivers or have a regular job because even if they had a degree they lacked experience that was far more important for the employers than any kind of paper.

I had very high paid jobs and now I'm working on my own startup, in the IT world where information is very accessible and is very easy to learn without needing a middle man, you can have a very big advantage by using the time lost in college in a more productive way.

Learn on your own or by internship, experience matters the most and every year of experience matters, don't lose any.

Re: Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

#27

Post by mattm »

sharmanaetor wrote: post #18
nirvana wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who skip college start out financially ahead of those who get a degree-- they spend 4 years getting work experience and hopefully saving that money. One of the major things about compounding is that the more you save early on, the bigger the impact than saving the same amount later. So, you avoid-- what $200k?-- in college tuition cost and instead earn something like $200k over those four years, and if you're…

If you don't have a college degree, it's highly unlikely that you will get into a reputed company, assuming any company is willing to hire you. This means lower experience and probably lower pay as well. So this means you will spend about 4 years not working to your maximum potential. A person who graduates will easily catch up 6-8 years after graduating. There are, of course, exceptions to the scenario described abo…

This could depend on the country. I highly doubt not having a degree would affect one in the US if they could deliver.

Re: Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

#28

Post by pan69 »

The problem is that the difference between two engineers, one with 10 years experience and the other with 5 years experience, is huge. However, once you get over a certain threshold, say 15 years, it doesn't really matter that much any more. E.g. the difference between someone with 15 years experience and someone with 20 years experience isn't that important anymore. In fact, I'd rather be hiring someone with 15 years experience AND a degree than someone with 20 years experience without a degree.

[Disclaimer: I do not have a degree :)]

Re: Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

#30

Post by danielrpa »

It depends on how competitive your local market is. If there is a huge demand for people in your area and you have the skills, you can get away with not having a degree.

If demand for your skill is soft and there are a bunch of other people with degrees competing with you for a job, it's extremely common that companies will use degrees as an initial triage criterion. In this case, you can be very hurt by not having a degree.

I'm usually involved in hiring decisions for my company, a major player in the software industry, and I don't think lack of degree is a deal breaker - but it's a red flag for sure.

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