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Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

money.cnn.com

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Re: Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

#21

Post by readme »

nbouscal wrote: post #16

This is not necessarily a good thing for the web development field. This is how you end up with people with large gaps in their knowledge responsible for parts of your codebase. To be clear, it is entirely possible to be self-taught and learn everything you need to know. I'm self-taught, and I like to think I've filled in most of the gaps by now. I've also worked with a few self-taught people who make me feel like a…

>Things like not knowing what SQL injection is, not knowing what version control is, never having heard of unit tests, etc.

These things are more commonly learned in the field than in school. When people don't know, teach. Don't sit there and gripe about how they might cripple the company.

Your anecdotes are irrelevant. There are just as many people with CS degrees who would get stumped on one of the three things above. Web development doesn't even require a CS degree. You just need to know your way around databases, patterns, be neat and meticulous, and write code that's generally more efficient than O(n^2).

After all, you admit that you're self-taught.

universities are no silver bullet.

Re: Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

#22

Post by VLM »

joonix wrote: post #9
adaml_623 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironic that the quote "I'm pretty sure it's more work than going to college." is from somebody who only spent a few weeks at university. (Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with dropping out)

It doesn't take long to discover that university education is an inefficient sloth, a waste of time and basically a broken system for almost all majors.

Its incredibly good at educating, and fairly efficient. Training is better off at a vo-tech. Most of the people attending just want a credential proving they are trained, its their meal ticket. They're obviously not going to be huge fans of a liberal education curriculum. Yet their employers demand credentials from educational facilities not training facilities, so the 2-yr vo-tech is seen as toilet paper.

Its a messed up situation. They make an excellent product, but most of the people going don't want it, but they can't get something else because the market demands they attend. Very much like complaining a 5-star restaurant sucks because they don't have cheap hamburgers and a drive-thru, or the reverse situation.

Re: Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

#24

Post by dgabriel »

nbouscal wrote: post #16

This is not necessarily a good thing for the web development field. This is how you end up with people with large gaps in their knowledge responsible for parts of your codebase. To be clear, it is entirely possible to be self-taught and learn everything you need to know. I'm self-taught, and I like to think I've filled in most of the gaps by now. I've also worked with a few self-taught people who make me feel like a…

You can get a CS degree and never, ever encounter SQL injection, unit testing, or serious version control. Hell, you can get an MS without worrying about those things.

Re: Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

#25

Post by jonheller »

patatino wrote: post #12

A lot of people ask my why I never got a degree. As a .net web developer I don't wan't so spend 4 years part time (no money for fulltime) studying java, because that's what you mostly learn in our country. Edit: I maybe should add theres nothing wrong with java. It's just not my choice that's all. And in my country (switzerland) the education system looks little bit different. I started a education at age 16 as softw…

The language you learn in college isn't important, it's the logic behind it.

Re: Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

#26

Post by nbouscal »

ikkyu wrote: post #15
patatino wrote: post #12

A lot of people ask my why I never got a degree. As a .net web developer I don't wan't so spend 4 years part time (no money for fulltime) studying java, because that's what you mostly learn in our country. Edit: I maybe should add theres nothing wrong with java. It's just not my choice that's all. And in my country (switzerland) the education system looks little bit different. I started a education at age 16 as softw…

Whats wrong with Java? I am focusing most of my time on it. Bad decision?

It's not necessarily a bad decision. Many people would say it's a practical one. However, it limits your thoughts about programming to one very narrow style, and not a particularly good one. There are many other styles of programming that are worth learning (functional being likely the most notable of them), and that will make you a better programmer regardless of what language you end up writing in day-to-day.

Re: Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

#27

Post by tbrownaw »

ikkyu wrote: post #15
patatino wrote: post #12

A lot of people ask my why I never got a degree. As a .net web developer I don't wan't so spend 4 years part time (no money for fulltime) studying java, because that's what you mostly learn in our country. Edit: I maybe should add theres nothing wrong with java. It's just not my choice that's all. And in my country (switzerland) the education system looks little bit different. I started a education at age 16 as softw…

Whats wrong with Java? I am focusing most of my time on it. Bad decision?

Java is currently unfashionable, and is popularly associated with enterprise architecture astronauts who add too many layers of abstraction to everything.

It's about as good as any other language, and has more libraries than most. It's also mildly annoying to work with, but so is any language when used as more than a toy.

Re: Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

#28

Post by hackerboos »

nbouscal wrote: post #16

This is not necessarily a good thing for the web development field. This is how you end up with people with large gaps in their knowledge responsible for parts of your codebase. To be clear, it is entirely possible to be self-taught and learn everything you need to know. I'm self-taught, and I like to think I've filled in most of the gaps by now. I've also worked with a few self-taught people who make me feel like a…

>This is not a good thing for the web development field. This is how you end up with people with large gaps

As a graduate, university isn't much better. Fellow students didn't even know what version control was.

Re: Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

#29

Post by TheCowboy »

nicholassmith wrote: post #13

Missing at the end of the title 'as long as you're willing to work your ass off getting good at it'. There might be a shortage in the talent pool but I can't see lots of companies taking on crap devs to put bums in seats.

These articles seem to frequently discount the hard work part of the equation, and make it sound like anyone can pick up a keyboard and get a job.

The "no degree, no problem" idea isn't backed up by my personal experience. I wish it were that easy, but I still find myself struggling to break in. I've been told by temp agencies that my associates degree is worthless here as well.

I wish I had known over a year ago that the most important thing is having enough savings and time to start with so you can build up a portfolio, and disregard the sentiment that if you don't know algos then you're second-rate and don't cut it.

For awhile I've been in a position where it's hard to focus on projects that would make me stand out because I'm distracted working weird hours part-time for minimum wage. While I'm getting more contract work, it still is just a trickle, and seems to be more of a distraction than it's worth sometimes. Additionally, most entry-level positions I've encountered seem to want someone who is a designer/developer hybrid rather than a developer.

I live in Washington, DC, so it could just be that the market here has a enough of a concentration of CS grads and experienced developers to not need to bother with people who are junior and lack a CS background.

Re: Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

#30

Post by jwoah12 »

dgabriel wrote: post #24
nbouscal wrote: post #16

This is not necessarily a good thing for the web development field. This is how you end up with people with large gaps in their knowledge responsible for parts of your codebase. To be clear, it is entirely possible to be self-taught and learn everything you need to know. I'm self-taught, and I like to think I've filled in most of the gaps by now. I've also worked with a few self-taught people who make me feel like a…

You can get a CS degree and never, ever encounter SQL injection, unit testing, or serious version control. Hell, you can get an MS without worrying about those things.

I'll agree with you about SQL injection, but I don't see how you could miss unit testing in any decent CS program. You may be able to avoid seeing version control if you purposely stick to the hardcore math and theory classes without ever taking a software engineering or project-based course.
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