Ask HN: Do I need to go to college?

Something that no one has mentioned here, you will have a HUGE amount of free time at college. Far, far more than you will have if you go get a job.

If you are more interested in starting/continuing to run your own projects than working on someone else's, then I would- without a doubt- go to school.

How do you assume someone will "learn as slow as the rest of the class"? I am currently in college and while the pace is that of the slowest person it does not mean that you cannot learn more than them. Actually, I like going slower. It gives me more time to focus on my skill development and at the same time I can help my peers with their issues (which is great if I already overcame the same issue!). College has taught me to become more patient, to find love of others through knowledge, and to work hard.

Maybe it was a waste of time to you, but I hardly think that giving someone advice to skip college because YOU think its a waste of time is a bad decision. Are you sure you didn't miss a few things while you were there? Might want to reconsider.

The bigger point though is that college isn't all mental. If you went through college hunched over a desk studying, and doing nothing else, then sure, you can replicate that at home.

There was a similar thread on this topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6142978.

Let me add my thoughts:

1. In this current climate, your lack of a college degree will not affect your hiring chances. Blue chip tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook care slightly more, but even then, four years of quality work experience will actually, in my opinion, put you ahead. I get the feeling that when people on this thread talk about HR, they are talking about the job recruiting processes at other non Goog/Apple/Msft/Amz/Fb firms that are not as software-focused. Those firms in my experience are a lot more meritocratic. I didn't have a college education when my resume got through Apple's recruiter filter, and when I got an in-person interview with Amazon.

2. However, the current job climate in SV is quite unique. The job market is so hot that, as you can see in the linked thread, people with 1 year of experience can get 120k job offers as web/mobile developers (take into account that SV is very expensive to live in). The central question is: what is the job market going to look like in the future? If the market crashes in the next 2 years, not only will you have a hard time finding a job, but so will even those with CS degrees (by no means am I saying that those with CS degrees will be ahead in that case).

3. I think there is a good chance of you getting a summer internship in the coming summer. Do you have any family in the Bay Area that you could stay with? Make sure it is a paid internship - unpaid internships are generally correlated with low quality.

4. There are other non-tangible reasons to go to school: the social experience, meeting girls (or guys), etc. If you're a 18/19 year-old guy it can be quite hard to date in SV working at a startup, esp. since everyone your age is in school. It's for this reason that I chose to go to school.

5. Consider a compromise (see linked thread): Get a great internship over the summer, preferably with a well-known startup or tech company. Do well and ask for a full-time offer, which will allow you to bypass the normal interview process. Defer admission to UT Austin for 1 year (a so-called gap year, you'll have to look into their admissions policies more closely or contact the admissions office to see if that is allowed - also see what kind of deadline you have for declaring that you're deferring). Work for a year, and at the end of the year, evaluate this again.

Plus: girls and things that aren't CS.

Creativity needs outside experiences and knowledge not in your domain to flourish. Go to college - it's one of the easiest places to get a large breadth of that stuff.