21–25 of 25 posts
You'll never be in college at college age again. Meanwhile, you'll have your whole life to work in the Valley. Unless this job is really something amazing, stay in school. Of course if you find yourself violently recoiling at that argument, that'll tell you something too.
Get your degree. Seriously, the lack of a CS degree will screw you over. Maybe not with this job, but you don't expect to work at this place for your whole career, right?
You'll see "or equivalent experience" but you'd be surprised at how many web startups using bootstrap will test you for data structures + algorithms chops.
As an example: I'm talking about hopping on skype for front-end jobs in angular, and they have some guy snickering at me not being able to solve a pathfinding equation.
You can always come back and do another coop at the same employer. As someone in 3A or 3B, you are really close to the end of your studies (and the courses in 4th year, along with FYDP, are the best parts of the program). Others have addressed some of the financial points. Obviously talking to a lawyer is a good idea.
Send me an email (in my profile), if you want to talk more about this.
Consider where you're leaving behind: KW is a rad area; I've been here in the startup world for just over 3 years (born and raised not too far away). A decent starting offer here is $60-80k, potentially more if you're at a 'name brand' company (I started at $65k for reference, with $50k the number I had in mind to stay local after wrapping up my CS degree). The cost of living here is way less than SF, so there's lots left over for actually spending on living.
If you really want to be in a city, go an hour east to Toronto and make your mark there.
I know the valley is a mystical, magical place, but if you're putting salary/equity high up on your list of "Pros", consider that you could do just as well, or better, in the area (when looking at purchasing power, cost of living, etc).