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Congrat me, I got a job. Should I quit college now?

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Re: Congrat me, I got a job. Should I quit college now?

#11

Post by randomanonymous »

randomanonymous wrote: post #9

Wait, you don't have time for what? I worked full time + (IE overtime, IE 40-50 hour weeks), and went to school fulltime and also picked up 4.0's. The whole I can't work because I have school, or I can't go to school because I have work ordeal is lame at the most extreme levels. Deal with it. If you quit college your a fool. If you can't do both and excel at both your lazy. Get it together.

And the comment from Kstenerud about contact networks is probably the most important thing anyone will ever tell you. Without this, your worthless. Well, unless you are a true renegade in tech. But web designing... come on. You are competing with a zillion other people, aren't prototyping hardware, inventing anything (hardware/software/anything else), so it's more about networking, schooling, etc than anything else!

Re: Congrat me, I got a job. Should I quit college now?

#13

Post by snikolov »

randomanonymous wrote: post #9

Wait, you don't have time for what? I worked full time + (IE overtime, IE 40-50 hour weeks), and went to school fulltime and also picked up 4.0's. The whole I can't work because I have school, or I can't go to school because I have work ordeal is lame at the most extreme levels. Deal with it. If you quit college your a fool. If you can't do both and excel at both your lazy. Get it together.

While I agree with the need to push yourself, and it might have worked for you, I disagree that this is a lame excuse in general.

Good work requires focus. Whether you can work and handle school at the same time also depends on your course load. If you are spending 70 hours a week on classes, an extra 40 hours a week (though not impossible) might not be worth a decrease in performance in both activities.

Re: Congrat me, I got a job. Should I quit college now?

#14

Post by abbasmehdi »

It's much easier to go from college to a job, and much harder to go the other way. Drop out if you end up inventing a successful business that's a once in a lifetime thing and pulls you out (think Gates and Zuck, not Jobs), but not for just another job. There are plenty of those where that came from.

Re: Congrat me, I got a job. Should I quit college now?

#15

Post by Daniel_Newby »

You are a 19 year old web developer who finds college hard? Then they are not hiring you because you are the second coming of Richard Stallman. You are being hired as just another warm body, easily replaced or downsized. When you get the axe, you will have no job and no enrollment. Whoops.

Tell them no way, you are committed to earning a degree. Higher education is valuable to you, so it's part time or no time. Do not be apologetic or sheepish. Do not blather on with explanations. Leave a silence for them to fill with compromise. If they truly like you, or if they are desperate for a warm body, they will likely compromise on part time or summer work.

Re: Congrat me, I got a job. Should I quit college now?

#16

Post by caw »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #15

You are a 19 year old web developer who finds college hard? Then they are not hiring you because you are the second coming of Richard Stallman. You are being hired as just another warm body, easily replaced or downsized. When you get the axe, you will have no job and no enrollment. Whoops. Tell them no way, you are committed to earning a degree. Higher education is valuable to you, so it's part time or no time. Do no…

I agree with this. If they want you and not a person who can code, they'll work with you on your school schedule. Either part time or remote work or flex hours. At the beginning of every semester, probably about 2 weeks in you sit down and talk about what your schedule will be like. The two weeks allows you to see what sort of course load you have and homework load. I did this and worked the last 3 years of college, 12-20 hours a week depending on courses, but I couldn't work outside of business hours.

Re: Congrat me, I got a job. Should I quit college now?

#17

Post by huhtenberg »

No, no, no, don't quit college. Your parents are completely right (sans yelling). Jobs come and go, but fundamental education is just that - the foundation for everything else that you are going to learn through other means. No foundation = mess in the head.

Besides, people who are self-taught are always treated with extra suspicion during the selection, interview and the trialing process compared to those with a proper degree. And quite rightfully at that. If you have Masters in Comp.Sci., it's given that you know reverse polish notation. But if you picked it all up by yourself, you could've missed this bit and it could complicate my life as your colleague or boss further down the road.

So, yeah, educate yourself properly first. The jobs will follow.

Re: Congrat me, I got a job. Should I quit college now?

#19

Post by willpower101 »

Even if you don't get much out of it. The BS will work on two levels. The first is when you inevitably change jobs, you need that single credential as a baseline for getting your resume in the 'to be reviewed' stack.

The second, is that it gives you a higher safety net if/when you find yourself off track in the future. You won't have to worry as much about finding employment just to get by.

Re: Congrat me, I got a job. Should I quit college now?

#20

Post by methane »

kstenerud wrote: post #6

Finish college. You NEED that theory stuff. If you don't get it now, it will stunt your growth and will limit how good you'll get at your craft (mainly because you'll keep making rookie mistakes for the rest of your life because you won't understand the theory behind what you're doing). Quitting something just because it's hard is a very bad habit to get into. All it does is keep you on the bottom rung for the rest o…

How would I need that theory stuff if it contains hardware and other similar stuff and I am not planing to do anything with that kind of things in my career (I just want to be a software programmer, because I love it)? I am just feeling that I am studying lots of useless things...

Thank you very much for researching companies advice, it's a very good advice, I will start doing that.

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