Is a College Degree Really Worth it for a Software Engineer?

in software •  7 years ago  (edited)

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Mosquitos suck. I hate mosquitos and am trying to understand their purpose. Much like the purpose of Universities today and the insane expense of getting a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science. You attend school for four to five years, spending tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, books, beer and room and board. All with no guarantee that this piece of paper called a degree will get you a job. Let alone a job you like. If you are lucky to land a job, you immediately start off with a huge load of debt. If you would have taken that money and the years wasted in college and started a business or studied the technologies you cared about on your own, you would be well ahead of the game of life. The key things here are time, money and studying a technology for which you have a passion. In my years of college, I was forced to take useless classes like Chemistry, Spanish, and other no related core bullshit. I was naive and did not realize that college is just a business where you invest a shit load of money in a service with no guarantee for results from said service. I can honestly tell you that none of the courses in college were useful in my day-to-day life as a software engineer. Why? well, when you are hired, you are indoctrinated into the company culture and their processes. You learn their systems and coding methodologies. None of which universities know nor teach you. So, in retrospect, the purpose of the degree was to help get you in the door. Well, things may be changing and software companies are looking at people's abilities and not whether or not they have degrees.

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."
— Steve Jobs

"You don’t need a degree to be a programmer in Silicon Valley"
The Wall Street Journal says most programming jobs in Silicon Valley now require a college degree. Don’t believe it.
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3050950/careers/you-don-t-need-a-degree-to-be-a-programmer-in-silicon-valley.html

Why half of developers don’t have a computer science degree
https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/04/23/dont-need-go-college-anymore-programmer/#.tnw_wb4TnwDO

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