Slashdot Mirror
Techies Saying No To College
peter303 writes: "Todays NYTimes reports (annoying free subscription required) how many young men are skipping formal college to pursue high paying IT jobs.
Is this a wise move?" Every fall this debate comes back up. I enjoyed college, but I don't know how much of what it taught me will be relevant in my career. But should techies skip out?
The mistake made in the article is that of equating the sysadmin area with all of computing.
Sure, kids from highschool make excellent Windows reboot jockeys. That is more of an indicator of what sysadminning has been reduced to, not an indicator that a university education is not useful.
The fragile networks of PC's have created a large demand for people to act as computer babysitters. The natural result is that bright children can get these jobs.
A sysadmin is basically just a computer user who knows slightly more than the average computer user.
Could these same kids get into a software engineering job? Advertisements for such jobs ask for bachelor degrees, with a hint that a master's degree would be an asset. And there are good reasons for that; you actually have to know something about computing beyond reading the user's manual or online help, plus a couple of books.
These kids are kidding themselves if they think that they are staying ahead of change by working as reboot jockeys. Knowing the user interface layout of the latest network administration tool is not really a form of keeping up with change; it's just a form of accepting software created by those who *make* the change happen.
IT companies pay for smart people. They don't pay for graduates, they don't pay for people with a piece of paper, they pay for "Can you do the job".
While it used to pay to say "my college says i can" it doesn't work that way. 2 kazzillion other people are saying that. Meanwhile an accomplished set of go getters that are both graduates and non graduates are getting these jobs and moving up because of HOW THEY SOLVE THE HIRRING MANAGERS SOLUTIONS.
I wouldn't want to work for a company that needed a piece of paper. That would mean a boring job for me. I could tell by that single mindset alone its probably a boring job, dead end until you get something better then a diploma.
Its alot harder to prove you can. It is alot easier to reiterate what you HAVE ACCOMPLISHED.
I feel sorry for the people who go to school and expect life to solve itself because they have a piece of paper. Those are the blue collar workers of the future.
Thanks for saying that really, that is about as true as it gets.
:-|
A degree in *anything* shows you can learn something to xyz degree of complexity and that you can handle the responsibility of getting that degree, That is why skipping the college part proving yourself can be a very difficult task
Jeremy
I'm sorry to break it to you, but the Ithaca in Upstate New York is actually spelled "Ithaca". Ithica is a Greek isle.
Secondly, I am able to write a paragraph if I need to, but in the case of a slashdot post, it is not important. Slashdot is an imformal setting where it doesn't matter. The only people who seem to care are snobs like yourself.
Another factor in my decision (as mentioned above, if you actually _read_ what I had to say), was my uncertainty as to _what_ I wanted to study.
Well, I'm glad they taught you "how" to program. I took some Computer Science, and it was neat. I expose myself to a lot of different things, including art and literature. In a way I almost dread going to college for fear I'll end up with an obnoxious and condescending world view similar to the one you are so eloquently expressing.
As for knowing "how" to program, there are several ways to do that. Your method is certainly a valid and proven method, and I'm sure it has served you well. It is not, however, the only viable way to learn. By a combination of self-teaching from textbooks obtained at the local public library, tutoring, users groups, formal instruction, and on-the-job training I have learned quite a few languages, but more important than that is the underlying logical basis of programming that transcends languages, platforms, and paradigms.
Right now (if I were not on lunch break) my employer is paying me to learn as much as I can about Neural Nets, and has supplied me with as many books as I can go through to do so.
My points are in order of importance:
Try to be a little more accepting of other styles learning.
Your reply is dripping with contempt. All it does is go to show your own insecurity.
Don't be superficial. This is in informal forum. The fact that you were so eager to pick on my form distracted you from actually listening to the content.
That's all folks.
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Play Six Pack Man. I
If they can get a good job now, why the heck not. Work while the economy is smokin'.
When you can't get the job you want is the time to go to school.
I'm all about continuing education, but folks have to remember that learning for the joy of learning doesn't have to take place in the classroom and learning to qualify for your dream job is stupid if you are already qualified.
Typical college graduate engineers get the company pocket protecter, max out there credit cards get married, get a belly and grow old with a company. While not bad, not practical for me. I don't want that.
I guess people perceive me as being cocky because i quit to achieve something for me rather "then the company"
But to me, life isn't about "College" it isn't about "The company" it isn't about what is right or what is wrong to society, its about how you choose to live it.
By being a biggot one way or another you limit your sociall beliefs to one specific group and are considered narrow minded. By not conforming your considered uneducated.
I don't want a world of beuracracy, politicians, war, animal science, biggots, fraters and single minded people. I want a world were society is evolutional instead of so twisted on perception.
Too bad taking control of your life and making decisions on your own pisses off the followers. Some people win, some people loose. Even when you loose you only truely loose when you give up.
I've lost everything several times, and that tought me to be prepaired and cautious. I didn't have to spend 20 grand at school to learn that, it only cost me some cheap furnitre and a girl i shouldn't have dated in the first place :)
I also used to stay up late running a BBS, hacking, engaging in drawn-out philosophical discussions with friends, reading, and such in high school. In fact, I was probably much like you. I had started my own business in high school, and likely could have continued that full-time, or perhaps gotten a job as a programmer. I had a lot of contempt for higher education, and, like you, thought that since I was smart and motivated enough to learn a lot on my own, it would be a waste of money to attend University. Yet I chose to go that route anyway, did very well in first year, and have now become very academics-oriented, a side of me I did not know existed. I am now very happy with the path I chose for myself, and realize how completely misinformed I was previously. To think that I might have drudged through life, never knowing what I was missing out on makes me appreciate this experience much more.
It disappoints me to read these comments on Slashdot along the lines of "I'm smart, so I don't need a University education", or "a lot of University graduates are stupid, therefore a degree is useless", etc. In my experience, this notion is incredibly wrong. I think if you are smart, that's all the more reason to get a degree! It's not about learning to code, it's not about getting a piece of paper. Higher education is about enlightenment, appreciation, and thinking. If you are smart, you'll be a better thinkiner, and be able to better appreciate the field you are studying, leading to enlightenment. I think it's a crime to be too stubborn to take advantage of one's intellectual ability in this way -- you are cheating yourself. A large portion of the most brilliant people on this planet are to be found in academia. I have had the good fortune, through attending a well-respected institution, of being exposed to some of the most brilliant minds in mathematics and computer science. I sincerely doubt that there are many people that smart in the "real world", as such a truly bright individual would simply not be able to find satisfaction in an ordinary line of work. So this begs the question: if academia is good enough for them, why isn't it good enough for you?
Regrettably, I find it difficult to put into words precisely what I am getting out of my University education. I KNOW that when I graduate, my academic accomplishments will be meaningless and insignificant to anyone else in the real world. But I take great pride and interest in them anyway. I don't feel this is born out of any psychological need to justify my chosen path. I actually disliked my first two years of University, and thought it was largely a waste of time (except for the social aspects). Had I not attained top grades, I may even have dropped out. But now I've become more comfortable with the academic life, and am beginning to find the experience more enjoyable and more rewarding as I study my field in greater depth. In fact, I wish I didn't have to stop soon in order to graduate. But when I do graduate, I know that the PROCESS of getting a degree will have made me a better person -- I already see that.
P.S. if you go into mechanical or computer engineering, as I believe you said in another message in this thread, you likely will not experience what I'm talking about. At least at my University, the engineering programs tend to be too practical, and in particular, lacking in intellectual content. You will study a broad range of subjects, but never in much depth. In my opinion, to truly get the most out of a University education, one must study some kind of art, such as philosophy or mathematics (which I would consider more of an art than a science, and computer science is essentially a branch of mathematics). I know several extremely intelligent people who have started in engineering programs, and virtually all of them have hated it. Some are struggling through and not getting much out of their university experience, whereas others have transferred to other programs and begun to enjoy it more. Engineering programs are great if you want to get a job or learn practical things, and you certainly do learn interesting things, but they are definitely not for everyone, particularly those looking to be challenged intellectually.
To return to your point, I did not get any offers of entrance scholarships either. MIT was certainly not an option. Yet I managed to put together pretty decent grades in high school, and be admitted to a University that is highly respected in its own right. Since then, I have been awarded a couple of upper year scholarships, which I didn't need because co-op jobs covered all my expenses anyway. Seriously, it sounds like you're just looking for excuses. There ARE options other than Harvard you realize, and if you have the skills to get a decent tech job right out of high school, then you certainly have the means to cover all of your school-related expenses by working during the summers. The bottom line, is that it's worth it. I would have made hundreds of thousands of dollars by now had I not attended University, but I have no regrets.
Wasn't a junior College, it was the University of Georgia. Which isn't a BAD school. Not all of us can afford Harvard or an equivelant ivy league school. And when you sleep through high school so you can stay up late reading Tolstoy and running a BBS and learning things that actually interest you, you don't usually end up with much in the way of academic scholarships.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Sheesh. Just because you may not have learned anything in school or didn't even attend, don't denigrate the achievements of those who did. If you didn't go to college, you're not a bad person, just like I'm not a bad person because I don't play basketball as well as those in the NBA, but I'm not going to pretend that I play as well as they do to make myself feel better.
If you have the opportunity to go to college, go. If you have the opportunity to go to a more competitive school, do that too, doesn't matter how much in debt you wind up. No matter where you go, do the work, do the reading, do the homework. Sit in the front row and ask questions. In the end, you'll learn more, meet more movers and shakers, and have a richer intellectual and professional life.
Please tell me you don't really believe that...
Where I work, the consulting firm sent us a relative newbie -- but he's got an MCSE. He's constantly frustrated with NT because it almost never acts the way they said it would in the book.
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Sadly, these 18-year old high school kids are probably more likely to get hired than a 23-year old college graduate for some jobs. The reasons are that (1) they don't need to be paid as much, and (2) that they know all the latest buzzword languages (Java, C#, Delphi, etc.). The college kid will have the background to pick up this buzzword crap quickly, but will not necessarily have it on his resume.
I think this sums up what I mostly hear from pro-college types. It also demonstrates how a good education can make one a lot better able to deal with theory than practice.
This guy (who I have nothing personal against) seems mystified/irritated that companies are more interested in hiring webmasters who can write CGI scripts than "proper" computer people who can write one paragraph informal proofs of Turing's Halting Theorem.
Guess what: I hire people for tech jobs. I work a tech/management job. And I personally want people who can write CGI scripts, and who know the latest buzzword languages. I have the utmost respect for academics, and people who love CS for the sheer joy of it. Without those people, the industry I work in wouldn't exist. They are undeniably better educated, better coders, and have a better understanding of how this stuff works than the $70k/year webmasters I work with and hire.
But I don't need Turing's Halting Theorem proved (or disproved, or debated, or whatever). I need software developed. And yes, I have worked with some college grads who are fantastic. But I've also worked with others who think that doing actual, practical work is somehow dirty or beneath them. On the whole, my experience with college grads leads me, as a hiring manager, to be neutral with regard to degrees.
Bottom line: as far as I'm concerned, I care about how well people do their job. Having the college experience may make people better coders, but it may also make them prissy academics who think that information technology should be treated as an art, not a business, and who will miss deadlines and simply not *do* their job because they have philosophical objections to some 10 year old API's structure. On the whole it's a wash.
So get a degree if you're into learning Turing's theorems. If you keep your feet on the ground, you may even be employable after that. But don't be upset if you fall in love with the cerebral purity of ivory tower CS, then graduate to make less than CGI scripting webmasters.
</metarant>If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
If you still haven't figured out how to learn on your own, stay in school. If you want to work for some uptight company where a degree/your age directly translates into your salary, finish school. Otherwise, you might wanna give the real world a chance - I'm having more fun than I ever did in school; the college thing just isn't for me.
1) Traditional BSCS college grads
2) U.S. Navy (or Marine Corps) ratings
3) Tech-school (e.g. DeVry) program grads
And I notice something else: The BSCS types (including myself) had something in common with the sailors and the certificate holders: Practical experience before graduation. We either got jobs with the computer center or a department or school doing practical things with computers, or we entered the Co-Op program and did real work for real companies as interns. Whatever the route, we had real-world experience on our resumes before the school ever deigned to give us our paper and set us free.
Bottom line: Get your schooling, however you choose, but make it practical . Make sure you have something to offer that recruiter when you hand him that piece of bond that has your life's work on it.... not a lot of fluff. The theory, the philosophy, the social conditioning, this is all well and good and useful, and I recommend it for those with those for whom it fits.... but get PRACTICAL, and you'll find success.
warp eight bot
near-old-f@rt
Instead of being a moron, why don't you actually visit the Warpstock 2000 Presentation Schedule and see what's going on. If your company does a lot of OS/2 development, then they would certainly be interested in Warpstock. IBM was there in full force and had lots of great stuff to say.
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And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
And yes, STATE colleges are beer drinking, getting chicks pregnant doing nothing colleges. I tried Texas Tech, i spent some time at UT down in Corpus Christi Campus.
I felt better at a small community college because it was focused, genuinly smart people, but not uber inteligent so they seem dictational.
I didn't have the money for MIT, didn't make the grades in high school frankly. I was too busy doing whatever.
You do miss on getting into psychology and such, but college isn't always the answer to being well rounded. Church group, civic groups, donating your time to ederly and exploring life is more rewarding then siting in a classroom.
It could have been public schools that spoiled me. But i think this topic is so hot because its filled with jealousy, rage and cockyness on both sides. Its a win win situation when you do whats best for yourself.
There is academia, there is the business world, the arts and physics and social services along with an unexplored and still young IT world. They all have there place in reality. And reality is to do what YOU want and makes YOU happy.
ah, you're getting off topic. As you argue against the philosophy going to college, you admit that you will go back. The thread said: "...many young
men are skipping formal college to pursue high paying IT jobs." You, obviously, are planning to do both because apparently you place value on a
college education. I personally would not be where I'm at had it not been for my college education. I own my own consulting and training firm. Without
the ability to communicate with customers and students, I would be nowhere fast. Without a great understanding of accounting principles, I wouldn't
be able to control my books. Without my understanding in psychology, I wouldn't be as insightful when dealing with employees and students. You get
the point. Yes, some people can skip the college, and do just fine. If you're interested in management, and understanding business, I sincerely believe 4
years of college places you LEAPS ahead of taking the road of "hard knocks" and learning it on your own. Lastly, yes, I could have read all those on
my own, but lets get real. Once in a career, you seldom can catch up to what you have to do, let alone learn to count beans, the human psyche, etc.
Joshua
The reason I am returning is because I want to be able to play with things that regular people just can't buy. I'm going back to go into Mechanical Engineering and Robotics. And while I can work on junkyard battlebots at home what I'd really like to do is work on creating a perfect human exoskeleton thatis controllable by nothing but a brain. A perfect cure for paralysis. And while the mechanics are relatively simple compared to the control mechanism it still is an extremely difficult problem and requires multi-million dollar equipment to test.
But I digress, I've been working full time for a year and a half. That hasn't cut into my time very much at all. I still get in 3 hours of Martial Arts every day. I still read a couple of books a week, and I still discuss philosophy with me net enabled friends. I have no desire to associate on professional or personal basis with idiots if I can avoid it. However I LOVE doing tech support. I enjoy teaching people things, and explaining, and figuring out problems. It doesn't matter if the person is rock stupid. I've taught kids that could barely walk because of a physical disability Taekwondo. I don't mind helping idiots. But I don't want to associate with them on a personal level. And I don't want to be in a learning establishment that can only go as quickly as the person who is both uninterested and an idiot.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Sorry, didn't mean to imply anything was wrong with JCs. I find them to be an excellent way of making education accesible to those of us who aren't rolling in dough. It just happens that Athens is 20 minutes from where I grew up and the University pretty much IS the town.... So that's where I went.>:)
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
A college degree wouldn't give me any more self esteem then knowing i have done it on my own. If shit happens, then shit happens. I've learned to move on, be prepared and move through life the way i see fit. I can't control anything in reality other then immediate issues.
College doesn't teach you reality. I'm sure alot of kids hit it while they're in school, but there is alot more chapter 7 or whatever bankruptcies out there because of ill founded college experiences. I'm sure there alot of pathetic dropouts as well. Too each there own. Your world is what YOU make of it. You accept everyone elses world and its YOUR loss for not doing anything to make it better for you.
Yeah, let's not forget the social and community interaction we had before
computers were the "in thing", and all the comp sci folks were uber-nerds.
Average uber-nerd: Hi, um...would you...um..like to go out for dinner
some time?
Hot ch1x0r: *slap*
Average uber-nerd: *picking up glasses* damnit.
Here's another fun scenario.
Jock-type: Hey look guys! It's one of the computer geeks!
* Angry mob approaches, hanging Average Uber-nerd by his underwear from a
flagpole.
Ah yes, the social interaction. I so miss those days *sigh*
that doesn't mean everyone who is in college is goona be 'behind' on Real World languages. Based on your experiences, your friends went to college and came out not knowing linux/php/js/sql, but that doesn't apply to everyone. I'm (about to) go into college and I have been exposed to a lot of linux... Afterall, Linux is an operating system that was initially created as a hobby by a young student, Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
Besides, many people (there will always be exceptions) with a good background from what they learned in school can pick up another programming language such as js/php/perl quickly while someone who simply learned one language may not be able to learn a second language quickly because they don't really understand the concepts behind programming.<BR><BR>
OTOH, some people just can't stand school, and if they can make a living w/o school, why force them to go to college? I agree with your conclusion, but I just don't think "my college grad friends don't know linux" is a good reason for a person to skip college and join the workforce.
Zetetic
Seeking; proceeding by inquiry.
Elench
A specious but fallacious argument; a sophism.
(on the off chance that this #800+ comment will actually be read...)
;)
/will/ strike your fancy, something so interesting you'll be willing to sacrifice 4 or 5 years learning about it (well, minus requirements...) before you join the rat race...
I started college a year ago knowing exactly where I wanted it to take me. I love computers, and I wanted to be a UNIX System Administrator. So I declared myself a Computer Information Systems and Management Science major (being less than excited about programming and figuring it was more relevant to a mangement setting anyway).
A lot changed in a year.
I discovered that the direction the CMS degree would take me didn't seem to line up with where I wanted to be. In fact, where I wanted to be doesn't even seem to be on the map anymore. Looking through various job listings, it seems as if the career I really wanted is rare to non-existant nowadays. But, I had discovered after taking but one class that I absolutely LOVE economics. So I had to figure out what I was going to do. Would I finish the CMS degree even though it seemed worthless? Become an economist? Something else?
My current, tentative plan is to change my major to economics (I've already started taking some of the advanced classes) and to get that degree, if for nothing else than my personal edification. Then I'll probably start at the bottom of the IT ladder and work my up the old-fashioned Andrew Carnegie way and see where I end up. Of course, if someone just happens to open up an Austrian-school economic research institute in Denver, then....
The point is that there are better reasons to go to school than to help you on to a career. We're computer geeks, and these blasted boxes make up a huge portion of our lives, but they're not everything. Some of us might be really interested in history, philosophy, economics (w00t!), theoretical physics, astronomy, whatever! If you jump right into a career after high school or whatever, you'll probably never have a real chance to go to college ever again. So my advice would be to go for a year. It doesn't have to be MIT or UCB, it can be a local state school, or a community college (many of the best teachers teach in these places, where students are more important than research, and 101 classes usually aren't in 200+ student lecture halls). Take 5 classes each semester, each in a different subject, and see if anything makes your mouth water. If nothing clicks, you've only wasted one year, and you can jump right into making the big bucks with the satisfaction that you were right in the first place. But maybe something
MoNsTeR
When you control your own canon - when you decide what you read based on your internal map of the discourse at hand - you are likely to avoid being deeply challenged. You can reduce the discipline you are studying to a game over a limited map, and miss a vast range of alternative perspectives. (Observation: if you say that you've looked at "both sides" of an issue, you likely haven't really looked at the issue at all, but only a sketchy cartoon version of it.)
Many of the autodidacts I've met have much too much faith on the quality of their sources and their interpretations of it, of their initial strategies of dealing with new information, and in the novelty and brilliance of their inferences (I've seen 28 year old self-taught intellectuals congratulate themselves endlessly for observations and discoveries that most undergraduates in a decent liberal arts program had mastered in their first weeks.)
Again, better self-taught than not-taught at all, but don't be naive about the pitfalls of an unguided education.
You must be about 14 and have no real idea how things work. Only a true savant can skip over entirely the things you're "restrained" into taking. IIRC Every accredited University in the country is required to make you take English and higher levels of math. While you think computers are everything and anything, theres plenty more to the world than keyboards and command lines. If you have a degree in anything you can be considered pretty competent in the area of your degree. If you've got some sort of "personal" training you may or may not have the level of skills required for a job. Most CIS and business classes now are set up to provide you with advanced skills for your future job.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I feel a bit sorry for people skipping a good education for a high paying job that has no garauntee of being around in five years. Today you may be able to program in modern languages in just a few years they will all be old hat. You'll end up being one of the legacy programmers a company keeps around to maintain old programs that are written in older languages and only one in ten of you will actually have that job. Unless you've got other skills that will allow you another career you're fucked. If you've got a BS is computer science-not JUST programming mind you- you will be able to get another job after your web firm dies when it's venture capital runs out or you simply become obsolete as a programmer. If you program well enough to get a job, go to school as a business major and you'll land yourself a VP job making ten times as much money for less than a quarter of the grunt work. If four years of effort are too much for you to handle go to a trade school or a JC and work towards an Associate's degree or some certificate in a useful field. You may scoff at people in college now but you need to remember that the people who invented the shit you write code for went to college and many of the technologies came about because of colleges. You're riding on someone else's laurels, don't get cocky because you're going to be working for the people who actually diciplined themselves to get a degree.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
You omit the idea that colleges (around here, they're *universities*, dammit) actually have something useful to impart, that you'd probably be an idiot to miss out on.
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
...Not that you necessarily have to go straight from high-school into Uni immediately, of course.
"*employers*! Their work consists exclusively in conditioning productive people, called employees, "...
and
"Buzzz! Off to class!"
Either you're right, you should stay in class until grown up, or you're getting your cynicism-for-BOFH training in early.
~Tim
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~Tim
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Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Like others that have replied to this post, I think it's still really important to go to college, not just for the piece of paper you'll get at the end, but for the life experience. Granted, you won't make much money during those four years, but you will make good friends your own age, become independent, and learn about looking after yourself and how to relate to other people. I don't think you can get this same experience from the workplace - people are there for different reasons. My advice to anyone deciding between an IT job and a college degree is: take the degree. You will enjoy it far more in the long run, and you'll never be able to have the same experience again. College is totally different when you return as an adult student.
Obviously his point is that you can't look at a few successfull non-college educated people as statistical proof that a high school graduate is better off not going to college. Because those without a college degree that lack significant intelligence or the work ethic remove themselves from the IT population [if you will], it is hard to take such a trivial statistic seriously. In other words, for all you know from these examples, for every 1 successfull non-college educated [unusually intelligent] techie, there are at least 9 [not so intelligent techies] who are flipping burgers right now.
Compare this with college, where we can say definitively, that, the average starting salary of a CS graduate these days is approximately 50k (or whatever it is now). It does not necessarily mean college is better, but that it is a much more accurate statistic than what many of the proponents of forgoing college offer.
You completely missed the point. Its a natural selection type process. The only techies that don't go to college are the techies that are still techies, and not working in McDonalds. They're the ones who are smart enough to skip school and still make it by with good impressions on people.
Okay, a college degree does not necessarily mean anything. My sister-in-law got hers and she is as stupid as a stick.
But, the college time means a lot more than that. It means that your non-technical upper-management will be more likely to pay attention to you - where I work, my ideas have to go up via one of my college educated peers in order to be reviewed by the executive board.
Having college also means that you have more opportunities for advancement. Many corporations have certain job requirements that must be met in order to advance to the next salary range, and often that involves college or at least a certain amount of college credit.
College is also the last time many tech-types will have to goof off before the real world comes crashing down around your ears. Enjoy it while you can.
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
Newsflash - numerous colleges have very few programming requirements of students (amazing as that sounds).
A college degree in no way indicates any exposure to rigorous programming practices.
I'm currently in college, majoring in mathematics. I am also employed by a DoD contractor, working as a programmer-- I have held this position since I left high school.
Going in to college, I wanted to major in Comp Sci. It's a great field. Interesting problems, fun stuff to learn, abstract thinking, a fast-changing field (well, parts of it, anyway), and so much diversity that you can learn new stuff from just about ANYBODY.
Part of the requirement of getting a CS degree is at least SOME proficiency with mathematics. So I naturally took a few math courses.
And instantly, I was hooked.
This was cool shit. Differential equations, Algebra, Geometry, Topology, Number theory... God, it was amazing. Like a drug-- I couldn't get enough of it. I loved it. I HAD to do this.
So I changed my major. I haven't regretted it. Don't get me wrong-- I love CS. But I love math even more. I could have been very happy as a CS student. I would have lived without regret, had I never taken a math course. But once I did-- I had to run with it.
I guess that's why I'm glad I've gone to college. It introduced me to the one thing that I find fascinating beyond all else. Math. I know what I want to do, and how I'm going to do it. Some people don't need that, I know-- they already found what they love. But I hadn't found that yet-- college gave me that chance.
The keggers ain't bad, either.
If all you want is to get job training, go to a tech school. If you want an education, go to college. The point of college is NOT just to get job training. You take philosophy, history, language(s), various science classes - and you interact with people from many different walks of life with many differing opinions. This is GOOD for you and good for society as a whole.
You gain information and grounding in the hows and whys of Western Civilization. You gain a grounding in the hows and whys of the (in the US) Constitution and our system of laws. You gain information about things that in a tiny, job-training-only school, you never even realize existed. You learn that people are different, have a right to be different, and that you MUST accomodate these differences.
Ignorance is evil. Merely seeking job training is an "education" in ignorance. One should ALWAYS seek to expand their knowledge and experiences rather than keep to their parochial, insignificant little worlds of unfounded, fear-based opinion with no basis in reality.
If you don't know how we got where we are, technologically AND socially, then you are in danger of repeating time-worn mistakes rather than actually learning from them and NOT repeating them. THAT is what a broader, non-job-training-only college is about.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I think it's fair to say that most of us geeks are much in need of college. Knowing a few languages hardly means that one's education can safely grind to a halt. I mean, if all you want to do for the remainder of your life is a little Perl and SQL, that's cool, but that's really not a great approach.
;)
I think that there's a big difference between "saying no to college" for now, and "saying no" for good. I'm skipping it for now. There's too much gold to be mined in the tech industry for me to hold off right now. I'm sure that lots of others feel the same. Anybody that says that there's absolutely nothing to be learned from college is a liar or a fool.
However, there are plenty of geeks here that learned little or nothing in college. And that's quite possible. But you could learn things if you went back and re-focused your work.
I still think that going to college for the purpose of furthering your programming knowledge borders oon foolish. Again -- possible, but generally unlikely. Some people float through their teenage years, and don't really focus until college. I like to think that I had a hell of a productive time in high school. I did more in those four years than most people do in high school, college and grad school combined.
Does this mean that I don't need college? Hell no. I want to major in everything, learn everything that they have to teach, and die at 99 with a dozen degrees. But right now I shouldn't be in college, as I'm sure that many of you aren't for the same reasons. There's too much life to live, tech will change too much in the next four years while you're pursuing that philosophy major.
Or maybe mwarps was right when he wrote of me (well, flamed):
Anybody with ½ a brain, and even two nanoseconds of a real college education knows this guy is full of crap either because he's completely moronic, or hasn't been to a real school.
His picture looks like he spends his time sitting in front of a sticky keyboard looking at alt.binaries.erotica.* and 'coding' HTML. Another fine candidate for the "Why Couldn't Social Darwinism Take This One" award.
But really... If you seriously think you're going to get anywhere significant in this world, without that piece of paper, you're going to end up nothing but a bench-drone or a tech somewhere useless, fixing a useless piece of hardware, broken by a worthless collegeless geek, just like you.
I'm not so personally insulted by this as I am by the implication that all of us that aren't in college are "worthless" to the world, and would be better off dead.
But what do I know? I've never been to college.
-Waldo
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I've sat on both sides of the interview desk and I totally agree that the college-educated make for much more attractive candidates. They have more experience in Just Plain Learning. (Of course, there's a causation arrow problem here, but I think it points the right way).
However, there's another factor involved: fundamentals. When you are sitting in "Algorithm Analysis" it seems like none of it applies to making $75k-$100k typing HTML into a text editor. But trust me, things like that help--maybe not often, but when you need it you need it.
For instance, I had someone come to me with a program idea: He was a divorce lawyer and wanted software you could type all the assets of the couple into. Then the program would allocate the assets in such a way that each member would have an equal amount. "Uh-oh", I thought, "Knapsack Problem." I immediately told him that would not be feasible , but we could work on an approximation.
Another example: When I was hiring, I gave out a programming problem. One of the problems I used was "write a program that will multiply two arbitrarily large numbers together". I can't tell you how many people tried to use a variable of type long to do this. I can tell you that none of them were college-graduates.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Mike said that he would be more than happy to bring me on full-time, and made an additional offer. He told me that he would pay 100% of my university tuition costs if I wanted to keep taking courses at the university. If I only managed a C grade, he would pay %50 and for a D or less I was on my own.
More high tech companies need to consider making offers like this to their employees. Educational institutions cannot keep up with the high-tech market - it is simply impossible to teach the teachers while they themselves are busy teaching their students.
I don't know about other "nerds" but taking random courses that I am interested in paid for by the company I work for seems a lot more appealing than going through someone's idea of the perfect high-tech ciriculum. All you prove in the end is that you've learned how to memorize.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
As has been driven into the ground in earlier posts, college is more about learning to learn for that lifelong cycle of learning than it is about acquiring all you'll ever need to know at once. True, not much you learn in college or grad school is going to make you a better modern programmer. But, a robust college CS or IT program might do a good job of teaching you how to quickly evaluate and learn a language, how to understand larger conceptual issues in writing a program, and how to go about learning the real-world techniques that will make you a better programmer.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Things might be good now. And if you're good at what you do you won't have a problem.
What will happen when the economy finally turns down and employers start getting swamped with resumes again? A lot of people receiving resumes will start employing a filtering mechanism, for example, throwing resumes for people with no degree straight to the reject pile without even reading it. It seems a shame to put yourself at a disadvantage when you're good.
Then there's the other aspect. When you get bored and want to go and learn something new, it's good to already have an undergraduate degree. I say get it out the way as soon as possible. I certainly wouldn't want to go back and start as a beginner.
I have a friend (used to be my mentor at my first job). More than years experience and also a very good software engineer. He has no degree. He wants to go back to school and learn more about computers. Unfortunately all of the stuff that he's interested in is at a post-graduate level (obviously). The stupid system of pre-requisites has put him off: too much effort pursuading the schools to give credit for his career experience, and too much effort taking classes he could do his sleep years ago.
It's unfortunate that society places so much emphasis on having a degree. You can't even get immigration visas for most countries without a degree. So not studying rules out living and working abroad (and I wouldn't change that experience for anything!).
Some of you all went to college for a few years before dropping out. I never even started. I went directly from high school to working for a friend's consulting firm.
Not having a degree has NEVER been a hinderance to me. Going through four years of school would have basically put me four years behind where I am now, and given me a piece of paper. Having a CS degree is the equivalent of having a BS in Business. Grads are a dime a dozen. I routinely win jobs over college grads, cause I spent that four years actually learning my field, not the complete waste of time classes that the university makes you take to be a well rounded individual.
The one thing in this industry that is prized more than a degree is knowledge. I've got my MCSE certification, and I'm working toward my Cisco CCIE. I've seen people with no degrees, but with a CCIE get offered six figures, even with no real CCIE job experience. Ever seen a grad from a four year school get offered that much right out of graduation? OK, it does happen, but it's RARE!
A degree is nothing more than a sign that you can read books and memorize stuff. A CCIE is the tech equivalent of defending your doctoral thesis. It's frigging tough! But, if you have the CCIE, that's your sign that you know what the hell you are doing!
College is not a guaranteed path to financial security. My dad has two bachelors degrees, and I make twice what he did when he retired. My wife has a Masters degree, and I make twice what she does. She hates her job and her field. I absolutely love my job (not necessarily where my job is, but I love what I do here). I play on computers at work, then I go home and play on them there.
A note to all teenagers. Quit school and move out on your own. Odds are, you really do know more than your teachers do.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I am working full time in the 'smokin hot' economy and finishing my undergrad at the same time. There is alot to be said for *directly* tying your career to your formal training. Certain things that wouldn't sink in without job experience are much more profound and applicable. At least that is my experience as a software developer and a CS student in my last year. Also, there is a depth of understanding about the fundamentals and behind the scenes concepts that you can't get by just getting a certification/degree or just being in the industry. Where in your MCSE class do you learn about interrupt service vectors or compiler design? Or, conversely, would any of the formally defined steps in Software development 101 actually sink in at all if you hadn't had the experience to realize they really aren't a load of arbitrary crap? It seems reasonably obvious to me that people who forsake one for the other, e.g. pure academics or experience only techies, are shortchanging themselves in the long run. Pure academics will always have a disconnected idealized view of the world and experience based techies will spend the rest of their lives scrambling to pick up the specifics of the 'Latest New Thing' without understanding it's basis or history at all. This also assumes you are aspiring to be a good computer scientist. If you are simply gambling for a quick buck or an IPO, by all means just dive in. Unfortunately, there are too many people like this today and the direct result is the sorry state of the industry today.
If you're career-oriented, and you're sure you want to be in software or systems/network engineering, a CS degree is worth less than industry experience.
Obviously, if you're unsure of where you want to be in 10 years, or if you're not motivated enough to take the initiative in building a career, college-at-18 is a good idea. But everyone here knows that CS is not trade school. The knowledge you need to compete in the IT/development workforce is obtained by doing, not by reading. I'm sure even the staunchest advocates of college education have horror stories about clueless CS grads starting jobs full of a sense of entitlement but completely bereft of any practical competance.
The word I hear most when talking about the way practical computer education SHOULD be is "apprenticeship". And we're fortunate to be at a point where meaningful (if informal) apprenticeship is available to everyone. Development and deployment projects of every level are open to participation in the form of open source projects.
If you're planning on becoming a software developer, contributing to a well-run open source project is a much better use of your time than theory classes. A solid 4-year history of real contributions to well-known projects looks much better on a resume than 4 years of undergrad schooling. It also costs less, and is more productive than undergraduate CS.
Speaking as someone who has been responsible for hiring people in the Valley for the past 3 years, I can confidently assert that the naysayers who claim employers will frown on a resume without a degree are completely full of it. The few exceptions I can think of (hardware engineering and research positions) so obviously require schooling (from a practical perspective) that they aren't worth debating. In the technology workforce, it's a sellers market. No serious employer has the luxury of waiting for a "traditional" candidate with a degree --- there are 10 companies competing for every job hunter now.
Even if the bottom drops out of the technology market in 5 years, a few years of industry experience is clearly more valuable to a resume than a degree. The market today is a huge opportunity for tech workers. It's silly to ignore that.
I left University after first year to pursue a carrer in Electronics. I started off as a trainee and soon acquired enough experience to be on the top engineers wage for my company at the time. Had I continued studying, it would have taken me years to gain the experience that I would have missed.
At 23 years old, after leaving a well paid job for a major ISP, I set up a company to provide networking solutions. As I now regularly interview and employ both graduates and non-graduates, I can appreciate the advantages of both. Often a young school-leaver is easy to train, as they are genuinely interested in the work and want to learn. All too often, graduates come out of college and believe they have learned enough at college to start in at the deep end. Trying to train an employee who is hostile to the idea of going back to the fundamentals and learning everything from the beginning again is a tiring task.
I've got nothing against employing graduates, but they work under the same conditions as school-leavers, on the same salary. Although they may be able to fast-track to management, there is no preference in our company and a 17 year old who is good at his job has exactly the same prospects as a 25 year old finishing his degree and coming in to employment.
Philosopher (n) - a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity
I graduated from high school in 1976, and went to University in 1977. I had gotten interested in computers in 1974, though a "computer concepts" course in high school (working on teletypes and time sharing with a bunch of other schools in my region). I got very good with the computers there, quickly surpassing my teacher in knowledge (although he helped me find better references and manuals to read).
I was interested in a computer career, so I asked a few programming professionals that I knew what I should do in college. All of them told me to FORGET about taking computer courses , they were too theoretical for the "real world" (read "business world"); if I wanted to be successful, find an industry that is using computers, and learn that industry. In other words, learn a bit about accounting if you figured you would be doing payroll, A/P, etc.
I took their advice (and a couple of scholarships and grants) and went to University as a pre-med (figuring that doctors would always have enough money to make computing for that profession worthwhile). When I visited the computer room at the place, I was VERY glad that I didn't become "just another computer geek." Those guys were sleeping next to the terminals... bad hygiene... all those other stereotypes we have today.
However, the problem with my decision was that it turned out that I **HATED** the science courses that were necessary for a pre-med occupation, and really DID love programming.
I eventually dropped out of college, and got a job as a computer operator, and then worked my way up to programmer, etc.
Today, I don't know if taking more computer courses in college would have helped (I am probably an exception), but I have two daughters that will be considering college in a few years, and I know that my advice to them would be to NOT do it the way that I did... it was most definitely the hard way.
If you really like something, then spending 4-6 years immersing yourself in the depths of the subject in an educational setting is money well spent.
Although, looking back, I can say that after I left University, I *did* have fun.
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
I would say there are certain fields in which having a degree helps more than a certification. Being a software architect does require experience designing large systems, but it helps a lot to have formal software design courses under your belt. Perhaps most importantly, you have reasonable expectations about how long it will take to write a given program. Something that most programmers fail to comprehend unless they've seen the research or done it a half-dozen times: Time spent actually writing the code should be well under 20% of the time budgeted for the entire project. I know it sounds painful, but in terms of programmer hours, companies spend the majority of time in design, fixing defects (bugs to those who regard them as inevitable rather than the product of poor design), and maintenance. This is just an example of the kind of thing you learn in a degree program. Most companies and certifications don't bother with a strong software engineering component, and I think it really contributes to the buggy code we all see every day. Having to take software design as a course and practice doing it right helps.
Also, if your idea of a fun job is to explore things that no one has ever done before, a degree and some research experience is very beneficial. Rather than go work for established software companies, I choose to take my BS from (shameless plus) Harvey Mudd and do research. While most places that are doing research require at least a BS as a standard thing, it makes sense because they don't want to be stuck with someone who has no experience in pursuing open-ended problems with no known solution. If you think you're in a research job, and you don't discover at least occaisonally that what you've been trying to do for the last week has been proved to be impossible, you're not doing research. Having a degree gets you experience with that sort of thing.
Walt
In the united states at least there is a decent segment of the population (mostly working class families) that are above the level where they can get financial aid, and way below the level where they could afford to pay for school on their own without taking on unmanagable amounts of debt.
This comes in part from reigional differences in wages and cost of living. Where I grew up (and still live (working as a programmer)) in Ithaca, NY there are a sufficient number of college students that have come for the ivy league experience at Cornell that they raise the cost of living quite a bit, and then there are also grad students that are starving enough to build a nuke, program the next greatest software suite, run your network, etc... for $8/hour. A small (less than 15' x 15' ) studio apartment in a lousy neighborhood (across the street from a crackhouse actually) is $350/month. I got lucky and snagged a tech job by knowing the right people and being in the right place, and after 4 years i've worked my way up to 36k/year as a consultant...
In any case, i decided to put off college indefinitely because i couldn't afford it, neither could my parents, and i wasn't ready enough to pick a field to go into, since i'd pretty much be locked in after i finished until i could pay off a massive (probably $50-100k loan)... with the constantly shifting future of the tech industry it is hard to pick a feild to go into that is both interresting, having new developments, and is going to be able to provide you with a job 4-6 years later and ofr long enough to pay off a loan.
My reasoning for not going to college right after high school was more born of a pragmatic evaltuation of my options, with many options and not very many known variables, i took the one which gave me the least chance of making a catastrophic mistike. For me this was to settle into a 9-5er until i could either afford to go to college (and had a good idea of what i wanted to go for...), or until i found a neat enough and stable enough job not to care.
As it is now, after passing the 4 year experience mark i've had a lot more offers for work (and good stuff too) than i can take, so i'm okay for the moment.
I guess i just wanted to be a voice for people who didn't go to school, because i've seen a lot of people putting that decision down as irresponsible, impatient, or just poorly though out. I'm seeing a lot of people writing off the non-degreed people as a bunch of idiots, which i think is a particularly narrow view. A good portion of the programmers i know have taken a similar path, and most of them have been successful. Several have found their calling and gone to school, several have saved up and bought or build houses and settled down in the community, and several of the younger ones (me included) are still feeling things out.
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Play Six Pack Man. I
As it stands, a college degree really proves virtually nothing - look at all the dimwits out there with degrees (as well, of course, as the smart ones). Its almost impossible to draw any useful conclusion from a degree.
I did some college but didn't finish. I've found that most employers who know what they're doing will treat 4 years in the industry about the same as 4 years of college. Most important on the resume seems to be the technology and the fact that you'll hit the ground running.
Krispy Cream is people
Here in Pittsburgh, you NEED to have a degree of some sort to get in the door at IT companies. They ignore that fact that you may have integrated databases on multiple platforms, built 100mb lans from the ground up and can make a machine sit up and bark, if you don't have that paper (or at least proof that you're working towards it) you're SOL.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This is curious to me...
I spent alot of time in college, but never actually finished a degree.
My goal in life was to become a history professor (after wasting lots of time thinking i wanted to teach philosophy). However, i was funding this entire venture working temporary and contract positions as a tech support specialist.
I almost accidently made my way into programming and here i sit as a developer now, having given up collegiant pursuits in favor of my High Paying Tech-Job(tm).
Whats interesting to me, is how many people i know in the industry who are officially degreed, whos degrees have very little relevence to what they do now. My project team leader has a bachlors and mastors in geology, my co-developer has a degree in psych and our little companies CTO holds a doctrate in child development.
I think a large part of this, is that the industry is surrounded by this mystique of strange techy geekdom, so that only people who are intrested in it seem to get in it and accel.
Additionally, this is a (reletively) very new industry and therefor (unlike history) demonstratable merit suddenly becomes more important to your educational certificates.
As the industry grows and matures, this _will_ change. All academic (or pseudo-academic) pursuits eventually become overrun with qualified individuals, and then who you know and where you went to school start to become more important( as in history, economics, and to a large degree, law).
Who knows how long that will take though? There are still many many companies that you walk in to and get in on the "ground floor" of their IT departments, and quickly move up in position and salary. The industry will become alot more eastablished before these types of opportunites begin to really dry up, though the market is harder now than it was perhaps 5 years ago. I don't mean that its harder to find a job, i mean that the skill sets required are higher now, as companies know more about what they actually need, rather than just looking for bright enthusiastic individuals.
-T
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
You could learn all that stuff at temp jobs. That way, if you screw up they just put you on another assignment, if you hate the job you can just quit, and best of all they pay you to learn what you're doing.
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...you could go to college, pay $15k/year, be too busy with studies to generate any income, learn obsolete technology, and live in a crappy dorm with annoying roommates while getting no real world experience other than "how to cope with hangovers".
Or you could get an entry/mid level IS job, earn $50k/year, learn new and interesting technologies, live in a decent apartment/house, and get started learning the stuff which will ultimately make you worth $250k/year.
Sure, college offers chances for cultural exposure and a self betterment. Me, I'd take the paycheck now, retire at 35, and travel the world. That's what I call cultural exposure and self betterment.
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
Obviously, going to college to learn something you already have a mastery of is a waste of your time and money, as well as a waste of the school's resources.
Something I've noticed about the cream-of-the-crop coders is that we teach ourselves more than schools do anyway. I've dropped out (for the 2nd time now) because at this point, the CS department isn't going to teach me anything I can't learn on my own.
I can honestly say that the amount of computer-related knowledge I aquired (and retained) at school would have taken me less than a month to learn on my own time. HOWEVER, I shudder to think about what sort of person I'd be had I not gone to college for 6 months in 1996, and a a year and a half in 98-99.
I am considering returning to school to study something else - psychology perhaps. One of the posts joked about making sure you go to a school with lots of women - a perfectly valid suggestion, especially given that plenty of us techies have a level of social skills that approach absolute 0. College is good for more than teaching you what you need to know to get a job.
I'm about to spew off on my views about education and how it is very much misunderstood, thus, condemned on traits that are not really applicable to it. Update: I basically stick to CompSci and Programming. I didn't get to the College/University paradigm...
Firstly, people tend to not quite understand the difference between the fields of programming and computer science. They are not the same thing. A computer scientist has a ciriculum rooted mostly in theory and discrete mathematics. Programmers, conversely, deal in a much more pragmatic atmosphere. It's theory vs. the practical.
Computer science is mostly concerned with computation in a general sense (asymptotic analysis, formal langauges, automata, etc.). These, on their own, do not stem from programming. They do, however, enhance it. A computer scienctist can live without programming (usually, they don't...) but a programmer sure can't live without computer science. I'm sure people can tell a programmer who doesn't understand the notion of a time complexity analysis or data structures. They probably suck.
Programmers are concerned with actually getting some tangible system up and running. In other words, they have real jobs =). Many more esthestic issues arise in programming. Style, modularity of code, etc.
They tend to collide in the world of software engineering. Whether this is an engineering discipline or a computer science one is still up in the air. Suffice is to say, it uses the theoretical and some time-tested practices to achieve it's goals. It is much more practical than computer science.
Now, here comes the real problem: people tend to not know what field they are in. They misuse the terms. Also, those who go to school tend to find that it is not what what they thought, mostly because of the misunderstanding and gross misuse of the terms. I find those who want to program do this the most. They can't understand why they have to use something that they see no use for. Often, this is a mix of short-sightedness and bad instruction. As soon as some math-oriented theory creeps in, a large chunk of people say "This is stupid". When you have to program in a language you don't see as useful (e.g., Scheme), they say "This is never used in the real world". Perhaps you should stop and think - what is the point to the course I am enrolled in? In the class I had that used Scheme, it wasn't to learn Scheme outright, but rather to grasp concepts in programming languages that Scheme demonstrates more clearly.
Think about this: how in the world would you tailor an education system to meet the expectations of everyone who used it? You probably can't. What is important to realize is that even if some of the course doesn't seem useful, there probably is - you just need to look deeper. That's a sign of a good student as well. Getting more out than what is put in. Following the implications.
However, after extolling the virtues of education, I should note that it is not for everybody. Assess what you need and don't go just becuase you are supposed to. However, don't put it down as wasteful because I can guarentee you many people down the road will say "I'm glad I took that."
This post got a little off track and has to be cut short due to time, but I think I (sorta) got my point across =).
Woz
That's a lot of money to spend to get a social life. You can save more than HALF of that just paying people to be your friend.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Oops!
Anyway, I also meant to say:
Just cause you're happy doing something now, doesn't mean you'll be happy doing it for the rest of your life. Having a degree under your belt can be used to other fields. Going back to school later in life to do an undergraduate degree is much harder than getting it out the way when you're young.
The economy is good, so there are plenty of jobs now. But how about 20 years from now, when most of the perl coding/c hacking/etc. has been moved to low wages countries such as india? As always the interesting jobs will go to well educated young people and experienced, well educated older people. Uneducated (i.e. without a formal proof of that education) will get the left over jobs.
Place yourself in the position of a future employer: one job two candidates. One with a master degree and some relevant experience, one without any degree and some experience. I'd hire the one with the master degree because that one has the brains to get a master degree and was strong enough to finish the job. The other one was a loser who went for the quick money and/or was not clever enough to finish his master/bachelor thesis.
Spending some time in college is time well spent. It will shine on your CV and you might actually learn something. The IT business is full with ignorant losers, you have to look for knowledgeable people with a candle. And when you find them you usually find out they did finish school.
Jilles
has a co-op program... You work and go to school alternating semesters in exchange for staying an extra year at school... You get a top notch education plus alot of practical experience. (this isn't "fetch my coffee boy" it's "change the routines to work with OpenSSL 0.95, finish the ODBC 2.5 routines, then start on the 3.0 driver")
I'm actually overloading on classes because I'm having such a blast in them. Sure, I could have taught all this stuff to myself, but I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'd be able to do a better job than some of the people who are being paid to do it for me... I say some because while most of my teachers have been great, there are still a few who aren't. ^^;;
There's nothing wrong with holding a professional IT job w/out a college college education... Hell, I was a computer tech Junior year of HS, and a web developer (backend, not frontend) Senior year... But from what I learned in college (things I overlooked because they weren't obvious, like data structures, run time analysis, induction) I can see that alot of the code I wrote way back when was inefficient/insecure and could definitely stand some improvement.
Obviously this doesn't apply to anyone except me because of one big deal: I'm in this because I like coding, I'm not in it for the cash. People who skip college for work are obviously going for those stock options, etc. But I'll be damned if I graduate without getting at least one cool research paper published.
Huge huge question: yes, money talks, so what? Where are you gonna find it easier to pick up nice chicks, after work in a bar or cocktail party or at a college? Skipping college for work is a choice, but I don't think it's a good one.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
"Education is what remains after what has been learned has been forgot". Certs and working knowlege are time limited. The education I'm getting at University is timeless. Sure that "Physics of Semi-conductors" class may not apply to my sys damin job, but figuring out complex realtionships between properties of physics definatly helps the overall thinking process.
This summer I worked at a .com and got stock. This is good considereing I'm making a lot on it. However I did consider moving to California to take a tech job. I decided against it. College is good. Girls and parties are fun. Working in a (nearly) all male office over the summer gave me a new appreciation for the other sex. But i made the decision because I LIKE LEARNING ABOUT PROGRMAMING. Sure I'm a decent programmer right now but there's no way I could... say... impliment an operating system with TCP/IP from scratch right now. Also, I'm interested in grad school. I think that if I can come up with an interesting idea in grad school I can make my .com million$ rather than my current .com thousand$.
so you're making 40k doing web design... how long do you think this will last? you think web design is going to be around for the next 10 yrs?
the difference is that people with a high school education are learning what they need to learn for today's market.
the people getting a college education are learning to think (hopefully) so that they can adjust to whatever job market and marketable skills they need.
The experience he's reffering to is from the other side of the silicon, so to speak. CSc types (especially if they skip college) often lack communication skills, which can introduce just as many (or more) problems in the development cycle as technical flaws.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
...up your arse.
/. that did not get a comp sci degree than did. The people who program as a hobby, not as a career, are the ones who know more about programming than most 4 year degree'd folks.
IMHO, college is a way for people who cannot get a job by outshining their peers to do so. Having a college degree is almost like being in the good 'ol boys network. I don't know why a lot of companies even bother to ask for 4 year degrees. Why the hell does my manager need a poly-sci degree to manage 20 people?
The only people who really need degrees are the doctor/engineer/lawyer types. Comp sci degrees? Not. When's the last time a computer science major actually went on to be a computer scientist? Most of 'em are programmers now. I quit myself because I wanted to be a sysadmin. Now I'm leaning more towards programming and development, but you still don't need a computer science degree to do that kind of stuff. I'm almost certain that there are more good programmers that read
Another important thing about programming, project management, I didn't hear about until I got into the real world. I don't think universitys (maybe with the exception of CalTech and MIT, et al.) really prepare their comp-sci students for the real world.
In defense of college...I loved it. I wish I had the resources to go back. I had more fun in college that I've ever had anywhere else. You can get all the sex, drugs and booze you'd ever want there. That's what college is good for.
We almost hired a very bright young programmer who hadn't gone to college. He scored VERY high on the BrainBrench.com C and C++ skills tests, and had other good credentials.
I asked him to provide some example code for me to look at, and he gave me a a short example where he had to optimize a C++ program that did a string rewrite (ie. convert character "A" into "BC", etc.) for a specified number of times. He precomputed the translation once, and gave up there, not realizing that he had taken steps toward moving from a O(N) algorithm to an O(N lg N) algorithm.
It was clear that he had never been drilled in recognizing certain algorithmic patterns, and thus his optimizations employed many language speed up tricks to make C++ faster, but largely ignored using a simple but better algorithm to improve the speed. I rewrote it to use the better algorithm (compute string replacements for levels 2, 4, 8, etc., when needed, rather than 1-N) and eliminate the repeated string copy (by rewriting front to back, then back to front, in a single buffer), and beat his "optimized" version.
In short, while he was great with language skills, particularly w/ C++, he had a lot to learn about algorithms in general, which is the kind of formalism that a university will drill you in, and which is very helpful. For the type of numerical and graphical software development we are doing, it is almost critical.
Still, we would have hired him anyway, but he decided to work elsewhere. Language skills alone made him quite valuable to many employers. But for someone who seemed as talented and bright as he was, he could really achieve much more.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Recently, Fortune updated their "40 Richest Under 40" Index. Meaning, it lists the 40 richest people under 40 living in America.
Every single person on that list is an executive or founder of a technology company - with the exception of Number 40: Michael Jordan, and even he is on the Board of Directors for MVP.Com.
Now, guess how many graduated from college? More than half? Hah. The site is slow, so I wish I could go and count how many of them actually did, but I remember that many of them dropped out, and one never even went - the former CEO of Datek Online was once Datek's mailroom clerk.
Should techies not going to college expect to become that rich? Certainly not, but there's no reason that forgoing academia can lead to a dismal life...
The list is here.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Trends will always have exceptions, but every IT salary survey I have ever seen that asked about college education has always placed salaries for degreed individuals higher than non-degreed individuals.
In a population (such as /. readers) where there is an abnormally high percentage of highly skilled there will be an abnormally high level of anecdotes about degree-less techs making a killing.
For most people, however, a four year degree will virtually always pay off over time. The average salary for degreed IT workers is about 20k higher than non-degreed IT workers. Degreed workers have higher ceilings when moving up the ladder in their career.
And as always, those with sharp enough skills will start their own consultancies and and bring in lots of dough whether they have a degree or not.
With only one variable assocaited with each asset, (value and not
weight) your asset problem isn't 0-1 Knapsack. It looks similar to
the Bin Packing problem, which is NP hard.
Whatever happened to knowledge for the sake of kowledge? College should not be simply about getting a degree to make money--but rather about a preparation for life & continued learning as a whole. "Cura Personalis" as Marquette University puts it, "Care for the whole person." For my age, I have a very good job as a Java programmer. The company I work for would take me full time in a second. However, I feel my education is something that it is important for me to complete. Thus, I'm taking the "golden mean"--9 credits/semester school, 35 hrs/week work. It allows me to apply what I learn immediately, make a decent amount of money for a college student doing what I love, continue steadily in my studies, and still get trashed on weekends. Life is good :-)
I met a geek recently, in fact, he told me about Slashdot. This is guy is WAY out. He's 21 years old, has no degree, talks about weird things, and is generally quite interesting. He finished high school and did really well, but decided not to go on to college, but instead studied for two certifications. On the course, he soon became bored with the pace of the certifications and did 2 extra certifications in the year-long course. He ended up with an A+, N+, MCSE and MCSD. (Even though he got the MS certifications, he hasn't used any Microsoft products in the products he created.)
So, when he was 19 he finished the course he was on and instead of going to work for a local MS shop that extended an offer to him, he went to work for an Equine institute. When I asked him why he took half the salary he could have, he exclaimed, he "just wanted to pet the horses"!!! Now, if that's not interesting, I don't know what is. He eventually went on to form an allainace with a top Equine official from another company, and wrote certain software (I'm not going to name the software or the individual, besides the fact that it has to do with E-commerce, because I don't want to "out" the individual because of certain other things), that has been a hit in the Equine industry, world-wide. He's now got more than $25 million dollars in his bank account.When I asked him what it was written in and what it ran on, he told me that instead of using Microsoft products, he decided to use FreeBSD 3.5, Apache, Perl, Python, and Zope, with some C modules, even though his "education" was in Microsoft products!! Later he was fired for having been caught having sex with the mares at the company he worked for, but the software he wrote had already raked in more than their original business. So, you see, while he doesn't have a college degree, he is strange, weird, and knows his stuff well enough to write a product that is widely regarded in Ecommerce business.
In college, classes only occupy a small portion of your day. Unlike work in an IT department, which we leave you drained and too tired to really do meaningful independent work, college will leave you with plenty of time to pursue whatever you want.
:)
I can't wait to hear you say how much free time you have during college after you've been there a while and get bogged down with actual work
I believe that if a person is ready and able to tackle the IT world at a young age, they should go for it. However, the people I was able to network with when I was at college made the extra four years a great investment for my future.
- js
This is very similar to my experiece!
I dropped out of college, I had a total of @28 credit hours, for a high paying job. I started at $35/hour plus a hefty per-diem package. I had an upward battle of gaining acceptance of my peers. I was 19 with 3 years professional experience in C/C++.
I was woking with people who were twice my age and with 4 to 5 times the work experience. They looked down on the young "wipper snapper."
I had a keen ability to sniff out bugs that just seemed impossible by everybody else. Finding a couple of them that everybody had given up on was the turning factor in gaining acceptance. But technical ability was only part of the acceptance. I had to learn quickly that I had to treat these people with much respect even though they didn't respect me. With the finding of bugs I didn't announce, or paraide the fact. I just humbly asked for the next bug/project to work on.
I emphasise the word "humbly" because the showed the older programmers that I was there to help the project in the best way that I could that was the best for the project and the people on the projects.
After about a year my software archectecture(SP?) skills were recognised and I was involved in almost all decisions on the development of some major software. In fact I was given a project of my own, I was 20, dealing with 50 year olds. They were all bent out of shape because I had won the title of lead. The project was for Windows CE utilizing a GPS reciever for tracking and docking of large freight ships. The projecst was deamed still born when it was given to me. I was given an impossible situation. I pulled it off by scrapping the old software and starting fresh. Everyone laughed, but they stopped when I had working software in 3 weeks that did more than the software that had been worked on for 6 months.
With that project along with a couple of other details gave my managers enough confidence in me, as a contractor, to send me to Oragne County CA at the age of 21. My responsiblilty was to train a group of software engineers on the fraimwork and ideals behind the software that I was woking on. I was a contractor with absoutly no obligation whatsoever to staying with this company. They paid Every expense.
I say all that to say... Technical merit will only get you so far. To really succeed you need to show initiative with out appearing cocky. You need a good atitude of looking out for what is best for the project and the other people on the project. Humility and Meekness is also very important. The best definition of meekness I've ever herad is, Power restrained. Think of a gentel giant. He could crush everything in his path but instead restrains his power, meekness! Humility is not, "Oh Woe is me." Humility is understanding your abilities and the abilities around you. With your abilities try not to inflate your position at your job. Let you co-workers do this. Humility is also tring to build an air of synenergy. Trying to build everyone up around you to better the project. It is to some extent every one for everyone else. The word humility is the combination of two words Human and Ability. Humility is the ability to effictively interact with other Humans to better their environment and yours.
P.S.
I failed speelling all through my school career!
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
- Communication skills - most high schools, even good ones, seem to avoid this, and though they offer the standard college-prep course, it's laughable (Let's analyze works of fiction, instead!). In my school back in the 80s, parents would call up teachers and complain that their children had too much schoolwork (HA!) and the first thing would be dropped would be essays and papers. Even a decent college education will tell you how to present ideas appropriately for both formal and personal communication, and this is NOT a skill that can be easily picked up by programming -- you need to have the critiquing that completes this. And given that code should be 50% comments, I'd think this is highly necessary.
- Teamwork - I hate it too, as I was always an individual learner, but you have to be able to work in a team in today's society. While the way many OSS projects are run are like that, you sometimes don't have the choice of who's on board your team, and you have to work with them personally, thus the group assignments they give in college are very necessary.
- Responsibility - College is odd - you go typically from an envirnoment that you don't control (due to parents, teachers, etc), to one where you have nearly full control. Many students have problems adjusting to this, as seen by freshmen dropout rates, the Freshmen 15, and how many go running back home to find part-time jobs to pay for extras that they initially thought they could afford. However, after 4 years of this, most learn how to handle their time and money to be able to do well in classes and still enjoy themselves. Showing this type of responsibility can be impressive to a potental boss, knowing that you know how to manage time and resources. Many (not all) high school kids can do that.
Those are just a few, I strongly believe there is more. And there are cases where skipping college may certainly be justified, but that doesn't work for 99% of those going into IT out there.But with colleges now aiming towards 5 yr programs, costing more and more, and the fact that IMO computer science/eng training tends to be about 3 years behind the rest of the world and focuses too much on specific aspects instead of a general feel for it, suggests that those that doubt the need for college will feel justified in skipping, and may or may not succeed later in life. It would be nice for companies that do actively hire students out of high school to provide tuition credit for night classes or online degrees, if only to help train their employee better.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
RANT
Everyone who says that going to college is falling behind in the field is adding to my growing list of reasons to bring back clinical lobotomies. Pure and simple.
They think that learning to hack out a shopping cart is what CS is about. Sure, they can learn that without college. They probably learned to do all these things from ``Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours'' or some other shit book.
This sentiment infuriates me. They think they're not going to learn anything by going to college... Okay, then, these 37331 boyz know how to write CGI scripts. It'll land them their dream $70K webmaster jobs. Now, maybe they could explain to me briefly Turing's Halting Theorem and present an informal proof in a paragraph or less. Or maybe explain the Knuth-Morris-Pratt string matching algorithm and present a proof of correctness. Or... how about implementing user-level multithreading with continuations and briefly explaining what basic problems need to be overcome once the basic operators (fork et al.) are implemented.
These people can't do those things, whereas a college undergrad could, probably starting around sophomore year. And guess what, that college kid knows more about better coding and theoretical CS than the high-school dropouts ever will. College educations make for much better programmers, even if graduates do not choose to become computer scientists per se. Having a college education is not about falling back by four years, it's about spending four years learning about how to be very very good at what you do.
Sadly, these 18-year old high school kids are probably more likely to get hired than a 23-year old college graduate for some jobs. The reasons are that (1) they don't need to be paid as much, and (2) that they know all the latest buzzword languages (Java, C#, Delphi, etc.). The college kid will have the background to pick up this buzzword crap quickly, but will not necessarily have it on his resume. Very sadly, that makes a huge difference when it comes to hiring, though the college graduate will be doing a far better job simply because he will have learned e.g., good coding techniques.
Aside from these purely practical considerations, the kids who go from high school into the workforce are missing out on other things. Ever hear the phrase ``well-rounded?'' Well, I personally know of no more boring entity than someone who can only talk about computers. A college graduate will at least have been forced to learn something about art, history, literature, and science (other than CS). That makes for far better people.
I look for college graduates when I hire not for proof of technical competence, but for evidence of some exposure to social sciences, literature, geography, and history. The real question is, do you want to go through life as a machine programmed to perform a certain function, or do you want to live as a human being, with awareness and appreciation for what your species has accomplished, both for good and for ill? In effect, skipping college and going straight to work in a high-tech field is a form of self-exploitation; you are denying yourself some pretty basic enrichment experiences if you fall into that trap. Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. You can't learn from something you don't know about.
It's your life. Be a shallow, unenlightened techno droid if you want. Most of you probably won't even realize what you're missing; more's the pity.
There's already getting to be a noticible problem of programmers being very poorly rounded (no jokes about diet, please :). In regard to technical subjects, this is already bad enough, with lots of people running around who don't know languages other than C++ or Java, who think that "operating system" = "Linux or Windows," who have never done any reading about human/computer interaction, and so on. In regard to other subjects, I'd call the situation pretty grim, with a majority of geeks poorly read outside of mainstream science fiction, for example. Yes, that is also the stereotype, but there is truth there, and one response of "Well, I don't like science fiction" isn't going to change it.
Why is getting outside the traditional geek circle important? Because not doing so can lead to extreme close-mindedness, as witnessed by all the pointless debates over meaningless tech subjects (Perl vs. Python, Linux vs. Windows, Emacs vs. vi, NVidia vs. 3dfx, Intel vs. AMD). There's also a tremendous creative force outside of the geek community, or at least big enough of a force that the geek community looks pretty weak in comparison. Garage bands with their own style of music. Authors who are compelled to bring their visions to life. In the open source programming world, there's getting to be a disturbing in-bred feeling, with people running in circles cloning things and acting like they're a movement to be reckoned with. More and more, though, the Linux and open source communities are not living up to all the hype that they are getting. You read about Linux in the Wall Street Journal, you read Eric Raymond's writing, and you expect astounding things. But we're not getting any of that. We're getting weird debates about how GUIs are for lusers and command lines for the 3r33+. And there are big sites devoted to Linux games, and we're just seeing (a) ports from PC titles, and (b) lots of riff-raff rehashes of games from twenty years ago or earlier.
Getting out of the circle is important. Programming is relatively easy. Unless you want to get a PhD and get into heavy research, I highly recommend that techie-types go to college and major in something other than computer science. History, literature, or business or liberal arts would be better choices. Seriously.
The fact remains the people who are good at what they do don't need a college degree to prove it. However, I can't believe I'm saying this, there is the idea of broadening your horizions. If you can go to a half way decent institution odds are you'll meet some really smart people. Reguardless of what their major or area of research they may inspire you to do somthing you normally would not. I was a computer geek through my very recent college years, but I also acted, preformed music, helped build set for a play. There were people smart and interesting enough to convince me to remove myself from in front of the computer screen. I like to think of myself a s a decent computer guy, but because of college I learned how to do more than drink beer and code. I like to think my life is more interesting because of it. The same cannot be said for everyones experience in college, but it worked for me.
BOFH, My model for being a sysadmin :)
There may be quite a few "self-made intellectuals" out there, but nothing can replace the interchange that takes place within a community of learning. Communication skills are essential to good product (and personal) development, and college is the best choice for the vast majority of people to develop those skills. If there's one thing I regret about my college years, it's that I didn't indulge myself with more philosophy, history, or lit courses.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The question shouldn't be "Is college relevant to my career?" but rather "Is college relevant to my life?"
I feel sorry for people who treat college as just four years of task-training and ignore the possibility of expanding your exposure to other walks of life, other disciplines, art, music, literature, sport, and everything else.
I don't just bring my technical training to work, I bring my entire self and everything I know and love and hate and have been exposed to.
College helped show me how to be a well-rounded human being. It gave me more to live for than just jobjobjob 24/7. College is there to teach us not only how to learn new things, but what new things there are to be learned.
Well, I've got a BSc in Chemistry and Physics, and (almst) a masters in Materials Science.
I just turned down a job writing code (for a games company). Ok, that's my choice (I want to go academic. But he fact that I had the degree got me the (unsolicited) offer.
So, on to the why.
The company in question is hurting for people. Not for bottom rung programmers, (It's situated with 10 universites within commuting distance), but for people who understand the real world, on an algorithmic level.
For example, they had a CS graduate, who wrote a bunch of code, which they binned. It was very elegant, implemented the design algorithm to the letter, but was too slow, and the guy didn't know how to simplyfy the algorithm.
Skipping collage may get you a job punching code. It will not get you a job doing design. You know, the really lucrative area.
Exactly. College used to be a thing that very few people attended. A college education used to mean the holder of the degree was intelligent and did know a thing or two. Now it just seems to mean you can put up with 4 years of BS.
A college prof of mine used to tell me that the purpose of a college education was to produce a well rounded person.
I took the rather non-tradional route through college (13 years), and I think I got more out of it because I already had the job, wife, kids, and career. I could really sit back and enjoy the classes. I learned a great deal about myself and other people from the western civilization classes and the various discussion groups that I had. The importance of these classes to computer science is minimal, but there is more to life than computers.
Having been exposed to things besides computers has given me a greater common base with non-computer people. At some point in your life, you're going to want to deal with a person without having a computer involved, and if you don't have something to bring to the table besides computer skills, it's going to be difficult to relate to the other person.
I don't know if I'm a well rounded person, but college did give me some intellectual pursuits that don't directly relate to computers. It's nice to have something else to do once and a while.
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
We had an ugly internal flame war about education the past few days. It was between the people who know certifications are worthless as an indicator of knowledge, and the people who know that they help you to get promoted by the PHB's running the show. Of course they're both right. EDS is famous around here for getting IT interns over the summer, luring them into not going back to school in the fall with 30-40K/year, then trapping them in low-level developer positions for life. After all, they don't have degrees, do they?
I got more out of my enlisted military service in SIGINT/Crypto than I did out of my university education. Right now, if I were to state the ideal candidate for almost any IT job that I hire for, I would say 2 year degree to give a bit of technical depth, 2 years military (in a tech specialty or else in the Cavalry - you really have to think there as a Cavalry Scout), and one year on-the-job consulting in a couple of assignments. I've found that the skills they learn in 2 years is enough to get them started as coders or net techs, the 2 years military gives them perspectives on what hard work *really* is (plus teaches resiliency, independence, teamwork and leadership), and the one year consulting gives them a bit of depth in terms of working in the IT world. Thats a lot better than the 4 year grads who often come equipped with academic skills but are absoulte morons when it comes to business pratices, work ethic or ability to function without being "managed".
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
Although there hasn't been one lately,
when the economy gets rough, non-degree people
are discriminated against.
I have lot of experience with this one. On a less than 10 year horizon, skip college. But doing so is a gamble you may eventually regret. Please read on.
I was around for the last great tech gold rush (late 70's-early 80's). At the time there were six of us who were crack progammers. (in BASIC -- this was a long time ago 8). Three of us jumped into the new economy, even ditching high school in two cases, while three of us did college and graduate school.
At 10 years (age 25), it was obvious. The college attenders were idiots. The three of us who were slogging through lectures were dramatically poorer than the jumpers. David was on Borland's C compiler team. Brian was number 2 at a software startup.
At 20 years, (now), it's no contest. All that "stupid college stuff" has paid off in spades. The three collegians have left the jumpers behind. What stock options can give so quickly, they can take away just as fast. More importantly, college is not supposed be about job training, it's supposed to be about gaining perspective and practicing learning. Indeed, none of us three collegians use our original job skills for our current wealth, and two of us barely use our college gained "job skills."
In summary, if you skip college you are making the "hollywood bet." A lucky few will be stars (eg. Bill Gates). Some will have good jobs as supporting characters or the key grip. And a shocking number will be walking Sunset Avenue sucking off people with college degrees.
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
I think that people would be better off going into the military. I went in at the ripe old age of 17 and spent 7 years there. Don't get me wrong, it pretty much sucked, but man I was a _complete_ mess before the military. I had no goals, I didn't appreciate learning, and I had _NO_ idea what hard work was. I'm a much better person for having done that, and now I can sit back in my comfy job that I got due to having been there.
The military has a lot of computer related stuff by the way, for those folks trying to break into the business (i.e. Electronic Warfare, etc).
There's really no way to explain the experience to someone who's never been in, but it will definitely change you for the better, and you get paid for it (plus college money ($50k)). Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars of mommy and daddy's money to drink beer, you can take 3 years or so see the world and get some experience.
I agree with you that maybe you were lucky. I never took classes that would have led to an actual job in college... and maybe that's what helped me. Instead of taking courses in web design, I taught myself. But I did take courses in religious studies, anthropology, and some CS courses which, looking back on, all helped me tons in getting me to where I am today, as well as preparing me for years from now.
Founder's Camp
Founder's Camp
News for non-Nerds. Stuff that matters.
I was just about to say the same thing: HA!
I'd like to hear his opinion in four years.
And if he's implying that he is paying his tuition aid-free out of his own account, well, I can imagine that for him, going to an Ivy League college must be a lot more romantic and a much easier choice over going directly into the workforce, than for many others.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I've always though what's important about school in general is not to memorize how to code, etc, but rather to learn how to work. Thinks like how to manage time effectively, how to get the job done even if you don't want to, how to effectively use available resources, how to ask for help, etc. These are things that do you a lot more good in the real world than a class on C...
It all comes down to what you know and how far you want to go. Without a degree upper management is pretty much out of reach. Some senior technical positions are out of reach. You basically have to go a lot farther to prove yourself to those around you, but once you do prove yourself, nobody cares if you do or don't have a degree.
There are companies that require degrees for decent jobs. Do some research into where you want to work. Do some research into if you want to work for such a narrow-minded company.
I've tried going to college 4 times. I have about 60 credits. Sure I want a degree eventually, but it's just not worth it at this point.
The worst part about college is paying thousands of dollars for classes where you occasionally know more about the subject (or at least the current state of the art) than the professor.
Make your own decision about college, nobody else really cares.
chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
More realistic is a lifelong cycle of learning and retraining that better serves radically evolving fields.
As for hackers who skip college - lets face it - very little you do in college is going to make you a better programmer as far as industry is concerned (not many of us spend time reimplementing sorting algorithms) - programming is still an art, and mastery of the arts is gained through practice.
Arrogent, cocky techie. If your startup company succeed, you may live comfortablely for the rest of your life. Chance of success is extremely low. You will make more enemy than friends on the way.
No clue type, learn about PC and windows in the basement. You might think you know something, but you probably don't know that you get lower pay than fresh out of college student.
"My destiny is with this company...", think again! Life is full of many choices. If the company failed, it's really hard to get a second job.
You might not need all the knowledge that school teaches you, but they should be the basic knowledge that you have access to them. Most important of all, diploma still works better in giving you stability in life. Think of it as the insurance of finding GOOD jobs.
I totally agree. And without coming off as snobbish, most of the time I can tell without looking at the resume which of the interviewees have attended top-ranking schools vs. community colleges eventhough many of their resume skillsets are identical. And the work they produce is quite different.
A college education isn't just to prepare you for a job (otherwise we'd all be going to technical schools), but is to teach you how to think, expand your mind, and make you a more rounded individual with increase problem-solving experience.
Just like a doctor, the point isn't to get rid of the symptoms, but to holistically educate the individual.
Wow. You think that college should be about teaching you Visual Basic?
Someone with a good CS education (note that I said a good CS education, which may not correspond to what is available in your school) can learn the computer language du jour quickly and independently. Someone who goes out of high school to a "Visual Basic in a month" course is useless as soon as VB loses favor.
Unfortunately too many universities these days are confused about this and providing their students nothing but a trade-school exposure to what's currently trendy.
Now that's not to say that it might not be a good idea for some folks to delay college for a while and try working in "the real world" first. Students (especially grad students) who've had more non-academic experience, I think, get more out of their university education because they are more focused.
(Apologies to Frater 219, for some reason I could not find a link to the individual post.)
What follows is a post that discussed this very issue over a year ago. I took it to heart and have enjoyed college ever since. It has opened my eyes up to a whole new world, one I would have never seen if I'd kept my nose buried in a keyboard. People should not go to college just to help them start a career. They should go to college to learn about life.
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Geeks, go to college. (Score:5)
by Frater 219 on Monday April 12, @01:05PM EDT
(User Info) http://
Don't go to college to learn to be a better geek. Academic computer science won't turn you into a system administrator, Web designer, or Perl hacker. You won't learn how to optimize a kernel configuration, recover files from a crashed disk, build a fast database, or tell your boss nicely that his ideas about information technology are stupid or violate the laws of physics. You may learn a lot of good theory -- but you could pick that up elsewhere, too.
Go to college to learn about culture, or history, or philosophy, or literature. Go to college to sit up late nights screaming at your best friends about what an idiot Rene Descartes was. Go to college to watch your best friends do the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Go to college to find out what the hell this postmodernism thing is that Larry Wall's always on about. Go to college to refute postmodernism, and to be called postmodern for doing it. Go to college to meet people who will be impressed with your intelligence instead of thinking of it as threatening.
Don't go to an easy college, and don't go to a place that lets you get by doing nothing but technical stuff. Go to a place that makes you do a lot of heavy reading and writing. Take tough courses. Learn to write well; not only will it help when your boss asks you to document your project, but it'll also help you sound better on Slashdot and USENET. Don't scorn "well-roundedness" or "communications skills"; the stars of geek culture are no bunch of illiterates.
Study music. Music, as Pythagoras demonstrated, is a form of mathematics, and musicians, like hackers, keep pounding on their work in search of the Right Thing. Study psychology and sociology. They represent our attempts to figure out how the systems called the human mind and human society work, so that we can make them work better.
Read Nietzsche. Refute your parents' religion. Then refute your refutation.
Get into politics. Which politics don't really matter -- be a socialist, or a libertarian, or even a Republican if you have to. Go to activist events. Take politics courses. Insist on bringing up free software in the middle of your classes. Derive the Debian Free Software Guidelines from the works of John Locke.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
I left university after 3 yrs because they were only interested in teaching me to become a programmer and after reading The Cockoo's Egg, I knew I wanted to be a sysadmin. So I packed my bags, moved to the high arctic, and wired a large chunk of Canada, and use that for my portfolio.
It can be done, I'm far enough along now after 5 yrs of experience that noone cares what my education looks like at this point, they're much mroe interested in what I've done in jobs up to here. My education is considered irrelivent by those who do ask about it anyways because it's all programming courses.
Having said that, there is something to be said about a good certification like CCNA/CCIE for cisco stuff. I have respect for it as an IT hiring manager.
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Remove the rocks from my head to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
academia is where a lot of GPL software comes from! What would we freeloaders do w/o college students sharing their homework with us??
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
$100k? Yeah, that's just plain silly. I graduated from college in 1994. The total cost of my education came in just a shade under $12k. I went to a college that's held in fairly high regard too (Trenton State College, Trenton, NJ - was regularly in the top 10 in the 80s and 90s from US News). I worked hard in high school, and was rewarded with a full scholarship that covered the full cost of my tuition. I think I'm a pretty smart guy, but by that same token, there are others out there that are probably smarter than me.
Does the name on your degree get you anything? Nope. One of my friends is dealing with a customer that has a couple of Harvard MBAs running it, and boy do they ever like to wave those little slips of paper in your face... You know something? These are supposed to be good businessmen. These clowns can't distinguish their anuses from holes in the ground. Was their $100k degree worth $88k more than my $12k degree? Nope, in fact, it seems to in the real-world be worth LESS!
Bottom line? Go to college. It may not teach you what you need to do your everyday job, I'm living proof of that (I've got a Math/Ed degree, and I'm in the data security field). However, it DOES teach you valuable skills that you WILL use in real life. Skills like real, adult inter-personal relationships, real problem solving, and will certainly help you to more cohesively and more convincingly relate your thoughts to others. Take an 18 year old wiz-kid over a 22 year old who's just out of college? No chance. The 22 year old has already demonstrated the ability to carry something to completion (the coursework required to get his/her degree).
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The unsig!
You don't need college to do a lot of things. But what it can help with is your ability to change the focus and direction of your career. In college you can learn a variety of things. Usually, you don't know what is going to be beneficial tomorrow, next year, or 20 years from now. It also helps you with the discipline to learn the really hard stuff. Often, you will be able to make connections between the skills and knowledge you have-- which leads to innovation.
It is kinda like the difference between a "professional" and a skilled tradesman. Usually the professional has a broader knowledge base and the ability to combine skills from a diverse background to solve the problem. The tradesman knows a few skills of the trade *really well* It is usually harder for the skilled tradesman to adapt to new situations.
I work as an electrical engineer. I can do a lot of things, code, design circuits, layout printed circuit boards, and so on. What usually makes engineers (usually, but not always, college educated) different from technicians (usually, but not always, non-college educated) is the ability to use all of these skills at the same time. I have worked with technicians that are much better at one or two of those individual pieces (layout, design, coding), but lack the skills and background to tie them all together. An engineering education, in particular, gave me skills to evaluate alternative solutions to the problems that come up: Should I try an analog solution? A discrete digital solution? A microcontroller? A DSP? I have enough background so that I can figure out which one may work the best.
Anyone who thinks that they are going to be doing the same thing for the rest of their career is taking an awfully narrow view of the future. There is no certainty that any career will last forever, despite what the Unions try. Someday, it may just be easier and cheaper to send all those Java programming jobs overseas. By that time, we may have Programmers Unions lobbying to keep the current languages, though they may be obsolete, their rank-and-file know them really well, and don't have the urge to learn something else.
Take a lesson from the professional athletes: You may be the best and fastest right now. You can command huge a huge salary right now. But the skills that brought you that salary could fade, or be eclipsed by some other bright young chap that has newer, better skills. You may not be on the top of the heap forever, so plan ahead.
Perhaps those considering it should try college and then decide. I am in college right now, and get paid damn well for a non-graduate/student. I love it. I wouldn't leave right now if someone offered me $100,000 a year. It's not worth it. Learn to enjoy college life because it only comes once. Then you're too old to do anything else!
College is about enjoying getting having as much fun as possible...and studying sometimes (till 5AM).
Yeah...I have yet to apply most of what I learned in the real world, but you know...there is plenty to learn in college...Plus...if this market does cool down, where are you going to get a job without that college degree.
Think about this!
and I leave with this quote
"Only when the last tree is dead, the last field paved, the last river dammed will we realize that we can't eat money!"
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
I agree those things need to be learned, but I disagree that going to college is the place to learn them.
College doesn't prepare you for the working world. Every college student/grad that I know is grossly unprepared to the rigors of daily corporate life.
What prepares people for work and teaches them time management, how to ask for help, responsibility for ones actions etc. is work. The more jobs you have the more you learn about how to work. I think that starting in an entry level position and learn form the people who are there. They have a lot to teach people who are interested in learning.
Aside from that getting a college degree is important to some people, and sometimes is very important to getting a job. Not all places will hire people without degrees. I know in my office there are a handful of people working in the MIS department without degrees, and most of them have some heavy experience instead.
If you don't live in the US and would like to move there to work having a degree is almost a must. A 2 year diploma from a community college is acceptable with 2-3 years of experience. If you want an H1B (3 year) though, you either need hefty experience, or a degree.
Phil
See? A degree IS useful.
"These are the days that must happen to you." -Walt Whitman
I found college fun, and it was a good way for me to hook up with some job experience in computers. But other than that, it was a waste of money. I didn't graduate because I got hired before I graduated and the company that hired me didn't care. Most IT places are looking for people with experience and brains anyway. Just because you have a college degree or any other kind of certification doesn't mean you know jack shit.
My brother just took one of those 6 month crash course Oracle/VB/Powerbuilder thing that says they have a 99% placement rate. He doesn't have any real job experience in IT, and no one will hire him because of that. Crash course certs are usually useless anyway, but it does go to show that most place want experience above anything else.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
the only barriers to getting jobs have been places like the Gov't and such. places I wouldn't want to work at anyway!
after several years of experience in the field, I've never found that my lack-of-paper stopped my progress. I see Masters and Doctorates all the time, but I doubt they make that much more than me, and I don't see them as being any more viable in the workplace - when it comes to code writing and usual software engineering type jobs.
I'm not in research - so maybe in that general field an actual degree might be useful. but for product engineering (mostly what software engineers end up doing anyways) I think its wasted time and money to seek higher degrees.
btw, not having an actual degree is sort of a built-in "filter" for non-desirable companies. if they give me a fuss about not finishing college, I'll take that as a hint that I'd probably not be happy there anyway. I kinda like that..
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
A long-standing professor once shared his opinion with me that a college degree didn't mean that you were trained in a certain profession or pursuit, but that you were trainable.
Not sure if I 100% agree with him, but when I look to hire someone, I really can see the difference between somebody who pursued advanced education and someone who didn't. That's not the only criteria of course, but college courses add a good dose of structured learning that high school just doesn't do.
From an AI point of view, it's like comparing a procedural solution to a neural net: the procedural solution has a better chance of reflection, of telling you HOW they got to a certain conclusion.
[
I've put a lot of thought into this. I myself am a dropout of college -- I went 5 quarters (at a quarter-based 4-yr school). I did more poorly as the time progressed, because I stopped attending. (One quarter I took astronomy, and only showed on the first day, the midterm, and the final -- did pretty well, too.) I've done very well since then. I'm very, very glad that I quit school when I did, and that things worked out how they have. In that sense, my own experience would be a remarkable endorsement towards this sort of trend. However, caveats abound:
:P
First, a large number of web jobs are merely technician positions. Most sysadmin, IT, network security, network engineer jobs are merely operating equipment. You plug in disks, you run backups, you create user accounts, you add rules to a firewall, you add static routes here and there, etc. They are jobs which can be performed by anyone slightly-above-average. Because this is true, you would economically expect people to shift into these jobs from lower paying jobs if they were capable, and this is happening. Right now, it isn't necessarily happening faster than these jobs are created. Eventually, supply of these worked will overtake demand, and the pay of these positions will equalize. I know a woman working as a sports therapist in the late 80s/early 90s who made over $100k a year. Interestingly, the most popular career choice of the graduating class before mine (I was '93), was that field. Today, she makes just over $30k/yr. System administration is not worth (imho) $100k+ in todays dollars. The Silicon Valley is an exception to everything, of course, and that may stay near that forever because of demand/cost of living, but in lifestyle terms, you're making the same/less. What this all comes down to is: fundamentally, people will seek out the best pay and the most challenging work. This is not an axiom, but it is a measurable trend. Those jobs which prove most difficult (historical examples being doctor and lawyer) will pay the best. Exceptions include non-commercial work, such as research/professorships.
Second, if you want to work on things which will be truly "new" in the future, a lot of them require some background. I know a ton of sysadmins, network engineers, security ppl, etc, who never schooled. But I know fewer software engineers, and even fewer hardware engineers -- I interact the hardware engineers less, but I still view this as being because these things respectively require more and more education. You can still be self-taught, but you don't see a lot of demand for, "How to lower the voltage on your integrated circuit" type mini-faqs. I think there will be a huge demand for the forseeable future for good software and hardware engineers. I don't expect them to lose the demand like system administration will. You don't see people offering the equivalent of of an MCSE in ASIC design. Because it takes more background. On the high levels, it requires a very good understanding of physics (for hardware design). On the software side, you have to be well versed in the theory side of things. Understanding how a computer executes instructions, how memory operates, etc, is far beyond 80%+ of all sysadmins and the like that I've run into.
So, concluding, if you can build the more demanded more fundamental skill sets/knowledge base without school, you're fine without it. If you don't have that knowledge, and are opting for one of the less-mentally-taxing jobs which are more administration/operation oriented rather than being true engineering, expect to see salaries eventually level off and decline.
Moreover, speaking from personal experience -- if you found that picking up sysadmin/network admin/security/etc skills was easy for you, you're probably not going to enjoy your job because it won't challenge you. It may also demand an enormous amount of time from you, leaving you less able to spend other time upgrading your knowledge, and you may feel like you've squandered your abilities.
There are exceptions -- there always will be. There are those so smart that this just doesn't apply -- they have a physics background by the time the choose a college that's strong enough fo r the work, or were answering 50 point questions in Art of Computer Programming when they were in Jr. High -- that's not the norm. So my message is a warning that inflated salaries for in-demand professions will draw people to equalize.
On another note -- I read another article not a year ago that stated that the number of people selecting computer-related majors entering college was actually _declining_. I have a feeling that this is largely the result of this skip-college-go-to-work effect, but there clearly isn't some huge college crop working its way inexorably towards us ready to flood the market with qualified applicants.
On a closing note, it depends on how good you are. For every person who actually understands what the machines are doing in that sort of work, there are 10 (at least) who can go through the motions. They are the network engineers who don't understand a TCP handshake, and the sysadmins who don't know how a buffer overflow works.
Anyhow, either way, good luck to those that take the plunge, I just wanted to offer a word of caution...and a few pages explaining it
"Techies" should be hitting college for sure. Not because they need to learn technical skills, or because they need to have a theoretical background, or becuase they need to learn a work ethic. They should go to college to develop a social life! That's right people, go to college, move in to residence and meet some humans.
Multiplayer Strategy
However, if what you want is a well-rounded, universal education (including some PE), go to a university.
Myself, I'm getting my degree in something totally unrelated to computers, but I am gathering work experience in the tech field. The fact that I'm not a ComSci major has not stopped me from landing high paying interships every summer. I intend to merge these two areas after graduating.
Example: If you study business, but have computer skills, you're more likely to get a higher paying job. If you study humanites, but have computer skills, you're more likely to get a higher paying job etc.
Even more personally, I'm not in school to make more money any more than most of you use Linux so that you can make more money. I'm here to learn, and to learn how to learn. Because of that I find myself catching on to things, including tech issues more painlessly than ever.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Over here in Canada, at the University of Waterloo we have an interesting compromise between work and school. It's called the co-op program -- I know a lot of schools are starting to do this, but UW was built upon this concept -- nearly half the school is in it.
The way it works here is that every 4 months (including during the summer) students switch off between school and work. The school helps you find a job -- our co-op employment rate, even for the non-tech degrees, is somewhere in the 90s. An added bonus is that you usually make more than enough in co-op to pay for your next 4 months of school.
UW is both a well known and well respected geek school. We've consistantly placed in the top 10 in the ACM programming contest (usually beating MIT). Plus grads are very hirable, and (in my experience) are generally good coders. It makes for a good mix of theoretical and practical.
The system is by no means perfect. Despite high standards, there are still idiots who come through it. And uprooting your life every four months with no vacation is not fun. Plus, there is a bit of a feeling around campus of being a factory for employees. But overall, it's a decent system.
I can spell. I just can't type.
I've interviewed about 100 candidates in the past year. I have hired people with no degree and I have passed on PhD's.
However, the people with the degrees are typically better qualified than those without.
Why is this? Well, I believe degrees conveys a kind of legitimacy. A degree says this person was interested enough in their field to give up four years of their life and a bunch of their parent's money, and had the discipline are wherewithall to get through a unverisity program. There are still plenty of stupid college kids, but at least I know what they are supposed to know, and I can evaluate them pretty quickly. Every self taught guy is different, and that makes my job a lot harder
Does this make college educated people more skilled than someone who is self taught? Probably not. But in an interview, they give me an hour to evaluate a person's entire life. I don't have time to be fair or thorough...I make a SWAG knowing I'm going to be wrong a lot of the time. Half the candidates I see are "self taught" -- meaning they think cutting and pasting a four line CGI into FrontPage is programming. I have to go through the trouble of separating the web weenies sick of working the fry maching from the people who know what they are doing. I see a degree, I can get to the real interview that much faster.
It helps to be able to ask questions of someone who knows more about the subject than you do -- and (sometimes) college professors are good in this role; but you can usually get the same assistance from someone in a user's group or from a co-worker. Finding a mentor is vitally important, IMHO, regardless if you are a college graduate or not. I was very fortunate that when I was starting out in this business I worked with some exceptionally talented people who were willing to mentor me.
You are pretty dead on about the team lead / project manager level being the glass cieling for a programmer w/out a degree; however this isn't necessarily a bad thing -- how many people who enjoy writing code actually want to go higher than this anyway?
The bottom line, as I see it is this: College is important, but not as important as experience. You do need both in the long term. I think you become a better-rounded programmer if you work full time in the real world and go to school part time rather than doing the traditional 4 year college gig and work at student jobs.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
So we have someone making a fairly low salary convinced that foregoing college is the smart move. And in the short run, and for the lucky who get rich quick, it may be.
But let's face the facts.
The internet boom is dying. No longer will there be endless venture capital for startups. The computer marketplace will consolidate into big multinationals like every other industry.
Startups are meritocratic, but big companies don't like people without college degrees. As supply meets demand, more people will go into IT with college degrees, meaning there won't be a shortage anymore.
I shudder to think of the day even sysadmins will be expected to have a college degree, but it may be coming. I give it a decade.
Eye of Argon at +1 LIVES!
Algorithms and big-O notation
When, how and why to normalize a database
Compiler theory, parsing and grammers
How to elicit a requirements document from a customer
Various software development models from Waterfall to Spiral
How to write a design document for a 3 tier project including UML diagrams, Entity-Relationship diagrams and architectural diagrams
How to work well with others (numerous team projects)
Time management skills
Distributed computing (CORBA/DCOM/Java-RMI)
How hardware works down to the most miniscule level
The above list is stuff I have learned in 3 years of college that I am very sure I would not have learned if I rushed off into industry to become some C++ developer.
Ask yourself this question, how far do people without college degrees go in industry? Besides the prodigies who create their own companies (e.g. Shawn Fanning, Bill Gates, etc) most people who rush into industry will spend their lives as code monkeys instead of software engineers. Companies rarely high school/college dropouts project managers or lead developers and when they do that is usually their glass ceiling.
Frankly my time in college has given me a larger skill set and more knowledge than if I was just cranking out C++ for some company for the past 2 years. This means I am more valuable as an employee and more able to set my own career path unlike a high school graduate who knows how to hack C/C++/Java but not how to engineer projects or exactly how and why certain things work.
I have been in the industry for nearly ten years, as well as going to school during a good portion of that time.
Something that I've noticed about people who have been to college vs. those who haven't is that the people who've been, "typically" have a better foundation of knowldege, as well as a better theoretical understanding of the fundamental technology.
When you work at a job you only learn the things necessary to get your job done efficiently. When you go to school you get a good technological foundation for a good portion of the technologies. Even though the specific application isn't necessarily what's in use today, a good theoretical foundation will allow you to ramp up on any specifics far more quickly than someone who doesn't understand the fundamentals.
The people with degrees also tend to outpace those without degrees in the long run, both technologically and finanacially.
Everyone can think of some success stories, but they are not the norm. Besides, Bill Gates skipped college and look what happened to him, is there any better argument for going to college?
Doug Tolton dtolton@yahoo.com
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
I went to University for a Bachelors in Chemistry, then a Masters in the same. Now I've had a high-paying, really fun job in a company's IT department (not a chemical company) doing both development and production work. I love my job, and like the perks. I don't think I could have done any of it without the discipline I learned in my two degrees, however. College taught me how to reason logically, how to effetively go about solving problems, and how to organize my work.
From what I've experienced here in the trenches, I do question whether or not a Computer Science degree is necessary. If one has the skills and the passion, all that's really need (and is sorely lacking in the workplace) is discipline and strucutre. That's what a person should bring out of college. Science degrees are probably most useful, but I'll wager other degrees would be helpful too.
Last time we discussed this was in January of '99, when we all argued over the relative merits of my existence. (One of the more nerve-wracking experiences I've ever had.) Adam Penenberg (who has since quit after Forbes wanted him to expose a source in a hacking story) did a story on me called "Quit School. Join the web." I guess I'm a better example now -- I've got my own company that's actually doing very well. So I guess you can still chalk me up as an advocate of "joining the web."
-Waldo
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Depending on the college, an 'above average' student might do better on his own, instead of having to go thru a curriculum that's been 'dumbed down' for whatever their accepted level of accomplishment is. For instance, I was the 'curve buster' at my school, and one professor stated he could do two things 1) proceed at a rapid pace to satisfy the smarter students actually interested in the subject, and leave a trail of dead bodies behind, or 2) proceed slowly so everyone gets by - of course he chose option #2, thus not challenging me.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Couldn't have said it better myself...
Although I'm now stuck in CS (hey, only one year to go, rather than switch majors and have 3 more years) earlier on I should have switched to something else. Why? CS bores me, and I'm not going into the field (most of the industry nauseates me, I need some time outdoors in my career) so I would have rather had some breadth in another field. There are a lot of sciences and disciplines I would have liked to take more than an elective class in.
Two insights: To redeem myself, I'm minoring in MIS, which gives me business courses to complement my CS education (this along with taking serious elective courses in other fields). Also, since I'm not going into IT, then my CS degree gives me breadth for whatever field I DO go into... and no matter what I do for a living, I can also be the indispensable "office tech guy" on the side...
You <B>must be smart</B> if you're going to choose to forego formal education when it's available to you. Only if you're really bright are you going to be able to succeed without the degree. If you're smart you'll be able to progress regardless, because you'll be able to prove your worth through performance instead of degrees. If you're mediocre, then taking that HTML design job at 18 is going to be a mistake, because you'll be doing it forever. With a degree, an average person can at least progress to a managerial level. (No obvious Dilbert jokes please...)
it was also reported here
over a year ago.
I have heard enough "techies" (usually young), say the same thing, "Why bother with college?".
Here's why you should bother with college:
- Provable skills
Oh sure, you worked for MomandPopISP.com for 4 years in Backwater, Miss. but what qualifications and certifications do you have on your resume which backs up what you say? Most likely none. This will hurt you later.
- Resume
Sure you can program Perl backwards and forwards and know the latest Cisco IOS, but *most* companies are not going to go past your resume when hiring. *Most* are not going to invite you into a little room and ask you to write some programs and configure your X windowing system. They are going to pick up your resume from a stack of 100 and see who you are on paper without ever meeting you in person.
- Available jobs
Look online at your favorite IT jobs site. 9 times out of 10 they say "BS in CSE or equivalent required". These companies want someone who has a piece of paper that says they accomplished something. The anti-college streak does not exist in HR and hiring departments. There is nothing about "we don't want no book-worm, frat boy, beer-swilling, panty-raiding, daddy's money, college boy" or "3rd grade reading level required".
- More than tech skills
So many times, people who say they don't need college and therefore never went, behave accordingly. They use the words "like" and "you know" over and over again during any explaination. Their spelling and grammar skills are lacking. And their reading comprehension outside of some technical knowledge is non-existent.
- Networking
Forget the 80's yuppie connotations, networking works. College puts someone in an environment with possibly 100's of future contacts who might prove useful with jobs and exiting projects. So many successful companies started in colleges (Dell and Yahoo for instance) when like-minded people were put together in a learning atmosphere.
- Life
Life is more than kernels, switches and code. College exposes human beings such as yourself to the wonders of the world be it through art, literature, or history. In so many cases it is true, if it is not required, many will not do it be it reading, writing or enjoying culture.
At the time I left in 1998 the well respected school I was attending was still teaching web-design by having students create pages in Photoshop then choping them up and making image maps with PageMill. And I was required to take this class and create pages this way even though I had already created an award winning, industry leading site for an international manufacturing company. Since I had already tought myself the basic foundation of what makes the web different from tradional design I was able to use both skills to create something which was both aesthetically and technically advanced. The school however still had no idea what made the web different and kept trying to push tradional design into a non-tradional media by throwing all the new abilities out the window.
Even worse was the multimeda design class I took using Macromedia Director. In Anticipation of the class I "Borrowed" a copy of Director and bought a few Lingo books. By the time I took the class I was already writing presentations which were more advanced than anything the two quarter class would ever cover. At least in this instance I had a professor who appreciated by ability to "learn outside the box" and rewarded for for it rather than punish me as the web design professor did. The worst part was that the class never even attempted to teach students the basic skills that could be applied to a Director project. Instead they tried to teach students how to do the "monkey work" of basic assembly and preparation of materials for a multimedia project. And while those skills are important to understand it was IMHO hypocritical of the school to be claiming that they were teaching students how to become "Leaders in the Field of Multimedia" while the actual course work created students who where capable of little more than the most basic jobs in multimedia.
Way too much of college today is structured around teaching students how to perform tasks in the prescribed way rather than how to find their own solutions to the problems they are presented. I was bought up being told that this is what Technical Schools are for and that colleges are designed to teach you how to think.
Don't get me wrong here, I loved my time at college and learned more about life by being there than I could have in pretty much any other venue. But as for learning how to learn and grow for a lifetime of meaningfull employment I got much more out of high school.
Maybe I was lucky to attend and outstanding high school and unlucky enough to attend a college which just "Didn't get it". But when it came to the point of me teaching my professors (as it did in both the web and multimedia classes) I had to ask myself why I was paying for this. And once I realized that my professors were learning more from the class than the class was learning from the professors I decided the only way I could stay and finish my degree was if I was being paid to do it. So I left and started my own consulting business.
Since then I've been offered numerous jobs based on my performance and skills. And all I can say is it feels great to be appreciated for what I've proven I'm capable of, not for some piece of paper that shows I can be "trained".
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
I went into college as pre-med. I finished that curriculum but majored in Sociology, deciding medical school wasn't the thing. What do I do now? I'm a web developer. But I'll be damned if that diploma hasn't opened up a number of doors. The degree, especially something showing a broader academic base than simply programming, shows to prospective employers that one can be trusted with a wider array of tasks. If money is what it's about, fine; however, if one wants power and decision-making influence, then the skill set, personal connections, and certification that comes with a college degree is invaluable.
Can what is formed say to that who formed it, "Why have you made me thus?"
It's hard to hear that people are shunning college because it was a great time in my life. I got laid a lot, made a lot of uberhacker-friends, and slept with a 10Mb data connection just above my head. My only real responsibilities were to learn and have fun. I even had a decent part time job at the help desk that kept enough money in my pocket to have a good time (ok, I did start to hate talking to idiots who didn't know their ass from a hard drive. I did get the occasional Linux question though).
Three years later I am making 6 figures, I get to wear what I want and my job is pretty cool. If I had the chance I'd go back to college in a heartbeat. The reason, as I have just recently realized, is that life doesn't have to be a work 'til you die kind of thing, and *gasp* money isn't everything. In fact, truth be told, I hate worrying about it. No matter how much you make, there's never enough.
--
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
25: ten.knilrevlis@wkcuhc
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
As a student who is just beginning his Freshman year in CS at Cornell, I have to admit that this was a question that I had to consider over the past year and will probably grapple with all four years of college. Each month, when I write a check to make the monthly tuition payment, I wonder whether I would be better off earning about 2 1/2 - 3 times more each month than I am currently giving away. And each month I come to the same conclusion--no.
While most of what you learn in college will not in any way relate to your future career, the people you meet and the experiences you have will be carried with you the rest of your life. If you always dreamed of working in a shared office space as a UNIX sysadmin, then maybe college is not for you--but, if you have ever wanted to start your own business or do high-level research in CS, then there is no better place to be than a major university.
In college, classes only occupy a small portion of your day. Unlike work in an IT department, which we leave you drained and too tired to really do meaningful independent work, college will leave you with plenty of time to pursue whatever you want. If you have any aspirations or career goals that extend beyond IT, then you can use the extra time that you have in college to get a leg up. For instance, I want to develop my own web network; where will I be better able to begin--working 40+ hour weeks for an established company or in my bountiful free time at college (especially considering that there is nothing else to do in Ithaca). If I acheive my objectives and reach a point where I would be better served by dropping out, I have no qualms about doing so. Remember, it is easier to drop out of a good college after getting in than it is to reapply to a BS program after going directly to work.
For those who aspire to nothing more than the IT life, go ahead, college has little to offer you. But if you would like to meet smart people, learn interesting things, and get a leg up on a future career in your free time, then give college a chance. I think Bill Gates answered this question best when he said that college is an excellent option that should only be dismissed in favor of the opportunity of a lifetime. Take his advice if you ignore mine.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
There was I niavely thinking it was about opening one's mind. You should study what fascinates you, not what's going to pay the most when you leave college, uh I mean university. It's no wonder there's so many ignorant college grads walking around, I can see the t-shirt now 'I want to college and all I got was this lousy job'
I'm an MIT drop-out (class of '93), who is now a contract programmer.
No doubt there are people who are leaving or skipping college because the money's good. Those people impress the hell out of me, because they are clearly impervious to social pressure.
The social pressures to stay in college are enormous, whether you are a middle- or upper- class kid just trying to live up to social norms, or a lower-class kid carrying the aspirations of your family on your shoulders. I assure you, the message is drummed into all of our heads from a young age that someone without a college degree is a failure, barely fit for flipping McHamburgers.
Nothing I have done, no political positions I have taken, no opinions expressed, no deeds committed (and I have racked up some doozies) have offended, threatened, and upset more friends, family and acquaintances than my dropping out of college. Nothing I have done required more courage of conviction, more steadfastness in the face of social pressure.
And frankly, I expect the reason young geeks are leaving the educational system is same or similar to my reason for leaving:
I was tried of being a child, and wanted to be a grown-up.
I was sick unto death of the prolonged adolescence which is college, even in such a sink-or-swim place as MIT. There are people who love being adolescents, and want to be one as long as they possibly can. Well, I hated it. I hated being a child from about age five on, and couldn't wait to join the world of adults. I hated being a second class citizen, I hated having no say in my fate, I hated having no effect on the Real World.
I hated the fact that whenever I expressed such sentiments, I was poo-pooed: "Oh, you don't want the world of bills and responsibilities and all that ikky adult stuff; enjoy your privileged childhood and don't worry your pretty little head about it."
I am a geek and an engineer: that means that somewhere deep in my soul is a drive to tinker, to build, to inflict my will on the systems around me, to push limits, to explore. In short, to exercise power over the material and intellectual world around me. My experience of youth was of being kept from the Real World, the world of things, the world of real concerns, the world of real systems: of being kept profoundly powerless.
I left school not for a cushy, lucrative IT job, but for the crap-shoot of secretarial temping. I did it because I couldn't stand to be apart from the real world of work, rent, bills, etc. I did it because I decided it was better to be an adult in the humblest of circumstances than an over-grown child in a gilded nursery.
I expect that many young geeks who eschew further "educational" (and those are indeed sneer quotes) institutionalization, are not lured by mere wealth -- what geek is? -- but by the opportunity to do Real Work, in the Real Adult World, which Really Matters.
Yeah, maybe running some company's corporate webservers isn't profoundly meaningful, and at the end of the day doesn't confer as sense of having bettered the world. But at least it mattered to someone what work you did, it mattered to someone whether you lived or died, it mattered whether the job got done.
And nothing in the artificial exercises of accademia will ever confer that feeling.
The money merely makes the choice to flee adolescence less financially dicey. It's not the money, it's the chance to be a grownup that is the temptation.
The choice to go to college or not is an intensely personal one -- as much so as what religion one follows -- and it sickens and offends me that people treat the issue as one of public policy.
Are these young geeks doing a bad thing by skipping, leaving or differing college? Well, who are we to second-guess them? Who are we to cluck our tongues in consternation and tell them they are screwing up their lives? Are those lives not theirs to do with what they wish?
If college is such a wonderful thing, no doubt word will get out, and those of us who don't have degrees will eventually get them. Contrary to everything you might have heard, it's quite possible to go back to school later in life -- heaven knows, the subway here is coated in advertisements for degree programs for working adults.
Frankly, I look at college and I don't see anything I want. That's all the reason in the world a person should need for not going.
Sure, there might be things I'd learn which would make me a better programmer, but I'm happy working (at a paid job) only 40hrs a week and would rather not sacrifice my composing, my writing, my music history research, my reading in medieval studies/structural anthropology/20th cen. literature/etc. to go back to school to be a better programmer. Sure, there might be classes in those topics at a college, but I hate the classroom environment and love coding professionally; I don't want to give up my career.
Sure, maybe a college degree would help me command more money....
But it's never been the money.
----------------------------------------------
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
You may never experience speeds so high elsewhere. Your poxy ADSL lines can't compare to a fight pipe. Of course you'll have to be up at around midnight to get it but there's nothing like downloading a redhat image at 600k+/s...
about dropping out of Haavard to start Micro-soft.
I wonder if he ever finished his formal degree??
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
For me college is a joke. I took my time looking into it. Living in a dorm, drinking beer and joining a frat all while supposedly "growing up" didn't make sense for me.
I chose my own path, and have proven myself to my peers and the people who have hired me to work for them.
I don't have a college education, i have an open mind, and honest heart and i will work. Everyone whom i work with who HAS a college education is so stuck in there ways and habits and beliefs that they cannot in any shape form or fashion be in the IS group and maintain a clear and concise communications channel to make things flow, the college grad is off to try and snuff someone elses job because they think they can rather then trying to feel the need to accomplish anything. I feel if you earn your education its better off then buying it, i wish smart people had a smart school that wouldn't put them in debt for life or produce assinine souls.
College to me adds biggotry to the soul. I don't see the asset in learning how to conform. If college was only the price of an education i would be there in a heartbeat.
My university has been the internet, my spare time and lots of mocha's and coffee at Barnes and Noble and such. I find it more rewarding to crack open a book and theorize from many different sources then be told a wrong and right way to do things. I get pissed off when a teacher demands one way of thinking.
Being a self taught person i understand how i learn. College is great for people who can study and apply what they remember. College is not however the easiest route for someone who is inventive and conceptual about how they perceive things and do things.
Hey, i'm 24. Make 60k a year, have full benifets, a huge 401k plan already and paid tuition. I will NEVER have a college loan or payments to m make, I am however working on getting an associates in business and managment so i can advance my career. I am simply going to community college that is right in front of the company i work for since we donated the property :)
So to me, going to college is a waiste of time. I lived my drinking days, partying, skipping school and "general college freedoms" when i was in high school. When i went out to the real world i went out to accomplish something. College doesn't give you that, simply choosing to do something does.
But be a wise man/women. Choose your own path.
So tell me, If I've had a comptuer since I was 8 years old, and when I went to college for a few months they were teaching stuff I knew from back when I was 8, why should I sit through this class and have them take credit for what I knew about when I was 8?
I can learn faster by purchasing the books and reading them faster. The Java course, the pace was so slow that by the end of the course the most we were supposed to be able to program was a little zork-like game in text-mode java.
I live in Canada BC (Americans that is the country north of you, the western-most provience)
I was looking at CS degees from UBC and the first thing I noticed was that the first year is spent not learning anything about computers at all. The Second year has all the introductory courses... That's right, by the end of the second year you only have to know how to turn the computer on and use a word processor.
Now that was a little too generalized, but the point is that why should I be wasting my time and money to get nothing in return? I do not, and have never cared about "making big bucks" because I will prefer a less-stressful line of work so I don't wind up being one of the "I hate my job but I get lots of money" people.
Now point number 2. Having looked at the Jobs in Canada and the Jobs in the USA, it appears that the Jobs in Canada are either more challanging, or they only want overqualified people to do what people off the street can do. I've seen job postings (Canada) where they want a CS degree to do word processing and spreadsheets, but I have also seen ones that want you to know every single programming language, protocol, and piece of hardware out there. Compared to the American jobs where a CS degree gets you more specific jobs instead of the broad jobs ones in Canada. (The typical job I've seen in Canada has CS degree and about 30 requirements, where as the American ones are CS degree and about 10 requirements.)
As for communication skills, people never talked to me through out (Grade1-12)school, college will not change that? It didn't in the 5 months I was there. I'm not a party person, I do my best communication through text not speech.
I think someone I was on IRC with the other day said it best "School teaches you not to think" , and I think he is right. Schools teach students that there is only a certain way to solve a problem. This has been proven by the fact that the Questions on the exams wanted the text-book answer, giving my definition instead of the text book produced "the wrong answer", even though it was the same answer. (Personally, If a school is supposedly teaching a computer-related program, WHY are we still using paper tests?)
I could go out and get A+ certification right now. I could have done it when I was 13 had it been around at that time (Maybe it was.) I could probally go and get all the Microsoft certifications, BUT all the jobs listed want the CS Degree more frequently then any certification at all.
Someone else said that a Degree is nothing more than a warrenty for the employer. Just because something has a warrenty doesn't mean that they won't screw up or do anything wrong.
Sorry for being cynical, but I'd rather work for nothing, Spend as much time needed to solve the problem so I do not have to go back and fix it. It would be a perfect, except that without any money you can't buy food, clothing or shelter.
I might be the kind of person that would rather have something work all the time, instead of going back to fix it. (Anyone notice that certain brands of computers need to be fixed a lot?) The last 10 or so computers I've serviced(while not working for someone) , the previous time I serviced them was a year apart. In between those two time periods they have had no problems at all. Compare this to when I was working for someone, I was told "Just fix it as fast as possible" which resulted in this one i820 computer having to be fixed a dozen times within two months, each time reinstalling the OS. (For those who don't know, the i820 MTH problem resulted in a recall of these boards, howver that was not the problem in this case, Intel's INF update utility was resulting in the problem (that wouldn't appear till an hour later, making it difficult to pinpoint the problem.) Intel (weeks later) released a INF update utility that didn't produce the registry corruption problem.)
Do I feel this hampered my 'round knowledge' in any way? Not in the slightest! If anything I am more rounded as a result of not attending college all four years. Why? I've been able to spend my time not only learning massive quantities of information in the computing trade, but many other pursuits as well, more efficiently than I would have in college since I chose them myself. Everything from researching ancient societies, philosophy, painting, photography, sketching, fiction writing, ect. Because I have chosen to work smaller jobs learning things as I go, I now have experience in programming with five languages, high-end 3d content creation, satellite broadcast, networking on 3 different infrastructures in both the small business and the massive corporation scale, database manipulation, SQL/pl, web design, server installation and administration, film scanning and color correction, graphic design, four color print, the list goes on and on. Actual experience, not classes, and enough experience to get a decent job in a majority of the above categories.
As a result, I can either specialize, or walk into a business that needs a 'jack-of-all-trades' and tidy up their automated work flow in a few months.
I'll admit, one can learn a LOT in college if they are willing to throw themselves into it. I just feel that you can also come out just as well, if not better by leaving it aside. You can be just as well rounded too.
So, I don't think your point about college being a necessary boon to your set is really all that accurate. I know that I can sit down with a bunch of artists, listen to how they work and what they do, then design a network, server, and program automated scripts that will make their lives ten times easier -- because I understand what an artist needs. I don't feel that my ability to relate to people who are not computer oriented has been hurt in any way by the fact that I did not attend college.
Now, other trades are an entirely different thing. From what I can tell, law, medicine, physics, and things of that nature are the types of things you really DO need to attend college for. I'm not really talking about that, I have no experience there.
V
why not do it for another 4 years while attending college. Then you'll be that much smarter when you go looking.
This is actually a great trend. Within hours we get a story telling us our country's educational system sucks so we can't turn out enough qualified people to fill high-tech jobs, and then one where apparently someone somewhere will hire you without bothering to go to college. Irony anyone?
I've seen these articles pop up time after time, on /., time, forbes magazine, you name it. And I think a fundamental point is missed by the authors, as well as in discussions following such publications (like the one happening right now). These people may be "techies" - but it doesn't take all that much to be one.
So, Mr. so-and-so makes $40K a year doing something vaguely described as "computer networking". Yes, in this hot technological climate people are willing to pay top $$$ for work which amounts to crimping cables, crawling through the ceiling tiles and setting up network workstations. This is not nuclear science here. You don't go to college to learn "white-orange, orange, white-green, blue...." order of colors in a CAT5 cable. If you don't want to invest the time to figure it out by yourself, with books and web (as most of us did), you can take a 4 week course that will teach you anything you need to know to be a $40K CAT5 crimping engineer and cable plugging monkey (no offense implied, this is how these people are referred to in my workplace, and hey, that's all they do :)).
What's wrong with making money this way you might ask? Nothing! But people who pass up an opportunity to receive a round-up education to get a hot IT/MISA/Junior sysadmin job in Silicon valley (gee, maybe even with stock options!) should stop and consider what the demand will be like for their job in five years. Right now, despite the slowdown in tech stocks, the growth rate is explosive and top dollar is paid for anyone who can get the job done at least well enough to last till next round of fund raising. Once the dust settles down, the HR people will need to decide who stays and who goes... and a college degree (with implied skills in communication, problem solving and ability to learn new things) will suddenly mean a good deal.
I anticipate that some people will dislike what I've said. Don't get me wrong, there are some highly talented people who might even be better off without college. But for every 10 cable crimper and windows networking "engineers" there may be only one person who will actually learn the things that they missed out in a college education on their own.
Flame away...
Alex
I prefer to hire engineers who never attended college or left early. I think college warps you. Too much theory. Every engineer I know with a BS or worse MS are so into the latest thing without thought to its real world applications. I've had people coming in to interview wondering why anyone want's to proram with C/C++ anymore since Java is sooo much better.
But then comparing a BS in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering with a BS in Comp Sci is like comparing a jet fighter pilot with an RC plane pilot.
Although I believe college is ultimately worthwhile relative to the other options for even the brightest of students, this does not mean college is optimal at producing the best and most capable individuals for society. The chief problem, in my eyes, is the unwillingness of virtually every program in every college to seperate the students. The only real seperation of candidates between college and non-college educated people occurs during the admissions process, not throughout college. This is a mistake. In other words, the chief difference between an 18 year old kid who gets accepted to a good college and one that does not is a couple answers (not points, there is a difference) on SATs, high school performance (where grade inflation and the like play a huge factor), and participation in extracurricular activities (i.e., sports). Although there is little else that can be done by the admissions officers, it is still a poor measure of seperating out students.
Then in the college programs themselves, the schools do very little. First, the work load [i.e., quantity] in most schools is quite light--hardly a sufficient burden to filter out those who can't work "really" hard--most students still find plenty of time to party. Second, the work [i.e., quality] itself is generally too easy. Because the work has gotten less demanding, grades have inflated to high Bs in many schools. Students, in an effort to stand out from the rest of the pack, have focused more and more on making fewer and fewer mistakes, rather than focusing on achievement--the work allows little room to demonstrate exceptional understanding. Third, empirically speaking and perhaps a little redundant, there is very little attrition going on at the better schools. Almost without exception, the only kids who fail out are those who screw off too much.
The end result is sub-optimal. Rather than encouraging exceptional intelligence and exceptionally hard work, we encourage a sort of plodding mentality, that of merely going through the motions. I complain not because I feel it is "unfair", but because I think the system, as is, serves society poorly. Not only does the system have a tendency to cut out "genius" [I dislike the word, but it'll do here], but it encourages a certain mediocrity amongst all the students. Not only does it fail to expose many other kinds of intelligence, but it also doesn't expose those who are really willing to work.
This gist of this rant, is that college doesn't do enough. This is not to say that a college degree should be ignored by employeers; I still believe employeers are statistically better advised to look at college graduates, in that they have assurances that the applicant can at least perform on SOME level, albeit not necessarily high enough. Likewise, the employeer is more likely to find a person who can read and write well if the applicant is a college educated [just not enough...and the numbers are getting worse]. Similarly, even the highly intelligent and highly motivated people can ultimately benefit from college, insofar as college is the best place to acquire certain skills in today's society [i.e., reading, writing, logic, etc.] However, just because such a person is better served at college does not mean that person is going to be found at college. There are clearly many exceptional people without any college education, and in some fields it almost seems to work against you....
...anyways, i've gotta run.
People were dropping out of college in the mid to late 70s to pursue computer careers -- people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack. What's new is that in those early days, people were dropping out to pursue a vision of the future of computing with little guarantee of money. These days they are dropping out to pursue guaranteed money now that the vision has been all but realized.
Seastead this.
Compare this to my high school friends who just graudated college a few months ago with a BS in Computer Science, and know C++ and Java. They can't do much in the way of web development, since they don't know PHP, Javascript, or SQL, they know essentially nothing about UNIX/Linux, and they don't have the two years of experience that I've had.
Personally, I'm happy where I am, because I got a two year jump on college people, and got to learn useful things (took classes in salesmanship and management, for example) when I was in school as well.
Ultimately, it's each person's choice, just be sure you are fully aware of the consequences of your choice.
Most of the comments here are saying the same thing: Go to school for the fun, not for the education. This is true.
I didn't go to university or college although I was going to go before I got hired where I am. My dad nearly disowned me but I am making a very nice living (not superrich, but I don't have to worry too much about money) with my young family now. If I'd gone to uni I'd just be getting out now and getting started, possibly $30-50k in debt from school loans if I didn't get into co-op.
Some things I miss about not going to university/college: friends. Most of my friends went that route. I do keep in touch, we party and stuff but at the same time, I know I'm an outsider in most of their circles. I also missed taking courses just for the hell of it, learning things that I normally wouldn't learn and a lot of social interaction with people my age.
Things I don't miss: bar crawls, school, paying for books, not having money/car/family and again, school. I dropped out of my senior (Grade 13 in Ontario) year twice because I just couldn't take school anymore. I was grabbing some extra credits before I ploughed off into university and just started hating it more and more and more until I just walked out of my physics class one day.
Don't get me wrong. I love learning, and I loved physics and calculus (the courses I was taking that fateful semester). I just couldn't stand school.
So what should you do? Weigh your options carefully. If you've got a lot of friends near you going to university/college, make sure you keep in close contact so you don't "lose your age". For the first while I was surrounded by people 15 years my senior, but that's better now. :-) Having a family early is a big plus for me (I'll be 45 and my 3-4 kids will (hopefully) be off to college/uni/working!) as I've got the energy now to pump into work, family and work. I won't be able to do that when I'm 35.
Finally, I love what I'm doing. I knew what I wanted to do ever since I was a young'un. I didn't need the "wide exposure to everything" that college/university gives you. If you don't know what you're doing, perhaps working a shit job and taking a few courses on the side is a better idea than blowing 30-40k to find out. You can always switch careers.
I think that's enough advice-giving for one post, sonny. :-)
...there is no reason at all to pursue a degree in IT or Computer Science any more, at least if the program I went through is any indication. We were only barely taught C/C++; the same with Java; there was no course for VB. The Unix work was introductory and sparse, and the only classes that taught any kind of "Web design" did not count for credit if you were a Comp. Sci. major.
In the light of this kind of attitude (the only reason to get a B.S. in Comp. Sci. is to go to Graduate School), I can understand why more and more people are trying to forego the degree and jump straight into the IT industry.
Also, the proliferation of applications that teach you how to program in C/C++, Java, VB, etc. are growing. It is much easier to learn this stuff on your own, at least for the early parts, and then get a job where they train you in the rest. Frankly, I think that most colleges and universities need to update their curricula and teach what needs to be taught instead of class after class of "useless" theory. (It's useless in the sense that if you're not going for a Ph.D., you'll never use most of this stuff after you get out of college.)
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Don't let school get in the way of your education - I think Albert E. said that.
College use to be about education and self-improvement, but now sometimes it seems that all it is about is graduating people with a piece of paper.
I did the college thing for two (2) straight terms (Fall, Spring, Fall, Spring) and then realized that what I was learning I was already learning at my job. So I cut back on classes and ultimately took a job making more money than both of my parents combined (both of which have college degrees). There are somethings I think you can learn more easily in college, but IT related stuff isn't one of them. If I wanted to be a philospher, sure, I'd go to college. But why spend the massive amounts of money so you can then try to pay back loans? It doesn't seem logically.
Just my $.02 worth.
-- bearclaw
I think that the vast majority of techies you see in the industry without a degree are because they are genuinely smart people. You never hear about the stupid tech who dropped out of college and is now working at McDonalds, because the fact that he's working at McDonalds removes him from the tech industry.
Right on.
I was educated very little by the University I attended. Oh, sure, I *learned* lots -- organic chemistry, political history, all sorts of shit -- but those were just boring facts, that I could have picked up on my own.
What *educated* me was life on campus.
Living in a dormitory with forty people, most of whom I'd never ordinarily wish to eat dinner with, let alone live with.
Living in a community of 30 000 people of varied backgrounds, from all over the country. Completely different folk than in my hometown, or any town I've ever lived in. People who were there to expand their education, not to hold down a job and raise a family.
Working in teams with people who are learning on-the-fly. People who are excited and aggressive about defending their ideas in the face of competing ideas. Who introduce ideas that are completely off-the-map -- but end up being relevent, and were available only because they took an obscure course and happened to put two-and-two together.
Do I get educated in "real life"? Sure. But it's not as cutting-edge. Everyone's more grown-up about it: we've all come to realize that maybe we don't know everything already, so we listen more easily and don't get so pumped about forcing others to understand and accept us.
It's a different pace, now. It's not a highly accelerated education curve. And there is definitely not the variety: most of us are just trying to keep ahead of taxes, children and skyrocketing gas prices.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I remember having the college/work conversation (argument) with my parents my senior year of high school. I was sure that I wanted to be a theater techie. I was even building a fairly good name for myself doing it. (I was starting to get union overhire calls.)
I ended up going to college. I was majoring in Drama Production and I hated it. I almost dropped out. But I convinced my advisor to let me take some courses outside the drama department. (CMU's drama department does not give you much flexibility or recognize outside interests) Anyways I started taking ECE and CS classes. After a bit I changed majors to ECE and started working in robotics. I even did something that I thought I would never do, I got my Master Degree.
If I had not gone to college I would be hating life in a dark theater making peanuts. Now I have met some of the most brilant people I have ever known and I can have great conversation with them. I look at the world in a whole different way. Furthermore I have in depth conversations with people who have been in the computer field longer than I have been alive because I know the theory and the ways of thinking behind what they do. If you are working on the cutting edge you are going to have to be learning new technology. With a college degree you can understand it without a '{string} for Dummies' book. Finally the is just as much smoke and mirrors in research robotics and in the theater, the technology is just much much cooler.
BTW My dad dropped out of college after a year and makes a killing in the computer industry. Just show there is never a correct answer to a question like this.
(Anybody here go to Grinnell College?)
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I spent most of the last 10 years in the video games industry, my responsibilities usually revolved around lead programmer of tools group, lead (3D) engine developer, and more recently lead developer of cross platform distributed systems for massively multiplayer. I'm currently ranked a "Programmer 4" in the industry HR vernacular, which is as senior as I can get without putting on a manager hat as CTO.
During this time I've participated in the hiring (and firing) of a decent number or people, and I've seen many more come and go. One of the more interesting things I've noticed over the years is the statistical signifigance of an observed inverse correlation between college experience and raw creativity for complex problems.
In the games industry, understanding the implementation and optimization details of Knuth-Morris-Pratt is useful only in the abstract. You must then understand how and where it is applicable, and know when to use Quicksort or merging presorted lists instead.
The level of design creativity needed, at larger and more complex system levels, quickly surpasses the mindset of most college trained programmers I've seen. They seem incredibly well prepared to calculate a good O() factor for an algorithm, but lack the more important ability to understand how to balance several algorithms whose O() terms are interdependant.
Most game programmers today are not "hackers" in the old school sense. Yes, the idiotic schedules force most to skip the formal prototyping stage (the prototype becomes the game almost invariably), but the design complexity and elegance signifigantly exceeds that of most catagories of software in use today. (This is an educated opinion, I've also worked in CAD/CAD/CAE, embedded systems, distributed networks, and avionics before getting bored and coming to games.)
Bottom line, your assertions about the ignorance of non-college educated programmers is true only for some subset of self-educated programmers. Yes, I would agree that many web site coders fit your description. But I know for a fact that in games, one of the most demanding programming carreers, _most_ of us (including myself) do not have degrees. Also, the more senior level the programmer, the less likely they are to have one.
By the way, most of the better game programmers continue to spend 1-4 hours a _day_ on pure and applied research. (What percentage of CS grads can say this?) My personal CS library is better than the community college I grew up near. Most of us continue to read confrence proceedings, and if we were patenting our innovations most of the senior programmers I know would have hundreds of actually non-obvious and unique inventions filed. (Instead we have an unwritten code that lets us continually steal them from each other once we see them on screen from a legitimately obtained demo.)
You would be surprised how well rounded some of us uneducated programmers are.
As I was growing up, I was raised with the belief that "things were no longer what they were like in (my parents') days. Gone were the days when you could get a "trade" education and be relatively successful.
Now things have been flipped once again. I'm two semesters away from graduating with a BA in History, and I am currently taking the semester off to get my MCSE*. Looking at the wages I will be able to make with a MCSE certification as opposed to what I could make in the field with my current degree path, or even a CS degree path, it's a no-brainer to me.
Yes, potential employers will still be looking for degrees on your resume, but they will no longer hold the weight that they once did. Anymore, especially in the tech field, a college degree states that you can stick with something for four or more years. That's all.
I'm 21, it's becoming increasingly difficult to see the reason to continue with my college education (aside from the fact that I've put this much time and money into it already, so I may as well finish it) when I can get a few certifications and be making close to, if not in excess of, a six figure salary.
The one thing that college is doing for me is it is allowing me to make contacts. However, training courses allow me to do the same thing and with people that are in my field as well. Here's the scenario: I will be spending two weeks at a training facility, at the end of those two weeks, I should be coming home with my MCSE cert in hand. At the end of four (if you don't fail any classes or take any below average credit semesters) I have a BA in History or the degree of my choice. And then what? Scrounge around for a job, when I can spend two weeks and be headhunted across the US. Or start my own firm.
Where's the discussion?
--Lise
* IMO, just a piece of paper, but that piece of paper opens a lot of doors and will make me a lot of money.
...but theory gronks really need the atmosphere, I think. I was always an OK-fair programmer, but a better-than average algorithms guy. I doubt I could have easily developed that skill outside of an academic environment. So I think it depends on your style: if you are king of the architecture exploits, go to university if you like, but don't ignore valuable hacking time. If you're the next Knuth-in-training, though, hitting the books might be very adviseable.
-TBHiX-
How to solve the travelling salseman problem in n^2 time on the number of cities:
1. Salesman finds and travels shortest path between any two cities. (Time: O(n) )
2. Salesman is inevitably shot by annoyed customer with shotgun. (Time: O (1) )
3. All other paths are marked unreachable. (Time: O( n^2 ) )
How about "I went to college but didn't learn how to spell"?
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
It's a real tough call. When the job market gets lean, as it will in a few years (as the IT trolls lured into the field by big bucks, and not the love of computers, start dropping like flies; and a new crop of grads enters an already bloated workforce) cashing in those stock options may not be a bad idea at all. Unless of course your options went belly up with the bulk of the dying dot-coms...
My suggestion, as an edumacated IT person: Get a job but go to school, at least part time. Keep going down the educational path, even if you have to crawl. And make sure that you consider employers who reimburse you for educational expenses more seriously than those who shower you with over-inflated stocks and leased cars. Those employers are investing in you, not tying you to their own success and binding you to their risks.
Stocks and cars will dry up quick when the economy turns south, but what you've learned is yours for life.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
It's not that obvious of course, it depends on the person. To me programming and system architecture are an art. I spend a lot of time working with clients trying to find the right software architecture to match their organizational needs, or trying to match their security requirements to what their corporate culture will bear. From that standpoint, I don't regret my BA in Anthropology at all. College taught me how to learn, Anthropology (and Psych) taught me about cultures and personalities. And since software is typically designed for *people*, that background is very helpful.
I've known great CS majors (my wife has a masters in CS). But with one exception, the best programmers and architects I know were dropouts or majors in completely different fields (Nuclear Physics, Philosophy...).
The key to college is learning how the world works. If you can pick up skills on your own, then don't bother with CS. If you feel more comfortable with formal learning, then by all means take it--but don't focus on it exclusively.
--
--
Just lurking, thanks!
The trend has reversed. Companies have started to recognize people for qualities OTHER than a college education. They're starting to realize that College isn't that big a deal. If you know something, who says you must have a document proving it? That's what a resume is for.
I speak from experience when I say a College education isn't a big necessity. I got a really good job in Information Security. My recorded education? High School Diploma. Sure, I went to college for a little while - but I went to college for "Interactive Media", meaning 3D Graphics, Design, and animation. I quit before I got any kind of degree, and got a good job in a totally different field doing something I really enjoy.
My classes in College didn't help me, except in the fact that I learned some things that I didn't know before. I learned 3D Studio MAX, Macromedia Director, Flash, and lots of other cool stuff. What do those have to do with my current work? Nothing. My company hired me based on my knowledge presented in my resume and during my interview, and my personality.
I'm not disuading anyone from GOING to college, mind you. In fact, I recommend it if you know what you want to do with life. But I decided late that Interactive Media wasn't what I wanted to do, and I wasted that tuition money to do it. And on top of that, I got a job that I enjoy - without college to back it up.
If you can swing that, go for it. Tuition rates aren't going anywhere but up, so if you can save that money - do it.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Exactly. Best thing I got from my years at school was the dicipline to make myself sit down and produce something, even if I would rather have screwed off.
I look at the difference it made. Before school I had a few different jobs, nothing very serious or demanding. But I look back at how completely hopeless I was at organizing my time and being productive during the hours I was being paid to work.
School was like boot camp to teach my lazy ass how to get it together. I did learn a lot about how to code, no doubt, but frankly could have learned some of it on my own. The real difference is the time management skills and work-ethic that I had to adopt to survive 4 1/2 years of demanding profs.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
For example, the state schools in Texas are very cheap for residents. If you could stick it out a year there you could pay around 5k a year going full time. Don't like Texas? It isn't the only state where you can find affordable education.
I'm from Vermont and the price of schools in the North East is high. I simply moved much further south and west. It really comes down to what sacrifices you are willing to make. I believe that anyone can afford a college education if they are willing to move. Some people may want to stay near where they grew up but that is a lame duck excuse in my book.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
There was I niavely thinking it was about opening one's mind. You should study what fascinates you, not what's going to pay the most when you leave college, uh I mean university. It's no wonder there's so many ignorant college grads walking around, I can see the t-shirt now 'I want to college and all I got was this lousy job'.
First, excuse me while I LMAO and make a note to myself to start marketing these shirts on college campuses everywhere.
I used to think that was what college was about too, but that's one of the hardest lessons that I learned while getting my degree. It's about getting the piece of paper so you can get your foot in the door. If you're lucky, you learn a lot about yourself and about how the world works in a relatively safe environment. At my alma mater, they seem to be more caught up in their own finances (and they're a public university). The education was just meeting their end of the agreement, but it was clear that their heart wasn't in it (with the exception of a few individual professors). It's quite sad. I guess it comes from a college degree being the status quo. Nowadays, the average college student is just an average person of average intellegence. When universities deal with that kind of quantity, what's their incentive to create a challenging curriculum for the above average student?
This has gotten me thinking recently that this mediocrity has seeped into the tech industry. It has become a popular career choice, encouraged by schools and government (in the U.S. at least). Back before it was popular, most of the programmers out there were folks who got into it in spite of how unpopular it was. Now, I am underwhelmed by so much of the programming talent that I see. Of course, there are still many traditional geeks, but they're so much harder to find when they're standing in a crowd of people who got into programming for all of the wrong reasons.
Even worse, I've noticed that the CS curriculums seem to be dumbing down a bit to accomodate this new breed of programmer. For example, teaching Java as Programming I, without bothering to teach object oriented thinking and skipping over many of the useful basics like trees and linked lists. What's next? Drop assembly because it's too hard and nobody uses it anyway? (For those who are sarcasm-impaired, I realize that all programmers should be exposed to at least a little assembly or machine code, if for no other reason than to give you a real understanding of what is happening when your code executes. And yes, I know assembly for various archetectures is still used.)
-Jennifer