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Ask Slashdot: CS Degree While Working Full Time?
An anonymous reader writes "First, some quick background: I am 26 years old and I have been working for a large software development company with more than 50,000 employees for about 5 years now. My actual title is Senior Software Engineer, and I am paid well considering I have no degrees and all of the programming languages I have learned (C, C++, C#, Java) are completely self taught. The only real reason I was able to get this job is because I spent a year or so in a support position and I was able to impress the R&D Lead Developer with a handful of my projects. My job is secure for the time being, but what really concerns me is the ability to find another job in the field without 95% of companies discarding me for lack of formal education. I started looking into local community colleges and universities, and much to my dismay, they offer neither nighttime or online courses for computer science. Quitting the job to pursue a degree is not an option, especially considering they will compensate me up to $10,000/yr for going back to school. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Does anyone know of any accredited colleges and universities that offer a CS degree through online courses? Obviously excluding the scam 'colleges' such as Univ. of Phoenix and DeVry."
and almost everyone I've ever talked to says unless you can already pass compilers in your sleep, you're not going to make it. Start with a years worth of Discrete Math texts and if you can follow that no problem you can make it through years 1 and 2. That said, you can get all the course work from MIT, learn it, and then go get the degree as a formality. It's still hard. There's a lot to do.
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Why is it wierd? Any decent company will offer academic compensation and pays for training. Maybe you work at a company run by assholes?
What prevents him from simply getting a BSc and leaving for another company with more pay?
Also, it's somewhat strange that the company should make an investment in his level of education, and yet the return will go to him (I'm sure he would expect a higher salary).
Lots of companies do this. You seem to completely ignore the possibility that the company could be interested in having its workers be more skilled, and willing to pay for higher skill levels.
If your job is reasonably secure, keep looking at community colleges. You should be able to find one with an online AS program for CS. Work your way through that first and by the time you finish that you should find that more options are available (more universities are starting online courses all the time) to finish a BS with.
You likely will find at some point you'll need to change your work hours - or save up a truckload of sick time - to take some day time courses but if you start with an AS you might be able to put that off for a while.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You don't need a CS degree which is more likely to require lab/classroom time. I tried to the CS program and couldn't stand it. I finally ended up with a degree in Math and that's perfectly suitable for a career in programming. I was working full time and taking classes to finish that up. I imagine it's a lot easier to find on-line math classes.
Work Safe Porn
While most universities will not allow you to enroll in a degree part time, they will have no problem with you doing one or two courses. See if your employer will allow you to take off the 1 hour / day 3 days/week to do a course... this would let you do 4-5 courses / year. Whenever you do find the time to do your degree, all these credit hours will be out of the way and it will save you a lot of time.
If your employer is willing to pay for a formal CS education, it's likely they'll be flexible with your work hours. Find a quality university near you, investigate their program and their requirements, and lay out a plan for your boss to look at. They'd probably let you leave a couple hours during the day as long as you came in early/left later to compensate for the hours you've missed. I'm 24 and have a full-time salary position and am getting a CS degree part-time, and only because my employer allows me to leave for a few hours during the day to go to classes.
It's convenient, as I go to a university in a large city, bus to campus when I have them, and bus back to work afterward. Usually I try to take night classes to avoid leaving during the day.
Warning: you will work extremely hard and you won't have much free time if the University you go to is any good.
If all you want is the piece of paper and aren't interested in learning much from your non-major classes, here's what I'd do:
1. Limit yourself to semi-reputable four-year universities. You don't need a top-tier school but you also don't want a degree from somewhere with a reputation so poor it will be only marginally more valuable than a two-year degree from Phoenix.
2. Do your research and determine which school (or schools) require the fewest hours in residence in order to grant a degree. My alma mater requires 60 credit hours (i.e. about four semesters as a full-time student) in residence. It's likely that many universities require less.
3. Do your research and determine which schools will accept transfer credit (and count it toward a degree) from either: a) online universities like Phoenix, and/or b) a community college in your area.
4. Knock out as much transfer credit as you can from online universities and/or your local community college. You want enough so that you only need take the minimum number of hours "in residence" at the school you intend to get the degree from.
5. Transfer all your credits and start working toward completing the in residence requirement. If you're going to be working full time you probably won't want to take more than two classes at a time. Though, you can also do this during the summer, meaning you can complete about 18 credit hours per year. That means it will take you ~3 years to complete the in-residence hours plus however long it took you to amass the 60-70 hours of transfer credit.
If you're dead set on working full-time during the entire affair (and I can definitely see the appeal) it's hard to imagine your being able to complete a degree in fewer than six years from start to finish. And that's a stretch.
Software development company with 50K employees?
If career advancement is truely a concern, by first suggestion would be to review job descriptions for higher positions in your projected career path - do the require college degrees? As I recall, MS (if that is where you work) had a couple of very senior executives without college degrees, they most likely included wiggle-room in their job descriptions to allow for alternative education paths.
Finally, you are already inside - typically the folks that care about technical issues like college degrees are in HR, and their main "contribution" is weeding out applicants - you've avoided that threat, and apparently the line managers appreciate your proven talents.
I would have a plan to complete a college degree, but only invoke it if you find that a degree is really *required* for advancement.
Ken
Listen well to the voice of experience. I went straight from high school to work as a programmer. Anyone who tells you that lack of a degree will not hold you back or will not get you a job - or that you wouldn't want those jobs anyway - has been fortunate or short-sighted. You need the degree for upward mobility and continued job security.
I worked full time while getting two associates, a bachelor's, and a master's (of sorts - long story). It's hard, even harder if you're married and have kids, but this is something you have to do for yourself and your family.
If you live in any sort of a big city, there's bound to be a college that offers night classes. That's the right way to do this. It won't be a diploma mill but the professors will care about you and will not be trying to wash you out or just see you as a paycheck. One side benefit is that you'll learn while going through the process. Maybe you know all there is about computers, but learning all the other courses you might think are BS, they'll help you think and speak and write.
I've been in the industry nearly 15 years now. I think not having a degree has only come up maybe one or two times. Sure didn't stop me from getting recruited by Microsoft.
What I would focus on is a couple of things:
I'm not trying to knock a college education - if you want it for the education. If you want it just for the advancement, the things above are going to have a much bigger impact on your career and your ability to find employment in many cases.
Random Musings
If you are born with natural aptitudes for logic and math, then you will do well as a programmer, regardless of which university you choose.
If you are not born with these aptitudes, you will never be a great programmer. I realize that genetic predetermination is culturally unpopular; we would rather believe that you can do anything if you put your mind to it. Well, as many people who tried to jump into the field in the 90's just for the money learned the hard way: you've either got it or you don't. These are the same class of people who go to college to learn how to become a programmer (but who are not already programmers) who are telling you that college is too hard. They misrepresent the level of difficulty only because they could never get it. If you are a natural, it will not be anywhere near that hard for you.
It isn't just a matter of skill either. You have to like spending hours at a stretch typing away at a keyboard, engaging your mind in the perpetual resolution of logical constructs. To some people, this task is about as much fun as doing several pages of algebra homework. They will never like doing it no matter how good they get at it, and that distaste for doing it will make college hard and work even harder.
So, if you like it and you are good at, then a college degree won't be too hard for you to get, but the only value it offers you is a piece of paper which (presumably) potential employers will respect. Otherwise, don't bother; figure out what you actually like and are actually good at, and chase that down instead.
There's always the risk for a company giving training to employees, and then they leave.
There's always a risk of not giving training, and they stay.
Only if there is no opportunity for promotion or advancement. I have absolutely no desire to leave my current company unless I have to. I admit, if they let you take a degree and then keep you doing grunt work, they're probably shooting themselves in the foot.
But also be aware that as a benefit paid out, the company probably pays less taxes on what they disburse, and there may even be programs in some places which make it even slightly profitable for them to offer tuition reimbursement.
Finally, at this point, your more motivated individuals are probably going to be those who take advantage of the classes while working. Those sorts of people will look for training and educational opportunities in prospective employers, so even in a tough economy, having the option there is probably a good idea for maintaining a staff of the more motivated people out there, even if you want fewer of them overall.
Employers have only themselves to blame for the "shortage". They reject perfectly good candidates out of hand, for the craziest subjective non-reasons, then complain there's a shortage. They have weird ideas about the extraneous qualities they think they want. Like, why is age discrimination rampant? They believe young coders are more easily bullied into working longer hours, and will take less pay. If they want to reject a programmer for being too old, they make up some other bullcrap excuse why, or don't even bother with that. They also desire what they call "loyalty" (while showing no loyalty themselves towards their employees), which really means they want the candidate who is not a "flight risk". They want a candidate within a "good" range of debt and desperation-- not so much that he will steal from the company, but not so little that he can afford to walk away. Evaluating that aspect of a person is very difficult, since they're not supposed to do that at all so they can't outright ask for the information they want. However, credit scores certainly help with that.
Employers are terrible at evaluating candidates. Can't tell a good programmer from a smooth talking bullshit artist. Nor, on the more subjective criteria, are they much good at telling the crazies apart from the merely desperate. The best they can do is hit prospects with a test on trivia about a particular language, the sort of stuff you shouldn't memorize but should look up in a reference. Quick, name all the reserved words in C++! If you can't do it, then you must not be an expert C++ programmer. If you try to explain why knowing that is not important, then you get that question "wrong", and are tagged as a BS artist to boot. I've had a so-called technical interview end after just 1 trivia question. They refuse to allow any time for training, demanding that new hires "hit the ground running". Candidates are expected to train themselves at their own expense beforehand.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I was in a similar situation in 2008. I had about five years of experience but when the economy started to tank it was harder for myself and some friends to find employment without a degree (wasn't a problem in the early 2000s). I already had over 60 transferrable credits at a community college from before I left college for a good job offer, but could not find any place to finish a CS degree while working full time.
So I decided to go the online route. But I knew that UoP or Devry would be looked down on, so I needed to get my Masters as well. Plenty of colleges have great night MS programs in CS. I am in my last year at DePaul right now, and once I am finished I will not even list my Bachelor's degree on my resume.
But even my UoP degree opened doors. I obtained a job at a Fortune 100 company, and my boss told me that HR would have never even let her see my resume if I didn't have a degree. I am now a senior developer making twice what I did in 2008, and I still haven't finished my Masters to clear the stench of UoP off my resume.
You just have to be honest with yourself about what you actually want. If you want an education, buy a book (seriously, you could buy about 50 quality books for the cost of a single university class). No college course, even in my Master's program, can compete with reading a book like Code Complete or Head First Design Patterns. But if you want credentials, online schools still give you that.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
They are kinda pricey for a 2 year degree that gets you technician work.
According to their tuition chart:
http://www.devry.edu/assets/pdf/uscatalog/US-Catalog-tuition-chart.pdf
That's about $45K.
So it isn't a scam, but grads need to balance degree cost vs. earning power. Maybe your company pays their technicians awesome salaries or something.
Lots of companies refuse to pay for training, because lots of people would just skill up and leave.
You're missing the point that in that case a lot of people will look for a job where there are tuition benefits.
Highly skilled, motivated people are both more likely to want continuing education, and to be able to find a job somewhere else.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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