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Top Established and Emerging Tech Companies Prefer To Hire Highly Educated Candidates, Not Dropouts (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report:It may seem like Silicon Valley is populated entirely with celebrity college dropouts, but in fact, they're the exception to the rule. Going to college pays off, and to land a job at one of the most coveted tech employers, you'll need to stay in school. Data analysis site Paysa looked at over 8,200 job posting and over 70,000 resumes at tech "titans" (companies worth at least $100 billion with an IPO more than 10 years ago) and "tech disruptors" (companies worth at least $10 billion with an IPO within the last 10 years) and found that employees at these companies are highly educated, not dropouts. A disproportionate number of employees at these sought-after companies actually have advanced degrees, and one company stood out as employing the highest percentage of workers with Ph.D.s -- Google. A whopping 16 percent of positions at Google require a doctorate degree. Less than 2 percent of Americans have earned a doctoral degree and an even smaller percentage have studied topics that are relevant to Google's work.
The only Drop-outs you see in the tech industry are people who dropped out because they got too busy managing a company they created themselves. The quality of developers is bad enough even among those who graduated. The people who couldn't even be bothered to finish their degree and then have to send out resumes looking for jobs are even worse off.
Your best bet is to complete your degree and do interneships or co-op placements to get real world experience. In addition, you should be working on your own personal projects in your spare time so that you actually understand how to do software development by the time you graduate. It may sound like a lot of work, but if you only depend on what they teach you in class, you will get out of school with very few marketable skills.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
A degree is not merely about demonstrating that you can acquire some minimal base of knowledge to start your career from. It also demonstrates that you can finish what you start, even when it is a long process that requires you to do many things you have no particular interest in doing.
I'm guessing this is addressing that silly tech narrative that you can drop out of college and become a billionaire Does anyone really believe that? If you take even a cursory glance at the rich 'dropouts' they were all from well to do families who could afford to take a break and come back. Meanwhile my kid basically gets one shot at college since if she takes even 1 year off because she didn't get into her 300 level courses (not enough space for somebody with a measly 3.8 GPA / average is 3.9 to be admitted to her major) all her loans come due and you can't get more loans until the first batch are paid off.
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A degree is about indoctrination, as is all education. You are made to think the way that your betters believe that you should think, so that they find you useful in their bureaucracy.
A degree has nothing to do with intelligence and not even much to do with persistence. You'll make it through as long as you can pay the bill and show up occasionally.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Maybe they saw the quality of your work and moved the goal posts. I have been hired for jobs that require a Bachelor's degree without having any degree at all. Very few positions don't include "or equivalent experience / skills" in the spec.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Robert Kiyosaki has a book called "Why 'A' Students Work for 'C' Students and Why 'B' Students Work for the Government", where A students (graduates) work for C students (dropouts) and B students (everyone else) work for the government. You don't need a college degree to own the corporate ladder, you just need to hire people who are smarter than you.
I find it ironic that Google invests so heavily in online education programs, but only hires people who have gone through the higher education song and dance. They straight up claim that their Udacity Android nano-degree will get you a job in the field, but how many of those grads are they hiring?
As someone who was self taught then went for a full degree, I found both to be useful.
When I was self taught, I know how to code, and what the commands to, after getting the degree, (perhaps I got good professors as well) I learned how the commands worked. Building my confidence in looking at the data, and going beyond what the API does, but being able to extent or trick the API to do what I would need it to do.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If you have little to no experience, a degree is the most basic filter the HR department can apply to the 12,384 resumes they are receiving for the open positions. No degree? Garbage, and yes I'm well aware of how unfair that is and how many potential good people they lose. A degree from the right program shows you can at least stick with something that's reasonably hard long enough to make it through, and can probably solve a few non-trivial problems given enough time and guidance.
I've been working for big companies for almost my whole career, and the simple truth is that you have to play a lot of stupid, asinine retarded games to get and keep a job, and advance in your current one. if you don't like it, go work for one of the 4 billion "Dude, GitHub is my resume!" web startups. A zero-knowledge, C-student HR generalist is going to apply whatever it takes to reduce that pile of resumes down. She has a degree -- it may not be CS and she may have spent most of her time at sorority functions, but she's going to feel she's college-educated and you should be too. If you're trying to cold-call your way into a job, it's a rare medium to large company that will even consider someone who hasn't completed a degree of some sort.
I'm in IT and we have _plenty_ of people with just a BS, AS or no degree at all who are very good at what they do. A lot of us don't even have a traditional computer science background. But, woe upon any of these smart people who can't network their way into their next job when they need one, because it puts them at a disadvantage no matter how smart they are.
If you have a CS degree and cannot get a job in the tech sector you must be carrying around a substantial amount of negative qualities as a person. You most likely come across as the type of person no one will hire no matter how many degrees you have. Techies are not usually known to be very good interviewees. A lot of techies tend to be introverts and display a lot of social awkwardness. Only the really smart and competent techies can get away with carrying around those types of characteristics. Most of those complaining they cannot get a job are overly inflexible in their stated goals. They decide they only want to work with certain technologies in certain industries and are most likely unwilling to relocate. These two qualities also show someone unwilling to take the initiatives necessary to find their perfect job. A college degree is only really useful for one thing. It shows a person who committed themselves to achieving a goal, namely a college degree, and was willing to do everything necessary to reach that goal. But if you think a CS degree actually prepares you for the real world you are woefully misinformed. College curriculums have a hard time teaching the technologies currently in use today because the technologies change faster then the curriculums can be updated. You end up knowing the basics which should allow you to adapt and learn the technologies not covered in your degree program.
"and found that employees at these companies are highly educated, not dropouts"
This statement makes the gigantic assumption that "dropouts" may not be highly educated but that doesn't mean they are not highly intelligent. There are high school students capable of running rings around the degreed professionals. If you are paying a lot of money for your degree but feel you have the skills to make $100K a year instead of spending $50K a year for your education the smart thing is to "dropout" secure your job using the only thing that really matters which is your knowledge level and go back later to finish up your degree. A lot of companies will even pay to offset the cost of finishing your degree. Even if the company doesn't offer tuition reimbursement you will be in a better financial situation than you were when you started running up your debt to get a degree.
The drop outs they want to hire aren't applying for jobs because they're busy starting their own companies. I started my own companies and completed college and worked full time. It was frankly nuts and I would have been better off dropping out to just start my own companies. No customer has EVER asked me for my diploma or even where I went to college. They want to know I'll solve their problems, not what my education was.
He was so happy he got laid he went out and got an MBA? Man that dude must have had some confidence issues!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I hope that made you feel better, buying all that bullshit. Now, the truth.
Yes, please try to explain the "truth" to someone who has seen things from both sides. Who dropped out of a computer science program the middle of their sophomore year to pursue a unique startup opportunity, worked in such an environment for a couple years, moved to a more traditional software development job, went back to school and finished their degree.
Colleges do not teach people how to be good programmers.
The classroom is not the sole source of knowledge for computer science and related fields. You learn as much from your peers, fellow students, and from self-study as you do from professors. A University is a unique environment. Not only is it dense with peers from your field of study but also with peers from other areas. Other areas that may provide insights that are beneficial. A University also can provide access to equipment and software unavailable by your own means. Been there, done that. Access to people, info, equipment, software, etc, is amazing at a University. Add to that the University making me take classes I expected to be of little value, and much to my surprise turned out quite useful on the jobs years later.
In summary, a formal degree program can make you a better programmer than you would have otherwise been. It is additive to what you are doing on your own.
I too have a 30+ year career. However I earned my CS degree 5 years into that career, not 25 years into it. Who might have the better perspective on how a CS degree affects the early portion of one's career?
Everyone knows that phone support sucks, but it's a great place to get in the door and hone troubleshooting skills. And, once you know the products of a company, you have a far better chance of moving into the engineering organization that does QA on those products ... That's how I did it. Now I'm working at one of those companies that thousands of people try to get jobs at, and over 99% get turned away.
That may have worked for you but it is risky. The effects of taking lower paying jobs or those which are not a great fit for your career ambitions can remain for an entire career. For most workers the effects of a poor first job dissipate after about 8 years, but it take more average or slightly under average graduates far longer.
And research has shown these workers generally catch up by moving to new employers, not by getting their foot in the door and being promoted. I know someone who literally moved up from the mail room to becoming a senior developer, but that is by far the exception to the rule (it was a very small company when he was moving up the ranks). Everyone else I know who was in similar circumstances got stuck in low paying QA jobs and couldn't break out of that role.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
[Citation Needed]. The lawyers I know of my graduating class are driving Ferarris and Lambos, with 700+k houses. The CS people, at best, are barely scraping 120k, 10 years after graduation.
Law school graduates have a very bimodal salary curve, and that remains throughout their career. A select few (about 20%) make around $160k+ right out of law school. Most of the rest make under $80k per year. Median starting salaries are at around $60k.
I know quite a few law graduates, and most of them either barely scrape by or move to another career. A couple of them have those huge houses you mention. My guess is either you have lost track with the unsuccessful members of your graduating class or you went to a very good school where most of your classmates were likely to succeed. Or its just an anomaly, since the statistics bear out that the results you claim are uncommon.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Yes, it would be great for people without family connections to a place wouldn't it? Or to simply not care about your family. Many have obligations to family and cannot move.
Then they will have a somewhat limited amount of career options. Almost no one really has access to 100% of all possible careers, regardless of what your kindergarten teacher might have told you. If your family provides you enough enrichment that they are worth more to you than the career you could have if you moved, then live with that decision. I'm certainly not going to tell people their priorities are wrong. But some choices in life have consequences. My choice to have two children, and my choice to live in the best school district in my state (aka most expensive housing) limits my career options (no going back for my PhD). It may be a bummer at times, but I doubt many people would feel sorry for me. And they shouldn't, because these are the choices I made and continue to make.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke