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Comment by tr0ut | Hacker News Reader

anecdotal disclaimer -- I think I've worked with more brilliant people with no degrees or uncompleted education. They just had more drive and do not let anything hold them back. They do not need to be told what to do. Not saying that the rest of the people that I worked with 9.8/10 that had degrees were not great. Just there was something positively different about the people I encounted without it.

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I don't have a degree or formal education but I managed to work for Google about 10 years ago and left to start a company that engages in HFT.

What I'd argue is that your observation is a form of survivorship bias. Of the very small people who manage to succeed without a degree, those people will likely have a great deal of drive, self-motivation, and other traits to compensate for that lack of degree. I'd then argue that in the long term, those traits end up having a much greater impact on your ability to succeed than an education.

But that doesn't mean not having an education is overall a good thing. The majority of people without a degree will be absolutely incompetent software developers compared to those with a degree... you would just have never met them because they don't last long enough to work with you.

I certainly was not trying to argue that. And I said it was my own experience (serendipity). I also agree with what you're saying.

Well if you work in any sort of specialized field or at a level beyond entry, you've got some obvious bias in your sample.

If a degree or formal education has been used as a barrier to restrict access for any time only the strongest and most driven of the degree-less are going to persevere and make it.

So my own anecdotal evidence against this is that the hiring process at my very first job did not weight having a relevant degree very highly, and hired a number of boot camp grads as software developers, many of whom literally could not do the job. I would say many of them had much less drive than the degree holders (not saying this is true for all non degree holders or even bootcamp grads, I know that some of the most driven people out there do not hold a degree)

I could certainly see that happening. But I would lump them in with being educated. Since they most likely did do a 9-5 4-5 days per week bootcamp (assuming). I've encountered people with masters degrees unable to do very basic development. Understanding all the jargon but not able to perform anything beyond basics. Some how these people survive in some businesses. Staying under the radar.

That only indicates you have a competent hiring process, that can filter out the people without degrees who don't have that drive.

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