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Comment by throwawaygh | Hacker News Reader

These articles are essentially an instance of the fallacy that all labor is equivalent.

If you are self-motivated and intelligent enough to learn the equivalent of a CS degree on your own, then the upper bound on your career trajectory is often significantly higher than "senior software engineer".

So even if you can self-learn, the article is still bad advice. Better advice would be "if you can learn this on your own, maybe aim higher than code monkey jobs".

Go ahead and major in CS because it'll be easy and enjoyable and a good fallback. But also pick up a second major in pre-med/pre-law/econ/finance/engineering/etc. Or get involved in research projects, etc.

So, yes, this is bad advice for weak students. But it's also often bad advice for strong students, who should be aiming high.

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I’ve met some really great self-learned programmers. Never had anyone self learned even been able to make a basic inductive proof, but they will still call themselves kings in CS.

Got a bit sick of the attitude that CS is programming. Switched to Data Science and after a while I’m starting to see Data Scientists that can’t do even basic math. With 6 lines of copy pasted code they’ve made a dnn. They know how to separate into test sets and that’s it. I really feel we need certifications that people actually respect because this is just the ultimate lemon market.

Now my colleagues are just PhDs and I couldn’t be happier. But still I do worry about the field. What will math heavy fields do in the future? Slap theoretical in front of the course as to not make self-learners self-conscious?

Haven't data scientists been watered down to effectively glorified data analysts who use programming languages and libraries as tools?

It really depends on the project. My company is hosting multiple ML/AI projects, some with datascientist that are, as you said, glorified data analysts. Usually MBAs or mixed cursus, but also CS guys (my favourite clients as they will never tell you "i can't ssh onto my server" after executing `chmod -R 777 /etc/`).

And some with genuine DS/statisticians. Also the first kind of project almost always end up hiring statisticians in the end, so realistically, having "glorified data analysts" that can sell to the consortium or kickstart project is enough.

It’s just a lemon market that seems to get worse with time, everyone says that they can do anything to get a foot in the door.

Heck one of my friends has more than double my salary because he said he was a specialist in a marketing software he never heard of before the interview. Now, a year later no one is the wiser and he can buy a new Tesla twice a year (still jealous).

I think a lot has to do with bosses that never started from the bottom so they aren’t great at interviewing, because they have no clue about non-management things. Then they have no clue how productive people should be or even what to measure besides “Sprint points”.

I suspect every technical field experiences this. For example, a surprising number of mechanical engineers I’ve worked with don’t know the difference between longitudinal stress and hoop stress derivations and the resulting impacts on design, yet they regularly design pressure vessels.

I think the reason has multiple dimensions:

1) most jobs, outside of fundamental R&D don’t require deep levels of understanding because they are more in the vein of “get ‘er done” type of work. Truth is, PhDs are over qualified for many (most?) jobs

2) some people simply want a credential and do a brain dump immediately after university

3) as you alluded to in a different comment, hiring managers often don’t have the technical chops to separate the wheat from the chaff

That's not true.

Many people can self-learn. Those same people often cannot perform well in school because school is rigid and authoritarian.

I'm definitely one of them and my career refutes your idea quite heavily. I'm absolutely not the only one.

Doubling down on debt and the system with another advanced degree is dangerous advice.

If you cannot self-learn, you find out relatively fast and with little cost. Not true for the above advice.

> Many people can self-learn. Those same people often cannot perform well in school because school is rigid and authoritarian.

So... labor isn't uniform?

> Doubling down on debt and the system with another advanced degree is anti-advice.

Becoming a medical doctor is anti-advice? Is attending Harvard Law or Stanford's CS PhD program also anti-advice? I know this is a tech forum, but jeeze. The lack of appreciation for the world of fulfilling career choices outside pounding out code and managing people who pound out code is a bit concerning.

I guess there's a small population of people who aren't good at school but can self-learn how to program. I agree that for those people a DIY CS degree is good advice.

However, I also think that there's a substantial intersection between people who would get bored doing generic software dev and people who can self-learn CS.

> Many people can self-learn. Those same people often cannot perform well in school because school is rigid and authoritarian.

Are you still talking about college here? For a lot of classes, I commonly skipped class and taught myself the topics. In some fields like math that was practically the system even if you attended: Step 1: attend lectures that go too fast and lose you at some point, providing little more than a roadmap to use. Step 2 go home and teach the material to yourself. Step 3 attend exams to quantify how well you did.

i've seen this comment a couple times on HN and find it funny. My classes and lectures were mostly about what was not in the book and if you tried to read the book and take the test you'd get around a 50%.

Really depends on the field. Parent comment is pretty accurate for most pure mathematics courses. Not so much in other fields (even non-pure math)

Getting the pre-reqs for medical school out of the way when you’re in college the first time is an incredibly smart move, even if you don’t go on to pursue Medicine. I looked into attending med school 10 years after getting my BBA in Accounting, and it turns out I need a ridiculous number of pre-reqs just to qualify for applications. Something like 60-90 hours (prob. closer to 90 for me as even my basics like business calculus doesn’t meet the math requirements of a BS - engineers who took engineering calculus don’t have to worry about this).

It’s too much for me to seriously consider going back for medicine, tbh. I’d have about 3 years of part time classes at community college or online, maybe less if you could squeeze more in each semester.

Law school requirements where I live aren’t as significant, in fact I don’t think there are any. So I have considered sitting for the LSAT... Family of doctors and lawyers so the thought of going back to school is always on my mind.

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