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Comment by brighton36 | Hacker News Reader

why bother getting the degree?

Working in software I've only found 2 cases where a lack of a degree got in my way. Getting a work visa to some countries is going to be much much harder without a completed undergrad. And continuing education with a master's level program will be very difficult to do without a completed undergrad. This is what finally motivated me to go back and finish my undergrad.

OP is Canadian. If they want pursue an opportunity in the US- a degree is a requirement for the TN Visa (technically you can get the visa with "equivalent experience" but that is much more cumbersome and unpredictable where as the process is a breeze with a CS degree). Since he mentioned in the article something about "overseas opportunities", I am guessing that is part of his consideration.

- To be able to work abroad.

- To be allowed into graduate school.

- To stop having to explain why I don't have one.

The older I get, the more I worry about ageism, and whether the absence of a degree might make that worse.

Degrees certify habitus.

Thanks for writing this is up!

I've been thinking about enrolling at WGU for their CS degree and was just chatting about it yesterday.

I'm also self taught but with only half a degree completed. I think about moving abroad especially for retirement reasons. Having that paper makes all the difference. Without it it's much harder to live anywhere outside a home country permanently.

These are all excellent reasons.

People that want to follow in your footsteps should also think about why they want to do it and to only do something like this if it makes sense for them.

My brother in law did a degree at WGU too, but not in CS. It was to finally get the job he wanted and had always been qualified for but was unavailable without the degree. And yes, he made up the cost in less than 6 months of his new job. It was 100% worth it.

Not the author, but I will say that in my experience having the paper has helped open a lot of doors, especially early in my career, that I otherwise would have had to push harder to get through. It gives you a bit of default credibility. Perhaps unjustified, that's a matter of opinion, but it's definitely real.

Just seems like a competent GitHub serves the job better, at lower cost...

Hardly. The only people who care about your GitHub are technical people. Most of the gatekeepers at any decent size company are not going to care one bit about GitHub, but they will recognize the degree. By the time you get to the hiring manager the degree doesn't matter. It's getting to that level that's the obstacle.

And frankly, when you have more experience, GitHub is also useless, because your network matters 1000x more than your portfolio.

That I get. Habitus is important. But, here, there was no transmission of habitus, due to the online courses.

> Habitus is important.

Agree, though I think the value will depend significantly on the person. For some folks this will be the majority of the value, others it'll be wasted on.

It really seems like an a society, we should just offer habitus reform schools in deficient precincts..

There are still a lot of jobs unfortunately that won't even look at your impressive github account if you don't have a degree.

I built my career for 10 years without a degree. It is doable. But having a degree (got it at 32) made life A LOT easier.

The first people to look at your CV probably don't know what Github is.

The degree is a checkbox for recruiters/HR who are looking to match a job spec before passing you onto the engineering team.

I don't have a degree. I feel that not having it has cost me some opportunities. Someone once said that when someone has put in years to get their degree they want the candidates they interview to have done that work as well.

I've had a successful career without a degree, and while I'm unaware of any opportunity I've missed out on, there's no way to be sure. No one's ever mentioned it at an interview, but there may very well be interviews I never got because I didn't have the credential. At this point, it's not worth the time or money for me to get a degree the traditional way. If I could have done it in six months for a few thousand dollars, it would have made sense earlier in my career.

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