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Comment by brtkdotse | Hacker News Reader

Computer science degrees are a waste of time and money unless you want to go into academia. If you ignore FAANGs you can get a very comfortable job as a developer after a bootcamp & internship.

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Bootcamps have failed one after another. The most well known, Lambda, is even desperate enough they will "loan" you a new "grad" for free to try to get you to hire one [0]. And that's not even scratching the surface of what's wrong with bootcamps in general, like having instructors barely a few months ahead of students giving out lectures and grading assignments [1].

I can't say I've seen anyone straight out of a bootcamp that was a great hire. I guess these online coding schools might cater to motivated teenagers that are interesting in trying out CS before enrolling in a proper degree. The few good hires I've seen were all STEM grads that decided to take a bootcamp after graduation, or CS grads that were not confident in their ability to enter the marketplace. They could have probably achieved the same thing with a bit of self study or a few electives in college.

[0] https://lambdaschool.com/the-commons/announcing-lambda-fello...

[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...

My argument against this would be that a lot of the things you learn in a CS degree are really interesting and useful, but hard to force yourself to learn if you don't have to. The big one for me is the ability to do proofs in mathematics and theoretical CS, which translates rather well to hard programming problems. Without being tortured with it in college, I doubt I would have ever bridged that gap.

There is certainly a subset of people that do like to solve these problems, and don't like to go to university, but I would assume it is rather small.

The other thing, which is probably less true in countries where you have to pay for university, is that people who join the job market very early view everything in monetary values. My university buddies would do things just because it sounds interesting or hard or could make a positive difference in the world, while my friends who joined the labor market immediately after school are much more focused on their career development and salary.

I agree, that why I added the caveat “unless you want to go into academia”

I worked at the FAANGs and a non negligible number of people either dropped out of college or have no degree.

Are they new hires? Is everyone has 0 connection inside?

Do you mean that a "college degree is a waste of time and money unless you want to go into academia"?

If you had to decide between dropping $X for a computer science degree, and $X for e.g. some liberal arts degree, are you suggesting that the liberal arts degree is a better investment for a career as a developer?

I'm not sure if you're making a statement about how things should be or how they are. Because pretty sure 90%+ companies still value computer science degrees.

I think I would agree, but with the caveat that the hiring companies need to change how they view credentialization. Right now many companies will just toss your resume if you don't have a BS+.

I have a BS an MSIS. Most of the information isn't used in my job.

I think some recruiters filter out people who don't come from a CS background. I think maybe something like a diploma route that concentrates on the CS courses are a better choice. You still get the proof but avoid those garbage irrelevant courses you are forced to take.

See the “ignore FAANG” part :)

The thing is that I don't know which one filters out :/ (I'm pretty sure it's not just FAANG and I know in some country they completely ignore anyone that doesn't have a university degree). But anyway I do feel that my CS education right now (just a few courses into a graduate diploma) ONLY serves as some push for me to complete my study.

I'm interested into CS but not that interested to devour everything on my own, so taking some courses is helpful on that perspective.

How can I work in domains like HPC (not run of the mill work, but not really “academic” either) without having formal education expose me to the the scale and infrastructure needed?

FWIW I don’t have a degree nor do I believe the average CS program is worth the money (US context ofc)

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