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Comment by foolfoolz | Hacker News Reader

while very impressive i would never trade going through the college experience with people my age for any advanced degree or study. that’s worth a lot more to me that the diploma

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So true. My college diploma is worthless to me, it's in the basement somewhere. What is very valuable to me is the experience.

I am sure it helped when looking for a job, no? You sometimes see this a lot where someone says their colleges degree was useless, but it was still helpful for getting that much needed foot in the door.

Maybe you're right about the getting the foot in the door, but in 14 years of work and 4 countries nobody ever asked me for my degree (I have a Masters). The only ones that cared were immigration.

Boeing recruited at Caltech, so while whether I actually received the degree or not never came up with them, I suppose it did matter for that particular first job.

However, there were several other positions at the time I could have gotten without without the degree. (I had worked with tech shops in the area, and some of my friends were creating startups.)

Also, while at Boeing, I was invited to join the Stress team, and the offer included waiving the requirement of a Master's Degree.

Microsoft declined to interview me because I didn't have a CS degree. Missed out on a few $billions there :-)

What should he be doing during the intervening ~6 years though? Just force himself to stop studying? Or study on his own and then be stuck bored to death when he finally goes to university and has to repeat courses?

Yeah, he's going to have a lot of regrets later on socially. But these type of kids would fit in a traditional school anyway so maybe its for the best.

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