Ask HN: 1 Year Deferment of College to work full time? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: 1 Year Deferment of College to work full time?

2 pointsdhammack7 comments

So I know most of you on Hacker News are intelligent professionals. Looking back, would you have taken an offer right out of high school to work full time for a year doing software development?

Let me give a little background - I've been working part time for this company for a year. I like the work, I'm good at it, and they like me. This week they'll be making me an offer for one year full time.

This does make a conflict, however, as I have the tuition to UCF (University of Central Florida) completely covered with scholarships which I would lose if I took the 1 year deferment.

Also, what salary do you highly intelligent folks think would be acceptable for a software developer with one year experience right out of high school (assuming I get no benefits).

Thanks for the input.

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One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people who leave school 'for a little while' with full intentions of going back can find it difficult to do so and then never go back. When you're in the 'real' world you can start to accumulate commitments and the more of these you have the less compatible college is with your life.

From other comments it sounds like your main motivation is to make yourself more marketable to future employers. CS grads are already highly marketable especially when combined with internships and/or part-time work. It sounds like you already have good experience and presumably you will have more during college with an internship or some such thing. If you complete a degree you'll have the qualifications that hiring managers would look for. Having full-time experience instead of part-time isn't going to give you any added benefit. And it probably won't get you a higher starting salary - you'll be in the same hiring pool with all of the other new grads.

And there are costs to be considered. You'll be delaying your college experience by a year. Your friends will be meeting smart interesting people and going to parties and spending late nights in the lab working on cool projects and learning about things they hadn't even heard of before. You'll have to get up early for work tomorrow. You'll be delaying the start of your career by a year. Your salary can rise pretty quickly in your first five years after school. How fast it goes up will be determined on how you perform on your first job(s) not on some work you did when you were 18. The money you earn next year probably won't make up for delaying that process by a year. Also note that salaries can vary widely by geography and are much higher in the Bay Area, New York, etc. If you want to move to a higher earning location you'll be delaying that by a year.

I had attended college for three years and realized that wasn't where I wanted to be at that time. I didn't have a job offer. In 1999, I quit school and moved to DC for a summer job. After that, I worked as an office temp for two months before I landed a job working on web pages.

In order to make up for my lack of degree, I really busted my butt learning everything I needed to know to build web applications, how to make them scale, build and manage databases and mange servers. After 13 years, I haven't gone back. I'm still learning. Every day.

Going to college, you get an education. You learn how to learn. Afterwards, you start learning for real.

Granted, you're in a good place having tuition covered. I didn't. I walked away with student loans that I've since paid off. In college, you'll form friendships that last a lifetime. That's important. It's an experience worth living. You'll be lucky if the people you work with at your first job will remember who you are in 10 years (1 or 2 of them will). You'll have other opportunities later.

Leaving college early to get a job, I'd do it again. I wouldn't do it right out of high school.

I appreciate the insight. Money isn't really the issue for me, and I don't plan to skip college altogether. I feel that with one year part time, and one year full time experience, when I do graduate I'll be much more marketable and my job prospects will be better. I also expect that I'll be more focused in college given that I've seen how what I'm learning applies in the real world. Either way - having more options can't hurt.

That being the case, try landing a job where the focus is pair programming. You'll learn more from a good mentor than you will ever learn on your on. Try to get involved in your local software development community, too. That is equally important as job experience.

Have you considered working full time while going to an online school? Florida State University has an excellent online computer science program. As long as you keep working, you should have no problem paying for your education even if you lose the scholarships.

I have. Online is an interesting option - I was considering taking one or two night classes at UCF for subjects which are cumulative - like calculus.

I recommend taking the job if the company has any senior developers that you can learn from. You will learn as much from working with them and producing code as you will from school, and after a year you should have saved up enough to make up for losing the scholarship. If it's a position where you are the one software developer, you might be better off going to school and staying on part time.

For the salary question, I would say $14/hr is appropriate but be willing to accept less for the opportunity. What they put in the work contract may be of greater concern to you than the money. Read it carefully, look up any terms you are not familiar with, know what your legal rights are and be cautious about signing them away.

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