Comment by overshard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by overshard | Hacker News Reader

Just in regard to the final paragraph I do not have a college degree but have worked for tech companies that say they require it. Usually the term for it now days is college degree or equivalent experience...

Side note I dropped out my senior year of college because I got tired of paying out of state tuition for what I finally saw as something useless to my computer science education. I've not regretted this decision and the experience I've gained in the field previous/in college working a normal programming job put me years ahead of any peers who graduated at the same time I dropped out.

I hate advising people to dropout or quit anything but when it comes to computer science, go start an open source project, use one of the many wonderful online learn to program resources or just hack away on a Linux machine setting up a few server services and you'll learn more real world usable computer science in a few days of doing that then you will in a year of college.

EDIT: What I wish I would have done was went in-state and got a degree in the arts or English or straight up math. The classes I took in regard to these subjects are useful to me on a daily basis. I know people like to make fun of liberal arts degrees but you learn some cool interesting stuff there, I don't think it's useful to my job but it is useful in sounding educated and communicating with people outside my field of work.

>"Usually the term for it now days is college degree or equivalent experience..."

You're lucky to be in an industry where companies have, in recent history, been falling all over themselves to hire great engineers. This can change; that's the problem with dropping out. Say what you will about formal education, all things being equal that piece of paper may be what distinguishes you from your neighbour when the labour market loosens up.

Yes, I understand (and agree with) the fact that you don't need a formal college education to be successful, especially in the tech industry. But I think we glamourize the Harvard drop outs. Do so at your peril; the day may come when these things matter, and your Udacity certificate isn't going to match up well with the Stanford CS degree...

I finished my degree, but nobody ever noticed since I started working full time years before graduation. I've been reluctant in recent years to give the "drop out" advice, however, since this was 12 years ago and I have no idea what things are like today.

Hearing that it can still be good advice is heartening. It's nice to know there are still some skilled professions that don't have huge regulatory or academic entry barriers.

I dropped out last year and my experience so far has been exactly the same. I actually gained the majority of my experience while working on a startup that I co-founded.

Personally, I don't see any reason to hesitate to advise CS students to drop out. It was the best financial decision I could have made.

I got my degree in math and learned to program mostly on my own (1 introductory CS class in highschool and another in college). The degree has served me well both in terms of having it on resumes and in terms of the skills that I developped studying math.

If I wasn't months away from graduation I would switch over to Math. I wish I had taken more math classes in school and more programming courses online. I hope that more math courses are offered at Udacity and Coursera. More and more I see that programming is just applied proofs.

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