Pst. Don't exclude people without college degrees. They're often far more resourceful, in my experience, and there's little that college gives you as a developer. Hire the person, not the school.
I hear this fallacy a lot.
A lot of people seem to give it a pass and nod along with it, maybe because it makes them feel better or maybe because it seems like the politically correct thing to say in a room full of talented hackers, only some of whom went to college.
While you in no way need to go to college to be a developer, I think people should be highly skeptical of this claim.
Look at the claim this way. Given two people with equal skill and ambition:
* the first one spent four years learning computer science and software engineering in school while hacking
* the second one spent four years hacking
The claim is that those people more or less have the same skill set.
It just seems unlikely that there's "very little" that the computer science program gave to the developer. It certainly doesn't match what I've actually seen in-field.
Of course, I'm biased: I went to school for computer science. Does anyone actually have evidence to support the other side of the argument?
That said, I really appreciate all of the other topics I learned in more breadth and/or depth while in college. I learned far more about psychology, linguistics, literature, history, etc., than I would have any time soon on my own. I enjoy reading, and enjoy learning a wide variety of topics, but I tend to hyperfocus on what I feel interested in at the time. I doubt I would have bothered to learn anything about Russian culture or listened to recordings of Jelly Roll Morton if I hadn't been required to for course credit... and I feel better about myself for having learned these things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts
edit:link added
The problem with most self-taught people is that the knowledge is deep, but narrow. To be an excellent, innovative, developer you need breadth in order to be able to consider alternate approaches to a problem, but with sufficient depth in certain key areas to be able to do analysis when necessary.
College provides in 4 years what could otherwise take decades of "on the job" learning.
Successful people without college degrees tend to take a few more years to move up the development food chain, they're basically opting to do on-the-job training.
Successful people with college degrees tend to have a stronger foundation in theory, which is useful; whether or not people want to admit it.
I don't believe they have the same skill sets, but they both bring something to the table.
Disclosure: My highest level of education is High School. I dropped out of college in my second semester to go work as a programmer. Over the years, I've hired lots of developers for various companies, and worked with hundreds of developers as well - with and without degrees.
Or is your argument that all people who go to college are "rich and naive kids" as you implied earlier in the thread?
You're exposing a pretty huge chip on your shoulder.
Now if only I could become as classy as you, injecting ad hominem jabs, bitter snark, and class warfare into the argument as a replacement for actually backing up your points.
[edited for wit]
[edit below]
However, as you're egging me on, I will rebut your flimsy argument, the crux of which is this anecdotal beaut:
"It just seems unlikely that there's 'very little' that the computer science program gave to the developer. It certainly doesn't match what I've actually seen in-field."
If that's all you have to lean on, I don't understand how your comment was upvoted so much. Absent in your analysis is a thorough inventory of what college gives you: While it provides new opportunities for learning, it also does not provide things that you get in the working world, such as
* Business sense and professionalism
* Assuming you don't live at home, a sense of independence: Knowing how to take care of yourself at 22 when everyone else is just figuring out is a huge advantage, believe it or not
* Documented experience
* References from others with working-world experience
On the other hand, there are indeed negatives of going to college. To me, the greatest one is the massive time drain: I work in the day, go home, teach myself more, read history, learn chess, and basically provide my own education. This is not by design, but rather, by my nature. It's unfortunate that so many take education to be the exclusive realm of educational institutions.
Sitting through lectures and working to verify for your professors that you are learning, to me, is a waste of time, when I know damn well if I've learned it properly. If I haven't, and it's important, it will show quickly back at work.
Oh, and college costs tens of thousands of dollars.
That was kind of the point. I was trying to be classy, like you.
Perhaps you should take the high road next time and assume that I am just stating my own opinions, not trying to argue with anybody.
I didn't mean to start an argument, I was just responding to your post. You said that a degree in computer science adds nothing to how someone develops software. I replied that this seems false, gave my reasons why, and asked if anyone had evidence to the contrary. You took offense and started flaming.
[yadda yadda yadda ... you insulted my argument then said a bunch of other irrelevant stuff ... yadda yadda yadda]
My argument was short because what you said is prima facie false: you more or less said that years of training in software development adds nothing to one's software development skill set. It doesn't take much to rebut that.
The rest of what you said was all well and good, but you're now attacking a strawman. We're not talking about a cost-benefit analysis of going to college, so your points aren't really germane here. We're talking about your claim that college adds nothing, which you still haven't backed up ... probably because it's a completely untenable position. Four years of anything will add something to your skill set.
But flame on ... I'm done with the thread.
To quote As Good as it Gets
"Last word freak."
People compare school vs "not-school" as if the alternative to school is sitting on your butt. In truth, one can accomplish a heck of a lot with that time and money.
It's a hugely personal decision of course.
Give me that time and money now, and I can hopefully accomplish something useful.
Give me that time and money when I was just out of high school, and chances are very good that it would have gone to waste. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life (still don't, but a bit less so than back then), I had no idea how to work hard, and only a vague idea of how the world works. Those are things I started to learn in college.
The opportunity cost goes both ways.
For what it's worth, I have a PhD and was not a "rich kid" - I was fortunate enough to grow up in the UK at a time when the government gave grants to people who would not otherwise be able to afford a university education (I'm not sure if they still do this - I know a lot has changed).
The fact you can get off paying if you're from low income families I'd bet still deters a lot of people from going to university, who would have otherwise gone which is a shame.
Without their generosity, it would have been very difficult to pay $40k/year to go there.
I think in the long run it wont matter what level of education I've "completed", I'm always going to be learning and I'm always going to try to be good at what I do. Taking classes might help me one day, you never know.
Granted, it would have been better to provide some prove as to why it is notable that I personally do not have a college degree, but being here at HN counts for something.
But yeah, I have probably taught myself 6 programming languages (PHP, Ruby, Java, Python, Javascript, Perl, and some software specific programming tools like Lawson Process Flow, TSQL, etc). I have over 10 years of tech / business experience, own 2 retail clothing stores, took statzen.com to TechCrunch50 DemoPit last year, am about to launch http://gpsaAssassins.com, yada yada.
I was going to go back and finish my BS, but something better keeps coming along. Now I am at a point where it doesn't seem worth it. So I am thinking I may one day clep out of a much of stuff and go get my MBA. Of course, by the time I have the time to go back to school the MBA probably won't seem worth it either.
So, hopefully that adds a little more to the conversation. (Better late than never)