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Programming is one career where, for many firms, experience
still trumps academic credentials.
That becomes less true every year, unfortunately. And it's entirely predictable. There are millions of middle-aged and elderly adults today who as young people enjoyed employment in a growing sector with minimal formal education, only to find themselves economically stranded when the sector matured and shrank.Counseling a young kid _not_ to get a GED is indefensible. Life is a lottery. Just because you can see a path forward today doesn't mean that path will remain viable tomorrow. And despite the increasingly rapid pace of changes in our modern economy, a high school diploma or equivalent has remained extremely valuable. Among other things, it will be difficult to pursue post-secondary education at accredited institutions without a GED. Kid, there's no reason you can't take the job _and_ get your GED. And remember: formal education isn't for learning stuff you could learn on your own, it's for learning stuff you couldn't or wouldn't bother learning on your own. That's why it's simultaneously so difficult (in the sense of willing yourself to do the work), yet so important. It's a cruel world out there[1] and you want to acquire all the tools you can, especially easy ones like a high school diploma or GED. Also, always remember success is more visible than failure. Similarly, people who succeed without credentials are much more visible than those who didn't succeed or who suffer significantly diminished earnings power. I can assure you, as somebody who has worked in IT _without_ a STEM degree for almost 20 years, and who makes much more than the median compensation in Silicon Valley, that engineers with a STEM degree enjoy a significant advantage, notwithstanding people like mindcrime and myself. [1] It's cruel in the sense of being unforgiving. Many people, perhaps even most people, will enjoy a comfortable existence with nominal effort. But it only takes one illness, one accident, one crime, or one some-other-event to drag you to the bottom. Climbing out of a hole is immensely more difficult than falling in, and it's at times like those when decisions like you're facing now will matter most. |