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by detail-oriented 2420 days ago
Totally agree with your last statement. I've fired more CS degree programmers than self learners.
2 comments

Same here. There are comments further down, which also assert this. This is probably because there are more developers in the market (overall) that have degrees than not, along with a lack of passion to expand their skills.
yeah, I was going to pound this home a bit more, but was seeing some other people already did.

Coming back to this, one of the defenses I've had from CS people who couldn't do day to day development all that well is "well... that's not what CS is for - it's really for diving deep in to the theories behind problems... " - or some other relative claptrap. On its own - yeah, there's a class of problems that are served well by people with a CS-focus. Just don't try to drop them in to a "developer" role and assume that they'll be "just as good or even better" than someone who's simply been doing development perhaps with minimal schooling or just self-taught. One skill isn't really a superset of the other, but some people tend to think of them as such.

Agreed. The main point is that a CS degree is not a proxy for success in all things that require code. I like to keep in mind that a BS in CS only demonstrates the ability to study, memorize and be quized on your memory. Using a set of axioms to build something unique is totally different.