[lapsedacademic]

> the social stigma of not having a college degree

People have been saying this for decades, but is it still really a thing? Perhaps on the coasts? If you're in a small or mid-sized city in the midwest or the south, it's almost exactly the opposite...

[kodah]

It absolutely is but it depends on the field. My first few years in software were filled with questions like, "Why didn't you finish?" We also continue to interview in ways that are more accommodating for college graduates and attendees, regardless of whether it's needed or not.

[lapsedacademic]

I see. Makes sense. I was thinking more about "general social status", rather than job-specific stuff, because that's how I interpreted OP.

> We also continue to interview in ways that are more accommodating for college graduates and attendees, regardless of whether it's needed or not.

Wouldn't Leetcode-style interviewing be more egalitarian? Assuming self-taught people know their stuff, I guess? The alternative in other engineering disciplines is to just check the degree and do some soft interviews, right?

Or do you mean something else?

[kodah]

The DS/A stuff that's taught in schools as well as math aids a lot in leetcode style interviews. Consider that material to be a very large hill to climb to understand solving these problems in a time-boxed manner. Additionally, most of the time these problems have nothing to do with your day to day work - which begs the question: why do they exist in the first place?

[lapsedacademic]

I'm in an awkward situation because I'm in R&D, so every job I've had uses DS/A style stuff intensely every day. The engineers I hire are mostly there to help me with my work, so they need the DS/A style stuff. I don't really care about someone having a college degree, but they do need a level of maturity equivalent to an upper-division algorithms course to be productive/useful.

It is odd that jobs which don't require this knowledge test for it.

[kodah]

Your job sounds super niche. I work in R&D and we definitely don't use DS/A most of the time. That said, most of these FAANG and start up jobs are just like mine. They test for those skills anyway.

[ModernMech]

It’s not so much a social stigma as it is different socialization. People who went to college use the experience to relate to one another long into adulthood.

More than anything that’s why students go to college (source: college students).

[jokethrowaway]

As in, we went to college together therefore we're friends and we refer each others / pass each other clients?

That doesn't ring true for my case. I'm sure it's incredibly anecdotal but college level networking lasted 2 years top for me - and it was all ex-coworkers from there on.

[ModernMech]

No, what I mean is that people who went to college share a similar socialization process. I'm not talking about networking, I'm talking about culture. It's the same as people who went to high school versus people who were home schooled.

Everything from bonding (or not) with your roommate, to going out late at night with your hallmates, to meeting boys/girls and dealing with the strange dramas that ensue, your first off campus party, cramming in the libraries at 4am for exams, hanging out in the [insert major] lounge and complaining about your professors, tailgating at football games... just all the little incidental things that are part of college life. People who went through college can automatically bond over their separate experiences of these things.

[jimz]

I'm sure in some social circles or professions it is, but after college I've lived in Seattle, Boston, Brooklyn, and Las Vegas, and outside of the context where the existence of my degree is a necessity by virtue of state law in order to undertake the profession I was in, it really doesn't come up, ever. In part, it's probably because facebook had us all list our education particularly my cohort who needed a .edu email address to sign up, but even after I got off facebook and changed careers entirely, it's just not something that comes up. I don't know if there's simply a presumption that I'm "one of them" or because I have a social circle that isn't entirely homogeneous educationally, but I can't even really think of how the subject matter would come up, or why anyone should care.