[sarusso]

Wow. Pretty strong opinions here.

Completing a degree means you can commit and deliver, IMO.

Instead, leaving for writing code just because you can tells me that you took the short path, and that your missing basics (the real ones, which teaches you University) will knock at your door some day.

My 2 cents.

[cinntaile]

> Completing a degree means you can commit and deliver, IMO.

Not completing a degree doesn't mean you can't so this statement doesn't tell us all that much.

[sarusso]

Not sure. As I said in the other reply, if you don't finish it, provided that you don't face major practical or financial issues, to me it is a red flag on being able to commit and bring something to conclusion.

[cinntaile]

As it stands it's a theory of yours. Now you need some actual data to back it up. It's a bit dangerous to reach conclusions based on a hunch, you might be biased after all.

[sarusso]

I am definitely biased by my values, and I value finishing something once you started. Always ;)

Then yes, I might be of course proven wrong, I just gave my 2 cents on what not finishing a degree tells me, including my bias.

Then you could be a false negative, in the sense that you might have not finished your degree but be able to commit 100% on other things. However, as we all know, spotting false negatives is very hard and who hires don't like these bets if not in very particular circumstances, as it is going to be their fault if the person is then not a false negative but a true one. With or without backup data.

I think is no coincidence that as far as I can see the OP basically got the "finish your degree" as first and foremost comment.

Don't take me wrong: I have been a false negative and an outlier my entire life, now I love it, but in the early days I really wished someone told me what I am saying now.

[cinntaile]

> Then you could be a false negative, in the sense that you might have not finished your degree but be able to commit 100% on other things.

I'm not projecting my own experiences on others, I just take issue with your claim. Studying and working are very different beasts, I think it's very much possible for people to not finish degrees yet be really good employees that finish their tasks as agreed upon. The incentive structure is so different that the two can hardly be compared. Not finishing your degree, ignoring personal/financial issues, tells us nothing about their work performance.

> However, as we all know, spotting false negatives is very hard and who hires don't like these bets if not in very particular circumstances, as it is going to be their fault if the person is then not a false negative but a true one.

Yes that's hard but that's a very different issue from your original claim. It's a good reason for a recruiter to go for the person with the degree instead of the person without the degree, but that still doesn't mean that the person without the degree can't commit and finish their work.

> I think is no coincidence that as far as I can see the OP basically got the "finish your degree" as first and foremost comment.

He has 3-4 months left of a 5 year education, of course people will recommend him to finish his degree. There is very little opportunity cost downside.

[sarusso]

Sorry, the "you" was not referred to yourself by any means, it was a generic "you".

My original claim was not an actual claim, it was just what not finishing something one starts tells me. A sensation. And by "not finishing" I do not mean trying for a bit and then quitting, that's of course OK.

What I meant is not finishing, after investing vigorous effort, because one gets "enchanted" with something else (e.g. "oh look I can code in javascript and build a website, who cares about finishing studying the basics, I don't need them anymore!").

By the term "finishing" I implicitly assumed to be near the finish line. If then this is not a symptom of poor commitment capability, I don't know what else it could be.

On another angle, the comment to which I responded originally basically said "University does not teach you anything valuable at all, just quit and go writing code" and here I strongly disagree and will always do.

[marcus_holmes]

>> I am definitely biased by my values, and I value finishing something once you started. Always ;)

What do you do when it becomes obvious that the thing you started is now irrelevant, or was poorly-conceived, even mistaken, when you started?

Genuinely curious. I've walked away from a lot of projects because I learned while doing them.

[marcus_holmes]

I don't want developers who continue doing something even when it's blatantly the wrong thing to be doing.

Flunking out of university is not the "short path". It's the hard path. Getting a degree is not difficult, or even hard work. It's the easy choice - the thing everyone expects you to do.

I don't want people who follow orders and do what they're told. I want people who are prepared to make hard decisions, take the less-travelled path, do what they feel is right and not just what everyone else tells them is right.

I want someone who can actually code, and not someone who has a certificate that says they can code.

My 2 cents.

[sarusso]

I think we are just talking about two different things, and that you have in mind "coders" and "developers", not software engineers or data scientists. But the OP was talking about the latter, not the first, where I can to some extent agree with you.

I saw it many times: javascript kids or self-taught backend Python "engineers" falling extremely short when it came to scalability, algorithmic complexity, or just abstracting concepts.

Similarly, I saw several self-claimed "data scientists" not even knowing what a non gaussian error distribution means.

Not knowing this stuff jeopardise your work and the projects you are working in.

Then, if you are telling me that your interview process should spot these shortcomings at the same level a university degree can, then to me this sounds a bit unrealistic.

However, if you need someone that can write code to pass the unit-tests that some one else wrote without taking any architectural decision, than OK I can agree with you, but it does not sound much of an appealing career path IMO.

[dvtrn]

Completing a degree means you can commit and deliver, IMO.

So does a lot of other valuable and still relevant lived experiences, and they come without the price tag.

But we all already know that.

[sarusso]

Sure, if you include the price in the equation then this makes things different, you are right. I got biased by the nearly free University we get in Europe.

However, if you start something, I think that it is a good attitude to finish it, provided that you don't face major practical/financial issues along the way.

[dvtrn]

However, if you start something, I think that it is a good attitude to finish it

I 100% agree with this. I've just got a bit (maybe a lot) of chagrin towards the sometimes strident mentality that college is the only meaningful way an individual can prove they possess such a capable characteristic, or that completing college is an indicator that such a person will retain such a characteristic throughout their careers/lives.

It's useful as a snapshot of an individual's educational accomplishments for sure, and more power to them for that accomplishment, but I will always have a bit of reticence about the application of "has degree" past that.