| I got by first job in software just when the first big software bubble started popping and companies started falling left and right. I still stuck with it and I'm still here. You start seeing the signs of downfall when you're made redundant for the 3rd or 4th time. =) If I could do it all over again, I'd get an actual degree in a trade. Electrician, plumbing, carpentry. Both as a backup job (that I would never really do) and as something I can do with my hands and make actual physical things. Oh, and get a job in retail, even for a month or so over summer. It'll give you a new respect for anyone who can do it for over a year without murdering anyone. -- As for education in general I'll leave you with a Donald Rumsfeld quote[0]: "...as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know." Getting any kind of education lowers the number of unknown unknowns in your life and gives you some known-knowns and a ton of known unknowns. Known unknowns are the things you know exist, but don't know how to do or solve. But because you know they exist and are a solved problem, you can study them further if you need to. If you have a ton of unknown unknowns you might spend a long time reinventing something that has already been solved. Your solution might be better because you didn't know it couldn't/shouldn't be done a certain way, but in 99.99% of cases it's not. You've just wasted time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns |