[sharmanaetor]

If you don't have a college degree, it's highly unlikely that you will get into a reputed company, assuming any company is willing to hire you. This means lower experience and probably lower pay as well. So this means you will spend about 4 years not working to your maximum potential. A person who graduates will easily catch up 6-8 years after graduating. There are, of course, exceptions to the scenario described above, but usually I think what's described by me is most likely to happen.

[mattm]

This could depend on the country. I highly doubt not having a degree would affect one in the US if they could deliver.

[heretohelp]

I dropped out directly into a job offer that got me off the ground in my first quarter of college.

That was nearly six years ago, now I'm the CTO at my company.

I think we can generally trust people to follow their gut on this, as to whether school or work is a better idea. I'd been programming since I was a kid and was overall a self-directed learner. For me, school was an immense waste of time.

Books and MIT OpenCourseWare were a much better use of my time.

[sharmanaetor]

Like I said, there are always exceptions.

[nirvana]

Let me guess, you're in college?

>If you don't have a college degree, it's highly unlikely that you will get into a reputed company, assuming any company is willing to hire you.

That's just silly. I have worked for Microsoft and Amazon, and HP and lots of other reputable companies. Google was pursuing me like crazy for months until I finally told them in no uncertain terms that I had no interest in working there.

>So this means you will spend about 4 years not working to your maximum potential.

The first year or you're not at your maximum potential, but by the second you are and those capabilities grow by the third and fourth... meanwhile, college graduates are just having their first year in college being babied because they don't know how to be professional yet-- and you're the one managing them.

>usually I think what's described by me is most likely to happen.

It isn't, but there's a huge industry in college- and their tuitions are growing several times faster than inflation, and that industry is wholly dependent on people believing they have value, even while they hollow out their curriculum in order to support football and to keep a cadre of professors in the liberal arts employed.

Hey, you go to MIT or CalTech, I'll respect that. You got to Podunk U, and I won't be prejudiced against you (The way you are prejudiced against those who didn't)... but someone who spent those four years building a startup, is going to have a leg up!

[keiferski]

Let's be honest now: if Google was pursuing your for months, and you've worked for Microsoft and Amazon, you aren't the average college student. Most people can't get a job for 50k+ out of school.

And that's not even mentioning the fact that this is limited to consumer tech companies.

[nirvana]

My point is this: Getting a job for $50k+ is easy when you've got four years of development experience behind you. That puts you ahead of the people just out of school.

I can't speak about non-engineering professions. Its quite possible that the college degree prejudice is much more entrenched there. Doesn't make it any less arbitrary and silly, given the low (really, with only a few exceptions) level of education that colleges provide.

[easp]

You've made many references to engineering jobs, but many engineering professions require not four, but five years of college, with next to no option of employment, much less advancement without it.

Let's be clear, you are talking about software engineering.

[sharmanaetor]

I'm not in college anymore. I graduated 4 years back and have been programming ever since. I've based my views on candidates that I have interviewed over the past few years.

Without exception, when a candidate comes in with no graduation and having done a basic 2 month programming course from some private institution, he lacks of a programmer. He may have some idea about his core specialty, but deviate even slightly from there and he is lost.

Alternately, a person with a graduate degree is much more likely to be a well-rounded programmer and has his basics in place.

I'm from India and I believe that the country you come from matters here. In India, society gives a lot of importance to a persons qualification. I guess this affects my views on the matter too.