[nihilocrat]

You get out of a degree as much as you put in. This should reinforce your "swagger and hustle" rather than weaken it.

From an employment perspective, you are simply making HR people happy. The technical interviewers don't see much value in a degree in practice, even if they will tell you differently.

[suhail]

Sometimes school teaches you the things you wouldn't take the time to learn normally but are so vital to your experience as a hacker. I value school in that respect, sometimes you need a push to learn something to open up your mind a bit.

Kudos to this guy, I agree with his path. He's not just making HR people happy, he's truly learning regardless of what his GPA may become after it.

I do agree, you do only get as much out of the degree as you put in.

[nihilocrat]

I think your argument is valid, sometimes you get more out of learning something when you're forced to learn the alternatives and edge cases that don't matter in a learn-as-you-go approach.

However, take two job candidates:

One of them just has a CS degree, let's even say it was from a "prestigious" university or whatever. No internships, no computer-related jobs, no open source / hobby projects, nothing else except good grades and dubious academic rewards.

The other has no college degree, but has spent 4 years working various junior positions / contract jobs that pertain directly to the job in question, mentioning several cases where they wrote/maintained software in a production environment. To even the field, let's just say they don't have any open source / hobby projects or otherwise "outside" experience.

They are both asking for the same salary and are "equal" in terms of team fit and other non-technical factors. Who would you hire? This is ultimately the point I'm trying to make.