[anxx]

My Google interviewer was a HS-educated guy. My parents couldn't believe it. I tend to think - if he is as good at the job as me, what does his education matter? Why should I be offended that a HS-educated guy is in the same room with me?

Education is meant to produce a difference in job performance; it's good for the worker, not directly to the employer. If I with my college degree can't get a better job than a HS-graduate, it's on me to change.

My parents find my lack of ego around this subject so weird. Also, the world at large is probably more similar to my parents.

[lawnchair_larry]

I was on a team of about 10 that had at least one of each: HS dropout, HS diploma, bachelor CS, masters CS, Ph.D. CS.

Most people weren't really aware - many came from other teams, so they didn't interview each other, and it just never came up. Everyone is just known by their title/responsibilities.

There were two people in particular that were carrying a lot of that team. Not only did they do the most work, they fixed broken design, and other engineers relied on them for support as subject matter experts. One of them happened to be the HS grad, call him Sam, another had a BSc.

It came to be interview time for a new hire, and the hiring engineer (head engineer made team hiring decisions there, manager just signed) asked me for feedback on the candidates. "That guy? He didn't even have a degree!", was his response, even though this guy did objectively better in the interviews than anyone else.

Confused that he would be surprised that I would vote for the clear winner, I said, "Huh, since when has that been a consideration here? Sam is one of our strongest contributors and his lack of a degree sure doesn't seem to be a problem, right?"

"What do you mean? He only has his Bachelor's? Wow! Really?" he said, completely shocked.

"No, Sam doesn't have any degree. He didn't even go to college at all."

After some feelings of both shock and skepticism, he muttered something about being uncomfortable with it, and legal liability, then walked off.

Just a few weeks prior, I watched this guy rave to the VP like a fanboy about how smart Sam was. His favorite employee, until then judged on his merits over the last year, was perhaps not up to his standards now. Boggled my mind. I always thought that a degree is one of a few positive signals that you have a worthy candidate. If someone is already proven, how can it possibly matter?

[munin]

I was a Sam in one of these stories once. Now I'm back in school, finishing my degree. In my version, the next few weeks were not happy ones for Sam.

You can ask yourself "how can it possibly matter" all day long but it doesn't matter. Just get the degree. You'll thank yourself later.

[georgemcbay]

I don't have a degree and have no intention of getting one (not because I think getting a degree is worthless in general, but rather I feel it is worthless for me at this stage).

I did go to college for a few years but quit to work at a company I was co-oping at (which presumably was against the rules of the co-op program the company was in with the school, but I never gave it much thought back then).

I'm currently nearing 40 and don't feel that the lack of degree has negatively impacted me. Of course, YMMV depending upon career arc -- I'm still coding, and have no interest in management roles.

Also, one of my multiple moonlighting side projects is volunteering at a nano-engineering lab at UCSD working on writing Go code to control a UV-light-based polymerizing nano-scale biomaterials 3D printer. Nobody there seems to care I don't have a degree, nor has it come up negatively at my current or any of my previous jobs.

[munin]

That's awesome for you. I wish that had been my experience. I will share with you (one of) my stor(ies).

I had been working at a big company for almost five years with no degree and asked my boss "what's next". He arranged a meeting between me and the technical director for our division.

During the course of this meeting another employee reveale to the technical director that I did not have a degree. The technical director refused to talk to me (or even look at me) during and after that meeting and it became apparent from that point forward that there was both no way for me to advance and that my days could be considered numbered.

Your milage may vary. Until that conversation I was a valued member of technical staff that had taken on a variety of leadership roles, authored white papers and was on very good terms with the senior technical leadership in our customers. The lack of a degree killed it all.

[georgemcbay]

Yeah like I mentioned YMMV, I'm sure.

For some people getting a degree might be the right choice, especially if they intend to get more into management in largish companies.

[lawnchair_larry]

Funny you say that, Sam just had his second successful "exit" since then (the first he wasn't quite a founder, but this one he was). Even if he didn't get "lucky", he was doing fine at ~150k/year salaried at BigCorp. I think if you had trouble in this market, the problem was probably not your lack of a degree.

Honestly, if I were you, I would have considered companies or managers discriminating over that (in the face of evidence of skill/talent) someone you wouldn't want to work for anyway.

[munin]

our business unit came under new management after I had been there for four years and new management had different priorities. a lack of degree hadn't been a problem before, and it hasn't been a problem since. my lesson from that though was that some people are stuck up about degrees and you can't accurately predict when you will need to work with one of them, even if just for a little while.

there are a lot of employers in my geographic area (not west coast) that have a strong preference for degree credentialed individuals, I've been declined at the last minute after technical interviewers gave the thumbs-up because I didn't have a degree. it's pretty frustrating and ideally I'd like to never be in that position again...

[ralph]

This team of about 10, was it at Google or elsewhere? Wasn't sure given the higher-level context.

[coliveira]

You shouldn't necessarily care about this at a personal level, but this has some deep implications, which might be a reason for concern for your parents and/or the society:

1. The company doesn't value education. It only cares if somebody can do the hard work and maybe pick up what he/she needs to perform at the same level of other people who have degrees.

2. The university program you attended did not give you any skills that can provide a differential in the market. It is clear that several degrees give that differential, such as psychology, electrical engineering, medicine, just to mention a few.

I think both issues are true for CS degrees. Companies are too interested in getting bodies to do their programming jobs, and don't care if the people have the right kind of education (especially at big companies like Google). Universities, on the other hand, are doing a lousy job of preparing people for the profession.

[lawnchair_larry]

It doesn't have those implications at all. I'm not sure if you live under a rock, but Google values education very highly. The error in your logic is believing that a lack of a degree is a lack of an education. A degree is the obvious way to get an education, but not the only way.

In many professions this isn't feasible, but development? Everything is online. That doesn't mean universities don't provide value. If you were expecting that they would provide exclusive value, as if they have some kind of monopoly on knowledge, and no one could possibly learn the same material in a self-directed way, your expectations need some adjusting.

[randomdata]

As far as development jobs are concerned, the work is out in the open enough that, while education (formal or otherwise) remains important, the accreditation part has little value.

It is difficult to evaluate, say, a doctor - possibly not the best example, but the first that came to mind - based on his past surgeries because much of that data is never recorded, and what is recorded is impossible to access for a variety of reasons. Therefore you need some kind of system to say that, yes, this doctor is capable of doing the job.

Programmers do not really have that problem. Everything you do is recorded, and in many cases that data is accessible for any prospective employers. Worst-case, if you really have nothing else to show, is that you have to spend a few weeks writing some software to publish to GitHub. With that data, you can prove some level of competency, which is already everything a degree can do and more.

So it is not that education is not valued. It certainly is: You would never be able to do the job without some kind of education. It is that your work speaks for itself, so the degree does not need to be valued.

[coliveira]

Every profession has some level at which you don't need a university degree to work. For example, the medical profession has paramedicals. Civil engineering have civil engineering technicians. This is the kind of difference that has not been made in the software engineering profession, and would make life easier for everyone. If you just want to be a programmer, get a job at that level without the need of a university degree. The CS/Comp.Eng. degree, on the other hand, should prepare people not just to program but to design and manage complex software projects.