[lsc]

>Not everyone is going to drop out of high school or college and launch a billion dollar company.

Neither did this guy. Most of us without degrees did something similar to what this guy did; do a high dollar job for a while for a low-dollar wage, and eventually you build up enough reputation that you can get paid market rate.

>As for you, the average reader, go/stay in school and get a degree. Life throws all kinds of curves at you. At 20-something it might be cool and trendy to be a modern hippie-techie drinking latte's and coding for Google, Facebook or whoever. One day you might wake up in an entirely different landscape at thirty, fourty or fifty years of age and regret the fact that you did not take the time to complete a degree before your life got more complicated. I've seen this happen.

Serious question: What is the downside to going back to school later?

I mean, sure, if you have someone giving you free money to go to school, yeah, that might be a time-limited offer, and you should take it. All other things being equal, you should take free money. But for those of us who have to pay our own way? seems to me like it would be much easier to go back to school when you can make a bunch of money working part time.

I mean, I don't know; I haven't seriously attempted to go to school. But I can tell you that when I work part-time, my hourly rate is more than 10x what I could get when I was 17, and trying to go to school while working. My cost of living isn't much higher than it was then, either. (biggest difference, probably is that I've gotta pay for health insurance now.) - I could live pretty comfortably and pay reasonable state school fees, contracting myself out 1/3rd of the time.

So from where I stand now, in my early '30s? it looks like going to school would be way easier than it was when I was 17, and thinking I needed a degree to increase my salary above sustenance levels. But then, I haven't seriously tried to go back, so I don't know.

[flatline]

I went back in my mid-30s, with one kid. I had flirted with a variety of work/school balances up until that point, but working full time and doing school part time was going to require about 8 more years of sustained effort to finish a B.S. With a kid, full time school pretty much precluded me working, as my spouse works full time, so I ended up taking on much more debt than most undergrads, which brings up the next fundamental problem of opportunity cost. I left a $100k/yr job to do school, so that loss of income on top of paying for things like daycare and a mortgage made it a much more expensive proposition than when I was in my early 20s. I don't regret doing it at all, I'm very glad to have finally finished the degree, but there are lots of extra costs and obstacles that come up when you have other substantial responsibilities.

That being said, the actual schoolwork was way easier in many ways than during my first foray from my 20s. I had time management skills, a supportive wife and stable home situation, and years of experience in the software industry that gave me a reasonable baseline of knowledge.

[lsc]

>I left a $100k/yr job to do school, so that loss of income on top of paying for things like daycare and a mortgage made it a much more expensive proposition than when I was in my early 20s

Why did you decide to go back to school if your income was already that high? did you change careers? or was this just a social status/personal enrichment project?

[flatline]

Mostly the latter, though I was tired of writing business applications and looking to move into something, broadly, in the domain of scientific research. Which is not terribly straightforward with only a B.S., but seems to be pretty much impossible without one. So for the moment, I'm still on the job hunt in this area.

[haihaibye]

I dropped out of CS to work in the games industry. After that I took a financial coding job instead of going back to school, and a few years later am back at school (top 1% in the world), but as a research fellow. Everyone else doing my job has a PhD. It was extremely hard for them to hire me and they had to break the rules but they did. I'm a terrible student but a good researcher - maybe because I have what Feynman would describe as a "different box of tools"

Sure I'll never be a professor, and make decent but not top $$$, but compared to more senior people, I actually prefer what I do day to day (90% coding & research) rather than the meetings/teaching/grant writing etc that those with higher prestige jobs seem to spend their time doing.

I'm probably an outlier, and don't advise others to follow me. If I could go back in time and get the degree I would, but at the moment the opportunity cost is too high. Not just the considerable amount of money, but also the interesting new work and real world problems that I can solve now, compared to memorisation, sitting exams and redoing old problems.

[lsc]

I've worked with a bunch of folks going the other way; physics BAs who couldn't cut it as a researcher who fell back on programming.

From what I've seen, physics majors are more likely than CS majors to have a reasonable level of Linux competency.

[seanp2k2]

>" I don't regret doing it at all, I'm very glad to have finally finished the degree" What was the benefit in the end?

[robomartin]

Going to school later on isn't a bad idea or impossible. It could be a good idea for some. I would guess for most it is difficult, if not impossible. Throw a couple of kids and a mortgage into the equation and it's really tough to make independent (and risky) decisions.

At some level I am suggesting this has nothing to do with earning more money but rather being able to get a job and not loose it to someone with a degree.

I don't know the answer to this question: How many technical people work at places like SpaceX without having at least a BS? Probably few, if any. You'd have to have a pretty serious track record to get past the filters at companies like that.

I am not being elitist here. Not at all. I am merely suggesting that the reader consider want it might mean not to have a degree later in life.

[lawnchair_larry]

I think you're confused. Later in life, it becomes less relevant. If someone is gainfully employed and earning a living that they are satisfied with, I think the only "moron" is the one calling them a moron for not getting a degree. The whole mentality of "one size fits all" for paths through life is pretty narrow minded.

That aside, your post is missing the point. Nobody is advocating for not getting a degree or saying that they are a waste.

[robomartin]

> I think the only "moron" is the one calling them a moron for not getting a degree.

That's fine. You are certainly entitled to that opinion. It is also clear you might not have seen what happens to older people who held well-paid jobs and now find themselves looking for work without a degree. Wear those shoes for a while before you think my comments to be harsh. I know a few of those people. It isn't pretty at all.

Perhaps "moron" is a bit extreme. It was used on purpose to elicit an emotional response. "Unwise" might have been a far gentler way to characterize it. Either way, get done with your degree as early as possible in life so that you will not have to regret it later on.

[wslh]

>I think you're confused. Later in life, it becomes less relevant. If someone is gainfully employed and earning a living that they are satisfied with, I think the only "moron" is the one calling them a moron for not getting a degree. The whole mentality of "one size fits all" for paths through life is pretty narrow minded

I completely disagree. You can work for Google and in fifteen years they go bankrupt because Infinootle is using a new hyperrank technique and they employ robots instead of humans. Then you remember that Google was a colossus on the early XXI century.

At minimum a degree is an insurance. Not the best but better with it.

[lsc]

>At minimum a degree is an insurance. Not the best but better with it.

That super cool coffee house that only employs art majors? you need to notice that none of the baristas are over 30.

In all seriousness, you are talking about middle management, and in that case, yeah, you've got a point. Class markers matter very little as an individual contributor in this industry. They matter more and more as you move into sales and middle-management. (what I find interesting is that it seems to matter /less/ when you are the actual owner. Class markers are important for impressing people when you have no actual power, but if it's your company? you can show up in a 10 year old minivan, and you are just being smart with your money.)

That is the thing; The degree is breaking down as a class marker. (that, and if you are American, I'd not put all that much stock in non-monetary class-markers to begin with. Unlike Europeans, to us? class is all about the money.)

Or, rather; the degree from a mediocre school is breaking down as a class marker. To be clear, if you are talking about a degree from Yale, I completely agree with you. If you have a chance to get a degree from yale, get it. I'm talking about the rest of us who have a choice between a job and a degree from a mediocre school. If you show up with a degree from po-dunk state and I show up with no degree? we're going to compete on our merits. (If you show up with a degree from University of Phoenix, as far as class markers go? I'm going to have the edge.)

>I completely disagree. You can work for Google and in fifteen years they go bankrupt because Infinootle is using a new hyperrank technique and they employ robots instead of humans. Then you remember that Google was a colossus on the early XXI century.

you have several issues here. First, if you can't get another job when your current company goes under? you have a huge problem. Huge. You need to focus on keeping yourself employable within your industry/job role. If that industry/job role goes away, you need to switch. But google going out of business? None of the people I know working at google have skillsets that will become obsolete if search and search advertising go away as important businesses. Programming is... pretty generalizable; many of the googlers I know were programming and solving interesting problems before google made that business model a big deal.

Having big names on your resume is great. But you can't rely on that to get you your next job... how many of us have hired someone who used to work at google on the strength of the google experience, and found the results disappointing? I have. (actually the person was a contractor, handling internal helpdesk stuff, but I was hiring for a helpdesk type role, so it seemed a reasonable match. It wasn't.)

Next? automation. Competing with machines is something we all will have to do, degree or no. As a SysAdmin, I've seen tools come out that can make handling larger fleets with fewer people significantly easier; but I've also seen fleets get significantly larger. Some would call "the cloud" an 'existential threat' to my job role, but cloud providers being what they are... this does not seem to be the case.

And programming languages are doing the same thing; you can do a lot more with less programming skill than you could 10 years ago.

(I think automating away programming has an additional problem; most people can't clearly define what they want done in prose. If anything, it's usually easier to clearly specify exactly what you want in code than in prose, even if you are semi-literate. So half the programming job is going from vague requirements to an implementation that works. This, I think, is why we are seeing a diminishing return on 'easier' programming languages... at some level, someone along the chain needs to understand what the hell they are asking for, and nice GUIs don't make that requirement go away.)

The thing is? the best (and perhaps only) weapon that we the meatbags have against the machines is our flexibility. The people who have to be shown how to do a job before they can do it? those people have already lost the battle. they are already unemployed. So training? a whole hell of a lot less valuable than it was back when you could do the same thing day in and day out.

If you want to stay employed? you need to be able to figure out how to solve the problems that the robots haven't been programmed to solve yet. This is a fast-moving target, and while school can give you a larger toolbox, from what I've seen, it leaves people with this laughable expectation that they will be trained to do the job that they are required to do.

[wslh]

I like your answer but I think you went too far.

My main point is how to bet against the unknowns. In this context having a degree increments your chances.

The future? Imagine a future where you cannot compete with robots... or worst... where you cannot compete against the humans competing with robots. Because you talk about preparing yourself against the unknowns... that's really difficult in our field because... they are unknowns and we have an overconfidence bias. May be not you, but the average people do.

I am not saying that a degree is a solution. Just that is positive to add it in the equation. And yes... if you are the next Zuckerberg don't follow my recommendation!

[lsc]

>I am not saying that a degree is a solution. Just that is positive to add it in the equation. And yes... if you are the next Zuckerberg don't follow my recommendation!

But a degree takes limited time and resources; why do you think a degree gets you better ROI on those scarce things than, say, writing a book? I mean, if you know a subject well, you can probably pump out one or two published technical books with that level of effort.

I mean, part of my problem is that school was, well, pretty difficult for me. from what I see, it's one of those activities where being really good sometimes doesn't make up for being really bad sometimes. It's one of those jobs where showing up on time is the most important part. It plays to all my weaknesses, so while I think I could probably pull it off, getting a degree from a mediocre school would take more effort, say, than publishing another book. I'm pretty sure the book would be better for my future marketability, even after the technology in question is obsolete.

[lsc]

>At some level I am suggesting this has nothing to do with earning more money but rather being able to get a job and not loose it to someone with a degree.

Really? job security? are you telling me that they are willing to hire people without degrees, but then they take the opportunity to let us go first when they have layoffs?

This makes very little sense. The hard part is getting 'em to give you a chance. After you have the job, well, it's easy enough to compete on performance.

[robomartin]

You got what I said exactly backwards. I meant it exactly as you put it. It's about getting the job in the first place and not being eliminated outright in favor of someone else with a degree ("lose it to someone with a degree").

Job security has nothing to do with it. It's about landing a job.

[ikonst]

The common opinion is that your mental capacity for learning is at peak when you're young and gets worse with age. You might find an engineering degree more frustrating with age.

Also, you might feel out of place in a regular college.

Not that I recommend schooling for the sake of schooling. I'm now doing it myself at the age of 29 (nearly done), and I keep wondering whether I'm doing something wildly irrational.

[lsc]

>Also, you might feel out of place in a regular college.

So how is that working out for you? is it weird being the old student?

My guess is that I'd do much better socially now in my early 30s than I would have a decade ago, simply because my social skills are dramatically better. But, I dono. Being the old guy could be kinda weird, too. But my social skills were really, really poor in my early '20s.