[kenzokai]

Like others have said, I find self-taught programmers (I'm a tutor, so I meet a lot of them) have an attitude of, "why should I care about time complexity?" They are motivated to get things done quickly, and will do it to the best of their ability, but it may not be the best solution, since that would require deeper theoretical knowledge.

On the other hand, programmers coming from academia are expected to "just know" a lot of the practical tools that are used these days. I did C++, Java, MATLAB, and machine learning-type stuff in school, but learned Git, Rails, Python, Hadoop, etc etc. after graduating. Recruiters, etc. expected I'd just be ready for that stuff right off the bat.