[MrTonyD]

I'm 56, and when I started I was an electronic tech assistant. Over time I started coding and specialized in developing device drivers and then OS development. So I have a long resume with lots of experience. After Steve Jobs hired me he said that there were two people at NeXT without a degree, and that he (Steve) was one of them. So I was the other. Having said all that, it definitely would have been easier with a degree.

[daven11]

I have to ask - any stories you can tell?

[MrTonyD]

I have too many stories...I had dinner with Edward Teller and he described what really happened at Los Alamos (saying that he would be put in prison for such disclosure), I was fired and rehired multiple times by Steve Jobs, I did a stint as an Oracle Product Manager for the core database and saw how they cook the books, I wrote code in the ATT UNIX kernel, in the Oracle source tree, and in the Apple source tree. I've been doing big data now and teach NSA, CIA,... (so I've heard stories about a level of spying that I can't repeat. But I will say that the people trying to keep us safe don't care about the laws and don't report what they are doing up the chain of command.) I taught technical classes at the School of the Americas to people who don't exist and heard more stories that I can't repeat. And I've coded while sitting beside several well-known names in programming. All of these are interesting stories. But one for this group... Steve Jobs made yearly trips to give talks at major universities. His real goal was to convince post-grads who had innovated to drop out and port their work to our platform. Steve would fund them personally - with just enough cash to eat beans and live on friend's couches. If he thought he could sell it, he would later make them employees - and burn them out to get them to produce more and faster. After he got their work, those engineers would typically leave. So Steve would make more billions to hide offshore, and the innovators would get a salary and be burned out. A true robber baron.

[daven11]

Wow, that's the bit you don't hear in the papers. Ever thought of writing a book with this stuff?

[MrTonyD]

Well, a lot of the stuff I really only tell friends. And even then I've had people tell me that I'm wrong (eg. they read all the books about Los Alamos - so they think they know the whole story even though it is top secret.) And there are Steve Jobs stories that really can't be repeated (involving his family and really unbelievable things.) Another example: Steve and Bill and Scott and Larry would meet to divide up the computer market. Bill & Steve broke their networking so that UNIX could have back office, Scott broke front office so that Bill could keep that, Steve got schools and DTP, Bill killed SQLServer features, Larry killed the low cost linux hardware project. Basically, we have been working in a rigged system our entire lives - with effective monopolies in all the profitable segments.

[daven11]

I find that one hard to believe - I can't believe Bill would open himself up to cartel laws, the others however :-) Though that would explain a few things

[MrTonyD]

Bill and Steve would meet in a plane flying over the ocean - in order to prevent anyone else being involved and to prevent any monitoring. And, in general, these deals made them very rich, so the only people who could betray them had both made a lot of money and been involved in illegal activities themselves. Kind of hard to see much risk in something that is completely deniable. If I hadn't spoken to people with direct knowledge of these things, I wouldn't know it myself. I'm not sure what it would take to get people to admit to their involvement.

[daven11]

lol, I think you may be an exception :-), kudos to you by the way

[MrTonyD]

You are right, I am an exception - and I think those other commenters would also agree that we are exceptions. At two companies everyone else in my group had PhDs. And I've rarely worked with people who don't have at least Masters degrees. So, while it is possible to do this without a degree, it takes an unusual person. (I love to read. I would sometimes spend weekends at the Stanford library reading published papers. And I built my first computer from components after reading about logic gates and getting sample parts from chip vendors.)

[mjones]

I'm 64 and started as a mini computer tester in the mid 70s. Within two years I was forming my own programming team at one of the early microcomputer companies. I've been programming ever since.

[daven11]

That's great - did not having a degree ever cause you problems?

[toomuchtodo]

I'm in my 30s, no degree, my career is in infrastructure/sysadmin/networking/management, doing devops now. I've done datataking for a detector at the LHC, managed datacenters, etc. Not having a degree has never been a problem.