I have a similar trajectory. I attended two very competitive military schools in Brazil but never finished and moved to America.
Today I’m a senior software engineer at a FAANG company. The lack of diploma has never been a barrier and I progressed very quickly in the company from junior to senior (4 years).
But this has always been a perceived pain point and limiter for me so I decided to get a CS degree during COVID online from a college from Brazil. Just finished last week :)
I do look for a stronger school name on my resume and got accepted at Johns Hopkins Masters in AI (online). Anyone had any experience with that program? Thoughts?
Congrats! I am also an autodidact who desired a stronger school name on my resume after a long run in startups, so I took a senior engineering role at Johns Hopkins.
I'm not affiliated with the engineering school or familiar with their curriculum. It may not be as famous as the schools of medicine or public health, but in general they are quite good.
do whichever one of these online MS which permit you to leave off the "online" part (i.e., are awarded through the conventional faculty). i'm not sure johns hopkins does but OMSCS from gatech does.
GaTech only permits OMSCS if you have a 4 year undergrad. In many countries undergrads are three years. Even you have a Master's, that is also not counted. 4 years undergrad or nothing.
I had an unrelated undergrad did my MSCS online (not JHU but same idea). It was great. But if you’re already senior at FAANG I’m not sure you need further legitimacy.
The actual education can be useful. I dont think my masters degree has ever landed me job. But I would not have been able to deliver many of the things that got me a leadership position, nor be as capable as an engineer as I am today without the experience. The milage obviously varies greatly here based on where one goes.
Agree on the list, I would say GT is hardest to get in, but most inexpensive. While the later two are much easier.
I also suggest reading Dr. Joyners’ Reddit posts and books, they helped me quite a bit and I do want to reiterate that if you need help on admission and completed the EDX cs50(?) course, you can personally email him, as it’s stated on one of the last slides.
All around an amazing program that I hope to one day do, but I went the UIUC for business for now.
> I would say GT is hardest to get in, but most inexpensive. While the later two are much easier.
Regarding the acceptance rates, it's actually the opposite. GT OMSCS has a very high acceptance rate (~80%) and UIUC and UT Austin online masters are much more selective (~30%).
For break-the-bank options, Stanford and Columbia have good programs too.
If you're looking at the potential returns to a graduate degree in a high paying field, $60k spread over a few years isn't an insane investment, but yes, it is worth considering the value vs. GATech/UT Austin.
Columbia as a program isn't worth $70k in tuition, and the Columbia name doesn't open any doors that GT or UT Austin couldn't unless you live in NYC or China.
Stanford HCP is great (I've worked with plenty of their grads), but a large portion end up switching to FT because Stanford is a once in a lifetime experience.
“ I was ready to enter the workforce and become independent as early as possible. I got into tech through certifications like MCP, MCSA, and A+ (they were all the rage back then), which was enough to land a helpdesk job at 18.”
Same sentiments, if you had an MCSE you were hirable everywhere. A+ put you ahead of the pack and was lifetime back then.
The early 00s were def a time. This is how I started too and also just recently completed my bachelors and now doing a masters.
> Group projects were also a common complaint. You were randomly assigned a group, but it was often unclear if the participants were even doing the course - many people were in completely ghost groups.
I see that nothing has changed in 20 years. Even when attended the courses physically in person, group project usually had 1 or 2 people doing all the work and the rest nowhere to be found, or just hanging out. :p
I still remember in a varsity project, we're a group of three. I took over the design and coding. Another guy was bad at coding, so he took over all the documentation etc. The last guy was doing db design and write some basic SQL for the CRUD.
We were supposed to integrate everything a week before submission. Project was assigned about 6 weeks before submission. The last guy kept saying he's working on it and we don't have to worry.
Then a week before submission, he has nothing to show. Didn't type one word.
I had to scramble and get it done myself. Time was not enough anymore; we got B instead of A. I was already known to get A grade in every project where teachers would give me A++ if that was a grade. The teacher of that course was so disappointed...
Since then I did all projects solo. Had to fight a little with some teachers to get that approval; esp when there were really big projects for 5/6 people group. Still did solo and got rated as best project in every single one of them.
I once had a group project during a masters course where one guy disappeared halfway through the semester. Didn’t respond to phone, email, anything. The rest of us were discussing how to let the professor know after he had been over a month MIA (we didn’t need him but didn’t want him to get the group grade) when the professor emailed us to say he had heard from the guy, who had been literally hit by a truck and was still in hospital; medical withdrawal.
I did masters in a similar way, just to get some credentials and fill in the gaps and learn something new. There is an idealistic part to it which is quite romantic as you spend the nights learning and doing the assignments. The structure of such online based learning systems is great for a determined person. However the “other” part of such courses are cheating and ai use. It is depressing to know that the specific credentials prove little because of it. So the only valid signal is: this person did not quit and they know how to write a report, use references. You’d need to test them to fully validate the credential.
Congrats! I've been considering this particular one too for some time...
Wondering sometimes if I want to do this for "my career" or if it's really just for myself.
I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life.
As I progress in my professional career I'm more convinced that pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, and universities are little more than a social club. Nowadays you can learn everything you do at university and far more online and for free.
Universities (elite ones particularly) still give you credentials that have some value getting a job. However I wonder for how long that will still be true. Learning by doing and building a portfolio sounds like a better way of getting in the industry today than getting a multi-year degree with nothing or little to show for it.
Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one. And even then, I would focus on networking and finding like-minded people rather than necessarily getting good grades.
Computer science is a weird degree because it was meant to produce computer scientists. Theory of computability, graph theory, discrete math, formal logic, etc. But the world just doesn't need as many computer scientists as it needs people who know JavaScript.
Over time, many CS degrees shifted toward producing software engineers, and it sounds like this person's experience was closer to that. But the problem is that as an engineering discipline, software engineering is just profoundly underwhelming. There are basically no universally-respected design best practices, no governing bodies, no calculations of safety limits, no nothing. You grab left-pad from npm and run with that. Or, now, Codex does that for you.
So CS is weird because it's what you're supposed to get if you want a job at Google, but it's also not very useful. It's a very inefficient and expensive way of testing if you're "serious enough", can complete assignments on time, etc.
My day job is relatively boring JavaScript components and SPA's, but even there I find things I learned in my Computer Science degree valuable. "Hey, this looks like a finite state machine.." "This could be a simple domain specific language, good thing I had to write compilers in college and I can easily make a simple lexer/parser.." "This other thing is easy to parse if I ingest it into a lexer-resembling state machine.." And I would think the value of understanding algorithmic complexity and so many other fundamental things is obvious, no matter what someone is doing. And you won't waste your time accidentally trying to solve the Halting problem, among other things. Obviously there's nothing a university can teach you that you couldn't theoretically learn somewhere else but I'm seriously not convinced that a Computer Science degree is useless or a poor signal even for someone doing run of the mill React apps.
If I had two SWE candidates with the same genes where one dropped out of high school to build a portfolio of software and the other followed the traditional CS trajectory, then I'd pick the one who "wasted" their time trying to solve the halting problem.
I am biased because I did drop out of high school, yadayada. My career has seen consistently a much steeper incline than nearly all CS graduates I've ever met. Plus, I got to build a bunch of useful and cool stuff, while others were wasting their time studying.
I was self taught and went back for a bachelor's after ten years working and then a masters after another four. There was a lot of wasted time in the BS (ie the trade-school-for-programmers classes) but the pure CS has been valuable to me quite regularly as a working developer.
Not every day, maybe not even every month, but I've faced plenty of problems I was well equipped to solve directly because of the formal study of them.
> I had to write compilers in college and I can easily make a simple lexer/parser.
I'm jealous. My university did not make that a core class of our degree. While in hindsight, I wish they did. I did have the luxury of a lot of low-level exposure, which has served to be quite useful at times (digital logic, assembly, etc.).
Even for research, a lot of CS papers seem like cosplay.
In the place of hard math, models, proofs, quantitative analysis of past approaches, etc. there is simply an “Architecture” section with much navel gazing. The paper topic is not a formal analysis but merely a description of a thing that was made.
Ironically, the least important part of an engineering research paper is the part describing the thing actually built/simulated. That is merely validation of the theory.
And all the governing bodies are just money scams.
More often than not, it requires a few weeks of mandatory paid "trainings" in order to attempt (and pass) the certifications.
And because IT is IT, no two companies or persons do things in similar ways (and for good reasons, the moment you do like everyone else, you average to the middle at best), and unless you are doing PHD like work, you don't need CS.
> But the problem is that as an engineering discipline, software engineering is just profoundly underwhelming. There are basically no universally-respected design best practices, no governing bodies, no calculations of safety limits, no nothing.
I somewhat disagree: there exist a lot of deep questions in software engineering, and there do exist some (very, very partial) answers.
The problem rather is that most people don't want to listen to and/or do deep literature research about the few answers that we do have, but rather want to aggressively push their private political agenda about how they want software to be built. With some literature research, it is often not too hard to disprove the "foundations" on which this political agenda is built. But this does not make you admired because you showed serious knowledge about software engineering, but rather near to an outlaw.
TLDR: the problem is not software engineering, the problem is organizational politics.
When you say “political“, what do you mean? It’s easy for me to relate to talk of software development aesthetics or philosophy and I’ve certainly had plenty of conversations that I think are accurately described that way. But I can’t think of software development discussions that I’d describe as political (except in the sense that politics is what happens when people disagree on anything).
Might be like, do we build more datacenters whose masters and possessors are all in the oligarch club, or do we build distributed systems that maximize flat power distribution.
I won't try and argue the merits of Bachelor's and Masters. But if you honestly believe that you can pick up the same experience from PhD on the job, then is seems like you learned little from that PhD that you were supposed to and your supervisor failed you. PhD is not about learning content. It's about picking up research independence, confidence, and a strong capacity for critique. It is supposed to be suffering of a special kind, an experience in grinding and radical unproductivity when the problem really is that hard. Maybe you did get that but you aren't using it in your job; if so, then maybe you didn't need that PhD, but that's hardly the fault of the degree.
PhD experiences vary much much more than bachelor's and master's programs that cover a fairly standard set of topics worldwide. PhD depends a lot on your specific topic, the specific supervisor, their other time commitments, their funding situation, how similar the other PhD students' topics are to yours, how hot the topic is or how the hotness changes over your PhD duration, how much teaching you have to do, how hands off the supervisor is (it is extremely common to have extremely disengaged supervisors, even famous ones, likely engagement and fame are anticorrelated), the expected publication venue tiers etc.
In most of Europe, the PhD contains no formal training. It's just what you informally pick up while working with other PhD students, if you do collaborations (depends on whether the supervisor likes that), or from postdocs (if there are postdocs), or from your rare meetings with the supervisor (which are often about updating the supervisor on new developments, not getting much actionable insight from them), but many many are simply left to their own devices and just do stuff and cope with the inevitable rejections, etc. At other places the supervisor organizes things like retreats, internal poster sessions, lots of internal presentations, discussions among the group etc. While in other places there is none of that, in some places many PhD students simply work from home and don't even meet much.
The winning strategy for prolific professors is to get a good early-career reputation, then hire really smart and conscientious applicants (proven through already published papers) and let them carry out the research. It's nothing about training them in any practical way. There are some who do that but it doesn't scale. You have to hire 20 PhD students and they will deliver enough papers for you to preserve your status and be able to hire the smartest applicants again and again.
But again, there's huge variation. Even at good universities.
do you have a phd? did you get it in the last 10 years? because i have one as well and 100% agree with op - it was worthless. and i got mine from a "world class" school too (US T10).
> It's about picking up research independence, confidence, and a strong capacity for critique.
lolol maybe in the days of yore. today it's about pumping out questionable papers that your advisor tells you to pump out and targeting the right conference.
> It is supposed to be suffering of a special kind
are you also one of those people who takes cold plunges every morning? this myth is what perpetuates the same horrible relationships with shit advisors. it's not supposed to be suffering. it's supposed to be challenging. there's an enormous difference.
> an experience in grinding and radical unproductivity when the problem really is that hard
there are no problems like this in academia (at least not CS) because it's absolutely impractical (re graduation, tenure, etc.) to set out tackling problems which are intractable.
in summary: this entire comment is "phd virtue signaling"
I do have a PhD and agree much more with the parent comment than yours. Granted, my PhD was in math, not CS, so I'm sure the experience was different. For instance:
> there are no problems like this in academia (at least not CS) because it's absolutely impractical (re graduation, tenure, etc.) to set out tackling problems which are intractable.
There's a difference between problems that are intractable and problems that require "grinding and radical unproductivity when the problem really is that hard". Maybe the problems in CS are easier. In math, many of the problems are very much of this flavor, and the point often isn't to solve the original problem but rather to use your investigation into that problem to discover new techniques or more tractable problems that you can solve. Of course, the pace of publication is far slower in math, so I'm sure this is a factor in the choice of problems.
On the other hand, I do mostly agree with this:
> are you also one of those people who takes cold plunges every morning? this myth is what perpetuates the same horrible relationships with shit advisors. it's not supposed to be suffering. it's supposed to be challenging. there's an enormous difference.
Agreed, there should be a difference. Unfortunately, in many modern PhD programs I'm not sure there is much of one....
> Granted, my PhD was in math, not CS, so I'm sure the experience was different
my BS and MS were in (pure) math (my MS thesis is on convergence of the ito integral...) and my PhD is in CS systems. CS outside of theory is worse than an empirical discipline - it's a "throw spaghetti, lasagna, burgers, caesar salad at the wall and see what sticks" discipline. it bears literally no resemblance to math (pure or applied).
> Maybe the problems in CS are easier... Of course, the pace of publication is far slower in math, so I'm sure this is a factor in the choice of problems.
yes and that should tell you everything you need to know - there are kids in my department graduating with 5 first author conference papers (i had "only" 3). how much of those papers do you think is original work really?
Yes, I did get it within the last ten years (with an excellent supervisor fortunately), and I take part in student supervision. I get to talk with the students and determine what is most valuable for them in the long-term. Considering where those students have ended up, and that we still keep in contact, I'd say I've done alright so far.
> today it's about pumping out questionable papers that your advisor tells you to pump out and targeting the right conference.
That's called a garbage supervisor. I'm sorry that was your experience, nobody deserves that. There has been only one student I have personally experienced where I felt some of the papers were questionable, but they were not strong, and should not have done the degree in the first place (unfortunately, I have no choice in the matter and just need to get them through).
> it's not supposed to be suffering. it's supposed to be challenging
Immense challenge is suffering because you encounter failure over and over and over again. Eventually success will come, but the interim is tough on the mental state. No human likes to fail repeatedly, but it is important to experience that at least once in a research career. It only needs to happen for one project; afterwards, the student tends to develop an incredible autonomy because they've been through the worst of it. But of course, this is where the supervisor is supposed to be responsible to find the right balance, since the difficulty of the task needs to be judged to ensure the student can finish it, while being as ambitious as possible within reason. It's pretty difficult to get right, and many supervisors don't even bother, choosing instead to push their own career. To any PhD student out there experiencing that, find another PhD supervisor please, before it is too late.
> there are no problems like this in academia (at least not CS) because it's absolutely impractical (re graduation, tenure, etc.) to set out tackling problems which are intractable.
No, this is precisely what the PhD is supposed to be for. It should be the most challenging topic of your entire early career, or your supervisor wasted your time. You have a handful of years to impress people, so they have to count.
> this entire comment is "phd virtue signaling"
Honestly, it just sounds like you were unfortunate enough to have been in a supervisory relationship where you were used as part of a paper mill. I'm really sorry to hear that; it isn't uncommon, but it isn't what the degree is supposed to be, and it seems you did not experience what you should have. The program doesn't work for everyone, but it does have a purpose, and it is frustrating when selfish academics bastardize that purpose to give this kind of false impression of the degree.
1) my advisor is literally in the top 500 most cited researchers in the world
2) every single other student in systems had the exact same experience
in summary: your "no true scotsman" doesn't work here because by all measures all of these people are the scotsmen.
> Immense challenge is suffering
this is facile - torture is suffering, deprivation is suffering, prison is suffering. immense challenge is ... challenge. stop with the exaggerated language please. stop writing these paeans for research. it's not some ethereal pursuit. for a select few it's a calling. for most it's just a shitty job.
> find another PhD supervisor please, before it is too late.
bro you are so out of touch it's laughable. there are departments full of your so-called "not true advisors". what do you recommend to the students in these departments who are post-quals and are just now discovering the truth? you recommend to them they what? transfer schools? drop out after 2-3 years of reduced earnings? will you compensate them?
> No, this is precisely what the PhD is supposed to be for. It should be the most challenging topic of your entire early career, or your supervisor wasted your time.
again my guy: take a look at literally any top conference and tell me how many papers do truly novel work? as i commented below: i grew up in math where novel work meant a truly original theorem. that kind of quality is 1/1000 in neurips.
> you were used as part of a paper mill
did you catch the part where i attend a US T10? how do you square your assessment with that?
> The program doesn't work for everyone, but it does have a purpose
there is literally no program. you're completely full of shit. there is no "standardized phd". every single department around the world completely makes it up to be whatever they want.
> it is frustrating when selfish academics bastardize that purpose to give this kind of false impression of the degree.
have you looked at the mirror recently? the frustration comes not from the craven/mercenary individuals who admit their cravenness - it comes from gaslighters like you who claim there's some idealized version of it that exists that everyone supposedly falls short of (hint hint: have you ever heard of this convenient concept of original sin?).
EDIT:
> it seems you did not experience what you should have
i got exactly the experience i needed to disabuse me of the illusion that academia was a priesthood in pursuit of truth/knowledge/beauty/whatever. so that was perfect (i will never step foot on another academic campus again and i will warn everyone else off from it too). in addition i got a job in FAANG so that was a nice consolation prize :)
I don't agree that my argument was a "No true Scotsman", since the argument made above (as far as I read it) was that "all PhDs are a waste of time". My counterargument was that the PhD, if done right according to its purpose, is not a waste of time. That is not the same as asserting that all PhDs are going to be good, and then refining the definition.
> i grew up in math where novel work meant a truly original theorem
I am in the math department and work with geometric analysts and combinatorialists, but mostly with CS researchers. I work with math and CS students. My entire education was analysis, then pure probability theory. Just for some context. And while CS has a lot of problems, math does too, unfortunately. A theorem may be original, but that doesn't make the work good.
> bro you are so out of touch it's laughable. there are departments full of your so-called "not true advisors".
Your experience, not mine. Regarding "out of touch": I've supervised across five different universities, all (apparently) in the top 100 worldwide. There has been a quality supervisor in each department I have come across. They may be in the minority, but they exist. They tend to not have many students, because it is virtually impossible to give adequate supervision to more than ~5 students at any one time.
> you recommend to them they what? transfer schools?
I now live in a country where that is easy to do, so yes I do, and yes I have. I have had friends that were "forced" to grind in a bad supervisory relationship for a while until they found another better supervisor and then had a good experience. I understand it is more difficult in a country where you cannot easily transfer. In those cases, I would 100% suggest dropping the degree early before wasting time and money on it, but naturally it depends a lot on their situation. A bad PhD can be a lot worse than no PhD.
> that kind of quality is 1/1000 in neurips.
I've found the proportion is more like 1/100 in the theory domain, but yes, there is a lot of rubbish in NeurIPS. There is a lot of rubbish in every venue.
> attend a US T10
I did a lengthy postdoc at one of these. They are largely paper mills by construction. A top 500 most cited researcher got that way because they run a paper mill. I did not associate with the students there very much, and I doubt that they thrived there either, other than getting a nice item on their CV. On the other hand, that institution benefited me at the time. I'm glad I did my education somewhere else.
> there is literally no program. you're completely full of shit. there is no "standardized phd". every single department around the world completely makes it up to be whatever they want.
Yes, which is why your experience is not necessarily indicative of that of others. That's a good thing.
> the illusion that academia was a priesthood in pursuit of truth/knowledge/beauty/whatever
I won't disagree that academia is a cesspit and I would exit if I felt I had the opportunity to do good elsewhere. I actively do not recommend it to anybody that feels they could do anything else. But there certainly are people that benefit from the PhD, so calling it useless is a bit much.
> have you looked at the mirror recently? the frustration comes not from the craven/mercenary individuals who admit their cravenness - it comes from gaslighters like you who claim there's some idealized version of it that exists that everyone supposedly falls short of (hint hint: have you ever heard of this convenient concept of original sin?).
I love the insinuation that I must be an evil prick. This is tantamount to hearing from a victim that all X are evil. I respect your position and your experiences, but also recognize you do not speak for the entire world in this matter. The bad supervisors tend to excel in their metrics nowadays (including how many students they have), so their perceived presence is disproportional.
> in addition i got a job in FAANG so that was a nice consolation prize
Good for you! If that was always an option, I would question the PhD too. Telling others your own experiences to warn those away from academia is perfectly fine, unless having that degree did help get you to that point. If you honestly know that having the PhD on your CV did nothing at all for you, and did not positively influence your chances, then this is fair, and I would recommend teaching others how they can avoid doing the PhD to get into those roles. Yes, people get FAANG jobs without doing higher education, but was everyone going to take that route? Otherwise, you are in the ivory tower telling others that they shouldn't come in.
> I love the insinuation that I must be an evil prick.
the insinuation is that there is deep, rich, delicious, irony in someone writing this
> The program doesn't work for everyone, but it does have a purpose, and it is frustrating when selfish academics bastardize that purpose to give this kind of false impression of the degree.
after giving everyone reading a false impression of what a PhD is worth. ie you sound extremely selfish yourself when you use phrases like
"Maybe you did get that but you aren't using it in your job; if so, then maybe you didn't need that PhD, but that's hardly the fault of the degree."
and
"PhD is not about learning content. It's about picking up research independence, confidence, and a strong capacity for critique."
and
"No, this is precisely what the PhD is supposed to be for. It should be the most challenging topic of your entire early career, or your supervisor wasted your time. You have a handful of years to impress people, so they have to count."
ie ludicrous absolutist terms.
> Otherwise, you are in the ivory tower telling others that they shouldn't come in.
...are you a native english speaker? the ivory tower is academia. i am emphatically (as i've been emphasizing for 2 hours now) not in the ivory tower and i advocate for everyone to avoid the god forsaken place no matter what.
> Yes, people get FAANG jobs without doing higher education
the vast vast majority of my coworkers have BS/MS. the two best engineers i know (extremely successful ICs) have only a BS. the other PhDs i meet in industry are generally worthless "architects" who can't hack their way out of a paper bag.
EDIT:
it's amazing to me that the conflict of interest here isn't front and center: you're still in academia recruiting students! of course it's critical for you that the dream of academia lives on! if you had any integrity you would have disclaimed your conflict of interest at the outset.
I think the biggest thing is most software "engineering" jobs are in no way engineering and are closer to a trade like being a mechanic or (imo) a doctor.
It's fairly rote - you need good judgement and to stay current in latest state of the art but generally speaking you're not researching (nor should you be) cutting edge algorithms or anything.
Add a new button, add some parameters to this analytics call, implement dark mode. These are the things that everyone is doing at their six-figure tech jobs.
and yet, the collective industry has still continued to expand for decades because people overwhelmingly cannot consistently do these tasks without their code collapsing on itself.
imagine if people regularly had tires fall off on their way home from the mechanic. or regularly having to get bones rebroken to set them correctly.
I can agree that much of the work is not true "engineering" but most of what I've seen produced over the years is closer to fraud than anything else.
I echo the sentiment. Most work is described as basic and unimaginative, yet we still have every large company having outages despite employing "the best". Even worse, they game uptime and outages in a way that mirrors gerrymandering.
You already have a lot of replies here and the comment is provably divisive. I'll toss in that while only you can judge whether it was truly a waste of time, a lot of that factors in how you used it. If it benefited you in interview material understanding, increased the probability that you could extend your network with someone, or other somewhat intangible signals then I'd say it wasn't as much of a waste as you say.
I have no degree and that is arguably worse and there are exceedingly fewer people with my background in technology on the coast. On the other hand, I spent a lot of my career writing applications that solved Software Operations problems. I spent a lot of time working in small teams rather than huge ones, I often did not have product or project support. I used to loathe that chapter of my career because of how toilsome it was in my memory. Lately I've come to appreciate it a lot more because I am much more self reliant and I often have the skills and familiarity to run much larger teams as a tenured engineer.
Long way of saying, the value of an experience or thing is often not immediately realized or appreciated.
Same experience. "Is school worth it" is divisive because it speaks to people's investment and value system. I too have a full and successful career in software without any degree largely for the same reason you mentioned: I learned the hard way and continued to show up.
Earned experience is objectively valuable. The problem is people don't want to be fools so "working hard" looks suspect when you see plenty of people do well because of network and social aspects.
When it comes to school, there's obvious value in the social/status/network aspects and debatable value in the actual content, but what I find most discussion worthy is how one's background shapes mentality toward "putting in the work" when there's no explicit reward for said work.
The simple difference is that school promises you results. One at least leaves with a paper that's supposed to be worth something. Doing anything else, provides no such guarantees.
Regarding "university isn't worth it, you can just learn by doing, none of this theory matters in practice", I've usually heard this from people who weren't able to pass the math courses (or even the programming courses), so it seemed more like sour grapes.
I have to admit though that they were right, in that they were indeed able to make a career at some multinational companies even after barely getting through a bachelor's with bad grades and with many more years needed than the normal time.
Real mass-scale software jobs are indeed significantly easier than the math courses in CS university programs. At least in a cognitive capability sense. There can still be many other kinds of challenges that are more about social skills which are not much needed for passing college courses but are quite important in jobs.
the distinction is specific to the economic value calculation.
it’d be disingenuous to assume the conversation is about anything other than the economic trade off. That said, wholly agree that if school was about learning, it’s great for advancing and curating an environment for learning as its own value.
fwiw in high school, authority figures justified college as a way to counteract the failure scenario of dead-end jobs. success looked like a good paying job and opportunities to do what you’d like like vacations and raise a family. Maybe thats the right framing for the rank and file public school, but it’s why I didn’t even apply to college, let alone attend.
edit: it is objectively economically more valuable to hold a degree, the data is clear. my issue is that it’s reverse causality as is always the issue with data signals.
when you go back to the scenario of what to tell a public school kid, going to college actually works as a negative motivation tool, because the majority of kids won’t go to college so you’re basically telling them their economic value is shit before they are even grown. I don’t believe in that.
> it’d be disingenuous to assume the conversation is about anything other that the economic trade off.
To me it seems hollow and sad to think about higher education purely in job and money terms, but maybe I’m weird. I studied what I wanted to learn about, and was naïve about any economic trade offs. There were a few companies I thought were cool and dreamt about working for, and at some level I knew it’d take a degree to get in, but in my book school was quite valuable beyond the jobs I’ve had, in many non-financial ways.
> you’re basically telling them their economic value is shit before they are even grown. I don’t believe in that.
Maybe I didn’t understand, but I can’t quite reconcile your suggestion to only look at college as an economic trade off, with not believing in recommending college due to your pessimistic interpretation of the message. It’s a fact that in the US, people with 4-year degrees earn more than people without, statistically speaking. (And the factor is a lot bigger than I thought.) People with advanced degrees statistically earn a considerable amount more than people with 4-year degrees. If you want to look at this as an economic trade off, it seems like there’s only one recommendation that makes any sense, no? Like, based on the numbers and my own experience, it doesn’t feel like going to school has particularly strong negatives that offset the positives. (BTW I went to a state school, and borrowed money to pay tuition.)
You'd need a comparison group who are just as intelligent and conscientious and equally rich as the college graduating population for comparison. They would likely find ways to demonstrate their value in other ways if forced not to attend college.
> Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one.
I'm in Europe where education is mostly free or inexpensive so it may be different in the US, but it sounds like terrible advice. In most fields, it will be virtually impossible to get a job without a degree, and even in tech it'll be hard. I work in a big tech company, and as far as I can tell, most SWEs do have a degree of some sort. I'm sure there are exceptions, but they are rare.
causality direction violation. is it because of the degree that people get jobs or is it because everybody tells everyone that they need a degree that they get a degree to permit themselves to apply to get the job?
the productive takeaway is that of course its safer to come with a degree but it’s hardly proof that one needs the degree. Nobody is going to risk their or their kids livelihood on being the variant for the a/b test though.
Depending on the country in question, SWE jobs might be quite scarce, so companies can afford to be picky about the candidates.
You have outliers in both ways (companies that don’t care and companies that will ask you about your uni grades) but the general sentiment in my (EU member) country is that you do need at least a two if not a three year degree to get a decent SWE job. Most of the time it’s explicitly listed as a requirement in job listings too.
Note to everybody: this is a very exotic position and the vast majority of people I've met during career would strongly disagree with that. I don't have a Master or PhD, but my Bachelor degree was absolutely worth my time and was essential to enable me to have a successful career where I earned millions and retired early.
> I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life.
In CS, for Bachelor, I can understand. You perhaps do it just to show the paper and get a job.
For Masters, I can somewhat understand, as the Masters is becoming the "new Bachelor's"
For PhD: It's all on you. No one makes you do it, and the downsides are well documented. In many (other) disciplines, you do a PhD because you want to do research, and you'll never otherwise have the time to dedicate to a research problem. You don't do it for the certificate - unless you want to go into academia.
So: Why did you waste your time on the PhD? Why did you stick to it if it wasn't furthering your goals?
I spent years pursuing it, and eventually quit when I realized it wasn't taking me where I wanted to go. So what's your excuse for sticking with it?
It just sounds very silly to complete a PhD and complain about it. It was your bad decision, after all.
PhDs are not immune to buyers remorse. It's just buyers remorse. They are a buyer because of the opportunity cost of getting a PhD. It's economically equivalent to spending money, because the alternative was working as a software developer.
Can't speak for masters or PhD, but I feel like the most valuable part of my undergraduate was being exposed to many opportunities constantly. I saw a table looking for study/work abroad near one of my classes. I applied, got a job, met my now wife overseas, and have moved to a different country as a result (have been here for 5 years and very happy). All because a student group was sharing a cool oppurtunity with low friction to sign up.
I learned everything I use on my job in the first year of studies. The other 4 years were theory I never use or think about. But those 4 years exposed me to sooo many different people from all walks of life. University is a space to learn and unlearn. If you are lucky enough to make that your complete focus, you leave the institution a different person.
As my mother explained it to me, the point of the degree is not necessarily the knowledge you acquire, but to demonstrate to employers the fact that you are capable of completing a project that is multi-year and requires dealing with annoying bureaucratic obstacles.
> I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life.
I disagree: I have fond memories of my university time. I also do really like programming. The problem rather is that there are hardly any job where what you learned and loved at the university (and why you studied - in this case - computer science) is of much use.
Keep in mind that your degree was a huge part why one was selected for the job.
I honestly ask myself quite often why employers are so fond of university degrees for programming jobs. If they put much less relevance on this criterion, employers would have a much bigger group of applicants among which they can select - and this means employers could use this to level down salaries.
I'm currently finishing my bachelor in CS in Rome, and have been feeling this often. I'm 24 and feel a bit lost.
When I started 5 years ago I had never programmed
(in my high school we studied latin for 5 years, and I don't remember a single word), and basically had to teach myself Python for an exam, delaying the others,
(we had 4 exams per semester, and couldn't keep it up).
Then I had the opportunity to start working for a remote company writing 2 webapps in reactjs (no guidance on the code, I had to learn all by myself with courses, youtube etc. because I'm the only one writing the frontend)
In the meanwhile I stopped the university for a year to only realize later that I was missing my academic education. After all, having a guidance on what to study makes you feel safer, the world is so complex and full of different things, that the university gives you the illusion of learning the "right" and "indespensable" thing. Trust our path, they say.
But now I'm here again, 1 exam left (on ancient Artificial Intelligence, based on Norvig's book), and I don't really know what to do
- Artificial Intelligence Master ?
- Computer Science Master ?
- Sabbatical Year to learn by following rabbit holes, hoping to find my real self ?
In the meanwhile I'll probably see the AI take my job.
The great future I once imagined seems so unreachable now, I'm demoralized. I wanted to create cool and hard things, but I find myself chatting with LLMs nowadays, and I think, is this worth?
(How I migrated my tech career into a plumber career - coming soon.)
Antony Trollope says in 'Eustace Diamonds' that he feels in a lot of professions, experience creates more competent people than mere learning. (Rough paraphrase). In other words, you don't get to be truly competent unless you are earning that experience!
It is true that most software development jobs don't need much CS knowledge to perform. The majority of developers simply kludge together common libraries, frameworks, and software packages without needing to understand all that much about the internals.
It is also true that the software development jobs that don't need much CS knowledge to perform are the ones most vulnerable to being automated away by LLMs. If a kludge is sufficient, AI can kludge it cheaper than a human.
People who don't know how computers, compilers and operating systems work make terrible code and are normally completely unable to figure out issues if they arise.
I've found bugs in compilers, in the jvm, in libc header files.
I have always recommended people get an MBA and self teach the development skills. There is a value to higher education:
Bachelors - You can communicate in writing.
Masters - You can plan and prepare business documents for planning and proposals
Doctors - You can do research
To me uneducated people can still have skills, but their utility into management becomes questionable even though education certainly does not make anybody a better manager. I do however question the future value of education if most young people have never read a book or cannot write a simple essay without AI.
For me the ability to communicate is the most important skill, because programming is a form of writing. So, if I were hiring for a software team manager I would have absolutely no reservations about putting them on camera and watching them hand write a 5 page essay within an hour. It’s one of those don’t waste my time and I won’t waste yours kind of things.
I have worked with self taught programmers and the fact that they don't know the first thing about the most basic and well known algorithms makes cooperating with them painful.
If you write a PhD and feel like it was a waste, too bad. I think if you had approached it differently, you would have gotten something else out of it. By that point you’re supposed to be more responsible for your own learning.
As someone who's self-taught, I find this argument tantalizingly validating, but I'm constantly reminded that universities offer more than just the material. Between peer networks and "alumni" connections or even just the ability to email a former professor or TA for advice, these opportunities just aren't really available independently. Skipping college might not limit what you can learn but it sure narrows the network and institutional support available to you.
Going to need more than that. Why? Do you want to work in biostats or biotech, or do you enjoy it enough that the money and time commitment is worth it purely out of interest? What skills are you missing that you think a masters would give you? Online, in person, where?
I never regretted getting a BS and MS in CS. It was a lot of fun learning, landed me my first industry job with basically no extra effort, and it ultimately allowed me to be an instructor at a university after a couple decades at work.
But I did get my degree when it was 5x cheaper than today (inflation-adjusted). There is that.
One thing about on-the-job learning is that employers are increasingly reluctant to pay for that. So non-degrees will still have to get on their indy learning.
Employers care about credentialization, a lot. And not just from elite universities based on wage data. Diplomas are a signal that you're conscientious enough to grit through large amounts of dull lectures, work and cramming, and that you're probably able to grasp some abstract concepts. You're underselling their value.
> Learning by doing and building a portfolio sounds like a better way of getting in the industry today than getting a multi-year degree with nothing or little to show for it.
Graduates do this too. The industry has gotten highly competitive. So who do you think employers would rather hire, a CS grad with a portfolio or high school grad with a portfolio? It takes a lot more for apps to impress today, in no small part because LLMs expedite the process.
Going so far as to as to found a company might be necessary if the goal is to work at a FAANG co or whatever, but most developers don't work there.
Master's here. I already knew how to program before going to University. However I learned a lot about how to think more abstractly/mathematically about software. It has helped me a ton in my industry work and given me a clear advantage.
> Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one. And even then, I would focus on networking and finding like-minded people rather than necessarily getting good grades.
I am a teenager and I am currently going to college. I am not going into a world class one college but its a decent college.
I think that you might be right in terms of pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, but the rationale behind going to a bachelor's college is that as someone else has said here: you all are treated equally and companies come to select you. So you are competing in a much smaller pool and are able to stand out much more.
Also, I get 4 years to do what I do best so much so that I did it these 2 years as well, I just can't resist myself because I have tried to do so I just love tinkering with computers and this also puts me up to an comparatively decent advantage.
Sure, there might be some rote-learning and some things which are a bit theoretical but they might also be practical. I was learning on my own a month ago IIRC about what the 7 layers are and I am probably going to read some on my own time before going to college the book of "networking a top down approach"
This has given me 4 years to do the things that I like, the job market right now is a bit not too good but reading books about history of the dot com bubble etc. I feel decently confident that its very cyclical. Just reading the book of "how the internet happened" made me realize all the similarities with things happening right now. Every 20 years, a new generation happens and we forget the old things which have happened (IMO).
That being said, I am unsure about 11 years of the free time at the same time but honestly, it really just depends upon your subjective nature and personal preference and for someone genuinely interested within research... it could be an interesting path. I am open to every opportunity that comes in front of me and wish to try my best :-D
> Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one. And even then, I would focus on networking and finding like-minded people rather than necessarily getting good grades.
Networking is a multiplier. You realize the ability of multiplier because you have the base-line. Were you able to form the base-line because of the time spent within those 11 years, partially yes, and other comes from your natural interests and curiosity judging from the fact that you are on Hackernews for the sake of it itself.
Would a person with the strongest of networks but failing to have the baselines of (technical & managerial?) tastes/intellect and just this feeling of learning be able to do something with networking. Absolutely, people are using these top grade colleges as just a way to network and so there is a lot of froth/hype in the market. Theo Baker (a 22 year old journalist who lived in stanford) has written a book about it ("How to rule the world")
I still think that its interesting that they get to become the startup owner at such an young age and there are benefits but also tradeoffs and realizing both of these is important and making the decision wisely is important. I do envy them in some sense as well but also not so, its nuanced! and I wish them all success hopefully :-D (and I think one should keep the options open), If an opportunity comes for me to open an startup say even within college and upon proper careful thinking I get the answer to be a serious yes, I will try to follow that as well :-D
but my main point is that after a particular point in life: the multiplier feels much more important than baseline but before that, the baseline is just as important if not more, so I will try to get good grades hopefully if interests align with the subjects which I think they do.
From my understanding of the world, the world is nuanced and complicated so there isn't one size fits all so its best to keep your options around and do what you feel rationally so but rationality can also only go so far so it also depends a bit on the emotions involved and many other factors but we can't also think infinitely in recursion for everything so we need to have good instincts and ability to think deeply when needed and basically being adaptable to the situation thus me suggesting that there might not be one size fits all.
These are the talks that I have had with myself over the conflict that I myself had over going to college or not and some reasons behind going to do so, so I do realize my bias in that and I am not entirely an unbiased source but perhaps a truthful source. It so much depends on the situation of the person to decide if they should go to college or not and all factors involved imo.
Have a nice day if someone has read it till here and take care! :-D
A degree is not a bad thing. This forum is pretty biased on startup culture but I bet the vast majority would say its not worth it personally but worth it on a career level. Even then, the space to explore things outside of your immediate interest is invaluable and you WILL make connections beyond what you expect. Good luck in your studies.
I agree, the future looks very dim for tech degree grads. I would not even recommend a degree from an elite school. Grads'll be in debt for a long time.
> Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one
This is horrible advice. Hiring is a zero sum game, and a college education is treated as a table stakes requirement which won't change.
When trying to get hired, you are competing against other candidates, and if a tiebreaker is needed, the less risky option will always be hired.
Additionally, where you get your degree doesn't matter too much, but getting one is critical. It can be a BSCS from WGU for all that matters, but getting one is important. Also, bootcamps are useless now. Don't waste money on them.
The only exceptions remain veterans from the armed services assuming they were trained in the right MOS.
I got a math degree with mostly pure math courses, and did a few CS and data analytics courses on the side. I used to feel a little behind that I didn't do a proper CS degree, but I found math to be a lot more fun and less time consuming.
After a few years in the workplace I don't feel behind at all, and I'm grateful that I have more potential back up plans and won't be just another unemployed CS major if there's a real contraction in the job market. I've been considering pivoting to being an actuary, or possibly teaching high school.
I did this too for my BSc! Prof. Yee King is a great teacher, and although I was mostly doing it for the qualification and knew most of the course materials going into the degree, his explanations of web app architecture still really helped solidify my understanding. It's a great course in general, especially if you like data science
Its technically true but it can take a long time for it to solidify for people and it would have taken way longer for me if I didnt have an IDE/compiler to experiment and experience it in real time and life
So… obligatory not in HR and also not a manager. But I’ve helped hire a couple engineers over the last 5ish years. Seems that HR at my companies filter for college degrees, and basically require 2 - 4 more years of experience (sans degree) or pedigree at their last couple companies. Maybe this depends more on the size of the company, but, for <1000 at each of them, HR is strapped for time and shortcuts the interview process with filters like this. I work with a great data engineer who never finished college and is fully self taught, and we’re currently navigating a recent "degree’d" data scientist hire who appears to have lied on their resume and used AI in the interview. Note, they lied about experience and title, not the degree or the companies. So not something a background check would catch.
Kinda sucks that the first barrier to interviewing at most companies is HR, and they generally are the least qualified or motivated to properly assess candidates. I don’t fully blame them, as there are just too many resumes and interviews to go through for the limited time we have in a work day, but great candidates can come from any background and demographic.
Edit: Sample size of 1 here, so take with an appropriately sized (whale?, school bus?) grain of salt.
If you like math, this is the best advice. I did math with a CS minor, had a great time in college, and I seem to go in the same pool as people with a CS degree for hiring on any team I would actually want to work with. It also opens up a different set of backup plans or potential career switches if you don't want to or can't stay in software long term.
> Further to this point, it's quite common to favour a candidate with a strong STEM degree who has learned to code as an adjacency.
... because they know less about programming, and thus think much less deeply how a novel abstraction could look like which solves the problem much more elegantly.
In other words: these applicants more obediently do their work instead of regularly questioning whether there could be a better way and thus rocking the boat too much. :-(
As someone who has met a lot of math majors and a lot of CS majors, I am skeptical of your supposition that CS majors are better at finding and applying novel abstractions than math majors who know how to code.
> As someone who has met a lot of math majors and a lot of CS majors, I am skeptical of your supposition that CS majors are better at finding and applying novel abstractions than math majors who know how to code.
I do work with people who have a math major. Let me put it this way: if they were interested in finding and applying novel abstractions for programming, they would for sure often be very capable in this, but people who majored in math often rather love to apply these skills to more mathematical problems in their area of interest.
I recommend it. I got a masters in Math, learned how to code, and now I'm a software engineer. Math was a lot of fun. Honestly, the best take away from my degree was that learning math concepts is often so obtuse/difficult it makes learning anything else seem relatively easy. It took away that fear of "I can't learn this" when approaching a new topic.
Math is static, CS is dynamic. In math you describe static idealized "worlds", in CS you look at any discrete dynamic process in detail via algorithms. Many folks doing math can't understand algorithms, and many coders can't understand math. Just ask a mathematician what does A = A + 1 mean. There is some inherent impedance mismatch.
I'm actually doing something similar, myself, and doing a MSc in CS right now. I'm somewhat jealous of how little group work you had to do! Almost every course I'm going through now has 1-3 group work assignments each.
Often the reason is something like _"that's how it is in the workplace"_ which is a blatant cop out, imo. It's clear the reason that Universities force group work is because it's a cost cutting exercise.
They need to pay the hours for people to mark assignments. Make groups of 2, and you've cut the number of hours that need to be paid by 50%. Make groups of 5, and you've cut the cost by 80%. Of course, this comes at the cost of some students unfairly carrying others.
Huh, I was doing a mechanical engineering degree at the same time as working on a engineering team and when I was doing exams it struck me just how distorted the exam is from reality and how it selects for a completely different skill set.
So you’re going to put me in a room, under extreme time pressure, where I can’t access the internet, reference books, modelling tools or talk to people?
Versus an office where you often have to collaborate, or ask for help or approval from someone more senior, where important decisions are reviewed over and over by multiple people? Where you need to use tools like the internet, books and modeling software. Where you need to talk to people whether they are engineers, business people or machinists.
Not only that but exams I think are better for people who are good at solving mostly math problems quickly with reasonable accuracy, where as most mechanical design roles require intense attention to detail that rewards taking your time to make sure there are no mistakes made. And most mechanical engineers end up being projects managers anyway I suspect in my country.
I got the MSCS from U Illinois on there. It was more work than I expected even with one class a semester. I definitely learned a lot I could use in my current role.
I was in the inaugural class and it was pretty smooth other than one professor there who was an asshole and felt that online classes were beneath him. It felt like we got scraps from the table (then Covid happened and online was everywhere). Also, one prof quit just before the semester on a required class that seniors had to take and a replacement couldn’t be found in time. They offered us alternatives which weren’t really good class replacements.
Strongly recommend if your time and money is limited.
I have a similar trajectory. I attended two very competitive military schools in Brazil but never finished and moved to America.
Today I’m a senior software engineer at a FAANG company. The lack of diploma has never been a barrier and I progressed very quickly in the company from junior to senior (4 years).
But this has always been a perceived pain point and limiter for me so I decided to get a CS degree during COVID online from a college from Brazil. Just finished last week :)
I do look for a stronger school name on my resume and got accepted at Johns Hopkins Masters in AI (online). Anyone had any experience with that program? Thoughts?
Congrats! I am also an autodidact who desired a stronger school name on my resume after a long run in startups, so I took a senior engineering role at Johns Hopkins.
I'm not affiliated with the engineering school or familiar with their curriculum. It may not be as famous as the schools of medicine or public health, but in general they are quite good.
> Johns Hopkins Masters in AI (online)
do whichever one of these online MS which permit you to leave off the "online" part (i.e., are awarded through the conventional faculty). i'm not sure johns hopkins does but OMSCS from gatech does.
GaTech only permits OMSCS if you have a 4 year undergrad. In many countries undergrads are three years. Even you have a Master's, that is also not counted. 4 years undergrad or nothing.
I had an unrelated undergrad did my MSCS online (not JHU but same idea). It was great. But if you’re already senior at FAANG I’m not sure you need further legitimacy.
The actual education can be useful. I dont think my masters degree has ever landed me job. But I would not have been able to deliver many of the things that got me a leadership position, nor be as capable as an engineer as I am today without the experience. The milage obviously varies greatly here based on where one goes.
> got accepted at Johns Hopkins Masters in AI (online). Anyone had any experience with that program? Thoughts?
Not worth the tuition.
GATech and UT Austin is highly respected and they only costs $6k and $10k respectively for their OMSCS.
The only online CS degree programs I can think of that are actively taught by top faculty and don't break the bank are GT, UT Austin, and UIUC.
Agree on the list, I would say GT is hardest to get in, but most inexpensive. While the later two are much easier.
I also suggest reading Dr. Joyners’ Reddit posts and books, they helped me quite a bit and I do want to reiterate that if you need help on admission and completed the EDX cs50(?) course, you can personally email him, as it’s stated on one of the last slides.
All around an amazing program that I hope to one day do, but I went the UIUC for business for now.
> I would say GT is hardest to get in, but most inexpensive. While the later two are much easier.
Regarding the acceptance rates, it's actually the opposite. GT OMSCS has a very high acceptance rate (~80%) and UIUC and UT Austin online masters are much more selective (~30%).
For break-the-bank options, Stanford and Columbia have good programs too.
If you're looking at the potential returns to a graduate degree in a high paying field, $60k spread over a few years isn't an insane investment, but yes, it is worth considering the value vs. GATech/UT Austin.
Columbia as a program isn't worth $70k in tuition, and the Columbia name doesn't open any doors that GT or UT Austin couldn't unless you live in NYC or China.
Stanford HCP is great (I've worked with plenty of their grads), but a large portion end up switching to FT because Stanford is a once in a lifetime experience.
“ I was ready to enter the workforce and become independent as early as possible. I got into tech through certifications like MCP, MCSA, and A+ (they were all the rage back then), which was enough to land a helpdesk job at 18.”
Same sentiments, if you had an MCSE you were hirable everywhere. A+ put you ahead of the pack and was lifetime back then.
The early 00s were def a time. This is how I started too and also just recently completed my bachelors and now doing a masters.
Congrats!
> Group projects were also a common complaint. You were randomly assigned a group, but it was often unclear if the participants were even doing the course - many people were in completely ghost groups.
I see that nothing has changed in 20 years. Even when attended the courses physically in person, group project usually had 1 or 2 people doing all the work and the rest nowhere to be found, or just hanging out. :p
I still remember in a varsity project, we're a group of three. I took over the design and coding. Another guy was bad at coding, so he took over all the documentation etc. The last guy was doing db design and write some basic SQL for the CRUD.
We were supposed to integrate everything a week before submission. Project was assigned about 6 weeks before submission. The last guy kept saying he's working on it and we don't have to worry.
Then a week before submission, he has nothing to show. Didn't type one word.
I had to scramble and get it done myself. Time was not enough anymore; we got B instead of A. I was already known to get A grade in every project where teachers would give me A++ if that was a grade. The teacher of that course was so disappointed...
Since then I did all projects solo. Had to fight a little with some teachers to get that approval; esp when there were really big projects for 5/6 people group. Still did solo and got rated as best project in every single one of them.
I once had a group project during a masters course where one guy disappeared halfway through the semester. Didn’t respond to phone, email, anything. The rest of us were discussing how to let the professor know after he had been over a month MIA (we didn’t need him but didn’t want him to get the group grade) when the professor emailed us to say he had heard from the guy, who had been literally hit by a truck and was still in hospital; medical withdrawal.
An important lesson.
I did masters in a similar way, just to get some credentials and fill in the gaps and learn something new. There is an idealistic part to it which is quite romantic as you spend the nights learning and doing the assignments. The structure of such online based learning systems is great for a determined person. However the “other” part of such courses are cheating and ai use. It is depressing to know that the specific credentials prove little because of it. So the only valid signal is: this person did not quit and they know how to write a report, use references. You’d need to test them to fully validate the credential.
Congrats! I've been considering this particular one too for some time... Wondering sometimes if I want to do this for "my career" or if it's really just for myself.
Wow, I'm surprised that doing an online course through coursera is still that expensive - £17,000 or $22,000 USD over 3 years!
Interestingly it does seem comparable with what it would cost through The Open University - https://www.open.ac.uk/courses/computing-it/degrees/bsc-comp...
Congrats on sticking with the impulsive decision and congrats with your first class!
Thank you!
I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life.
As I progress in my professional career I'm more convinced that pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, and universities are little more than a social club. Nowadays you can learn everything you do at university and far more online and for free.
Universities (elite ones particularly) still give you credentials that have some value getting a job. However I wonder for how long that will still be true. Learning by doing and building a portfolio sounds like a better way of getting in the industry today than getting a multi-year degree with nothing or little to show for it.
Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one. And even then, I would focus on networking and finding like-minded people rather than necessarily getting good grades.
Computer science is a weird degree because it was meant to produce computer scientists. Theory of computability, graph theory, discrete math, formal logic, etc. But the world just doesn't need as many computer scientists as it needs people who know JavaScript.
Over time, many CS degrees shifted toward producing software engineers, and it sounds like this person's experience was closer to that. But the problem is that as an engineering discipline, software engineering is just profoundly underwhelming. There are basically no universally-respected design best practices, no governing bodies, no calculations of safety limits, no nothing. You grab left-pad from npm and run with that. Or, now, Codex does that for you.
So CS is weird because it's what you're supposed to get if you want a job at Google, but it's also not very useful. It's a very inefficient and expensive way of testing if you're "serious enough", can complete assignments on time, etc.
My day job is relatively boring JavaScript components and SPA's, but even there I find things I learned in my Computer Science degree valuable. "Hey, this looks like a finite state machine.." "This could be a simple domain specific language, good thing I had to write compilers in college and I can easily make a simple lexer/parser.." "This other thing is easy to parse if I ingest it into a lexer-resembling state machine.." And I would think the value of understanding algorithmic complexity and so many other fundamental things is obvious, no matter what someone is doing. And you won't waste your time accidentally trying to solve the Halting problem, among other things. Obviously there's nothing a university can teach you that you couldn't theoretically learn somewhere else but I'm seriously not convinced that a Computer Science degree is useless or a poor signal even for someone doing run of the mill React apps.
If I had two SWE candidates with the same genes where one dropped out of high school to build a portfolio of software and the other followed the traditional CS trajectory, then I'd pick the one who "wasted" their time trying to solve the halting problem.
I am biased because I did drop out of high school, yadayada. My career has seen consistently a much steeper incline than nearly all CS graduates I've ever met. Plus, I got to build a bunch of useful and cool stuff, while others were wasting their time studying.
I was self taught and went back for a bachelor's after ten years working and then a masters after another four. There was a lot of wasted time in the BS (ie the trade-school-for-programmers classes) but the pure CS has been valuable to me quite regularly as a working developer.
Not every day, maybe not even every month, but I've faced plenty of problems I was well equipped to solve directly because of the formal study of them.
> I had to write compilers in college and I can easily make a simple lexer/parser.
I'm jealous. My university did not make that a core class of our degree. While in hindsight, I wish they did. I did have the luxury of a lot of low-level exposure, which has served to be quite useful at times (digital logic, assembly, etc.).
Even for research, a lot of CS papers seem like cosplay.
In the place of hard math, models, proofs, quantitative analysis of past approaches, etc. there is simply an “Architecture” section with much navel gazing. The paper topic is not a formal analysis but merely a description of a thing that was made.
Ironically, the least important part of an engineering research paper is the part describing the thing actually built/simulated. That is merely validation of the theory.
And all the governing bodies are just money scams.
More often than not, it requires a few weeks of mandatory paid "trainings" in order to attempt (and pass) the certifications.
And because IT is IT, no two companies or persons do things in similar ways (and for good reasons, the moment you do like everyone else, you average to the middle at best), and unless you are doing PHD like work, you don't need CS.
Software engineering is more akin of witchcraft.
> But the problem is that as an engineering discipline, software engineering is just profoundly underwhelming. There are basically no universally-respected design best practices, no governing bodies, no calculations of safety limits, no nothing.
I somewhat disagree: there exist a lot of deep questions in software engineering, and there do exist some (very, very partial) answers.
The problem rather is that most people don't want to listen to and/or do deep literature research about the few answers that we do have, but rather want to aggressively push their private political agenda about how they want software to be built. With some literature research, it is often not too hard to disprove the "foundations" on which this political agenda is built. But this does not make you admired because you showed serious knowledge about software engineering, but rather near to an outlaw.
TLDR: the problem is not software engineering, the problem is organizational politics.
When you say “political“, what do you mean? It’s easy for me to relate to talk of software development aesthetics or philosophy and I’ve certainly had plenty of conversations that I think are accurately described that way. But I can’t think of software development discussions that I’d describe as political (except in the sense that politics is what happens when people disagree on anything).
Depends on your organization I suppose.
Some places you see people pushing their Shiny New Rewrite, basically as resume fodder or promo packet material.
I describe that kind of decision as political because it doesn’t seem to come with a legitimate cost-benefit analysis.
That makes sense — decisions that are about personal benefits beyond technical/product choices and their merits.
Might be like, do we build more datacenters whose masters and possessors are all in the oligarch club, or do we build distributed systems that maximize flat power distribution.
What questions in particular are you thinking of that's purely about the engineering and ultimately not the political agenda?
- If it's about gaining a deep understanding of the topic involved for the pursuit of knowledge, it's science or engineering.
- If it's about manipulating people, it's politics.
I won't try and argue the merits of Bachelor's and Masters. But if you honestly believe that you can pick up the same experience from PhD on the job, then is seems like you learned little from that PhD that you were supposed to and your supervisor failed you. PhD is not about learning content. It's about picking up research independence, confidence, and a strong capacity for critique. It is supposed to be suffering of a special kind, an experience in grinding and radical unproductivity when the problem really is that hard. Maybe you did get that but you aren't using it in your job; if so, then maybe you didn't need that PhD, but that's hardly the fault of the degree.
PhD experiences vary much much more than bachelor's and master's programs that cover a fairly standard set of topics worldwide. PhD depends a lot on your specific topic, the specific supervisor, their other time commitments, their funding situation, how similar the other PhD students' topics are to yours, how hot the topic is or how the hotness changes over your PhD duration, how much teaching you have to do, how hands off the supervisor is (it is extremely common to have extremely disengaged supervisors, even famous ones, likely engagement and fame are anticorrelated), the expected publication venue tiers etc.
In most of Europe, the PhD contains no formal training. It's just what you informally pick up while working with other PhD students, if you do collaborations (depends on whether the supervisor likes that), or from postdocs (if there are postdocs), or from your rare meetings with the supervisor (which are often about updating the supervisor on new developments, not getting much actionable insight from them), but many many are simply left to their own devices and just do stuff and cope with the inevitable rejections, etc. At other places the supervisor organizes things like retreats, internal poster sessions, lots of internal presentations, discussions among the group etc. While in other places there is none of that, in some places many PhD students simply work from home and don't even meet much.
The winning strategy for prolific professors is to get a good early-career reputation, then hire really smart and conscientious applicants (proven through already published papers) and let them carry out the research. It's nothing about training them in any practical way. There are some who do that but it doesn't scale. You have to hire 20 PhD students and they will deliver enough papers for you to preserve your status and be able to hire the smartest applicants again and again.
But again, there's huge variation. Even at good universities.
do you have a phd? did you get it in the last 10 years? because i have one as well and 100% agree with op - it was worthless. and i got mine from a "world class" school too (US T10).
> It's about picking up research independence, confidence, and a strong capacity for critique.
lolol maybe in the days of yore. today it's about pumping out questionable papers that your advisor tells you to pump out and targeting the right conference.
> It is supposed to be suffering of a special kind
are you also one of those people who takes cold plunges every morning? this myth is what perpetuates the same horrible relationships with shit advisors. it's not supposed to be suffering. it's supposed to be challenging. there's an enormous difference.
> an experience in grinding and radical unproductivity when the problem really is that hard
there are no problems like this in academia (at least not CS) because it's absolutely impractical (re graduation, tenure, etc.) to set out tackling problems which are intractable.
in summary: this entire comment is "phd virtue signaling"
I do have a PhD and agree much more with the parent comment than yours. Granted, my PhD was in math, not CS, so I'm sure the experience was different. For instance:
> there are no problems like this in academia (at least not CS) because it's absolutely impractical (re graduation, tenure, etc.) to set out tackling problems which are intractable.
There's a difference between problems that are intractable and problems that require "grinding and radical unproductivity when the problem really is that hard". Maybe the problems in CS are easier. In math, many of the problems are very much of this flavor, and the point often isn't to solve the original problem but rather to use your investigation into that problem to discover new techniques or more tractable problems that you can solve. Of course, the pace of publication is far slower in math, so I'm sure this is a factor in the choice of problems.
On the other hand, I do mostly agree with this:
> are you also one of those people who takes cold plunges every morning? this myth is what perpetuates the same horrible relationships with shit advisors. it's not supposed to be suffering. it's supposed to be challenging. there's an enormous difference.
Agreed, there should be a difference. Unfortunately, in many modern PhD programs I'm not sure there is much of one....
> Granted, my PhD was in math, not CS, so I'm sure the experience was different
my BS and MS were in (pure) math (my MS thesis is on convergence of the ito integral...) and my PhD is in CS systems. CS outside of theory is worse than an empirical discipline - it's a "throw spaghetti, lasagna, burgers, caesar salad at the wall and see what sticks" discipline. it bears literally no resemblance to math (pure or applied).
> Maybe the problems in CS are easier... Of course, the pace of publication is far slower in math, so I'm sure this is a factor in the choice of problems.
yes and that should tell you everything you need to know - there are kids in my department graduating with 5 first author conference papers (i had "only" 3). how much of those papers do you think is original work really?
Yes, I did get it within the last ten years (with an excellent supervisor fortunately), and I take part in student supervision. I get to talk with the students and determine what is most valuable for them in the long-term. Considering where those students have ended up, and that we still keep in contact, I'd say I've done alright so far.
> today it's about pumping out questionable papers that your advisor tells you to pump out and targeting the right conference.
That's called a garbage supervisor. I'm sorry that was your experience, nobody deserves that. There has been only one student I have personally experienced where I felt some of the papers were questionable, but they were not strong, and should not have done the degree in the first place (unfortunately, I have no choice in the matter and just need to get them through).
> it's not supposed to be suffering. it's supposed to be challenging
Immense challenge is suffering because you encounter failure over and over and over again. Eventually success will come, but the interim is tough on the mental state. No human likes to fail repeatedly, but it is important to experience that at least once in a research career. It only needs to happen for one project; afterwards, the student tends to develop an incredible autonomy because they've been through the worst of it. But of course, this is where the supervisor is supposed to be responsible to find the right balance, since the difficulty of the task needs to be judged to ensure the student can finish it, while being as ambitious as possible within reason. It's pretty difficult to get right, and many supervisors don't even bother, choosing instead to push their own career. To any PhD student out there experiencing that, find another PhD supervisor please, before it is too late.
> there are no problems like this in academia (at least not CS) because it's absolutely impractical (re graduation, tenure, etc.) to set out tackling problems which are intractable.
No, this is precisely what the PhD is supposed to be for. It should be the most challenging topic of your entire early career, or your supervisor wasted your time. You have a handful of years to impress people, so they have to count.
> this entire comment is "phd virtue signaling"
Honestly, it just sounds like you were unfortunate enough to have been in a supervisory relationship where you were used as part of a paper mill. I'm really sorry to hear that; it isn't uncommon, but it isn't what the degree is supposed to be, and it seems you did not experience what you should have. The program doesn't work for everyone, but it does have a purpose, and it is frustrating when selfish academics bastardize that purpose to give this kind of false impression of the degree.
> That's called a garbage supervisor.
yes my advisor was garbage but also
1) my advisor is literally in the top 500 most cited researchers in the world
2) every single other student in systems had the exact same experience
in summary: your "no true scotsman" doesn't work here because by all measures all of these people are the scotsmen.
> Immense challenge is suffering
this is facile - torture is suffering, deprivation is suffering, prison is suffering. immense challenge is ... challenge. stop with the exaggerated language please. stop writing these paeans for research. it's not some ethereal pursuit. for a select few it's a calling. for most it's just a shitty job.
> find another PhD supervisor please, before it is too late.
bro you are so out of touch it's laughable. there are departments full of your so-called "not true advisors". what do you recommend to the students in these departments who are post-quals and are just now discovering the truth? you recommend to them they what? transfer schools? drop out after 2-3 years of reduced earnings? will you compensate them?
> No, this is precisely what the PhD is supposed to be for. It should be the most challenging topic of your entire early career, or your supervisor wasted your time.
again my guy: take a look at literally any top conference and tell me how many papers do truly novel work? as i commented below: i grew up in math where novel work meant a truly original theorem. that kind of quality is 1/1000 in neurips.
> you were used as part of a paper mill
did you catch the part where i attend a US T10? how do you square your assessment with that?
> isn't what the degree is supposed to be
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
stupid is as stupid does
> The program doesn't work for everyone, but it does have a purpose
there is literally no program. you're completely full of shit. there is no "standardized phd". every single department around the world completely makes it up to be whatever they want.
> it is frustrating when selfish academics bastardize that purpose to give this kind of false impression of the degree.
have you looked at the mirror recently? the frustration comes not from the craven/mercenary individuals who admit their cravenness - it comes from gaslighters like you who claim there's some idealized version of it that exists that everyone supposedly falls short of (hint hint: have you ever heard of this convenient concept of original sin?).
EDIT:
> it seems you did not experience what you should have
i got exactly the experience i needed to disabuse me of the illusion that academia was a priesthood in pursuit of truth/knowledge/beauty/whatever. so that was perfect (i will never step foot on another academic campus again and i will warn everyone else off from it too). in addition i got a job in FAANG so that was a nice consolation prize :)
I don't agree that my argument was a "No true Scotsman", since the argument made above (as far as I read it) was that "all PhDs are a waste of time". My counterargument was that the PhD, if done right according to its purpose, is not a waste of time. That is not the same as asserting that all PhDs are going to be good, and then refining the definition.
> i grew up in math where novel work meant a truly original theorem
I am in the math department and work with geometric analysts and combinatorialists, but mostly with CS researchers. I work with math and CS students. My entire education was analysis, then pure probability theory. Just for some context. And while CS has a lot of problems, math does too, unfortunately. A theorem may be original, but that doesn't make the work good.
> bro you are so out of touch it's laughable. there are departments full of your so-called "not true advisors".
Your experience, not mine. Regarding "out of touch": I've supervised across five different universities, all (apparently) in the top 100 worldwide. There has been a quality supervisor in each department I have come across. They may be in the minority, but they exist. They tend to not have many students, because it is virtually impossible to give adequate supervision to more than ~5 students at any one time.
> you recommend to them they what? transfer schools?
I now live in a country where that is easy to do, so yes I do, and yes I have. I have had friends that were "forced" to grind in a bad supervisory relationship for a while until they found another better supervisor and then had a good experience. I understand it is more difficult in a country where you cannot easily transfer. In those cases, I would 100% suggest dropping the degree early before wasting time and money on it, but naturally it depends a lot on their situation. A bad PhD can be a lot worse than no PhD.
> that kind of quality is 1/1000 in neurips.
I've found the proportion is more like 1/100 in the theory domain, but yes, there is a lot of rubbish in NeurIPS. There is a lot of rubbish in every venue.
> attend a US T10
I did a lengthy postdoc at one of these. They are largely paper mills by construction. A top 500 most cited researcher got that way because they run a paper mill. I did not associate with the students there very much, and I doubt that they thrived there either, other than getting a nice item on their CV. On the other hand, that institution benefited me at the time. I'm glad I did my education somewhere else.
> there is literally no program. you're completely full of shit. there is no "standardized phd". every single department around the world completely makes it up to be whatever they want.
Yes, which is why your experience is not necessarily indicative of that of others. That's a good thing.
> the illusion that academia was a priesthood in pursuit of truth/knowledge/beauty/whatever
I won't disagree that academia is a cesspit and I would exit if I felt I had the opportunity to do good elsewhere. I actively do not recommend it to anybody that feels they could do anything else. But there certainly are people that benefit from the PhD, so calling it useless is a bit much.
> have you looked at the mirror recently? the frustration comes not from the craven/mercenary individuals who admit their cravenness - it comes from gaslighters like you who claim there's some idealized version of it that exists that everyone supposedly falls short of (hint hint: have you ever heard of this convenient concept of original sin?).
I love the insinuation that I must be an evil prick. This is tantamount to hearing from a victim that all X are evil. I respect your position and your experiences, but also recognize you do not speak for the entire world in this matter. The bad supervisors tend to excel in their metrics nowadays (including how many students they have), so their perceived presence is disproportional.
> in addition i got a job in FAANG so that was a nice consolation prize
Good for you! If that was always an option, I would question the PhD too. Telling others your own experiences to warn those away from academia is perfectly fine, unless having that degree did help get you to that point. If you honestly know that having the PhD on your CV did nothing at all for you, and did not positively influence your chances, then this is fair, and I would recommend teaching others how they can avoid doing the PhD to get into those roles. Yes, people get FAANG jobs without doing higher education, but was everyone going to take that route? Otherwise, you are in the ivory tower telling others that they shouldn't come in.
> I love the insinuation that I must be an evil prick.
the insinuation is that there is deep, rich, delicious, irony in someone writing this
> The program doesn't work for everyone, but it does have a purpose, and it is frustrating when selfish academics bastardize that purpose to give this kind of false impression of the degree.
after giving everyone reading a false impression of what a PhD is worth. ie you sound extremely selfish yourself when you use phrases like
"Maybe you did get that but you aren't using it in your job; if so, then maybe you didn't need that PhD, but that's hardly the fault of the degree."
and
"PhD is not about learning content. It's about picking up research independence, confidence, and a strong capacity for critique."
and
"No, this is precisely what the PhD is supposed to be for. It should be the most challenging topic of your entire early career, or your supervisor wasted your time. You have a handful of years to impress people, so they have to count."
ie ludicrous absolutist terms.
> Otherwise, you are in the ivory tower telling others that they shouldn't come in.
...are you a native english speaker? the ivory tower is academia. i am emphatically (as i've been emphasizing for 2 hours now) not in the ivory tower and i advocate for everyone to avoid the god forsaken place no matter what.
> Yes, people get FAANG jobs without doing higher education
the vast vast majority of my coworkers have BS/MS. the two best engineers i know (extremely successful ICs) have only a BS. the other PhDs i meet in industry are generally worthless "architects" who can't hack their way out of a paper bag.
EDIT:
it's amazing to me that the conflict of interest here isn't front and center: you're still in academia recruiting students! of course it's critical for you that the dream of academia lives on! if you had any integrity you would have disclaimed your conflict of interest at the outset.
I think the biggest thing is most software "engineering" jobs are in no way engineering and are closer to a trade like being a mechanic or (imo) a doctor.
It's fairly rote - you need good judgement and to stay current in latest state of the art but generally speaking you're not researching (nor should you be) cutting edge algorithms or anything.
Add a new button, add some parameters to this analytics call, implement dark mode. These are the things that everyone is doing at their six-figure tech jobs.
It doesn't have to be like that.
This is choose your own adventure. You can be writing any kind of code you want, including stuff at the frontier.
and yet, the collective industry has still continued to expand for decades because people overwhelmingly cannot consistently do these tasks without their code collapsing on itself.
imagine if people regularly had tires fall off on their way home from the mechanic. or regularly having to get bones rebroken to set them correctly.
I can agree that much of the work is not true "engineering" but most of what I've seen produced over the years is closer to fraud than anything else.
I echo the sentiment. Most work is described as basic and unimaginative, yet we still have every large company having outages despite employing "the best". Even worse, they game uptime and outages in a way that mirrors gerrymandering.
Ha, definitely agree well said :D
You already have a lot of replies here and the comment is provably divisive. I'll toss in that while only you can judge whether it was truly a waste of time, a lot of that factors in how you used it. If it benefited you in interview material understanding, increased the probability that you could extend your network with someone, or other somewhat intangible signals then I'd say it wasn't as much of a waste as you say.
I have no degree and that is arguably worse and there are exceedingly fewer people with my background in technology on the coast. On the other hand, I spent a lot of my career writing applications that solved Software Operations problems. I spent a lot of time working in small teams rather than huge ones, I often did not have product or project support. I used to loathe that chapter of my career because of how toilsome it was in my memory. Lately I've come to appreciate it a lot more because I am much more self reliant and I often have the skills and familiarity to run much larger teams as a tenured engineer.
Long way of saying, the value of an experience or thing is often not immediately realized or appreciated.
Same experience. "Is school worth it" is divisive because it speaks to people's investment and value system. I too have a full and successful career in software without any degree largely for the same reason you mentioned: I learned the hard way and continued to show up.
Earned experience is objectively valuable. The problem is people don't want to be fools so "working hard" looks suspect when you see plenty of people do well because of network and social aspects.
When it comes to school, there's obvious value in the social/status/network aspects and debatable value in the actual content, but what I find most discussion worthy is how one's background shapes mentality toward "putting in the work" when there's no explicit reward for said work.
The simple difference is that school promises you results. One at least leaves with a paper that's supposed to be worth something. Doing anything else, provides no such guarantees.
Regarding "university isn't worth it, you can just learn by doing, none of this theory matters in practice", I've usually heard this from people who weren't able to pass the math courses (or even the programming courses), so it seemed more like sour grapes.
I have to admit though that they were right, in that they were indeed able to make a career at some multinational companies even after barely getting through a bachelor's with bad grades and with many more years needed than the normal time.
Real mass-scale software jobs are indeed significantly easier than the math courses in CS university programs. At least in a cognitive capability sense. There can still be many other kinds of challenges that are more about social skills which are not much needed for passing college courses but are quite important in jobs.
the distinction is specific to the economic value calculation.
it’d be disingenuous to assume the conversation is about anything other than the economic trade off. That said, wholly agree that if school was about learning, it’s great for advancing and curating an environment for learning as its own value.
fwiw in high school, authority figures justified college as a way to counteract the failure scenario of dead-end jobs. success looked like a good paying job and opportunities to do what you’d like like vacations and raise a family. Maybe thats the right framing for the rank and file public school, but it’s why I didn’t even apply to college, let alone attend.
edit: it is objectively economically more valuable to hold a degree, the data is clear. my issue is that it’s reverse causality as is always the issue with data signals.
when you go back to the scenario of what to tell a public school kid, going to college actually works as a negative motivation tool, because the majority of kids won’t go to college so you’re basically telling them their economic value is shit before they are even grown. I don’t believe in that.
> it’d be disingenuous to assume the conversation is about anything other that the economic trade off.
To me it seems hollow and sad to think about higher education purely in job and money terms, but maybe I’m weird. I studied what I wanted to learn about, and was naïve about any economic trade offs. There were a few companies I thought were cool and dreamt about working for, and at some level I knew it’d take a degree to get in, but in my book school was quite valuable beyond the jobs I’ve had, in many non-financial ways.
> you’re basically telling them their economic value is shit before they are even grown. I don’t believe in that.
Maybe I didn’t understand, but I can’t quite reconcile your suggestion to only look at college as an economic trade off, with not believing in recommending college due to your pessimistic interpretation of the message. It’s a fact that in the US, people with 4-year degrees earn more than people without, statistically speaking. (And the factor is a lot bigger than I thought.) People with advanced degrees statistically earn a considerable amount more than people with 4-year degrees. If you want to look at this as an economic trade off, it seems like there’s only one recommendation that makes any sense, no? Like, based on the numbers and my own experience, it doesn’t feel like going to school has particularly strong negatives that offset the positives. (BTW I went to a state school, and borrowed money to pay tuition.)
It's not necessarily fully causal though.
You'd need a comparison group who are just as intelligent and conscientious and equally rich as the college graduating population for comparison. They would likely find ways to demonstrate their value in other ways if forced not to attend college.
> Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one.
I'm in Europe where education is mostly free or inexpensive so it may be different in the US, but it sounds like terrible advice. In most fields, it will be virtually impossible to get a job without a degree, and even in tech it'll be hard. I work in a big tech company, and as far as I can tell, most SWEs do have a degree of some sort. I'm sure there are exceptions, but they are rare.
causality direction violation. is it because of the degree that people get jobs or is it because everybody tells everyone that they need a degree that they get a degree to permit themselves to apply to get the job?
the productive takeaway is that of course its safer to come with a degree but it’s hardly proof that one needs the degree. Nobody is going to risk their or their kids livelihood on being the variant for the a/b test though.
Depending on the country in question, SWE jobs might be quite scarce, so companies can afford to be picky about the candidates.
You have outliers in both ways (companies that don’t care and companies that will ask you about your uni grades) but the general sentiment in my (EU member) country is that you do need at least a two if not a three year degree to get a decent SWE job. Most of the time it’s explicitly listed as a requirement in job listings too.
Note to everybody: this is a very exotic position and the vast majority of people I've met during career would strongly disagree with that. I don't have a Master or PhD, but my Bachelor degree was absolutely worth my time and was essential to enable me to have a successful career where I earned millions and retired early.
> I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life.
In CS, for Bachelor, I can understand. You perhaps do it just to show the paper and get a job.
For Masters, I can somewhat understand, as the Masters is becoming the "new Bachelor's"
For PhD: It's all on you. No one makes you do it, and the downsides are well documented. In many (other) disciplines, you do a PhD because you want to do research, and you'll never otherwise have the time to dedicate to a research problem. You don't do it for the certificate - unless you want to go into academia.
So: Why did you waste your time on the PhD? Why did you stick to it if it wasn't furthering your goals?
I spent years pursuing it, and eventually quit when I realized it wasn't taking me where I wanted to go. So what's your excuse for sticking with it?
It just sounds very silly to complete a PhD and complain about it. It was your bad decision, after all.
PhDs are not immune to buyers remorse. It's just buyers remorse. They are a buyer because of the opportunity cost of getting a PhD. It's economically equivalent to spending money, because the alternative was working as a software developer.
Can't speak for masters or PhD, but I feel like the most valuable part of my undergraduate was being exposed to many opportunities constantly. I saw a table looking for study/work abroad near one of my classes. I applied, got a job, met my now wife overseas, and have moved to a different country as a result (have been here for 5 years and very happy). All because a student group was sharing a cool oppurtunity with low friction to sign up.
I learned everything I use on my job in the first year of studies. The other 4 years were theory I never use or think about. But those 4 years exposed me to sooo many different people from all walks of life. University is a space to learn and unlearn. If you are lucky enough to make that your complete focus, you leave the institution a different person.
As my mother explained it to me, the point of the degree is not necessarily the knowledge you acquire, but to demonstrate to employers the fact that you are capable of completing a project that is multi-year and requires dealing with annoying bureaucratic obstacles.
> I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life.
I disagree: I have fond memories of my university time. I also do really like programming. The problem rather is that there are hardly any job where what you learned and loved at the university (and why you studied - in this case - computer science) is of much use. Keep in mind that your degree was a huge part why one was selected for the job.
I honestly ask myself quite often why employers are so fond of university degrees for programming jobs. If they put much less relevance on this criterion, employers would have a much bigger group of applicants among which they can select - and this means employers could use this to level down salaries.
I'm currently finishing my bachelor in CS in Rome, and have been feeling this often. I'm 24 and feel a bit lost. When I started 5 years ago I had never programmed (in my high school we studied latin for 5 years, and I don't remember a single word), and basically had to teach myself Python for an exam, delaying the others, (we had 4 exams per semester, and couldn't keep it up).
Then I had the opportunity to start working for a remote company writing 2 webapps in reactjs (no guidance on the code, I had to learn all by myself with courses, youtube etc. because I'm the only one writing the frontend)
In the meanwhile I stopped the university for a year to only realize later that I was missing my academic education. After all, having a guidance on what to study makes you feel safer, the world is so complex and full of different things, that the university gives you the illusion of learning the "right" and "indespensable" thing. Trust our path, they say.
But now I'm here again, 1 exam left (on ancient Artificial Intelligence, based on Norvig's book), and I don't really know what to do - Artificial Intelligence Master ? - Computer Science Master ? - Sabbatical Year to learn by following rabbit holes, hoping to find my real self ?
In the meanwhile I'll probably see the AI take my job.
The great future I once imagined seems so unreachable now, I'm demoralized. I wanted to create cool and hard things, but I find myself chatting with LLMs nowadays, and I think, is this worth?
(How I migrated my tech career into a plumber career - coming soon.)
Advice: look for a job, then use what you learn you need in the job to motivate your next studying.
I'd focus on security if I were you. I've seen AI's code and it's so full of holes that fixing those should be a career.
> basically had to teach myself Python for an exam, delaying the others, (we had 4 exams per semester, and couldn't keep it up).
How did this work? They actually waited for you before holding an exam?
lol. He means he just failed the other ones because he didn't manage to keep up (which is somewhat normal in italy)
Antony Trollope says in 'Eustace Diamonds' that he feels in a lot of professions, experience creates more competent people than mere learning. (Rough paraphrase). In other words, you don't get to be truly competent unless you are earning that experience!
It is true that most software development jobs don't need much CS knowledge to perform. The majority of developers simply kludge together common libraries, frameworks, and software packages without needing to understand all that much about the internals.
It is also true that the software development jobs that don't need much CS knowledge to perform are the ones most vulnerable to being automated away by LLMs. If a kludge is sufficient, AI can kludge it cheaper than a human.
People who don't know how computers, compilers and operating systems work make terrible code and are normally completely unable to figure out issues if they arise.
I've found bugs in compilers, in the jvm, in libc header files.
I have always recommended people get an MBA and self teach the development skills. There is a value to higher education:
Bachelors - You can communicate in writing.
Masters - You can plan and prepare business documents for planning and proposals
Doctors - You can do research
To me uneducated people can still have skills, but their utility into management becomes questionable even though education certainly does not make anybody a better manager. I do however question the future value of education if most young people have never read a book or cannot write a simple essay without AI.
For me the ability to communicate is the most important skill, because programming is a form of writing. So, if I were hiring for a software team manager I would have absolutely no reservations about putting them on camera and watching them hand write a 5 page essay within an hour. It’s one of those don’t waste my time and I won’t waste yours kind of things.
I have worked with self taught programmers and the fact that they don't know the first thing about the most basic and well known algorithms makes cooperating with them painful.
Yeah, I have never bothered with memorizing patterns myself. I always found that to be a waste of time.
What do you think of something like this as an alrernative:
https://cs.ossu.dev/
(Free self-learning/paced/online CS curriculum)
As a European living in the US, would you have been able to immigrate without a degree? I know I needed one for immigration.
Unfortunately a degree required if you don't want your resume immediately filtered.
You can do the Georgia Tech online masters in CS. It's rigorous, demands a lot of time, but carries the full prestige of the on-campus degree.
You still need a bachelor's to gain admission to that.
There are other options for online CS bachelor's programs (WGU is the most famous).
If you write a PhD and feel like it was a waste, too bad. I think if you had approached it differently, you would have gotten something else out of it. By that point you’re supposed to be more responsible for your own learning.
No comment on the advisability of the degrees.
Computer science is to programming as physics is to plumbing.
If you want to be a plumber get an apprenticeship.
As someone who's self-taught, I find this argument tantalizingly validating, but I'm constantly reminded that universities offer more than just the material. Between peer networks and "alumni" connections or even just the ability to email a former professor or TA for advice, these opportunities just aren't really available independently. Skipping college might not limit what you can learn but it sure narrows the network and institutional support available to you.
Why did you go beyond a BA in CS if you’re going to not work in academia? Sounds like a PhD didn’t help much?
What a hook of a first line!
BTW, does anyone recommend doing a masters degree in bio-stats or not? Or something similar, bio-tech-like?
Going to need more than that. Why? Do you want to work in biostats or biotech, or do you enjoy it enough that the money and time commitment is worth it purely out of interest? What skills are you missing that you think a masters would give you? Online, in person, where?
I never regretted getting a BS and MS in CS. It was a lot of fun learning, landed me my first industry job with basically no extra effort, and it ultimately allowed me to be an instructor at a university after a couple decades at work.
But I did get my degree when it was 5x cheaper than today (inflation-adjusted). There is that.
One thing about on-the-job learning is that employers are increasingly reluctant to pay for that. So non-degrees will still have to get on their indy learning.
And, yes, networking is king more than ever now.
What kind of work do you do now that you feel is entirely unhelped by your time in higher education?
Employers care about credentialization, a lot. And not just from elite universities based on wage data. Diplomas are a signal that you're conscientious enough to grit through large amounts of dull lectures, work and cramming, and that you're probably able to grasp some abstract concepts. You're underselling their value.
> Learning by doing and building a portfolio sounds like a better way of getting in the industry today than getting a multi-year degree with nothing or little to show for it.
Graduates do this too. The industry has gotten highly competitive. So who do you think employers would rather hire, a CS grad with a portfolio or high school grad with a portfolio? It takes a lot more for apps to impress today, in no small part because LLMs expedite the process.
Going so far as to as to found a company might be necessary if the goal is to work at a FAANG co or whatever, but most developers don't work there.
Master's here. I already knew how to program before going to University. However I learned a lot about how to think more abstractly/mathematically about software. It has helped me a ton in my industry work and given me a clear advantage.
> Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one. And even then, I would focus on networking and finding like-minded people rather than necessarily getting good grades.
I am a teenager and I am currently going to college. I am not going into a world class one college but its a decent college.
I think that you might be right in terms of pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, but the rationale behind going to a bachelor's college is that as someone else has said here: you all are treated equally and companies come to select you. So you are competing in a much smaller pool and are able to stand out much more.
Also, I get 4 years to do what I do best so much so that I did it these 2 years as well, I just can't resist myself because I have tried to do so I just love tinkering with computers and this also puts me up to an comparatively decent advantage.
Sure, there might be some rote-learning and some things which are a bit theoretical but they might also be practical. I was learning on my own a month ago IIRC about what the 7 layers are and I am probably going to read some on my own time before going to college the book of "networking a top down approach"
This has given me 4 years to do the things that I like, the job market right now is a bit not too good but reading books about history of the dot com bubble etc. I feel decently confident that its very cyclical. Just reading the book of "how the internet happened" made me realize all the similarities with things happening right now. Every 20 years, a new generation happens and we forget the old things which have happened (IMO).
That being said, I am unsure about 11 years of the free time at the same time but honestly, it really just depends upon your subjective nature and personal preference and for someone genuinely interested within research... it could be an interesting path. I am open to every opportunity that comes in front of me and wish to try my best :-D
> Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one. And even then, I would focus on networking and finding like-minded people rather than necessarily getting good grades.
Networking is a multiplier. You realize the ability of multiplier because you have the base-line. Were you able to form the base-line because of the time spent within those 11 years, partially yes, and other comes from your natural interests and curiosity judging from the fact that you are on Hackernews for the sake of it itself.
Would a person with the strongest of networks but failing to have the baselines of (technical & managerial?) tastes/intellect and just this feeling of learning be able to do something with networking. Absolutely, people are using these top grade colleges as just a way to network and so there is a lot of froth/hype in the market. Theo Baker (a 22 year old journalist who lived in stanford) has written a book about it ("How to rule the world")
I still think that its interesting that they get to become the startup owner at such an young age and there are benefits but also tradeoffs and realizing both of these is important and making the decision wisely is important. I do envy them in some sense as well but also not so, its nuanced! and I wish them all success hopefully :-D (and I think one should keep the options open), If an opportunity comes for me to open an startup say even within college and upon proper careful thinking I get the answer to be a serious yes, I will try to follow that as well :-D
but my main point is that after a particular point in life: the multiplier feels much more important than baseline but before that, the baseline is just as important if not more, so I will try to get good grades hopefully if interests align with the subjects which I think they do.
From my understanding of the world, the world is nuanced and complicated so there isn't one size fits all so its best to keep your options around and do what you feel rationally so but rationality can also only go so far so it also depends a bit on the emotions involved and many other factors but we can't also think infinitely in recursion for everything so we need to have good instincts and ability to think deeply when needed and basically being adaptable to the situation thus me suggesting that there might not be one size fits all.
These are the talks that I have had with myself over the conflict that I myself had over going to college or not and some reasons behind going to do so, so I do realize my bias in that and I am not entirely an unbiased source but perhaps a truthful source. It so much depends on the situation of the person to decide if they should go to college or not and all factors involved imo.
Have a nice day if someone has read it till here and take care! :-D
A degree is not a bad thing. This forum is pretty biased on startup culture but I bet the vast majority would say its not worth it personally but worth it on a career level. Even then, the space to explore things outside of your immediate interest is invaluable and you WILL make connections beyond what you expect. Good luck in your studies.
I agree, the future looks very dim for tech degree grads. I would not even recommend a degree from an elite school. Grads'll be in debt for a long time.
> Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one
This is horrible advice. Hiring is a zero sum game, and a college education is treated as a table stakes requirement which won't change.
When trying to get hired, you are competing against other candidates, and if a tiebreaker is needed, the less risky option will always be hired.
Additionally, where you get your degree doesn't matter too much, but getting one is critical. It can be a BSCS from WGU for all that matters, but getting one is important. Also, bootcamps are useless now. Don't waste money on them.
The only exceptions remain veterans from the armed services assuming they were trained in the right MOS.
To be fair, you do research at school.
I got a math degree with mostly pure math courses, and did a few CS and data analytics courses on the side. I used to feel a little behind that I didn't do a proper CS degree, but I found math to be a lot more fun and less time consuming.
After a few years in the workplace I don't feel behind at all, and I'm grateful that I have more potential back up plans and won't be just another unemployed CS major if there's a real contraction in the job market. I've been considering pivoting to being an actuary, or possibly teaching high school.
I did this too for my BSc! Prof. Yee King is a great teacher, and although I was mostly doing it for the qualification and knew most of the course materials going into the degree, his explanations of web app architecture still really helped solidify my understanding. It's a great course in general, especially if you like data science
Pure computer science, you can teach it on a chalk board, without ever touching an electronic device.
Its technically true but it can take a long time for it to solidify for people and it would have taken way longer for me if I didnt have an IDE/compiler to experiment and experience it in real time and life
You can teach it like that, but you can't learn it like that.
> The exams themselves are done remotely using Inspera proctoring software.
Then it's almost trivially easy to cheat with a VM, or, failing that, a KVM switch with real hardware.
This reminds me of Miguel's post about completing a BS in CS at WGU:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180816 (470 points, 402 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900 (425 points, 377 comments)
I was inspired by Miguel and took the same path, but I had no pre-existing credits to transfer so the whole process took me 7 months, instead of 3.
How do employers perceive such diploma? I would try to find out before spending time or money. Did you?
I always saw motivated people taking the "road less travelled" as a HUGE green flag.
There's a stark difference between self motivated curious people and certification collectors even though on the surface they can look very similar.
Yeah but writing detailed blog posts about the experience is usually a signal pointing toward the former group
> Yeah but writing detailed blog posts about the experience is usually a signal pointing toward the former group
Writing detailed blog posts about the experience is rather usually a signal that the person is an annoying self-promoter. :-(
Same issue with the cert collector.
Some people with certs and some people with blogs are legit.
A lot of them are really eager to be seen and that's it.
Some people are legit and some people are not. Got it. Thanks for the clarification and analysis.
A bachelors degree is way different than a program certificate.
So… obligatory not in HR and also not a manager. But I’ve helped hire a couple engineers over the last 5ish years. Seems that HR at my companies filter for college degrees, and basically require 2 - 4 more years of experience (sans degree) or pedigree at their last couple companies. Maybe this depends more on the size of the company, but, for <1000 at each of them, HR is strapped for time and shortcuts the interview process with filters like this. I work with a great data engineer who never finished college and is fully self taught, and we’re currently navigating a recent "degree’d" data scientist hire who appears to have lied on their resume and used AI in the interview. Note, they lied about experience and title, not the degree or the companies. So not something a background check would catch.
Kinda sucks that the first barrier to interviewing at most companies is HR, and they generally are the least qualified or motivated to properly assess candidates. I don’t fully blame them, as there are just too many resumes and interviews to go through for the limited time we have in a work day, but great candidates can come from any background and demographic. Edit: Sample size of 1 here, so take with an appropriately sized (whale?, school bus?) grain of salt.
I've hired probably 200+ people in my career and I totally share your opinion. It's just an unfortunate reality of how things currently work.
Lying seems to be the only way to get a job these days
True, because lying is the currency that HR and Recruiting traffics in.
I've hired non-trad candidates. We'd treat them as any other hiring candidate.
OP would just put "BSc Computer Science from Goldsmiths, University of London" on his resume and LinkedIn.
CS degree is not all that fun. You’re better off doing math and just learning to code on the side.
If you like math, this is the best advice. I did math with a CS minor, had a great time in college, and I seem to go in the same pool as people with a CS degree for hiring on any team I would actually want to work with. It also opens up a different set of backup plans or potential career switches if you don't want to or can't stay in software long term.
Further to this point, it's quite common to favour a candidate with a strong STEM degree who has learned to code as an adjacency.
> Further to this point, it's quite common to favour a candidate with a strong STEM degree who has learned to code as an adjacency.
... because they know less about programming, and thus think much less deeply how a novel abstraction could look like which solves the problem much more elegantly.
In other words: these applicants more obediently do their work instead of regularly questioning whether there could be a better way and thus rocking the boat too much. :-(
As someone who has met a lot of math majors and a lot of CS majors, I am skeptical of your supposition that CS majors are better at finding and applying novel abstractions than math majors who know how to code.
> As someone who has met a lot of math majors and a lot of CS majors, I am skeptical of your supposition that CS majors are better at finding and applying novel abstractions than math majors who know how to code.
I do work with people who have a math major. Let me put it this way: if they were interested in finding and applying novel abstractions for programming, they would for sure often be very capable in this, but people who majored in math often rather love to apply these skills to more mathematical problems in their area of interest.
Any suggestions for online program / distance learning (I'm in Australia)? I want a proper challenge not a walk in the park.
I recommend it. I got a masters in Math, learned how to code, and now I'm a software engineer. Math was a lot of fun. Honestly, the best take away from my degree was that learning math concepts is often so obtuse/difficult it makes learning anything else seem relatively easy. It took away that fear of "I can't learn this" when approaching a new topic.
Math is static, CS is dynamic. In math you describe static idealized "worlds", in CS you look at any discrete dynamic process in detail via algorithms. Many folks doing math can't understand algorithms, and many coders can't understand math. Just ask a mathematician what does A = A + 1 mean. There is some inherent impedance mismatch.
This is such a ridiculous and incorrect comment; I don't even know how to respond.
I'm actually doing something similar, myself, and doing a MSc in CS right now. I'm somewhat jealous of how little group work you had to do! Almost every course I'm going through now has 1-3 group work assignments each.
Often the reason is something like _"that's how it is in the workplace"_ which is a blatant cop out, imo. It's clear the reason that Universities force group work is because it's a cost cutting exercise.
They need to pay the hours for people to mark assignments. Make groups of 2, and you've cut the number of hours that need to be paid by 50%. Make groups of 5, and you've cut the cost by 80%. Of course, this comes at the cost of some students unfairly carrying others.
Huh, I was doing a mechanical engineering degree at the same time as working on a engineering team and when I was doing exams it struck me just how distorted the exam is from reality and how it selects for a completely different skill set.
So you’re going to put me in a room, under extreme time pressure, where I can’t access the internet, reference books, modelling tools or talk to people?
Versus an office where you often have to collaborate, or ask for help or approval from someone more senior, where important decisions are reviewed over and over by multiple people? Where you need to use tools like the internet, books and modeling software. Where you need to talk to people whether they are engineers, business people or machinists.
Not only that but exams I think are better for people who are good at solving mostly math problems quickly with reasonable accuracy, where as most mechanical design roles require intense attention to detail that rewards taking your time to make sure there are no mistakes made. And most mechanical engineers end up being projects managers anyway I suspect in my country.
I got the MSCS from U Illinois on there. It was more work than I expected even with one class a semester. I definitely learned a lot I could use in my current role.
I was in the inaugural class and it was pretty smooth other than one professor there who was an asshole and felt that online classes were beneath him. It felt like we got scraps from the table (then Covid happened and online was everywhere). Also, one prof quit just before the semester on a required class that seniors had to take and a replacement couldn’t be found in time. They offered us alternatives which weren’t really good class replacements.
Strongly recommend if your time and money is limited.
Congrats!