No degree. Founder and UI/UX Dev (now in Sacramento be previous Bay Area). Six figs. No connections, just hard work.<p>I'm definitely an outlier. I've yet to meet someone holding it down in the Bay Area with a developers title who didn't have a degree. It's always a look of surprise when asked where I went to college and I respond "I didn't.". Part of me wishes I had, the other part wishes I was less lazy. The ladder in me knows there isn't a thing I can learn in college I couldn't teach myself on my own.<p>I once asked a genius colleague of mine (also founder and now millionaire at 29) who went to school for biology and wound up a developer if he felt he wasted his time pursuing biology. His response "No, it taught me how to learn.". I really liked that response, obviously it's stuck with me. For many things you need a degree (health fields etc) but for most everything else you need the ability to learn and learn well.
The Best Job Candidates Don't Always Have College Degrees<p>Is there anything surprising or interesting about this truism? There are millions of jobs and millions of people without college degrees with infinite combinations of skill sets. Of course you are going to have some jobs that are best executed by some people who don't have a college degree.
"great grades and successful founders/technology entrepreneurs have at best a zero correlation"<p><a href="http://steveblank.com/2009/04/07/the-good-student/" rel="nofollow">http://steveblank.com/2009/04/07/the-good-student/</a>
Maybe it's just me, but in discussions like this, I consistently interpret an expectation of naivety in non-college graduates. In practice, I find it's the exact opposite.<p>If your mentality is to follow Gates' advice of a “much surer path to success” you've already demonstrated weakness.<p>Many graduates I know did not have a job before college. You don't learn practical job experience in school, so they're left having to figure it out. For example, a lot of my peers aren't comfortable solving problems in their workplace. After they vent and I recommend making changes, most are unwilling to act; they'll make excuses or expect to be fired. Having experiencing a <i>wide</i> variety of "professional" environments myself, I know where to draw the line, and how to stand up for myself.<p>I also find that expectations of employment differ. That MS title was hard earned, and gets them into interviews at companies with those requirements, so that's where they go. It's expected that you want a salaried job and will ride it (or similar positions in similar companies) to retirement.<p>Sure, I may one day be the "old dude without a degree who says he can code", but I'm actually preparing to be the dude who no longer codes because he has skills that apply to many industries. Try diversifying your skillset in your cubicle, or exclusively on weekends; from experience, I can say I'm better off without. In the 4+ years you were socializing and studying, I was already living life (actually, I've been working since I was 15-1/2).
I think we'll start seeing a trend where students, especially at STEM schools, can come out of high school, do a coding bootcamp, and work as a junior startup dev without college.<p>That said, the challenge of when they hit the point that algorithms and data structures are important to their software is creation is I think unsolved so far. edX/Coursera/etc. could be a big help.
This sums up pretty much nicely. You don't always need a college degree is a fact. But, getting a college degree is useless is an over statement. I have interviewed/spoken to a bunch of bootcamp camp grads who are good at what they do. But, they fail to catch up with other people when anything new is thrown at them(eg., devops stuff to a front end guy). But, if you are a hacker at heart, you dont need any bootcamp or any degree to excel at a job. The best developer I know is a high school dropout who started out as a kernel hacker.
Everybody loves the 'kid without a degree who can code'. 5 or 6 jobs later that kid becomes the 'old dude without a degree who says he can code'
Hints of "sour grapes" can be detected in this article.<p>- well credentialed candidates are harder to get due to the job market and are expensive -- the grapes are high on the vine.<p>- but they are not all they are cracked up to be; and besides it is elitist to be hiring them since they are from affluent backgrounds -- the grapes are sour!<p>- hiring them for junior roles is a "terrible approach". (Why? Not explained: probably because they are, doh, <i>expensive</i> for junior roles) -- I didn't even want grapes in the first place; free blackberries grow everywhere.