

Dropping out: Is college worth the cost? - pajju
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57436775/dropping-out-of-college-a-good-thing/

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DigitalSea
Being a self-taught developer myself who has landed some incredibly impressive
jobs including a 2 year contract with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
(ABC News) as a developer amongst other awesome places, I agree with the
statement of college being a waste of money.

I completed high school, contemplated college but then decided to get a job
instead. Every place I have ever worked at has mentioned that they prefer
hiring self-taught programmers as opposed to educated ones because the passion
is already there and just because you can complete college doesn't mean you
can handle the pressures of a programming environment in the real world (late
hours, tight deadlines, last minute issues before major launches etc).

It's about damn time that non-educated programmers and non-programmers alike
who know their stuff start getting more recognition and better pay to suit.
I've had to work damn hard to earn the salary I do now and I know more than a
lot of the other programmers here who went to college, I teach them stuff and
I thought it was meant to be the other way around.

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pajju
Great to hear your story, an excellent answer from someone who has gone
through similar experience and is also successful. (I would like you to blog
about your experiences so far and document it, as I would love to hear your
whole story).

But I have other few questions -

Isn't it really hard to convince yourself at that naive age to risk yourself
to drop out of college?

Going this way, the path to Success will be very hard. Can everyone sustain
it? Well I don't think so. There are few exceptionally talented guys out there
who did it and probability is 1 in 10M. Not all. Period. So generalizing it to
everyone is not correct.

