
Ask HN: Is going back to college worth it if you already have experience? - kidneysincluded
Though I&#x27;m happy with my current position, I&#x27;m starting to look towards the future a bit. I have an associates degree and four years of experience as a full-stack .NET web developer. I&#x27;m considering going back for my bachelors to make myself more marketable.<p>Have any of you out there without a bachelors had professional doors shut because of your lack of degree, even with experience?
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pascalxus
The people in charge of hiring decisions are as diverse as you and I or
anyone. Some of them will say: "I don't like this guy because he doesn't have
a degree". There's many more that would still hire you despite not having a
degree.

CS is a fascinating subject and great fun to study. But, truth be told, most
of the knowledge you gain will be completely useless in your day to day job,
unless you become a CS Professor. Just think about it, you don't have a degree
and you've already completed 4 years of software engineering experience: that
should tell you everything you need to know about that.

If you do, do it, then just get one of those online degrees where you do the
minimum amount of work: that way, you can decrease cost and maximize your ROI.
At this point, it's just going to be a small line item at the end of your
resume, mostly there for checkbox purposes.

There is one exception. If you get a chance to go to a top tier college like
Standford or harvard or MIT, obviously, a lot of people are going to like
that. And it may open a few doors for you that might not otherwise be open. It
would probably give you a sizable advantage in an interview at Google or
facebook.

~~~
a-saleh
By "unless you become a CS Professor." you probably mean "unless you want a
career in academia" :-) Being a post-doc in a good research institution can be
fine, and with a good project even rewarding :)

~~~
matt_s
He and the OP are talking about a Bachelors degree though. Those are really
geared towards fundamentals of computer science and not necessarily applicable
skills to software engineering.

OP might want to look at very specific applied technology types of Bachelor
programs, like Software Engineering, databases, networking, etc. if he has no
intent on a Masters/PhD.

------
rbeardow
After 20 years experience in software development and no degree, I went back
at 39 to get a Bachelors. Firstly, I had always felt as though it was a dirty
secret that I didn't have a degree and I never knew which jobs I had been
turned down for because I did't have one. Secondly, when I looked at the
executive of the organisation I currently work for, every single one had
letters after their name. I realised it's very unlikely (but possible) to move
up the corporate ladder without at least a Bachelors, if I choose that path.
Thirdly, a Bachelors degree is used as a filter for many things - insurance,
immigration, bank loans. It helps to be able to check that box.

There is also, of course, the learning experience.

~~~
mrfusion
How did your resume look without a degree? I always figured just listing a
high school degree under education would look kind of barren/jarring? Maybe
leave off an education section altogether?

What letters can you put after your name after a bachelors? That seems weird
to me.

~~~
rbeardow
I always just left the education part off. I've been a contractor most of my
career and have only been asked once about it in an interview. I don't care
about the letters personally, but in Australia (where I am) it's common for
executive teams, boards, etc to include their qualifications after their
names.

------
lsc
A lot of schools offer certificates, if you are looking for vocational
training

[https://extension.berkeley.edu/public/category/courseCategor...](https://extension.berkeley.edu/public/category/courseCategoryCertificateProfile.do?method=load&certificateId=17558767)

(among others)

but my point here is just that college is... not vocational school. Which
isn't to say it's worthless, there are lots of good reasons to go to college,
and a lot of people feel they get a lot out of it; I'm just saying that if you
want vocational education and you go to college, you are not really using the
right tool for the job.

I don't have a degree myself, and I dunno, I do pretty okay. I probably would
do better if I were the sort of person who went to college; but I do a lot
better than a lot of people who are that sort of person, so who knows?

I personally want the non-monetary bits of college, but that's mostly...
hobby, you know? I like reading. I like talking about books. It really does
sound like a lot of fun.

Monetarily, though, getting a degree wouldn't get me a raise. It might help me
twenty years out, say, or if I spent a lot of time unemployed, as a degree
loses it's value much more slowly than a job at a prestigious place, but I
don't think a degree has a higher value in the short term than a job at a
prestigious place.

~~~
perl4ever
It seems to be a very popular meme these days to declare that college is not
vocational education, but that seems to me to be historically ignorant or
revisionist, because of how many universities originated as land-grant
colleges (e.g. Cornell) or teacher's colleges (e.g. SUNY Albany). Aren't the
universities that didn't originate as vocational education more the exception
than the rule?

It's as though people want to write out of history the whole political
movement to make education relevant to the masses during the industrial
revolution.

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-
grant_university](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university) and:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Land-
Grant_Acts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Land-Grant_Acts)

~~~
lsc
Huh. interesting. that was not my impression, but I didn't know about the
land-grant acts, so perhaps I am wrong. Vetoed by Buchanan - you don't get a
much stronger endorsement of a government action than that. It's interesting,
and I'm going to read up more on this; I mean, from the overview, it looks
like C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures" thing was a live issue much earlier than I
had thought.

Note, I think you might be using the word "revisionist" wrong. I was being
ignorant or lying, right? (I mean, I was being ignorant, but you can't tell
ignorance from deception at a distance.)

Historical revisionism is a different thing; and certainly not a thing you can
do without quite a lot of knowledge about the subject and the historical
context. It's not just making things up (any more than the rest of history
isn't just making things up) Go read the wikipedia article on it :)

------
dcorderoch
I have heard some people saying that experience is more important than a
degree, while others say that having a degree even without the experience is
more attractive, because it signals that you're willing to both work hard, and
learn

I would say it depends on what you want, if you think you'd be more
comfortable having a degree were you to apply for a job on another company,
either where you live, or in the same country but different place, or even
abroad, you should go for it, you'll probably regret not getting the degree
later on

if what you want is simply to become more marketable, maybe simply learning a
sought-after technology or framework could help you achieve that more easily,
or faster, depending on how much time you'd need to dedicate for the degree
(there is a lot of legacy code in Cobol for instance, telecommunications uses
erlang, these aren't all that popular, and BECAUSE of that, the few jobs that
use them might pay higher than the average job in programming, just to give an
example, though some people would prefer something other that better pay, like
shorter commutes, better life-work balance, working on something they can
truly get behind, etc.)

perhaps I'm biased, because I am in a similar position, I am "taking a break"
from my college program for a semester, and working full time as a C++
programmer, and I fully intend on finishing my degree, so I personally would
recommend you get the degree, as it might not only make you more marketable,
but also give you the opportunity to get a scholarship to pursue a higher
degree abroad, if that's something that might interest you (there are a lot of
scholarships that get wasted because nobody knows about them)

------
andrewhillman
Depends but NO. After running 2 successful companies I was thinking about
going back to school and I asked myself the same question but more importantly
the staff as me why I would want to go back to school with my real life
experienced. They knew of my endeavors. I was applying to get into Boston's
most well-known entrepreneurial schools. I sat in on two classes to see what
it was all about. I felt like I was in a room with high schoolers. It was
total cake. I answered the questions that most couldn't. Felt bad because I
had to set the teacher straight a couple of times as you could tell he wasn't
doing much outside reading textbooks. At the end of the course, the professor
asked if I'd like to give lectures during the semester. I said not right now.
But I got the answer to my initial question.

------
arisAlexis
I got my degree at 34 after working in the field for 15 years. The university
recognized it and I didn't have to take all the courses.This completely cured
any imposter syndrome in me and cured other idiots for asking me "but are you
really a software developer" or a hobbyist? Also helped a lot with job offers.
Do it.

~~~
ThrowawayIP
How did you start that conversation with your uni? I completed most of a
degree and now the thought of retaking all the basic classes is a large hurdle
to me going back to actually earn it.

~~~
arisAlexis
I sent a custom application describing my past. UK universities can liberally
assign credits for previous experience.

------
mchannon
Software dev as an industry tends to be bifurcated: startups and unicorns tend
to be very anticredentialist, at least when it comes to formal education.
They'd rather see X years at Y company than really care what school you went
to or what degree you got, unless that's all you have to show.

Unfortunately for you, this is slightly less true for Microsoft-centric
development environments. Government and big business still value the degree a
lot.

Unless your A.S. or A.A. is in basket weaving, getting some kind of BSCS in
five years of part-time distance ed would probably be both affordable and
worthwhile.

------
w0rd-driven
I went to college for a bachelor's degree from about 1998 to early 2000. I
never finished but I absorbed a breadth of the fundamentals. Once I started
getting into assembly and deeper C++ usage I lost interest. This was a little
before .NET 1.0 and my CS 101 course made everything coalesce. Prior to that I
had cut my teeth on Basic and specifically Visual Basic 3 and beyond but
without the fundamentals all I was really doing was creating forms and backing
code. It took understanding a different language like Pascal for me to first
get into Delphi and then follow the trail to C# where I would eventually land
a job as a full time WPF developer from being in primarily an IT focused role.

I think I got lucky and latched onto Pascal at just the right time. I don't
think Python or Java would've carried me as far as something about them is
actively off-putting. I have no problems reading just about any language and
I'm unsure how that happened exactly. I feel like it's likely the result of
being mostly self taught with CS 101 bringing about a matrix moment where I
finally started seeing the code.

I feel like some of the latter courses in specific languages may be a problem
for someone like me but considering I've never completed any, I may be
extremely biased. I've often wondered what I may be missing without completing
my degree, but for me today that would just be a piece of paper. If I've lost
opportunities for something that saddles me with more debt for very little
extra return of investment, I'd rather ignore the opportunities that have
passed me over rather than do something that feels like appeasement. I admit I
could be approaching this all wrong but I've had no problems being gainfully
employed for the last 8 years as solely a developer. I know the worth I've
brought to the companies I've been involved in even if interview processes in
the past have made me feel inadequate.

At the end of the day though it's ultimately going to come down to how you
feel. Do you feel you need this? Can you justify the downsides, the extra time
and money spent on something you've proven more than capable of handling over
the last 4 years? If you can handle the downsides, I say go for it. If you're
someone that feels like me, it's probably not worth it.

------
mstaoru
I dropped out of the university a day before defending my thesis — had a
conflict with my supervisor. 5 full years, but still no bachelors. I shrugged
it off at that point to proceed and have a 15-year career rising to a CTO in 4
years, and building several companies after.

However, now I am in China as a founder of a new company, and in order to
self-employ and sponsor a work visa for myself, I either have to go finish my
degree or set a ridiculous salary which is roughly 30x times country average
wage.

So if you plan on working in other countries, lack of a degree may pose some
difficulties.

------
EnderMB
When I was at university, there were a few older students that had come from
careers in software development.

They were split into two camps: One would study part-time over several years
to boost the knowledge they already have. The other would use it as a "reset",
in order to move into different types of development. Given our location near
a bunch of defence contractors and big-name engineering firms, many of these
developers were keen to get out of that world, and viewed getting a degree as
their chance to jump from low-level development to working on web stuff, or in
higher-level languages.

I remember one guy that flew through all of his programming assignments, and
would spend most of his time chatting to lecturers about C. He was earning
money that made student me's eyes water, but he took three years out and moved
into building web applications. Within a few years he went from junior to
technical manager at a large agency, and now he's heading his own startup.

On the .NET front, some of the best .NET developers I've worked with had no
degree, so I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing skills-wise, but I do
share your concern that you simply don't know what roles you'll have missed
out on due to not having a degree. It's also another layer to throw onto the
standard "imposter syndrome" that all developers face. Should you choose to do
a degree, my only advice is to budget well. The adjustment from 9-5 to student
life is hard enough without having to worry about whether you've got the money
to afford that book you really need.

------
Harken
"A degree isn't worth anything, but you have to have one to be able to say
that."

I went back and got my CS degree after 10 years of programming experience.

From what I've seen, degrees don't matter when the economy is good (as it
appears to be at the moment), but the lack of a degree can become a "reason"
to lay off, not to hire, or to assign to drudgework projects, when the economy
is bad.

This also requires guessing what the economy will be like when you expect to
get out, because it's hard to get a good job as a new graduate when times are
bad as well.

Ideally, you want your degree and a couple of years of new, full-time,
experience before the next recession. Your pre-college experience will become
nearly worthless during the 4+ years you're "away" from day-to-day production
programming.

What you learn in college is focused on theory, so won't generally be on
cutting-edge languages, libraries, and APIs, or the sorts of equipment that
will become available out in the world in the interim (Is cloud computing
anything more than a specialty elective class yet?).

Longer term, having the piece of paper will show employers that you can stick
to something for the years needed to complete it, and you'll vaguely-but-well-
enough remember the algorithms that you'll call as existing libraries rather
than ever hand-coding again, but mostly your degree will be a check in the
box.

Will your dream job require that box to be checked?

Just my opinion, but from having worked both without and with a degree. All-
in-all, I'm glad I have the degree, but it took several more years than I
originally anticipated to catch up and surpass where I feel I would have been
without it.

------
gt2
I think you should only do it if you have hit the ceiling of your potential.
You didn't say anything that indicates that so I would say no. Anecdotally the
best performers and best compensated had BS, BA or no degree so it's a no from
personal experience as well.

If you want to complete your education in case fundamentals or practical
applications there are plenty of courses available online.

------
nvarsj
You can probably always find a job if you're good enough, but there will be
opportunities forever shut because of the lack of a degree. I feel this myself
even though I have a B.S.

------
super-serial
Since you're using .NET I'm assuming you work in the corporate world and not
the trendy tech-startup world with "unlimited vacation" and nap pods?

A degree would increase your salary significantly in the corporate world. It's
worth doing if you plan to stay at your job or go anywhere similar. The
alternative is to learn React/Node/Go (trendy tech) and release a bunch of
side projects so you can get hired somewhere that doesn't care about degrees.
You'll also need to get better at white boarding and understanding algorithms
you'd never use outside of a tech interview.

I think the degree is the better choice if you want stability and plan to
start a family soon. The trendy tech choice is better if you want to travel
the world or do your own startup.

------
sixothree
I was a resident of New Orleans during Katrina and it was then I realized I
needed to be more marketable. I went back to school and got my Bachelors in
Computer Science.

Without it, I would not have the position I have now. It was a struggle but I
am more pleased with the results than you can imagine.

~~~
Buttons840
One of my worries about going back to school is that I'll return to the PHP
web development class where they were teaching about what GET and POST
requests are. I've been a web developer for 10 years, and such a class really
feels like a waste of time.

~~~
cweagans
It's a total waste of time, but at least it would be exceedingly easy. If you
already know the material, homework should be quick and studying should be
very, very limited.

------
theonemind
I don't know about the marketability aspect, so perhaps this doesn't answer
the question. I went to a top tier CS school and enjoyed the curriculum. I
never really worried about my GPA, I just took the hard, interesting classes.
It was a good experience if you can fit it in. Mostly, I just know little
tricks that I never use for problems I never have, like using parser
generators for parsing context-free languages and how dynamic programming
neatly solves some problems that look really hard arbitrarily close to the
perfect solution, map-reduce as a useful programming paradigm to scale things
that parallelize easily. Oh, and perfect uniform hashing. One of these days,
I'm sure it'll come in handy.

------
justaguyhere
The answer is obvious if it is a top tier school.

If it is not a top tier school, a degree might still be useful in these cases
- there are companies that will filter out resumes that don't have degrees
attached to them. Second and more important, if you apply for work visas in
other countries, degrees matter as most countries have some kind of point
system and you get points for age, experience, degrees etc. It will also be
useful if you want to get into research later on.

One of my friends was making 60K or something, then he did part time MBA from
a top tier school. His next job got him 150K, and it was a quick climb both in
terms of money and responsibilities from there.

So yeah, degrees are worth something.

------
togusa2017
My 2cents would be if you want yourself to be markatable, anything less then
top tier school is waste and won't do any good. But if your objective is to
learn and have a new experience then ur good with alot of schools.

------
jwhitlark
There are lots of good thoughts here. If the only thing is to make you more
marketable, then consider if there isn't something else less time and money
consuming that would give you more.

I think college has more to offer, but it really depends on what you want out
of it and how hard you want to work.

At the moment, the economy is booming. You could always go back to school
during the next downturn. When it's raining soup, put out your bowl and all
that.

I have seen professional doors shut because of a lack of a degree, or a lack
of a masters, or a phd. It all depends on what you want and what tradeoffs
you're willing to make.

------
ben509
I think a CS degree would be helpful and is worth looking into, especially if
your associates lets you trim off a few courses. Don't look to the degree to
make you more marketable, rather, look for the deeper understanding of the
math to help you solve problems that others can't.

If you're interested in being the person who builds the tools rather than
using them, I think you'll find yourself going further with a degree. In
addition, you may get more out of it because you're not starting from scratch.

------
jokab
I also worried about the same. But after 15 years of experience, I said to
myself: "just grab a copy of Rob Conery's Imposter's Handbook and move on"

------
tdsamardzhiev
Having a degree opens certain doors, namely careers in public sector, research
or university. It also makes getting a visa for some countries much easier.

If your life plan includes any of these, go get a degree. If not, returning to
school will be a waste of time.

Generally, the best way to make yourself marketable is to become ridiculously
good at something.

------
syntaxing
I'm a Mechanical Engineer that has a degree so I am not sure if this applies
to you and my findings are anecdotal.

I work(ed) with a lot of people that did not have degree and moved from the
production to design engineer. However, it took a lot of time for them to get
there. Also, I find that people with higher degrees tend to get promoted to
higher positions. Another big drawback of not having a degree is that it's
harder to move to the same position in a different company. I know many
coworkers who started at a lower engineering position (and lower pay) because
of the lack of degree. They'll eventually get promoted to their previous level
because of their expertise but this usually takes a couple years.

------
_superposition_
I have never felt I had any doors shut. Dropped out of CS after my first
semester when I got a job doing ops overnight and was being paid to learn more
than I was learning at school. Best decision I ever made (almost 20 years ago
now). No debt.

------
jason_slack
I think it is worth it. I am currently back in college at 41 for a degree in
Economics.

------
mabynogy
Some doors will always be shut down because of your pathway. Accept that as a
fact and avoid those people who value what you don't have. You'll miss
nothing. The other half of the world is better and more warmful.

------
CyberFonic
I doubt that a degree will make you more marketable. But you can learn many
things that will advance you way beyond being a .NET web developer.

Unfortunately, recruiters will never tell you why you missed out on a job, so
it is extremely hard to determine whether your lack of a degree is the reason
for missing out on a job or some other factor.

In my experience, solid experience trumps paper credentials. In companies
where that is not the case, you have to ask yourself whether you would even
want to work there.

