

Ask HN: Should I go for engineering? - cupofjoakim

Hey guys, I have a question.<p>I&#x27;m currently working as a front end developer at a brand agency in Stockholm, Sweden. The work&#x27;s fun and varying in difficulty - sometimes it&#x27;s brand websites, sometimes it&#x27;s prototypes and sometimes it&#x27;s interaction demos. It also pays decently considering my age (23), experience (3 years) and earlier education (2 years at Ad school).<p>As it stands right now, I&#x27;m self taught. I enjoy programming a lot, but I know that I do lack some basics that CS bachelors know. I still am not fluent in any other language than javascript, even though I know my way around php and swift.<p>I&#x27;m considering going back to school to get a bachelors in CS, but it would mean a huge time investment. I didn&#x27;t read enough math and physics before graduating, so I&#x27;d need what the Universities in Sweden call a &quot;basår&quot;. It&#x27;s like a year where you get prepared to study the actual engineering programs. All in all it&#x27;d mean 4 years to get a bachelors. I can freelance during those 4 years, I&#x27;ve got a good network, but I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;d be the best way to spend my time.<p>Should I go for it or should I not? Anything else I should consider?
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ramtatatam
Basing on my experience I would first ask you a question - how much do you
like doing it. "it" means fiddling with code, handling legacy and not so often
creating your own stuff. Also what technologies do you want to work with - web
technologies is that right? I'm guessing some people won't like that idea but
I can advice basing on my own experience - you do not need to go back to
school to do this stuff for your living. I'm holding MSc in engineering not
relevant to software engineering nor computer science and still I'm working in
software engineering. Having that said holding a valid qualification is an
entry requirement for many well paid job posts out there. So if you do not
hold a degree then it's a good time to get around that since later it will be
much more difficult (i.e. when you consider a great project called 'family'
your time is basically vanished).

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cupofjoakim
Thank you for the response. The family aspect is certainly something I do
think about. I don't think I'll be having kids for another ten years, but I'd
like to know that I could get a job in a smaller town than Stockholm, which
isn't as easy as a front ender compared to an engineer. A kid needs a bit of
nature, I think :)

Doing web is not as important as I might've made it sound in the original
post. I just want to feel challenged at all times, and front end isn't doing
that as often as I'd like it to. For now I'm moving into full stack, but I
think the concept of machine learning is intriguing as well, even if it is
very far away from where I am at this point.

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ramtatatam
In such case going for degree might be a good idea - depending on university
you pick there are wide and narrow courses. Wide in the meaning that they
touch many areas giving you a feel of what is it waiting down the corner if
you decided to specialise in that direction. That's what I was studying -
pretty multidisciplinary course and I'm happy with it even though I work in
quite a different market than what I was studying for.

