
Ask HN: Is it worth continuing my computer science degree? - speedyapoc
Hey HN,<p>Pardon me if this has been asked before but I am at a sort of crossroads in my life and would like some outside feedback.<p>I&#x27;m a (going into) 2nd year university student majoring in computer science.  For the last 4 and a half years, I&#x27;ve self taught myself iOS development, web development, and a wide variety of other computer related topics.  For over 3 years, I&#x27;ve been doing iOS  consulting for multiple international companies and startups and have racked up a pretty sizeable portfolio for my age.<p>Recently I was choosing my courses for second year and became discouraged at the electives required to continue in the computer science program.  I&#x27;m forced to take things that don&#x27;t interest me like psychology, basic marketing, etc.  This made me question whether it is even worth spending the money to get a degree when half of the work that I put in won&#x27;t even be relating to my field.<p>In my consulting jobs I&#x27;ve worked with and kept up with individuals that have over 15 years of experience in the field with degrees.  In addition, I feel like it could almost be better to consult for 3 more years and even land a full time tech job in my field instead of spending time at university.  In addition, during these 3 years I could optimize for my specific niche: iOS development.  However, I don&#x27;t know if the jobs that I&#x27;ve worked at so far are because of my experience alone or the fact that I have experience and am &quot;still in school&quot;.<p>Every adult that I talk to (all of whom have degrees) swear by them and say how they&#x27;re such a great fallback but I&#x27;m having a hard time connecting the value, especially in the field of computer science.  I suppose for more traditional jobs it would be beneficial but with the boom in startups lately, a degree is seldom necessary.<p>Essentially, is it worth continuing my degree?
======
mechanical_fish
As you may have realized, any adult older than forty went through college back
when it was _lots_ cheaper and students routinely graduated with job offers in
hand. You may be wise to discount our advice.

I wouldn't spend fifty or a hundred thousand dollars slogging through a major
that you hate, in exchange for a reward that you can't see yet. Take a break
for a while and get that full-time iOS developer job that you crave. Work for
a while, save every penny you can, and await future developments.

When circumstances change, and iOS developers become as commonplace as Java
developers are today, or the economy cools off for a while, or you find
yourself jammed against a career ceiling, or you become bored out of your mind
in your little cubicle, or you grow a little older and suddenly realize that
your dream is to become a computational molecular biologist with an art
studio: College will still be there. Believe me, even when you're forty and
fifty colleges will still happily take your money. (Although I was once warned
that medical schools don't admit students older than thirty-five, so don't
wait _too_ long to become a heart surgeon.)

~~~
tptacek
As someone with the opposite experience (I have just a semester of college):
if you're even a little bit successful with the iOS development job, it's
going to be very hard to go back to school. Once you let it, life happens
fast.

I don't regret not going to college, but I'm not happy about how drastically
my life choices foreclosed it for me.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Okay, I'll take your word for it. Let me put on a different hat and try a
different tack.

\---

This _is_ the best time in your life to go to college. It _will_ be harder to
go back, later. But you're wasting your limited college time on iOS
development, which has nothing to do with college and vice versa.

You will have the rest of your life to build iOS applications, if that's what
you want. (In ten years, let alone twenty or thirty, it probably won't be.)
But you'll only have a few years of access to a university: It costs a fortune
to go, and it's hard to find the time. Make the university count, or take my
original advice and get out until you're ready to take it seriously.

You need a real major: That is, one which is real to you. Based on your
question, I'm not convinced that CS is it. I count three mentions of iOS in
your question, and zero mentions of such things as compiler theory, concurrent
operating systems, cryptography, programmable logic, deep-UV photolithography,
or computer vision algorithms. If you can't get inspired by anything from that
list, or if your so-called CS department doesn't offer such subjects, study
something else.

(Just because you like programming doesn't mean you're supposed to like CS. CS
is to programming as physiology is to playing football, and you can love
weight training, passing, and tackling without necessarily loving vesicular
transport and the troponin-tropomyosin complex.)

I'm a physicist so I tend to recommend sciences - physics, chemistry, biology,
geology, astronomy, meteorology - or mathematics, or engineering. But I know
wonderful programmers who studied classical music, medieval Icelandic, and
Renaissance essays. (And art, architecture, and design, of course, but that
goes without saying.) Steve Jobs, legendarily, only liked one college course:
Calligraphy. It doesn't matter what you study. Find something more
challenging, more interesting, or more awesome.

Labs. You'll never see them again once you graduate. Take every lab course you
can stomach.

It saddens me to hear complaints about electives. Elective courses are
beautiful. The best of them are professionally-guided tours of other fields,
custom-designed to showcase the good parts. Ask around, find out who the best
teachers are, and take whatever they offer.

------
bicx
> but with the boom in startups lately

That will not always be the case, and when the market starts cooling off, you
will want as many options as you can find. A degree may feel worthless right
now, but it provides you with a well-rounded skill set and credentials that
bigger companies with actual HR departments will value. Developers won't
always be the ones who filter through the resumes.

------
slagfart
Firstly, it sounds like you have a very solid grounding in programming. Why
not expand your mind? Take some economics, law or statistics subjects, and you
may find a personal interest and niche at the intersection of the two fields.
The classical reason that they force kids to do this is so that you don't
develop narrowly as an individual. If you don't want to do psychology, do some
research into other fields, find one you want to learn about, and talk to the
professors about swapping psych for one of them. Remember - programmers in IT
are a dime a dozen. Programmers in other fields are rarer than hen's teeth.

Secondly, as an employer a degree serves as a signal that a student is ready
and willing to accept short-term pain in return for long-term gain. Compared
to other graduates who have a degree, you'll always be second-best.

Lastly, don't be fooled by the perception that iOS will be around forever. A
degree will give you a foundation that you can fall back on.

You've already made the commitment of the first year - stick it out. Talk to
the professors about accelerating your course if you're doing incredibly well
and finding it boring.

~~~
thearn4
> programmers in IT are a dime a dozen. Programmers in other fields are rarer
> than hen's teeth.

this is absolutely the best point made in this discussion so far.

------
junto
I believe that my CS degree was worthless to me. I learnt nothing. Everything
I know is self-taught, either pre-university or post-university. I kid you
not.

However, and here is the kicker; My degree is NOT worthless to the multiple
employers I have had. Of course it was worthless in reality, but those letters
after my name helped.

Stupid, but a fact of life.

I recommend you finish the degree, but do the stuff you love alongside. To be
honest, the fact that you are enjoying your programming gigs is a great thing.

Going to university is similar to going to school, except nobody bugs you
anymore about doing work. You have to play smart within the system, whilst
abusing it to your own benefit within the confines of the rules that you can
manage to bend without breaking them. Know your Rubicon.

~~~
hashtag
This. I can't tell you how often the barrier of not having a degree is an
issue, even in places like Silicon Valley where supposedly skills matter more
(yet majority of postings including for a large number of startups requires a
degree).

If you have a solid portoflio, solid work experience, etc... this might not be
an issue down the road but it can be difficult just making that first step.
Unlike Junto, I didn't get a degree. I dropped out. I regret not doing
something about it sooner. Although things did work out in the end, having
that degree would have been much easier even if the courses and everything
else turned out to be useless relative to what you do.

Go to school. Work on projects and learn on the side. Make connections while
you're still in college.

------
zxcvvcxz
I would finish it. You'll be pushed to do courses like analysis of algorithms
and operating systems, very tough and important topics you might not cover
otherwise on your own.

While these may seem disconnected, the fact is you will build much more
intelligence here than continuing to make (likely trivial, sorry) iOS and web
apps. Basically with a proper CS education you will learn the fundamental
skills needed to adapt to new technologies, rather than being a "trade worker"
of the tech industry whose experience and knowledge is confined to languages
and frameworks that can fall out of style at any point.

------
anthonycerra
There's a price at which it's worth it and a price at which it's not. $10k?
Sure. $200k? Nope. Now it's a matter of finding that inflection point.

Do you have any scholarships? What percentage of the degree are you paying for
and how much of that is being financed?

Might you be able to walk into the president's office and negotiate your
tuition? Not the bursar. Speak to a decision maker with vision. If you're as
good as you say you are and can prove, with pay stubs, that companies also
find you that valuable as a sophomore, you're an asset to your university.

You're the success story they're dying to tell prospects. And you might be
willing to make introductions to those companies just in time for the campus
career fair. And what about when you become an alumnus? If you're this
promising as a sophomore, where will you be in 10 years that they can continue
to reap the benefits from? College is a business, too. Sell them on you.

You're concerned that you could better spend the time in university improving
your skill in iOS development. How can you leverage those gigs in your
curriculum to count toward credits?

As for the courses you're not interested in, don't make the assumption that
you are aware of all the things you will ever need to know to be successful in
life. But again, there's a price at which that exposure makes sense, and a
price at which it doesn't.

------
frostmatthew
> Every adult that I talk to (all of whom have degrees) swear by them and say
> how they're such a great fallback but I'm having a hard time connecting the
> value...

If the consensus of more experienced people is that you should complete your
degree you're probably going to be better off listening to them.

Another two or three years might seem like a long amount of time when you're
20ish but the difference between having one vs not having one can very likely
have an impact for the _rest of your life_.

~~~
jagawhowho
Thousands of Americans are debt slaves for the rest of their life because they
followed the consensus of "good" advice.

The comp sci field may be the exception but you still have to be careful
taking advice from people who purchased their degree for a fraction of the
purchasing power required for 2014 degrees.

~~~
Ologn
How much is an in-state CS degree from schools like UIUC, Berkeley, or any of
the public universities from which so many successful programmers have come
from? Factor in Pell grants and such, and it is not so bad.

I did IT work during the day, and took public college classes at night and on
the weekends, and took on no debt at all.

People should look at the numbers, possible salaries, debt and all of that. If
you're thinking vocationally and as an investment, an English degree from
Sarah Lawrence might not be worth it, depending on your financial situation. I
myself would rather have some debt and be working through the next recession
or two, then to have no diploma, no debt, and not be working through the next
recession or two. If he can't get a job during the next recession, he is going
to go into debt, and not have a diploma.

------
com2kid
> Recently I was choosing my courses for second year and became discouraged at
> the electives required to continue in the computer science program. I'm
> forced to take things that don't interest me like psychology, basic
> marketing, etc. This made me question whether it is even worth spending the
> money to get a degree when half of the work that I put in won't even be
> relating to my field.

Well now it depends.

Do you want to be a front line programmer your entire life?

Sure, skip taking those courses. Never learn about psychology, after all, what
use is knowing how people think, leave that up to someone else. They can
figure out what the user's want.

And hey who needs marketing? I mean you may make the best piece of software in
the world, but you don't want to actually sell it do you?

Those electives are what make for a well rounded person. Writing good code is
hard, but engineering software that serves ends users well is a lot harder and
requires a lot more knowledge.

From understanding cultural issues around the world, to basic principles of
design. Having a wide background helps a lot.

~~~
sportanova
You're making the assumption that psychology classes teach you how people
think, and that marketing classes teach you how to generate sales - they
don't. If he was still interested, he could just buy the textbooks, or more
likely, get similar resources for free online.

~~~
ashleyt
Learning from a textbook about psychology is not the same as having
discussions, generating ideas, learning from others and teaching others. Just
my opinion though :).

~~~
sportanova
yeah, wasted 4 years doing that. would have been way better spent working..
anywhere

------
seekingcharlie
I'm 24 & had to make a similar decision to you. I had a full-time job offer in
a startup when I was 19, 2 years through my CS degree. I decided to stop
university & work.

I rarely think about going back, my work experience & portfolio of actually
building products has entirely outweighed the "piece of paper". I'm in a SF
startup now, on a very good salary for my age & I have years of experience
now. It has never been a deciding-factor in landing jobs.

That said, if you want to work at the big corporates (Google, Apple etc etc),
I would imagine this is where you would need it. Also, if you are not from the
US, having a degree is pretty much essential to getting a work visa.

Devs are in such demand, particularly in SF/The Valley, that I truly believe a
degree would always be overlooked for actual experience. As other posters
mentioned, there are CS degrees on Coursera etc now that you could still
continue to study for free in your spare time.

------
RogerL
How long before you are completely, utterly outsourceable?

I don't know why you think business and marketing are useless. I'm a
programmer, and had more than one conversation today on how to market our
product. Most technical decisions depend on business decisions. I don't make
the business ones, but I have to know when the business folks are missing
something (it is more common for tech types to know business than vice versa)
and inform them.

I need linear algebra. I need statistics. I need physics. I need algorithms
and optimizations. I need to understand DCF. It goes on and on. I'm taking
time out tonight from reading a pretty heavy math book to answer this.
Learning will never, ever stop.

All of that must be caveated by the quality of your school. Some schools will
set you up to be able to do anything you want in the field for the next
several decades. A bad one, well, good luck. I wouldn't waste the money if you
are at the latter.

------
brianchu
Firstly, what's you financial situation? Are you paying for college, do you
have a scholarship, etc.?

I think anyone can make it without a degree given sufficient motivation. I'm
doing a degree because I recognize I don't have the motivation to teach myself
certain areas of "hard" math, statistics, and theoretical CS. Yet I recognize
that these topics will be useful. All of these topics can be learned through
MOOCs/MIT OCW today (given sufficient motivation).

An alternative you could consider is to try transferring to a top CS school
like MIT/Berkeley/CMU/Stanford/UIUC, or to another all-around top school. You
may find that you'll be seriously challenged and stretched at those schools
(or maybe not). This depends on your financial situation, though.

------
CyberFonic
In order to secure a good job you need a great portfolio that shows that you
have the aptitude and talent required for the job.

As long as you are willing to continue learning and keeping pace with
technology (iOS could wane or you could lose interest) you should continue to
be in demand.

BTW even if you got your degree, you would still need to keep up to date. I've
seen too many people who stop learning as soon as they graduate. They end up
in management sooner or later.

If you are able to get consulting jobs that you like now, then I doubt that
getting the degree is going to get you better jobs or more money.

------
xiaoma
I believe the CS degree is one of the least useful degrees there is. The two
things most people get from a degree are the knowledge and the credential.

The material in a CS degree is pretty accessible for self study compared to
that of some other majors. No expensive materials are required beyond a $500
computer. Instructors don't generally spend time with you while you are
actually programming, so you won't be missing the kind of 1 on 1 feedback a
music major would get. Also of critical importance, CS materials tend to be
strongly represented in MOOCs. There are already people using Coursera, edX
and OCW to complete full degrees (see:
[http://youtu.be/piSLobJfZ3c](http://youtu.be/piSLobJfZ3c)).

As far as credentials go, it's a similar story. There are few fields in which
the credential matters less than they do in tech jobs. Tons of my friends work
at YC companies with either unrelated degrees or none at all. I personally
graduated with a Japanese degree and still managed to break into the industry
quickly once I started focusing on developing my hard skills. I received
interview offers from pretty much every top tech company in the bay area and
the degree never came up. I very, very nearly took one of them but instead
chose to do a start-up. At this point it's possible some investor would be
hesitant about us because we don't CS degrees, but it's also probably likely
they'd be interested in our exceptional backgrounds.

One caveat to this is is that without the CS degree you have to have the
skills. Also I wouldn't count too much on being an iOS domain expert since
specific tech stacks keep changing. You probably want to learn all the things
you'd get from a CS degree if you don't have them already.

Unlike a lot of posters here I really don't see anything wrong with not
getting the degree. I would strongly suggest that you make a bargain with
yourself and save/invest everything you would have spent on college. That will
limit your downside and give you the option to stop working and get the degree
if you change your mind and/or find your skill-set is no longer in demand.
Even if you learn the equivalent of a CS degree on your own, you might find
yourself wanting to return and study something like applied math, which pretty
much gets you by the credential barrier for any job a CS degree does plus
quite a few others.

~~~
Ologn
>The material in a CS degree is pretty accessible for self study

Whether or not it is, I have yet to meet anyone who has done self study who
has studied theory of computation, mutual exclusion, and that sort of stuff,
month on end, like CS students do. Everyone seems to go straight to what is
immediately useful, like the syntax of Objective C and so forth.

Also, the big technological leap allowing this was the Gutenberg printing
press, not MOOCs and the like. Theoretically one just needs the textbooks and
some other materials to self-study almost any topic. Yet people have still
been going to universities for centuries. The movable type printing press was
the major innovation for this, MOOCs have been relatively minor in comparison
to this thus far, yet people have still gone to universities for the past few
centuries.

> Also of critical importance, CS materials tend to be strongly represented in
> MOOCs

I did not find this to be the case. Some subjects we went into in class that I
did not understand or wanted to look into more indepth, I would go online
looking at Youtube videos, MOOCs, various materials etc. I was usually
disappointed. If I was lucky I would get a poorly shot Youtube video of some
professor with a thick foreign accent explaining the subject, often poorly.

~~~
yen223
I'm a 'self-learner' (graduated with a non-CS degree) who went through the
Machine Learning course on Coursera, which inspired me to pursue my Master's
in Computer Science

You are right about self-learners avoiding heavy academic subjects. The huge
problem with self-learning is that I had a moron for a teacher. There's just
too many unknown unknowns - I didn't know what I was missing out on.

Oh, and the credential helps too. Immigration departments don't look at Github
profiles :)

~~~
ciaranm
> Immigration departments don't look at Github profiles :)

That's a fantastic point, and one which has probably been overlooked so far in
this thread. Yes, it's entirely possible you'll be able to find a great
job/company in your home country, but good luck getting a skilled workers visa
in any major country without having 'professional' level qualifications.

------
sharemywin
The most interesting course I took in College was comparative studies. read
quite a few books I would have never read in a million years. With
perspectives from authors about things I wouldn't have thought about. Plus,
why aren't you going to college parties and having fun. You can try working
hard in your twenties and going to college parties in your forties but that's
just awkward.

------
lily2014
I do not think that you must get the CS degree. Someone go to the school
because they do not have equal specticic niche, and they do not have the
ability to taught themselves, a god study habit.But you do. So it is worth
contuning your degree. But you need to continue teaching yourself. That is the
most important thing.

------
alain94040
Sounds like marketing and psychology could prove very useful in the long term.
And a CS degree is great to cleanup the hands-on experience you have. So based
on what you described, I'd say: yes, continue your degree.

~~~
CyberFonic
Like it or not, sooner or later you need to interact with "real people" and in
that area a bit of psychology and marketing smarts can pay off.

------
hooya
If you've been able to keep up with others solely with the know-how you've
picked up on your own in terms of software development, then great; my advice:
take as many non-CS classes as possible. After you graduate, you'll spend all
of your time in CS - constantly learning. But you'll rarely get a chance to
learn anything else. College is where you do it.

Really, I see college as a way to learn how to learn. You've done that with
CS, it seems. Now learn how to learn in other areas. You'll probably never get
another chance.

During college I hated having to take any non CS class. In hindsight, I'm
really glad I had to.

------
sharemywin
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8019558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8019558)

------
ashleyt
How can you be interested in consulting and not psychology?

------
Ologn
> with the boom in startups lately, a degree is seldom necessary

This is true. What do you do when the boom ends though? Companies went through
layoffs in 2008, in 2000-2001, in the early 1990s etc. What will you do once
you're married with kids, laid off and then any job opening available needs a
college diploma. Yes, you're OK for the next year. Will you survive the next
downturn though, and the one after that?

> In addition, during these 3 years I could optimize for my specific niche:
> iOS development

Specialization is good, but you never know what might happen. Whether or not
it's likely, it's conceivable Android could kill off most iOS jobs in a few
years. At that point a broad underpinning of CS theory and a diploma are
helpful. Will you be doing iOS development 20 years from now? It's hard to
say.

> kept up with individuals that have over 15 years of experience in the field
> with degrees

Some people get degrees without ever seeming to have learned much. It's not
something that should affect your decision one way or the other. When time
gets tough and Craigslist job postings start saying "BSCS required", an e-mail
from you saying that you have "kept up with individuals that have over 15
years of experience in the field with degrees" is not going to mean much.
They'll be knee-deep in resumes of people who have a BSCS. Yours will go right
to the waste bin, in many cases.

> I'm forced to take things that don't interest me like psychology...half of
> the work that I put in won't even be relating to my field

Most of the pioneers of computer science did and do have an interest in human
psychology - Marvin Minsky, Noam Chomsky, John McCarthy, Alan Turing and on
and on. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion, two years into a CS
program and without knowing what the psychology course was teaching, that it
was irrelevant to computer science.

> Every adult that I talk to (all of whom have degrees) swear by them and say
> how they're such a great fallback but I'm having a hard time connecting the
> value, especially in the field of computer science.

When the economy goes south, it is better to have a degree than not to. Also,
while theoretically someone can do a program of self study, I've never met
anyone without a CS degree who understood pushdown automata, theory of
computation and so forth. It is helpful to have an underlying intellectual
framework. It is possible to be a code monkey who can put together for loops
and if statements in PHP or Objective C and so forth, and make money doing it,
but an intellectual framework allows people to do more. I see people self-
studying practical things such as learning a programming language, but it's
very rare for someone to spend months studying theory of computation, or
representation of floating point numbers, or formal mathematical definitions
of computational complexity, and so forth. So there are gaps in their
knowledge. They can muddle along, but then one day they will have a critical
race condition crashing their program. As they never studied mutual exclusion,
they will only have a vague idea of what will do. Software in general is
famous for mutual exclusion bugs, precisely because so many people who don't
know what they're doing can jerry rig for loops and if loops together to get
something going, but have no deeper understanding of theory, architecture and
so forth.

~~~
jkarneges
> When time gets tough and Craigslist job postings start saying "BSCS
> required", an e-mail from you saying that you have "kept up with individuals
> that have over 15 years of experience in the field with degrees" is not
> going to mean much. They'll be knee-deep in resumes of people who have a
> BSCS. Yours will go right to the waste bin, in many cases.

You're only as good as your last record. Who cares what anyone was doing 15
years ago? The degree you got when you were 22 is the same as the trophy won
by the school's quarterback: an old nostalgic story at best. It's not who you
are today, and I hope you've done far more interesting things since then. I
only look at the past couple of positions a person had on their resume anyway.

Even if HR does operate the way you say, I hope we can all agree it's pretty
stupid.

------
TomJohnson
I believe neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates received a 4-year college degree.
They had some college (Gates had 2 or 3 years at Harvard(?)), but no degree.
There is a difference between a trade school, a school that teaches you one
specific trade (maybe how to be an electrician (I was), or, in this case
programming), and a 4-year college degree. The college degree "broadens" you,
not as in fat, but as in understanding and appreciating things outside your
specific areas of interest. While many of the non-software courses may seem a
waste of time, your knowledge does become wider and you may at some future
time find that one of those out-of-major courses actually has some utility and
may, help you. I have spent a large portion of my life (in time, effort and
money) becoming educated. I have degrees in engineering, biology, and
medicine, and I do not regret having any of these degrees. They are all useful
and I may actually have too many, but I have been curious all my life and like
to learn. Now that I am retired, and after 25 years out of software (mostly on
military projects), I have taken up the task of studying, learning, and
mastering C++. During this past year I have read Bjarne Stroustrup's
"Programming Principles and Practices using C++" (2009), Lippman's "C++
Primer", 5th edition (2013), and Stroustrup's "The C++ Language", 4th edition
(2013). That's about 3,000 pages. At this stage, I have achieved the software
skills rank of "GrassHopper". Software, as used in the fields of computer
science and computer engineering, has progressed over the years. First there
was coding, then programming, then computer science, then software
engineering. The rate of change is increasing. You are a young person. Your
resume' and you reputation are everything and so far you are doing well. You
are getting work. But, at some point there will be a job, an opportunity, that
will present itself and the applicant MUST have a 4-year college degree.
Period! If you do not take the time, while you are young, to get your degree,
you will never have a degree. You will miss some opportunity. Every person
that you know who has a college degree took the time, expended the effort and
money, to "earn" a college degree. You have to make the sacrifice to be able
to earn your degree. You are not given a degree. You earn it. As some
anecdotal evidence of that, let me describe an event. Everyone knows and
respects the Nobel prize winning physicist, the German-born Jew, Albert
Einstein. Me, too. But my personal hero is the American-born Jewish
mathematician and physicist, Richard P. Feynman. You can learn about Feynman
in his biography, "Genius". He was a mathematical genius and a physics genius.
He invented the "Feynman diagram". At one point, when he was working on his
PhD, one of Feynman's advisers suggested to Hans Bethe, the senior adviser,
that they go ahead and award Feynman his PhD. Bethe responded, "Yes, yes, yes!
We all know Feynman is a genius. But, ... has he done the work (for his PhD)?
So, ... my young, successful, full-stack software engineer, that is the story.
The decision is up to you. I recommend the earning the degree, just like
everyone else has.

------
jagawhowho
Ancedote: A college grad made more money with his guitar playing in bars than
with his english degree.

If you are generating good income with your skills then you have already
achieved the goal.

