

Ask HN: Do I need a degree? - ephess

I&#x27;m 22 years of age, and live in New Zealand. I left school at quite a young age to pursue a career, and I now work as systems engineer for a successful technology start-up (~100 employees) where my team is responsible for scaling the platform as the company grows.<p>I had never considered getting a degree until about a year or so ago, when a family friend who works in senior management for a large hydro-power company told me it would be invaluable later on in my career, he described it as a &#x27;ticket&#x27;. Since then I&#x27;ve been working towards a BSc in CompSci part time at a local university. It will take me another 6 years to complete.<p>I think I would be better of learning in a self directed way as I have up until recently. I used to spend my evenings exploring whatever seemed interesting at the time, and I attribute a lot of my success to this. Now when I get home from work I have to study, and by the time I&#x27;m done I have no energy left for self-directed study.<p>I&#x27;ve been considering withdrawing from the bachelors program, however I&#x27;m worried there&#x27;s something I&#x27;m going to be missing by not having a degree. I&#x27;m particularly interested in start-ups, and would love to work in the bay area, or a similar environment at some point. That said, I&#x27;d also really like to work on my own business ideas, and think that my evenings would probably be better spent pursuing things I&#x27;m interested in rather than slogging away for a piece of paper.<p>Ultimately I&#x27;m concerned that if I don&#x27;t get a degree I&#x27;m going to need it one day. Perhaps to get a MBA, or work in the US (visa requirement), or something else that I haven&#x27;t thought of.<p>So HN, how important is a degree?
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gexla
Compsci is probably among the more time intensive degrees you could be
shooting for. It's heavy on math requirements, which requires a lot of
practice to fully understand. The degree is also relatively rigid in its
structure of requirements. You need math classes throughout and they all build
on each other. The compsci courses also build on each other. The math classes
are also requirements for the compsci classes. It's real easy to screw up a
semester (can't get into a class because it's full, have to drop a class,
can't take all the classes you need because of the load) and throw everything
out of whack. It's easy for a full time student to end up with a 5 year
schedule, let alone someone who has to work full time.

If you are just looking for a piece of paper, then perhaps something Xbusiness
would be better.

As to the value of the degree itself. I don't know. You have been on a career
track without it and you have been fine so far. Having a degree probably opens
up your options, but it's not the driver. There may be opportunities you can't
pursue because of a lack of a degree. But as long as you still have options,
then it's not a problem. In the tech field, it's more about what you know and
your network rather than having a degree. A more important consideration might
be getting a work visa for the U.S. I don't know if it's easier to get a visa
while having a degree. This is something you will have to look into.

I don't know that self study would solve anything. You have to put in X hours
to pass a subject and you probably have to put in that time either through
self study or while taking an actual course. You could self study before the
course to pass the course with less work, but you still had to put in the time
before hand.

You might also need to take a close look at your study habits. Is there
something you could be doing different? Is there a way that you could
substantially reduce your work load in school? Maybe you could let your grades
drop a bit in certain subjects by keeping up on the material but skipping
certain time consuming assignments?

The bottom line is that you should have a certain idea of what you want to do
and then do what you need to do to accomplish that. If you are starting a
business which will require all your time, then something has to give. If the
business is more important, then you will have to drop school. You have
already made that decision once, what would be different in the future?

Edit: I don't know that going to the bay area and having a degree in compsci
is a requirement for making an impact. Maybe it would be better to get
knowledge of a field outside of compsci so that you can apply your development
skills to that field. The best opportunities for start-ups are probably in
things that a typical compsci grad living in the bay area probably wouldn't
even think about because that person doesn't have that exposure. That's the
area of unknown unknowns. Instead, you get a bunch of start-ups creating "me
too" consumer apps that nobody cares about.

There are a lot of problems to be solved outside the bay area. The bay area
may be a hub of tech activity, but just as important are the outposts. For
example, Uber is a service which supports a limited number of metro areas in
the U.S. while WhatsApp aims to service the entire globe. I live in the
Philippines are there are lots of problems to be solved here that people in
the bay area don't know about. Bill Gates would never have got his idea for
his foundation if he had never visited Africa.

So, lots of approaches and limited time. Use it wisely. ;)

~~~
ephess
I actually started out doing a bachelor of business studies program, but
switched to CS as I figured I would enjoy it a bit more. The math has been a
lot of work, I don't have a strong math background.

The ability to get a US work visa is something that has worried me. I looked
into this when I got approached about a job opportunity in the states a while
ago, however it turns out I can't work in the US without a degree, or 12 years
experience. That said, I'll have 12 years experience around about the same
time I'd complete my degree, so it's probably not really going to help with
that.

I think your edit is actually pretty spot on, I probably need to worry less
about finding a start-up that's going to make it big and focus more on finding
a problem that I can solve locally. The scale in NZ is quite small
unfortunately, there are only 5m people here which is one of the reasons I
figured I'd need to look overseas.. perhaps it just means there's less
competition?

Lots to think about - Maybe I'll finish this semester and then spend the rest
of the year working on one of my ideas and see where I get to, if I don't have
any luck I can continue my BSc next year while I come up with another idea.

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gm
One thing: Different countries view college degrees differently. In some, if
you do not have a college degree, you will not even get considered for the
job, no matter what you've done.

It might affect work visas as well (some countries give a lot of weight to a
college degree when assigning a priority to your application).

Of course, to get stuff done you do not need a degree and examples abound
about people who "made it" without a college degree. Granted, they learned
everything on their own, so if you have a low motivation to learn stuff that's
important in your field but boring to you (for example, algorithms and data
structures), you might want to get through the degree just to force you to
learn stuff.

For me, I'm in the US, where college degrees matter relatively little,
specially in tech. Still, I can say without a doubt my CS degree has opened
many doors for me, even a couple decades after having gotten it. Also I have
had to fight far less to get good salary offers. Once people know I have a CS
degree, we move onto the advanced stuff instead of them trying to see if I'm
an idiot or not.

That's my $0.02, your mileage may vary.

~~~
ephess
One of the things I'm most worried about is that a country I'd like to work in
has really different culture in regard to university than we do here. To be
honest, from my perspective I've always thought US to be a country where
degrees mattered quite a bit.

Attending university in New Zealand doesn't seem to have nearly as much weight
placed on it as it does in America, although that may just be a perception
thing.

Thanks for your input =)

~~~
gm
To be fair, in the USA, it depends on the industry that you are going into. If
you are planning on joining the startup world, the attitude ranges from
indifference to the degree to downright hostiliy (do your best to hide that
you have an MBA, for example!). Startups tend to evaluate you on effective
skills that you know how to apply, degree or no degree.

In pretty much all other fields, including non-startup tech jobs, degrees do
matter a ton more.

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parkovski
I don't know if there's a good answer for this. Or rather, there are many good
answers, but they depend on your personality, field of interest, motivation,
etc. Personally I'm not a big fan of school because I'm really motivated to
learn on my own, and in school I have to redo a lot of stuff I've done several
years ago. A lot of people I've met in school don't learn anything that isn't
presented to them in class, so it's a valuable resource for them. Ideally,
that divide would answer the question for you (shouldn't it be enough to just
show you know what you need to know?), but the world isn't ideal.

I live in the US already, so this might not be as easy for you, but my
impression is that as a programmer with good jobs and a portfolio (GitHub), I
could probably get a job in silicon valley pretty easily. I might be able to
get a higher paying job with a degree, but if I find something and work for a
couple years, I'd probably be fine.

If you're looking to move here, my impression is you have to have a company
sponsor you, and that is probably harder without a degree, but not impossible.
Since you're in a college program, you might want to intern at a company here,
and prove you're someone they want to bring back.

But finally, there's this: as a programmer, are you going to be homeless if
you don't have a degree? I really doubt it. So I may have lied a little when I
said I wasn't a big fan of school. I hate it. I wish I didn't, but I do. I
thought I could go back to school for a year to finish up, and just deal with
the unhappiness. Maybe I could if I really wanted to, but I don't. So maybe
I'm making more obstacles for myself in the future, but the trade off is that
I'm a lot happier right now.

So I guess I haven't really answered your question for you, but hopefully my
thought process helps you come to a conclusion for yourself. Also, why not
find out right now? Look up some bay area companies you'd like to work for,
and apply. If you get in, then no, you don't need a degree. And if you don't,
then maybe you do, but you can always keep trying.

~~~
ephess
My understanding of the sponsorship system is that the company has to prove
that they're unable to hire someone with your skill-set locally. To do this
they have to prove you have a specialized skill-set, which means either a
university degree, or 12 years industry experience.

I was approached by Facebook a while ago but nothing came of it as I didn't
have a degree, it would be too hard for them to get me a visa.

I'm not too concerned with increased earning potential, or ability to actually
get jobs. I earn towards the upper end of the pay spectrum for my field in New
Zealand, and I've never had trouble getting interviews. I'm more concerned
that I'm going to have issues moving into leadership positions and the like.
Perhaps I'd have more trouble overseas though.

~~~
parkovski
Hmm, yeah, I don't know a whole lot about other countries' policies.

If it means anything, one of my friends' dad is an executive at a company
here, and is supposed to have a degree, but the company just kind of ignored
that requirement because they felt he was the best one for the job. I'm sure
there are a lot of cases where that won't happen, but in some cases it can.

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iamwithnail
Well, it depends which of those things you want to do. If you want to do an
MBA then a) why, and b) probably get a degree.

If you want to work in a big corporate, then probably get a degree; less so
for a startup, but I know that even in the London startup community, the
opening criterion is "smart and went to a good school". Smart is more
important than "good school", but the latter is often (but not always) a good
proxy. If you're able to build an exceptional portfolio, then degree won't
matter, but I do mean _exceptional_. But then the best coder I know is self
taught, 22, never touched a degree and gets paid £600+ a day. If you want to
do your own business stuff, then jdi. A degree won't help you much. (It'll
help, but not as much as 3x years direct experience of business stuff
yourself.)

Disclaimer: I have a BA, MSc and am finishing a phd (all non technical) - I'm
all about the education. And yet I wish I'd gone and done more stuff, instead
of studying. Go figure.

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loladesoto
you do not need a degree to be successful. what you need, above all, is hard
work + determination.

you will be asked to explain your lack of degree, however. so your best
strategy is so lead a life so successful, that your story overcomes any bias
you may encounter. :>

~~~
ephess
very motivational comment, thank you!

I've been asked before why I don't have a degree when, I've always thought
that meant I should have one. Next time I'll take it as an opportunity to
explain why I don't need one. =)

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cfredmond
i'm in the states and have gotten pretty far pretty quickly without one but i
think it really depends on the person. most/ all of the people i work with
have one.

