I feel the same way. I went straight into the workforce with 17. Now 5 years later I feel like I absolutely need that degree to advance my career or to simply avoid my resume being thrown out. So I went back to school and I bet you can already guess what happens. Now that I have to spend at least 25 hours a week studying I barely have time to work on my software skills. I used to learn stuff like writing compilers, work with FPGAs, read up on machine learning, etc... You can argue that maybe I focused too much on individual topics and a CS degree covers many more but at the same time the lack of a degree isn't what's hindering me from working in these areas. I'll finally be done with school soon and then I can go to college next year and I definitively am going to specialize in topics that I am unfamiliar with such as robotics. However, I bet the end result will be that I will work on the same trivial web applications as I am doing right now but with a pay bump and more opportunities during the job hunt.
> I feel the same way. I went straight into the workforce with 17. Now 5 years later I feel like I absolutely need that degree to advance my career or to simply avoid my resume being thrown out.
> However, I bet the end result will be that I will work on the same trivial web applications as I am doing right now but with a pay bump and more opportunities during the job hunt.
I started working in the field professionally around 18 or 19, and I'm begging to fear this same thing. If I do decide to go back to school, it'd be in hopes that I can escape subfields that bore me to death, but I feel the reality is that there just really isn't any real job market for the things I'm interested in.
