Tech Jobs without a Degree(techjobswithoutdegree.com)
techjobswithoutdegree.com
Tech Jobs without a Degree
https://techjobswithoutdegree.com/about
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"College forces you to interact with people and ideas that you either disagree with and/or were completely unaware of. It's the single best way to reduce the number of "unknown unknowns."
So does getting a job, volunteering, traveling the world, doing a mission trip, serving in the armed forces, etc, etc.
There is a social cost to having people spend 4-6 years in college. And colleges are increasingly becoming government-subsidized vacation from the real world. We should ask whether the core benefits of college that we want to actually subsidize - education, training, etc. - can be done cheaper and faster through other means. Cut the cruft.
Look, I was a humanities major in college and I loved it. But looking back, the four year experience seems like an extremely expensive exercise in upper-class cosplay. It was a luxury that the taxpayers, in effect, paid for.
So does getting a job, volunteering, traveling the world, doing a mission trip, serving in the armed forces, etc, etc.
There is a social cost to having people spend 4-6 years in college. And colleges are increasingly becoming government-subsidized vacation from the real world. We should ask whether the core benefits of college that we want to actually subsidize - education, training, etc. - can be done cheaper and faster through other means. Cut the cruft.
Look, I was a humanities major in college and I loved it. But looking back, the four year experience seems like an extremely expensive exercise in upper-class cosplay. It was a luxury that the taxpayers, in effect, paid for.
"humanities major in college" - i think i found your problem
you can learn skills outside of your classes and come out with the benefits of both. college isn't a job training program outside of a few majors
> College forces you to interact with people and ideas that you either disagree with and/or were completely unaware of.
So does a job (or an apprenticeship, or just participating in society at all). And a job is typically a less forgiving environment - there are fewer safe spaces where you can insulate yourself and your views from others.
Looking back on my college experience - it was a way to continue to coast along without having to face the pressures of making a living. The cost of that coasting was deferred to later in life, and was definitely not worth it.
The only thing I honestly regret from my college years is not partying more - not taking advantage of the myriad of socialization opportunities.
So does a job (or an apprenticeship, or just participating in society at all). And a job is typically a less forgiving environment - there are fewer safe spaces where you can insulate yourself and your views from others.
Looking back on my college experience - it was a way to continue to coast along without having to face the pressures of making a living. The cost of that coasting was deferred to later in life, and was definitely not worth it.
The only thing I honestly regret from my college years is not partying more - not taking advantage of the myriad of socialization opportunities.
Collage gives you a broad overview of your chosen field. There are so many concepts I would not be aware of if I never went to college. Looking back now, learning programming myself without a degree would have been much harder. I have a much better idea of where to look for a solution to some problem than I would if I had not attended college.
There are many, many ways one can accomplish this. And to a great extent, it's becoming more difficult to broaden one's idea exposure on college campuses. For example, I believe I learned more about myself and life in general from the U.S. Army than I did from college.
Ok. I went to college because I wanted a brighter future than my parents (read: I wanted to make more money than them). So from that perspective college has not been very valuable at all.
I don't think I'm in the minority in that way at all.
I don't think I'm in the minority in that way at all.
I often see people pointing out that college has other pros other than just teaching people technical skills, which many can learn from other sources.
My 2 cents: College has also many cons. Apart from the monetary issue, college forces talented people to learn things way more slowly than they could, in a much less efficient way than its possible. College also forces you to go through some very uninteresting classes. Some people would argue that this good, since in the "real world" that is often what happens. I don't like this line of reasoning: that is part of the problem. You shouldn't do what you don't like, and college shouldn't teach you that. From a biological point of view, college is the most productive time in your life.
Should we really be forcing (and by that I mean: should the people hiring engineers require a degree) people to sit through slow, sub-optimal, boring classes during their most productive years, in the hope that they get used to being unhappy most of the time?
College may be good to some people, but it may also hurt a lot of talented people, who waste their valuable time and become used to the fact that its ok to be unhappy with what you're doing. It's not.
My 2 cents: College has also many cons. Apart from the monetary issue, college forces talented people to learn things way more slowly than they could, in a much less efficient way than its possible. College also forces you to go through some very uninteresting classes. Some people would argue that this good, since in the "real world" that is often what happens. I don't like this line of reasoning: that is part of the problem. You shouldn't do what you don't like, and college shouldn't teach you that. From a biological point of view, college is the most productive time in your life.
Should we really be forcing (and by that I mean: should the people hiring engineers require a degree) people to sit through slow, sub-optimal, boring classes during their most productive years, in the hope that they get used to being unhappy most of the time?
College may be good to some people, but it may also hurt a lot of talented people, who waste their valuable time and become used to the fact that its ok to be unhappy with what you're doing. It's not.
I didn't go to college. I started teaching myself when I was 10 to write PHP/MySQL/HTML/CSS/JS. I got my first "real" job when I was 18, fresh out of high school. I'm now nearly 22, making more than either of my parents, with no student debt, and I am so glad I didn't decide to go to college.
My advice is to take a gap year before college. If you can become gainfully employed during that gap year, why bother?
My advice is to take a gap year before college. If you can become gainfully employed during that gap year, why bother?
This is mostly a US issue, though. In many European countries, for example, you can get a decent education without being left in large debt.
I prefer to live in a society where, when in doubt, people are usually more educated than they actually need to be. This is far better than the reverse.
The bad thing is the debt, not the college.
I prefer to live in a society where, when in doubt, people are usually more educated than they actually need to be. This is far better than the reverse.
The bad thing is the debt, not the college.
Be careful not to confuse education with schooling.
>The bad thing is the debt, not the college.
To add to this: the bad thing is that college is being peddled as necessary for career placement/advancement, when it's just another big business looking to profit off of young people who don't know what to do with their life.
College level education is great. The more educated and well-rounded a society is the more it will benefit from each other. The fundamental problem is exploitation for profit (much like our health care/insurance industry here in the US).
To add to this: the bad thing is that college is being peddled as necessary for career placement/advancement, when it's just another big business looking to profit off of young people who don't know what to do with their life.
College level education is great. The more educated and well-rounded a society is the more it will benefit from each other. The fundamental problem is exploitation for profit (much like our health care/insurance industry here in the US).
universities aren't for-profit institutions. the increase in cost was because states cut back funding for universities, forcing higher tuition and higher debt loads on students
> I prefer to live in a society where, when in doubt, people are usually more educated than they actually need to be. This is far better than the reverse.
The US has among the highest levels of university education attainment on the planet. [1][2] That's one part of the cost inflation problem.
You can in fact still receive a tremendous education in the US without ending up with large student loans.
The median cost of in-state tuition + fees to public universities in the US is close to $8,000 per year (the average is $9,650). The US has a lot of great public universities.
You can solidly get a four year degree, work occasionally on the side, and exit college with between $0 and ~$16,000 in student loans. $100,000 in student loan debt is not a requirement to getting a good engineering job making $60,000+ per year in the US.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...
[2] http://www.russellsage.org/sites/default/files/Fig10_Compara...
The US has among the highest levels of university education attainment on the planet. [1][2] That's one part of the cost inflation problem.
You can in fact still receive a tremendous education in the US without ending up with large student loans.
The median cost of in-state tuition + fees to public universities in the US is close to $8,000 per year (the average is $9,650). The US has a lot of great public universities.
You can solidly get a four year degree, work occasionally on the side, and exit college with between $0 and ~$16,000 in student loans. $100,000 in student loan debt is not a requirement to getting a good engineering job making $60,000+ per year in the US.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...
[2] http://www.russellsage.org/sites/default/files/Fig10_Compara...
$16,000 is actually a pretty big debt, though. It might not seem much compared to the amount some students in the US owe, but being $16,000 in debt places severe restrictions on your life options.
Bear in mind that there is a big different between $16,000 of debt payable over 20 years at 4.5% interest and say, a car loan for $16,000 payable over 4 years at 10.9% interest.
Right, but if you have the $16,000 debt, you have to work a job that pays a reasonable wage. Even ignoring the interest, $16,000 over 20 years is $66 a month.
I think a gap year is great for people who have some direction, like you. You were self-motivated and you taught yourself a lot of programming so you had the skills necessary to get a job. But not all people have the same kind of motivation, and I think some folks still need just a little more "time" to wander around in a traditional academic setting before deciding on what they want to do.
I think maybe the better advice might be to go to community college or a trade school. That'll give people the same type of structure they might need to learn without the price tag, and also still allow them to develop a lot of core social skills required for adulting.
I think maybe the better advice might be to go to community college or a trade school. That'll give people the same type of structure they might need to learn without the price tag, and also still allow them to develop a lot of core social skills required for adulting.
You sound kinda like myself when I was your age (I'm 44 now).
A week after I graduated high school, I moved out of my parents house to another state to attend a vo-tech school for a 1 year associates. Six months prior to graduation from that school, I had started my first job in software engineering. I graduated, and continued to be gainfully employed.
Today I wish I had gone to college to obtain a degree in CompSci. I'm not certain, but I am pretty sure I could have obtained an MS, if not gone further. I base this on my fairly recent experiences with my understanding and abilities vis-a-vis with MOOC courses for ML/AI. They have shown me that I have an aptitude for understanding this more advanced stuff - and likely always have.
Had I gone to school then, things would likely be better today. I'd probably be earning more, or have even gone down the startup route (I recall asking the owner of the company I first started at how he started the company - so there was interest there, and still is today to an extent - though I understand more about myself as an adult to know that I would probably be a poor business owner). More than anything, though, I would have a much better understanding of the deep and theoretical underpinnings of computer science, plus the knowledge of the math behind it all.
Today, with the MOOCs and other methods I am trying to make up for this lost time. I don't believe that it will change my salary or life; I don't think I will be likely to publish any papers on arXiv advancing the state of the art or anything, but I do intend to make some changes. If I'm very lucky, I might even manage a BS.
I don't think the years of work missed in my career nor the debt would have been that large of a burden in the grand scheme of things (granted, back then it was much cheaper to go to college than it is today); for me, the tradeoff for the knowledge would have been worth it.
My problem then and today is that I am lazy by nature (another reason I wouldn't be a good business owner); I did not want to spend more time at a school doing a ton of homework and such. That attitude has likely cost me a lot in missed and lost opportunities.
What doesn't make sense to me in light of that, though, is that I love to learn and I seek out opportunities and means to do so. I guess what I don't like is rote busywork; let me learn something, give me some examples, let me try my own hand at it, and once I am comfortable with the knowledge, let me move on.
High school doesn't do that, and I didn't realize I was like that until much later, and nobody told me that college doesn't work like high school. I know these things now, which helps me to tailor my self-studies better. But while I might have not listened back then, I also kind of wish somebody had told me and guided me better.
/working with what I have, and doing well at it, though...
A week after I graduated high school, I moved out of my parents house to another state to attend a vo-tech school for a 1 year associates. Six months prior to graduation from that school, I had started my first job in software engineering. I graduated, and continued to be gainfully employed.
Today I wish I had gone to college to obtain a degree in CompSci. I'm not certain, but I am pretty sure I could have obtained an MS, if not gone further. I base this on my fairly recent experiences with my understanding and abilities vis-a-vis with MOOC courses for ML/AI. They have shown me that I have an aptitude for understanding this more advanced stuff - and likely always have.
Had I gone to school then, things would likely be better today. I'd probably be earning more, or have even gone down the startup route (I recall asking the owner of the company I first started at how he started the company - so there was interest there, and still is today to an extent - though I understand more about myself as an adult to know that I would probably be a poor business owner). More than anything, though, I would have a much better understanding of the deep and theoretical underpinnings of computer science, plus the knowledge of the math behind it all.
Today, with the MOOCs and other methods I am trying to make up for this lost time. I don't believe that it will change my salary or life; I don't think I will be likely to publish any papers on arXiv advancing the state of the art or anything, but I do intend to make some changes. If I'm very lucky, I might even manage a BS.
I don't think the years of work missed in my career nor the debt would have been that large of a burden in the grand scheme of things (granted, back then it was much cheaper to go to college than it is today); for me, the tradeoff for the knowledge would have been worth it.
My problem then and today is that I am lazy by nature (another reason I wouldn't be a good business owner); I did not want to spend more time at a school doing a ton of homework and such. That attitude has likely cost me a lot in missed and lost opportunities.
What doesn't make sense to me in light of that, though, is that I love to learn and I seek out opportunities and means to do so. I guess what I don't like is rote busywork; let me learn something, give me some examples, let me try my own hand at it, and once I am comfortable with the knowledge, let me move on.
High school doesn't do that, and I didn't realize I was like that until much later, and nobody told me that college doesn't work like high school. I know these things now, which helps me to tailor my self-studies better. But while I might have not listened back then, I also kind of wish somebody had told me and guided me better.
/working with what I have, and doing well at it, though...
I'm a self-taught senior developer that has worked successfully without a diploma for decades.
Is bypassing college a viable path in tech? Yes, definitely.
Is college worth it? Hard to say. If you are going strictly to have a piece of paper and learn "job skills", no. If you are going for a wider education, connecting with other people and a world of ideas, absolutely. Those are experiences that I regret doing without.
However, there is one directly career-related reason to get an undergraduate degree: While many tech jobs don't require one (especially in the first few years of your career), many of the jobs you may want mid-career will increasingly require a _graduate_ degree.
For example, you can get pretty far doing User Experience work without a degree but I've noticed that more and more senior UX positions or UX architect positions strongly recommend, if not require, a Master's Degree. Likewise, you could be doing everything required of a Data Analyst at your current job but when you go to apply to other companies for a DA job you will likely be competing with and interviewing with people with graduate degrees.
So, my best "old timer's" advice is: Skipping college could very well be the best strategy for some, at first. After you've settled into a few years of work, though, go to night school and get the degree. That way, a graduate degree will be within reach a few years later when you want to pivot into a different or higher career.
Is bypassing college a viable path in tech? Yes, definitely.
Is college worth it? Hard to say. If you are going strictly to have a piece of paper and learn "job skills", no. If you are going for a wider education, connecting with other people and a world of ideas, absolutely. Those are experiences that I regret doing without.
However, there is one directly career-related reason to get an undergraduate degree: While many tech jobs don't require one (especially in the first few years of your career), many of the jobs you may want mid-career will increasingly require a _graduate_ degree.
For example, you can get pretty far doing User Experience work without a degree but I've noticed that more and more senior UX positions or UX architect positions strongly recommend, if not require, a Master's Degree. Likewise, you could be doing everything required of a Data Analyst at your current job but when you go to apply to other companies for a DA job you will likely be competing with and interviewing with people with graduate degrees.
So, my best "old timer's" advice is: Skipping college could very well be the best strategy for some, at first. After you've settled into a few years of work, though, go to night school and get the degree. That way, a graduate degree will be within reach a few years later when you want to pivot into a different or higher career.
Where'd the title come from? This doesn't have much information about the value of college.
> Are companies willing to hire tech people who do not have a degree?
> I don’t know, but I want to get some answers.
> Are companies willing to hire tech people who do not have a degree?
> I don’t know, but I want to get some answers.
This seems more like a re-hash of the questions that have been asked hundreds of times already. There's not much critical thought beyond
>"I would recommend taking a few humanities and social science courses, even though most tech employers do not list them as job requirements."
I think at this point most people are skeptical of the viability of a traditional 4 year degree and the debt it creates. Non-traditional paths have been peddled and marketed extensively. Bootcamps, community colleges, DIY approaches.
It's been made clear that companies are willing to hire non-traditional students. The biggest question, in my mind, is what is cap for these types of students? Where does the career trajectory end, and how does that stack up to regular 4-year-degree holders?
What is the real value of college these days? Connection building? Prestige? It certainly isn't job security or prospects. Not to mention the dollar-cost trade off of average debts.
>"I would recommend taking a few humanities and social science courses, even though most tech employers do not list them as job requirements."
I think at this point most people are skeptical of the viability of a traditional 4 year degree and the debt it creates. Non-traditional paths have been peddled and marketed extensively. Bootcamps, community colleges, DIY approaches.
It's been made clear that companies are willing to hire non-traditional students. The biggest question, in my mind, is what is cap for these types of students? Where does the career trajectory end, and how does that stack up to regular 4-year-degree holders?
What is the real value of college these days? Connection building? Prestige? It certainly isn't job security or prospects. Not to mention the dollar-cost trade off of average debts.
[deleted]
> For these reasons, people should consider the possibility of starting a career in tech without going to college, and employers should consider the viability of hiring such candidates.
How does this differ from the status quo?
How does this differ from the status quo?
That's a good question.
I believe that a lot of people see not having a degree as an impediment to getting a job "in tech", and therefore never set out down that path. In my experience, the reality of that is much different: I don't have a degree and I know many others in my situation. What I do have is professional experience. I don't think my lack of a degree has held back my career or limited my earning potential.
I believe that a lot of people see not having a degree as an impediment to getting a job "in tech", and therefore never set out down that path. In my experience, the reality of that is much different: I don't have a degree and I know many others in my situation. What I do have is professional experience. I don't think my lack of a degree has held back my career or limited my earning potential.
The problem is that many employers will toss resumes without a degree on them without a second thought.
First, why would you want to work for an employer like that? Second... why would you just submit a resume and do nothing else? If you're looking to land a job you need to be networking and making yourself known. The path here isn't to find a way through the HR filter, but to simply go around it.
This isn't just an HR filter, or something you can email your way around. Not having a college degree looks like risk, so unless you get lucky, your resume will not be considered. It sucks, but that's how things are at the moment.
Kind of how IBM stuck around for so long because 'no ones ever been fired for buying IBM'.
Kind of how IBM stuck around for so long because 'no ones ever been fired for buying IBM'.
Some companies require a degree, others will hire you but hold you back from some Senior level positions/professional advancement until you get a Bachelors degree.
It comes down to what is an HR filter and what is nice to have for negotiating advantage/advancement.
However as the industry evolves it would be nice for the entire pipeline from grade/highschool to career to facilitate a techcentric education and not even require 4 years in a college setting to prepare an individual for a career in tech.
It comes down to what is an HR filter and what is nice to have for negotiating advantage/advancement.
However as the industry evolves it would be nice for the entire pipeline from grade/highschool to career to facilitate a techcentric education and not even require 4 years in a college setting to prepare an individual for a career in tech.
Note that this post links to the "about" page, and clicking on the page's title will take you back to the home page. It's a job board.
For me, at the moment, it's a "Loading ..." board. Nothing shows up.
Education is not necessarily something that has value to the employer, but it certainly is valuable to the individual.
I for one value tremendously the fact, that I met so many people much smarter than me who had the time to have all those conversations with me and weed out some of my more ridiculous ideas.
That being said I studied in Europe, so I didn't have to shoulder the burden of student debts.
I for one value tremendously the fact, that I met so many people much smarter than me who had the time to have all those conversations with me and weed out some of my more ridiculous ideas.
That being said I studied in Europe, so I didn't have to shoulder the burden of student debts.
The title is pure link bait. Why not use the original title "Tech Jobs Without Degree"?
Atleast here in India a degree from a top tier engineering college matters the most
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
To me, college was extremely valuable. College forces you to interact with people and ideas that you either disagree with and/or were completely unaware of. It's the single best way to reduce the number of "unknown unknowns." Was it overpriced? Yes. Were the loans "worth it"? Not sure. But the solution to this societal problem is surely to make attending college more affordable, not to erode the fundamental importance of an educated society.