Ask HN: Is going back to college worth it if you already have experience?

I think you should only do it if you have hit the ceiling of your potential. You didn't say anything that indicates that so I would say no. Anecdotally the best performers and best compensated had BS, BA or no degree so it's a no from personal experience as well.

If you want to complete your education in case fundamentals or practical applications there are plenty of courses available online.

Software dev as an industry tends to be bifurcated: startups and unicorns tend to be very anticredentialist, at least when it comes to formal education. They'd rather see X years at Y company than really care what school you went to or what degree you got, unless that's all you have to show.

Unfortunately for you, this is slightly less true for Microsoft-centric development environments. Government and big business still value the degree a lot.

Unless your A.S. or A.A. is in basket weaving, getting some kind of BSCS in five years of part-time distance ed would probably be both affordable and worthwhile.

The people in charge of hiring decisions are as diverse as you and I or anyone. Some of them will say: "I don't like this guy because he doesn't have a degree". There's many more that would still hire you despite not having a degree.

CS is a fascinating subject and great fun to study. But, truth be told, most of the knowledge you gain will be completely useless in your day to day job, unless you become a CS Professor. Just think about it, you don't have a degree and you've already completed 4 years of software engineering experience: that should tell you everything you need to know about that.

If you do, do it, then just get one of those online degrees where you do the minimum amount of work: that way, you can decrease cost and maximize your ROI. At this point, it's just going to be a small line item at the end of your resume, mostly there for checkbox purposes.

There is one exception. If you get a chance to go to a top tier college like Standford or harvard or MIT, obviously, a lot of people are going to like that. And it may open a few doors for you that might not otherwise be open. It would probably give you a sizable advantage in an interview at Google or facebook.

I'm a Mechanical Engineer that has a degree so I am not sure if this applies to you and my findings are anecdotal.

I work(ed) with a lot of people that did not have degree and moved from the production to design engineer. However, it took a lot of time for them to get there. Also, I find that people with higher degrees tend to get promoted to higher positions. Another big drawback of not having a degree is that it's harder to move to the same position in a different company. I know many coworkers who started at a lower engineering position (and lower pay) because of the lack of degree. They'll eventually get promoted to their previous level because of their expertise but this usually takes a couple years.

You can probably always find a job if you're good enough, but there will be opportunities forever shut because of the lack of a degree. I feel this myself even though I have a B.S.

I think it is worth it. I am currently back in college at 41 for a degree in Economics.

I was a resident of New Orleans during Katrina and it was then I realized I needed to be more marketable. I went back to school and got my Bachelors in Computer Science.

Without it, I would not have the position I have now. It was a struggle but I am more pleased with the results than you can imagine.

A lot of schools offer certificates, if you are looking for vocational training

https://extension.berkeley.edu/public/category/courseCategor...

(among others)

but my point here is just that college is... not vocational school. Which isn't to say it's worthless, there are lots of good reasons to go to college, and a lot of people feel they get a lot out of it; I'm just saying that if you want vocational education and you go to college, you are not really using the right tool for the job.

I don't have a degree myself, and I dunno, I do pretty okay. I probably would do better if I were the sort of person who went to college; but I do a lot better than a lot of people who are that sort of person, so who knows?

I personally want the non-monetary bits of college, but that's mostly... hobby, you know? I like reading. I like talking about books. It really does sound like a lot of fun.

Monetarily, though, getting a degree wouldn't get me a raise. It might help me twenty years out, say, or if I spent a lot of time unemployed, as a degree loses it's value much more slowly than a job at a prestigious place, but I don't think a degree has a higher value in the short term than a job at a prestigious place.

After 20 years experience in software development and no degree, I went back at 39 to get a Bachelors. Firstly, I had always felt as though it was a dirty secret that I didn't have a degree and I never knew which jobs I had been turned down for because I did't have one. Secondly, when I looked at the executive of the organisation I currently work for, every single one had letters after their name. I realised it's very unlikely (but possible) to move up the corporate ladder without at least a Bachelors, if I choose that path. Thirdly, a Bachelors degree is used as a filter for many things - insurance, immigration, bank loans. It helps to be able to check that box.

There is also, of course, the learning experience.

I think a CS degree would be helpful and is worth looking into, especially if your associates lets you trim off a few courses. Don't look to the degree to make you more marketable, rather, look for the deeper understanding of the math to help you solve problems that others can't.

If you're interested in being the person who builds the tools rather than using them, I think you'll find yourself going further with a degree. In addition, you may get more out of it because you're not starting from scratch.

I have never felt I had any doors shut. Dropped out of CS after my first semester when I got a job doing ops overnight and was being paid to learn more than I was learning at school. Best decision I ever made (almost 20 years ago now). No debt.

The answer is obvious if it is a top tier school.

If it is not a top tier school, a degree might still be useful in these cases - there are companies that will filter out resumes that don't have degrees attached to them. Second and more important, if you apply for work visas in other countries, degrees matter as most countries have some kind of point system and you get points for age, experience, degrees etc. It will also be useful if you want to get into research later on.

One of my friends was making 60K or something, then he did part time MBA from a top tier school. His next job got him 150K, and it was a quick climb both in terms of money and responsibilities from there.

So yeah, degrees are worth something.

I don't know about the marketability aspect, so perhaps this doesn't answer the question. I went to a top tier CS school and enjoyed the curriculum. I never really worried about my GPA, I just took the hard, interesting classes. It was a good experience if you can fit it in. Mostly, I just know little tricks that I never use for problems I never have, like using parser generators for parsing context-free languages and how dynamic programming neatly solves some problems that look really hard arbitrarily close to the perfect solution, map-reduce as a useful programming paradigm to scale things that parallelize easily. Oh, and perfect uniform hashing. One of these days, I'm sure it'll come in handy.

My 2cents would be if you want yourself to be markatable, anything less then top tier school is waste and won't do any good. But if your objective is to learn and have a new experience then ur good with alot of schools.

Since you're using .NET I'm assuming you work in the corporate world and not the trendy tech-startup world with "unlimited vacation" and nap pods?

A degree would increase your salary significantly in the corporate world. It's worth doing if you plan to stay at your job or go anywhere similar. The alternative is to learn React/Node/Go (trendy tech) and release a bunch of side projects so you can get hired somewhere that doesn't care about degrees. You'll also need to get better at white boarding and understanding algorithms you'd never use outside of a tech interview.

I think the degree is the better choice if you want stability and plan to start a family soon. The trendy tech choice is better if you want to travel the world or do your own startup.

I went to college for a bachelor's degree from about 1998 to early 2000. I never finished but I absorbed a breadth of the fundamentals. Once I started getting into assembly and deeper C++ usage I lost interest. This was a little before .NET 1.0 and my CS 101 course made everything coalesce. Prior to that I had cut my teeth on Basic and specifically Visual Basic 3 and beyond but without the fundamentals all I was really doing was creating forms and backing code. It took understanding a different language like Pascal for me to first get into Delphi and then follow the trail to C# where I would eventually land a job as a full time WPF developer from being in primarily an IT focused role.

I think I got lucky and latched onto Pascal at just the right time. I don't think Python or Java would've carried me as far as something about them is actively off-putting. I have no problems reading just about any language and I'm unsure how that happened exactly. I feel like it's likely the result of being mostly self taught with CS 101 bringing about a matrix moment where I finally started seeing the code.

I feel like some of the latter courses in specific languages may be a problem for someone like me but considering I've never completed any, I may be extremely biased. I've often wondered what I may be missing without completing my degree, but for me today that would just be a piece of paper. If I've lost opportunities for something that saddles me with more debt for very little extra return of investment, I'd rather ignore the opportunities that have passed me over rather than do something that feels like appeasement. I admit I could be approaching this all wrong but I've had no problems being gainfully employed for the last 8 years as solely a developer. I know the worth I've brought to the companies I've been involved in even if interview processes in the past have made me feel inadequate.

At the end of the day though it's ultimately going to come down to how you feel. Do you feel you need this? Can you justify the downsides, the extra time and money spent on something you've proven more than capable of handling over the last 4 years? If you can handle the downsides, I say go for it. If you're someone that feels like me, it's probably not worth it.

I dropped out of the university a day before defending my thesis — had a conflict with my supervisor. 5 full years, but still no bachelors. I shrugged it off at that point to proceed and have a 15-year career rising to a CTO in 4 years, and building several companies after.

However, now I am in China as a founder of a new company, and in order to self-employ and sponsor a work visa for myself, I either have to go finish my degree or set a ridiculous salary which is roughly 30x times country average wage.

So if you plan on working in other countries, lack of a degree may pose some difficulties.

There are lots of good thoughts here. If the only thing is to make you more marketable, then consider if there isn't something else less time and money consuming that would give you more.

I think college has more to offer, but it really depends on what you want out of it and how hard you want to work.

At the moment, the economy is booming. You could always go back to school during the next downturn. When it's raining soup, put out your bowl and all that.

I have seen professional doors shut because of a lack of a degree, or a lack of a masters, or a phd. It all depends on what you want and what tradeoffs you're willing to make.

I also worried about the same. But after 15 years of experience, I said to myself: "just grab a copy of Rob Conery's Imposter's Handbook and move on"

I have heard some people saying that experience is more important than a degree, while others say that having a degree even without the experience is more attractive, because it signals that you're willing to both work hard, and learn

I would say it depends on what you want, if you think you'd be more comfortable having a degree were you to apply for a job on another company, either where you live, or in the same country but different place, or even abroad, you should go for it, you'll probably regret not getting the degree later on

if what you want is simply to become more marketable, maybe simply learning a sought-after technology or framework could help you achieve that more easily, or faster, depending on how much time you'd need to dedicate for the degree (there is a lot of legacy code in Cobol for instance, telecommunications uses erlang, these aren't all that popular, and BECAUSE of that, the few jobs that use them might pay higher than the average job in programming, just to give an example, though some people would prefer something other that better pay, like shorter commutes, better life-work balance, working on something they can truly get behind, etc.)

perhaps I'm biased, because I am in a similar position, I am "taking a break" from my college program for a semester, and working full time as a C++ programmer, and I fully intend on finishing my degree, so I personally would recommend you get the degree, as it might not only make you more marketable, but also give you the opportunity to get a scholarship to pursue a higher degree abroad, if that's something that might interest you (there are a lot of scholarships that get wasted because nobody knows about them)

Some doors will always be shut down because of your pathway. Accept that as a fact and avoid those people who value what you don't have. You'll miss nothing. The other half of the world is better and more warmful.

Having a degree opens certain doors, namely careers in public sector, research or university. It also makes getting a visa for some countries much easier.

If your life plan includes any of these, go get a degree. If not, returning to school will be a waste of time.

Generally, the best way to make yourself marketable is to become ridiculously good at something.

Depends but NO. After running 2 successful companies I was thinking about going back to school and I asked myself the same question but more importantly the staff as me why I would want to go back to school with my real life experienced. They knew of my endeavors. I was applying to get into Boston's most well-known entrepreneurial schools. I sat in on two classes to see what it was all about. I felt like I was in a room with high schoolers. It was total cake. I answered the questions that most couldn't. Felt bad because I had to set the teacher straight a couple of times as you could tell he wasn't doing much outside reading textbooks. At the end of the course, the professor asked if I'd like to give lectures during the semester. I said not right now. But I got the answer to my initial question.