Ask HN: Returning to university as an experienced developer

If you already have experience, a degree doesn’t mean that much - at least in the US.

Also, again in the US, most online degrees aren’t taken seriously by hiring managers.

The best way to learn is by changing companies and learning from other people. You’ve taught yourself this much, stay on that road.

I believe formal classes in good universities certainly help. You end up learning things that you would think are too boring or not directly related to your job. But in my 15 years of working and dozens of interviews, no one ever asked me about my courses or anything related to my education. I never asked anyone I interviewed about what they lerned in college.

I returned to University in my late 20s after spending several years in industry. After three years, I completed a business degree (with a major in marketing).

While I can't claim that I learned many things that have actually changed the trajectory of my career, having the paper has certainly helped me get the first round of resume selections. It's really just a credential and checking off a box.

I did gain a tremendous amount from the students and (especially) professors I met. Three years in University in my late twenties has had a tremendous impact on my network. To this day (11 years after I convocated), I still reap the benefits from that network.

When I went back to school, I was quite a bit older than most of my fellow students, so I gravitated towards professors and older students. Being in business, many of the older students had huge amounts of experience in industry.

Three caveats:

1.) I studied business, not computer science.

2.) I studied in person and not online.

3.) I focused on building my network.

Worth it for me. I got a minor in CS, did web development for 3 years, and then enrolled in a CS master's degree for professionals at a prestigious (expensive) university. In school I purposely avoided "software engineering" type classes and focused on more theoretical, mathy CS classes. The classes exposed me to a lot of things I wouldn't have learned otherwise and the shiny master's degree probably helped me land a job at a prestigious tech company. In the end, I like school and didn't feel like I was finished at the end of undergrad. YMMV.

In my experience certificates like this are considered pretty useless by most software engineers. Anybody can do a certificate and have their hand held all the way through it. Real world experience in much more valued. Also software dev is both an applied skill and a fast developing field too in which not everybody agrees on the right way to do things, so its hard for universities to keep up with the changing times. Plus whatever job you get after university will probably require you to learn a ton of new stuff anyway. Basically I don't believe that software engineering is a field in which you can go off to study for a year and then be considered better at your job because of it. (This could be different if you were to study a more specific subset of computer science like security, computer graphics, machine learning etc.)

That said you've been a developer for three years so are in a pretty good position to try moving to a company which does more advanced stuff and further your career. This of course has the added benefit that you don't have to make any financial sacrifices, in fact you will probably get paid more by doing this.

Finally you mentioned getting into Appsec, if you want to specialise in a field like this then I would highly recommend that. As I said earlier spending time to specialise in a field like this would be worth while, you could do a degree or do a certification like the OSCP (unlike software dev, certifications in info sec are actually valued if you do the right ones). This is what I'm currently doing myself after 5 years as a developer now specialising in security.

HI,

Similar situation, sometimes just getting noticed or fighting these algorithms to get noticed is difficult. Luckily I found socialplan.co which totally helped me accelerate my career. The hard truth is there is no correlation with grades and distinctions to future income earning potential.

Become the best at what you do "skills" then promote your personal brand like a fortune 500 would, with no shame.

Cheers,

Hanna

I did university late, after programming professionnal and hobby experience, but it was in the 80s. IME, it was interesting, but not that useful. The problem is that for practical work, you don’t learn more than what you already learned working, and what you really learn, the theory, you just cannot apply it in practice in the university.

Nowadays however, there are a few domains, that could be worth learning in university and open doors for nice jobs, such as deep learning, or biology (DNA, artificial life, etc).

A lot of jobs ask for a degree. If you don't have one you don't get past HR.

So I would say it's a benefit, and if you enjoy the course then why not.