I got a Bachelor, Master, and PhD in Computer Science, with a total of 11 years of education. It's the biggest waste of time of my entire life.
As I progress in my professional career I'm more convinced that pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, and universities are little more than a social club. Nowadays you can learn everything you do at university and far more online and for free.
Universities (elite ones particularly) still give you credentials that have some value getting a job. However I wonder for how long that will still be true. Learning by doing and building a portfolio sounds like a better way of getting in the industry today than getting a multi-year degree with nothing or little to show for it.
Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one. And even then, I would focus on networking and finding like-minded people rather than necessarily getting good grades.
Can't speak for masters or PhD, but I feel like the most valuable part of my undergraduate was being exposed to many opportunities constantly. I saw a table looking for study/work abroad near one of my classes. I applied, got a job, met my now wife overseas, and have moved to a different country as a result (have been here for 5 years and very happy). All because a student group was sharing a cool oppurtunity with low friction to sign up.
I learned everything I use on my job in the first year of studies. The other 4 years were theory I never use or think about. But those 4 years exposed me to sooo many different people from all walks of life. University is a space to learn and unlearn. If you are lucky enough to make that your complete focus, you leave the institution a different person.
Master's here. I already knew how to program before going to University. However I learned a lot about how to think more abstractly/mathematically about software. It has helped me a ton in my industry work and given me a clear advantage.
> Group projects were also a common complaint. You were randomly assigned a group, but it was often unclear if the participants were even doing the course - many people were in completely ghost groups.
I see that nothing has changed in 20 years. Even when attended the courses physically in person, group project usually had 1 or 2 people doing all the work and the rest nowhere to be found, or just hanging out. :p
I still remember in a varsity project, we're a group of three. I took over the design and coding. Another guy was bad at coding, so he took over all the documentation etc. The last guy was doing db design and write some basic SQL for the CRUD.
We were supposed to integrate everything a week before submission. Project was assigned about 6 weeks before submission. The last guy kept saying he's working on it and we don't have to worry.
Then a week before submission, he has nothing to show. Didn't type one word.
I had to scramble and get it done myself. Time was not enough anymore; we got B instead of A. I was already known to get A grade in every project where teachers would give me A++ if that was a grade. The teacher of that course was so disappointed...
Since then I did all projects solo. Had to fight a little with some teachers to get that approval; esp when there were really big projects for 5/6 people group. Still did solo and got rated as best project in every single one of them.
The point of group projects is not to make the best project, it’s to learn to navigate working with other people and all the messiness that entails. Soft skill development and the slackers are a feature not a bug. Doing group projects solo completely defeats the point of the exercise—I’m surprised you got approval from any profs for that.
You are not completely wrong but you are missing out a lot too. It is accountability without authority issue.
Yes, learning to navigate working with other people is important. But why are you learning that? Because you will need that in work place.
You know what is there in workplace that is not present in varsity project?
Accountability: If someone is not doing their job, you can complain to the manager/boss. There is none in group project.
Authority: In varsity project, everyone is equal. I have no authority over others, even when I have much more experience/know-how. Telling prof one guy is slacking doesn't get much done.
Right to Choose: In work env, if I am highly skilled, I have the option to choose the place I work and thereby increasing the chance of like-minded like-skilled peers. In varsity project, I can get paired with a dumbass and have to bring myself to lowest common denominator. Sorry, I don't (have to) work with idiots in an equal setting. There's a reason that guy is doing some unrelated bank managerial job for $1k/month and I buy $1k worth of collectible items per month without blinking an eye.
If a varsity project is setup in a work env way where I get to interview who joins my team and have the right to fire them if they don't get their shit done, then I'm happy to do group project. Similarly, I'm happy to go thru the same process to join another person's team (if I consider them better).
PS: I did 2 group projects with a friend before that incident and we had zero issues with anything. Simply because we did the work and our skill levels were similar. He's working as Principle Engineer at Oracle now and it is no surprise.
I'm actually doing something similar, myself, and doing a MSc in CS right now. I'm somewhat jealous of how little group work you had to do! Almost every course I'm going through now has 1-3 group work assignments each.
Often the reason is something like _"that's how it is in the workplace"_ which is a blatant cop out, imo. It's clear the reason that Universities force group work is because it's a cost cutting exercise.
They need to pay the hours for people to mark assignments. Make groups of 2, and you've cut the number of hours that need to be paid by 50%. Make groups of 5, and you've cut the cost by 80%. Of course, this comes at the cost of some students unfairly carrying others.
I got the MSCS from U Illinois on there. It was more work than I expected even with one class a semester. I definitely learned a lot I could use in my current role.
I was in the inaugural class and it was pretty smooth other than one professor there who was an asshole and felt that online classes were beneath him. It felt like we got scraps from the table (then Covid happened and online was everywhere). Also, one prof quit just before the semester on a required class that seniors had to take and a replacement couldn’t be found in time. They offered us alternatives which weren’t really good class replacements.
Strongly recommend if your time and money is limited.
I have a similar trajectory. I attended two very competitive military schools in Brazil but never finished and moved to America.
Today I’m a senior software engineer at a FAANG company. The lack of diploma has never been a barrier and I progressed very quickly in the company from junior to senior (4 years).
But this has always been a perceived pain point and limiter for me so I decided to get a CS degree during COVID online from a college from Brazil. Just finished last week :)
I do look for a stronger school name on my resume and got accepted at Johns Hopkins Masters in AI (online). Anyone had any experience with that program? Thoughts?
I had an unrelated undergrad did my MSCS online (not JHU but same idea). It was great. But if you’re already senior at FAANG I’m not sure you need further legitimacy.
So you got into one of Faang before 2020’s hype? Not surprising that you could do that without any degree. Nowadays there are so many smart guys from unis and colleges like Standord or MIT who couldn’t get into even a small company. “No degree but no problem” sounds like totally ignoring your own luck.
I am in a similar boat where I never completed my degree. I am from Asia. As far as I know even if a job does not require a degree, lots of countries do require Bachelor's degree to get a work visa, for example, for USA it's either bachelor's or 3/4 years of experience per university year I think. I would appreciate if you could share your story of how you moved to America.
My move to America was not related to my work :D I got married here and that made things a lot easier. I was fortunate enough to not have the visa barrier.
I agree that most jobs don’t require a degree if one has experience, but one ends up limiting themselves on the kinds of opportunities they can get abroad (if that is something the person is interested in).
“ I was ready to enter the workforce and become independent as early as possible. I got into tech through certifications like MCP, MCSA, and A+ (they were all the rage back then), which was enough to land a helpdesk job at 18.”
Same sentiments, if you had an MCSE you were hirable everywhere. A+ put you ahead of the pack and was lifetime back then.
The early 00s were def a time. This is how I started too and also just recently completed my bachelors and now doing a masters.
I did this too for my BSc! Prof. Yee King is a great teacher, and although I was mostly doing it for the qualification and knew most of the course materials going into the degree, his explanations of web app architecture still really helped solidify my understanding. It's a great course in general, especially if you like data science
Congrats! I've been considering this particular one too for some time...
Wondering sometimes if I want to do this for "my career" or if it's really just for myself.
I did masters in a similar way, just to get some credentials and fill in the gaps and learn something new. There is an idealistic part to it which is quite romantic as you spend the nights learning and doing the assignments. The structure of such online based learning systems is great for a determined person. However the “other” part of such courses are cheating and ai use. It is depressing to know that the specific credentials prove little because of it. So the only valid signal is: this person did not quit and they know how to write a report, use references. You’d need to test them to fully validate the credential.
That's more expensive than I expected. In South Africa you can do a 3 year degree at a top university (in SA terms, top 300 in the world) for about that, including lodging, food and other expenses. Mind, not foreigners, that's the tax subsidised cost for locals.
37 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 67.3 ms ] threadAs I progress in my professional career I'm more convinced that pretty much everything in tech is on-the-job learning, and universities are little more than a social club. Nowadays you can learn everything you do at university and far more online and for free.
Universities (elite ones particularly) still give you credentials that have some value getting a job. However I wonder for how long that will still be true. Learning by doing and building a portfolio sounds like a better way of getting in the industry today than getting a multi-year degree with nothing or little to show for it.
Nowadays I wouldn't recommend anyone to get a tech degree in a university unless it's a world class one. And even then, I would focus on networking and finding like-minded people rather than necessarily getting good grades.
I learned everything I use on my job in the first year of studies. The other 4 years were theory I never use or think about. But those 4 years exposed me to sooo many different people from all walks of life. University is a space to learn and unlearn. If you are lucky enough to make that your complete focus, you leave the institution a different person.
Job stuff not much related with stuff learned in school, sometimes related to some degree.
Skill stuff very closely tied to constantly applying stuff learned in school, but mostly on how to attack problems.
Me learn stuff because me like know stuff and level up. (edit: do not get me wrong, learning is still painful, and thinking even more painful)
Me job stuff because me like food and amneties, until the learn stuff transfers into sustainable food and amneties.
Then it's almost trivially easy to cheat with a VM, or, failing that, a KVM switch with real hardware.
> Group projects were also a common complaint. You were randomly assigned a group, but it was often unclear if the participants were even doing the course - many people were in completely ghost groups.
I see that nothing has changed in 20 years. Even when attended the courses physically in person, group project usually had 1 or 2 people doing all the work and the rest nowhere to be found, or just hanging out. :p
We were supposed to integrate everything a week before submission. Project was assigned about 6 weeks before submission. The last guy kept saying he's working on it and we don't have to worry.
Then a week before submission, he has nothing to show. Didn't type one word.
I had to scramble and get it done myself. Time was not enough anymore; we got B instead of A. I was already known to get A grade in every project where teachers would give me A++ if that was a grade. The teacher of that course was so disappointed...
Since then I did all projects solo. Had to fight a little with some teachers to get that approval; esp when there were really big projects for 5/6 people group. Still did solo and got rated as best project in every single one of them.
Yes, learning to navigate working with other people is important. But why are you learning that? Because you will need that in work place.
You know what is there in workplace that is not present in varsity project?
Accountability: If someone is not doing their job, you can complain to the manager/boss. There is none in group project.
Authority: In varsity project, everyone is equal. I have no authority over others, even when I have much more experience/know-how. Telling prof one guy is slacking doesn't get much done.
Right to Choose: In work env, if I am highly skilled, I have the option to choose the place I work and thereby increasing the chance of like-minded like-skilled peers. In varsity project, I can get paired with a dumbass and have to bring myself to lowest common denominator. Sorry, I don't (have to) work with idiots in an equal setting. There's a reason that guy is doing some unrelated bank managerial job for $1k/month and I buy $1k worth of collectible items per month without blinking an eye.
If a varsity project is setup in a work env way where I get to interview who joins my team and have the right to fire them if they don't get their shit done, then I'm happy to do group project. Similarly, I'm happy to go thru the same process to join another person's team (if I consider them better).
PS: I did 2 group projects with a friend before that incident and we had zero issues with anything. Simply because we did the work and our skill levels were similar. He's working as Principle Engineer at Oracle now and it is no surprise.
Often the reason is something like _"that's how it is in the workplace"_ which is a blatant cop out, imo. It's clear the reason that Universities force group work is because it's a cost cutting exercise.
They need to pay the hours for people to mark assignments. Make groups of 2, and you've cut the number of hours that need to be paid by 50%. Make groups of 5, and you've cut the cost by 80%. Of course, this comes at the cost of some students unfairly carrying others.
I was in the inaugural class and it was pretty smooth other than one professor there who was an asshole and felt that online classes were beneath him. It felt like we got scraps from the table (then Covid happened and online was everywhere). Also, one prof quit just before the semester on a required class that seniors had to take and a replacement couldn’t be found in time. They offered us alternatives which weren’t really good class replacements.
Strongly recommend if your time and money is limited.
Today I’m a senior software engineer at a FAANG company. The lack of diploma has never been a barrier and I progressed very quickly in the company from junior to senior (4 years).
But this has always been a perceived pain point and limiter for me so I decided to get a CS degree during COVID online from a college from Brazil. Just finished last week :)
I do look for a stronger school name on my resume and got accepted at Johns Hopkins Masters in AI (online). Anyone had any experience with that program? Thoughts?
I agree that most jobs don’t require a degree if one has experience, but one ends up limiting themselves on the kinds of opportunities they can get abroad (if that is something the person is interested in).
Same sentiments, if you had an MCSE you were hirable everywhere. A+ put you ahead of the pack and was lifetime back then.
The early 00s were def a time. This is how I started too and also just recently completed my bachelors and now doing a masters.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180816 (470 points, 402 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900 (425 points, 377 comments)
I was inspired by Miguel and took the same path, but I had no pre-existing credits to transfer so the whole process took me 7 months, instead of 3.
Interestingly it does seem comparable with what it would cost through The Open University - https://www.open.ac.uk/courses/computing-it/degrees/bsc-comp...
The testing/proctoring industry in Australia seems to be completely dead.
I actually liked using testing centres, I hate the invasiveness of remote proctoring.