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Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

> or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree)

I so completely disagree. College/university is for education. If you want skills go to a trade school and save a truck load of money.

As an example lawyers and doctors don’t gain skills in law/medical school. They are required to slosh through forced internships for that.

CompSci graduates can’t tell the difference because the software industry isn’t mature. In all other professional career paths there is some combination of licenses or certifications. Many of those licenses require college as a prerequisite. It takes substantially more to become a truck driver than it does to be a software developer.

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> If you want skills go to a trade school

Those really only exist for certain jobs, like plumbers, carpenters, electricians and machinists. I'm not knocking any of those positions - my parents and grandparents are/were machinists - but if you want to be an engineer or scientist, a college degree is required unless you want your resume to go straight to the shredder, or you're taking advantage of having friends and/or family in high positions (i.e. nepotism).

The fact that useful skills are usually only acquired during employment/internship is true. It doesn't change the fact that most can't get employment in the first place without a degree, and internships don't pay the bills.

In addition, since the civil war, colleges in the US have generally been far more focused on utilitarian skills, rather than the humanities. Sure, there were plenty of art colleges still, but there were far more agricultural schools.

> if you want to be an engineer or scientist

Get a graduate degree and then a professional license, such as CISSP. Software developers are just skilled technicians like carpenters and plumbers.

> It takes substantially more to become a truck driver than it does to be a software developer.

More what? Licenses? License != skills.

A CDL isn't exactly difficult to get. Being healthy and having the ability to see is probably the most difficult aspect. The technical sections contain information that you have to learn or be taught, but it's very high level and most people can learn the material in about a hour or two of study per section.

> More what? Licenses? License != skills.

Right, but what are the minimum requirements to become a software developer? A single 30 minute interview? There aren't any administrative or legal requirements. There is no minimum educational requirement.

Lots of software jobs have minimum educational requirements. When I did control systems software, an engineering degree (or the odd physics degree) was a hard requirement. Where I work now, certifications are mandatory and the interview process includes a real-world project + demonstration (which you're paid to complete).

You have this false impression that every software job has the same requirements. There are plenty of jobs where candidates have no hard requirements, but there is a large number that do have certification & degree requirements and/or rigorous interview processes.

Jobs building dating apps for dogs have substantially different requirements than one building brake control systems for cars, even if the job title for each is "software engineer."

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