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Comment by pezzana | Hacker News Reader

> As a result I never even finished my bachelors degree, and I'm now in my early 30s and regretting it a lot.

I'd really think carefully about why you want that degree.

> But then I look around and see the cool jobs in 3D graphics, in distributed systems, in machine learning, or other "hard computer science" fields, and it feels like I will never be qualified without a graduate degree.

Why do you feel that? What signals are you reading? Does this feeling apply across the board, or only to one or two of the fields you listed?

> What should I do?

Your title suggests that you may equate "credential" with education. I would take a serious look at that because it's far from a universal view. In fact, it may be the thing that's really holding you back.

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Part of it is vanity. Part of it is the feeling that I'll have to defend my lack of credentials for the rest of my career, and that it's ultimately going to hold me back. And maybe part of it is the idea that there are some things I'll never properly learn without taking significant time off work to do focused study.

But more than a few commenters here are saying that demonstrating ability is more important than pedigree. Perhaps I just need to get over the mental hump of obsessing over credentials.

>Part of it is the feeling that I'll have to defend my lack of credentials for the rest of my career

Your feeling is, IMO misguided. Ok, some employers will be shortsighted, but the ones where you'll have a fulfilling career recognize that the person that taught themselves has proven that they can learn something new without explicit guidance, and had the grit to see it through themselves. This is something that freshly minted grads have yet to prove.

Don't get me wrong, I found my degree useful personally, it helps to have an education programme map out your unknown unknowns and turn them at into known knowns.

When hiring, with computer science graduates, I know that they at least know certain things (with a little prodding), but I don't yet know their capacity for learning new things unguided.

For non-graduates, I might need a little more time when hiring to figure out what they do know (if they're new to the industry), but when they can demonstrate skills I know they have capacity to learn for themselves.

It's not that it's better or worse to have the degree, it's just different, but some of the differences are to your advantage.

I’m almost 50 and have to check the ’some college’ box. That nagging never goes away entirely but the best antidote has been working with folks that are have the creds im after. Mostly I find that we complement each other pretty well, they help me understand domain specialties and i help them avoid the gauntlet of footguns that is delivering software in a regulated juggernaut of an organization.

I use to feel the same way before I started working at a larger Silicon Valley company as a software engineer. I graduated from a state school with a degree in Industrial Print Management and always felt like I was at a disadvantage because I didn't have a CS degree. Most of what I know about software engineering is self taught, I felt very self-conscious about this.

My performance did not match my perception and I was consistently outperforming my peers; getting recognition that I never felt I deserved. It turns out that practical experience is actually more valuable than academic experience. I would rather hire someone who's humble, driven, and ambitious but didn't go to CS school then someone who's none of those things but they have fancy degree.

To skip creds, skip gov and bigco, esp when new :) Startups & smaller co's are the places that take on the uncredentialed CV risks that everything-aleady-works co's have too much to lose on.

Gov and bigco care about creds, esp early. Managers there are rarely judged on ultimate results as they are often far removed and just need to improve something predictable by say 1% and hit some fungible and redefinable goals. They are heavily into checklists for covering their ass in not going in the other direction: "Your team took down prod / project was late: why did you hire unaccredited ppl? You run a B team. My team needs 2x budget bc we have all CISSPs and PhDs, and are not responsible for final delivery bc that's grunt work." They do matter a bit later too, but more fungible: someone close to me is actively going through a ~50% pay negotiation based on the same work but differently creds & math being recognized.

Startups and smaller companies dont need to protect their fiefdom but make it exist & grow, so credentials mostly matter less and projects matter more. Early on whether you can actually code, which projects show. Later, whether you can actually run a project through various stages, vs ride on the coattails of someone else, which takes 1-3 years.

I use my background as an anti-credential credential. When I was hired to teach software testing to engineers at JPL, I was asked by the administrator of the training department not to tell anyone I never graduated from 10th grade. I told him disclosing that was in fact an essential part of my teaching process.

I want people to know I don’t deal in bullshit, and that I always do what I think is right, and that my whole life history qualifies me to cut through the nonsense. Being a dropout gives me street cred.

BTW the guys on the Curiosity Rover test team were great. One of the most satisfying classes I have taught, and I treasure the JPL polo shirt I bought at the campus store.

Came here to write this, but @pezzana did it better.

Having a degree for long time, the only usage where it is important is work visa application - in many countries you just won't be eligible for proper visa without degree. Besides that, the only thing I regretted were 6 years wasted in college.

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