Coding bootcamps instead of college

[AJ520]

And to add, 4 year college is not about skills and money, making a good network of friend is externally important. Those friendships lasts a lifetime for many. It is a place to build you kid as a person.

 

[aja8888]

His cousin who did resturant service work up til his early 30’s and didn’t graduate from high school ended up getting a GED and self taught coding for about a year and now working at a government job with $120k and a pension... He said he doesn’t know what he was doing for the first year or so but no one else knew at the agency either lol. So he was able to learn on the go....I think tech jobs are very flexible in this era.

The above I quoted and emphasized made me laugh. I hope that's not typical in government IT (or other) work.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

Right now computer majors with degrees are in high demand here (Bay Area). Our kids have a couple of friends who obtained high paying jobs without CS degrees. I think one may have had a degree in some humanities field, went to a coding boot camp and has a great job in IT. The other didn't go to college at all but became an expert in a certain kind of software, and got recruited for a six figure job just from posting on forums where he was known as an expert.

But the highest odds way of getting a good job in IT is probably still a four year degree. I do think the saving the money for a house or something else makes a lot of sense compared to expensive degrees with low job demand prospects. But in our area a community college transfer degree and a CS 4 year degree from San Jose State degree would probably cost under $20K in tuition (total for all 4 years), and most of the big tech companies recruit from SJSU. Plus there would also be the opportunity for paid internships and networking going to a school like that in the middle of a tech hub.

Here is a list of college where the big South Bay tech firms hire from, and many of the top ten schools are reasonably priced public schools, at least reasonably priced for in state tuition -
https://qz.com/967985/silicon-valle...ities-and-none-of-them-are-in-the-ivy-league/

 

[tmm99]

I think a lot of companies put a filter going through resumes requiring a 4-year degree. It makes their job easier.

 

[DanielD]

From my observation, a skilled programmer can earn good money without a college degree. But to do that you have to actively set up a solid, visible portfolio of your work which you can show to employers. IT develops so quickly that college course become redundant faster than they can be updated. College has a definite advantage for the hard skills (computer physics, etc.) which you can't easily learn anywhere else.

If you take into account the cost of college in terms of time an money - I would say a person with a keen interest in programming could go a lot further building their skills through targeted courses and on their own and by going straight into real-world projects.



My personal hunch is that the days of monopolized education are numbered, and that a college degree may not be as valuable in the future as it has been. That's just my hunch though.

 

[BoodaGazelle]

A degree in CS cannot hurt your child, but it is simply not true that it is necessary to be successful. As proof, I do not offer my own 37 year career as a software engineer with a B.A. in Philosophy, but more of my experience with many brilliant people who had similar or less (no degree) formal CS education. This includes architects, compiler designers, and operating systems engineers.

The higher education industry has milked the knowledge economy’s need for smart people to make everyone think they are necessary. And people who went through that also want to feel as though they gained from it by only hiring others who went through it.

Anyone who started in computers early knows that “smart and hard-working” is sufficient, because they lived it and built much of the current infrastructure that allows web programmers to do their work.

 

[pb4uski]

And to add, 4 year college is not about skills and money, making a good network of friend is externally important. Those friendships lasts a lifetime for many. It is a place to build you kid as a person.

Other than my first job out of college where a relationship from college helped.... one of my classmates worked there for a while before returning to complete his degree and was the SIL of the senior partner.... network has had zero value... in fact, until recently the only person from undergrad that I regularly communicated with was my college roommate... and that was only once a year or so.

I haven't communicated with anyone in my graduate school graduating class. I moved away shortly after graduating so that was part of it.

I do agree on the very last part, college... the work and required perseverance to succeed, are character building.