<p>Here is a good article to read before committing to pursuing a Computer Science degree.</p>
<p>Basically, higher education may not be quickest or best route to take if your primary goal is to work in this field.</p>
<p>As the article points out, the best software developers not only can code but also have a firm grasp of both the fundamentals and research done in computer science. So if your goal is to work in an IT department somewhere, you can just teach yourself to code, but Google isn’t hiring you to work on algorithms if you don’t have a CS background.</p>
<p>The analogy I’d give is that you don’t need even a math major be able to teach SAT-level math, but you’re not going to be hired to teach math at any college without likely an advanced degree in math.</p>
<p>As an aside, the grads of the best CS programs will know how to code just fine because those departments don’t just teach theory but also make their students code (and many of them can already do so before entering).</p>
<p>No disrespect but working at Google isn’t the “end all be all”. </p>
<p>@GLOBALTRAVELER I think the important point here that you maybe inadvertently made is that each of the first two posters made blanket statements that aren’t universally true. For a certain subset of IT jobs, getting a 4-year degree is probably just delaying your entry into the marketplace and is unnecessary. For others, it is absolutely a must. Whether either of these two positions holds merit must be evaluated on an individual basis.</p>
<p>More realistically, it is those few who have the ability and motivation to self-educate the needed concepts and skills effectively who can bypass the traditional bachelor’s degree study (or more easily change careers after completing an unrelated bachelor’s degree).</p>
<p>But most people do not have such ability and motivation, so those aspiring to a career in software typically would find studying CS at a school with a good CS department to be the most effective means of working to that goal.</p>
<p>@boneh3ad - I agree completely with your statement that neither statement is universally true. In fact, I tried to include phrases like “MAY not be” so that I wouldn’t be making a blanket statement. And, the article, as you can see, isn’t entirely one-sided, for it does also discuss the benefits of the things learned in CS degree courses. And I agree that it depends on the IT job - some absolutely require a degree or even an advanced degree - this article was aimed at programmers/software developers specifically. I should have been clearer about that. Thanks for the reply.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus - what you say about the two different types of people most certainly holds true. I would also like to add that, since software development/programming careers are constantly changing, it is generally the people in the first category you mentioned - the ones with the discipline and desire to self-learn - who will make the best programmers, for they are more likely to take the initiative to keep up with the new technologies, languages, and developments of the industry.</p>
<p>I have known people who made a career on SV with 2 months of programming training + 4 months of interview training (i.e. how to lie successfully). Sure, they never got the “glamorous” jobs at CS, but many of them worked at MS, eBay, Amazon, and other such companies. Six figures doesn’t mean much when housing is ridiculously expensive, but it’s still money that these companies pay for 2 months worth of programming knowledge. These people aren’t particularly talented or motivated either; they just manage to succeed because apparently the market works heavily in their favor.</p>
<p>Yes, you cannot pick up the CS knowledge of a major without taking classes; there’s a lot there about the theory and how to actually go about thinking about these problems. But for the past 15 years, the name of the game has increasingly been the conceptually relatively simple topic of web development. I suspect that anyone who has taken 1-2 classes on the topic in high school or college would be more than qualified to do a lot of those jobs. Not every programming job needs someone who can understand conceptually difficult low-level languages</p>
<p>I remember around 20 years ago when I was in graduate school at Dallas, many graduate students quit grad school and took a short term course to move into IT job market. They all found well paid jobs easily after 1 or 2 certification exam in a few months. I was about to jump the boat as I had been developing websites and working on servers for my lab for a while (and that was in the early 90s that not many people even heard of internet). I went back to take a programming class at CC but finally decided to remain in the life science research field. I regreted later when I found my career was taking forever to grow. Then all of a sudden, the internet bubble bursted. Many of my friends lost their IT jobs even those with a CS major. However, those with CS major found other IT jobs in a few months later while those who only have a certificate had a hard time to compete with other candidates.</p>