I'm going to turn 27 this year and I was wondering if I am too old for university. Is it worth it? Is it worth it if I don't have any financial problems and a good job?
Little bit about my situation:
I've been a computer person my whole life however I got into a physics undergraduate program because of parents. I quickly realized that either I'm too dumb for that degree or too uninterested. In the meantime, I passed an exam to qualify myself for a position at a very good computer science institute. I found myself learning more computer science stuff than spend time on my actual classes. However, I got kicked out of university because I hadn't passed any exams in physics for 3 years and the CS institute doesn't employ non-students.
With decades of technical knowledge as well as my 3 years of experience at the CS institute, I've found myself a decently paying software development job. Been working there for a couple of years now but lately I feel like a loser because I dropped out of university. I lost my girlfriend because of it, my parents are still very disappointed and I feel like I missed out on a great experience. If I had transferred to a different university that offers a CS degree, I might have been doing my PhD now - assuming I didn't fail my studies because of lacking cognitive abilities, that is.
I'm in a very good position and on a fast track career-wise (already CTO's favorite and right-hand), I am not sure if dropping my job is going to be worth it. Also I don't want to be some old fart sitting amidst high school kids. The fact that I will get my degree in my 30's is absolutely dreadful to me.
>>17149268
>Also I don't want to be some old fart sitting amidst high school kids.
Dude, in college, I see people in their 30's to 50's. 27 isn't bad. Worry about yourself and your education. At least your trying to improve yourself. Uni is a big step .
>>17149268
I mean, CS is by far one of the few high paying/secure professions where you don't even need a degree.
I mean with coursera, udacity, lynda, and edx. you could literally teach yourself most of the shit you would learn in a college.
Lynda is literally $15 a month with some high quality shit, and it gives certificates. Its not a degree, but its pretty damn cheap.
Why not just teach yourself whatever subset of CS/Software Dev you want to get into using these high quality resources and just build a portfolio?
Literally sit down and identify EXACTLY what kind of cs job you want to land. Do you want to be a web developer? front end? back end? Do you want to work for a startup or a company like google? Go to your ideal job and look at the description. What skills/platforms do they want you to be familiar with?
A degree isn't necessarily the best option if you have legitimate experience under your belt. Tons of game development jobs say "Degree in CS required OR equivalent experience".
If you can point to a portfolio of projects you've worked on, you can display a pretty good skillset.
Now if you live in a country where tuition is dirt cheap, you might consider going for the degree, but if its like the US where you're out $50-200k depending on what school you go to, its not really worth it.
So here's what I recommend you do:
1. Identify what job in CS you want
2. Look at what requirements they want
3. Learn that shit
Now this all is predicated on the notion that you are self motivated. if you aren't, meh, you might want to go for the degree, since it'll give you that extra push to do something.
But there's a lot of bullshit in degeres. General education classes, electives, etc. A lot of it is a waste of time.
>>17149280
>Why not just teach yourself whatever subset of CS/Software Dev you want to get into using these high quality resources and just build a portfolio?
Not OP, but nobody gives a fuck about self-taught people. MOOCs are great in tandem with a classical degree but utterly worthless on their own.
>>17149268
My advise, think about this as a personal.choice and talk about it with your boss. Maybe he can support you in some way, so he can rehire you.
>>17149280
There's many self taught people at our company and except for a very few exceptions, they're all code monkeys. I feel I have gotten lucky with my current CTO, who according to himself dislikes self-taught code monkeys as they display some huge lack of knowledge in many formal aspects of CS - I just happen to be an exception (probably because I'm faking it so well :( ).
>>17149285
>>Not OP, but nobody gives a fuck about self-taught people. MOOCs are great in tandem with a classical degree but utterly worthless on their own.
Speaking from experience? Or is this your NEET opinion on how you think shit should work? You don't sound like a working professional to me
I would highly doubt some retarded kid from a no name university with a degree would get a job over someone who is self taught with the skillset of an entry level software developer.
I have 3 guys that I know that were all self taught when getting their first jobs. One guy works in databases, the other in security, and another works for a startup working on the back-end of his team. None of them had degrees
Knowing OOP, Git, how to use unix and associated programs (emacs, etc), basic data structures, the ability to use tools used to manage large programs ( ivy, maven, etc) is all you need for a generic "sofware engineering" position
nobody is quizzing you on if you know the difference Kruksal's and Dijkstara's algorithm in the industry.
Half the shit that is mandatory in most CS degrees are straight up useless for most people
Theoretical CS is useless unless you're going into academia or you're working on on research
Comparative rogramming language courses are useless since programming in more than one language exposes to the notion that different languages treat primitives and data structures different. Do you really need a book to explain that to you?
I could go on, but there is so much fat in university courses, it, it would take so much time to explain why most courses are garbage. So much time wasted on bullshit that isn't even necessary to learn
So before you open your mouth and give OP advice, try actually having experience before you open your mouth
>>17149352
>Speaking from experience?
Yes.
>I would highly doubt some retarded kid from a no name university with a degree would get a job over someone who is self taught with the skillset of an entry level software developer.
First one got at least SOMEONE vouching for him, second one is just a shithead claiming he can do shit.
>databases, security, back-end
Muh MySQL, muh BASH, muh web dev
>Knowing OOP, Git, how to use unix and associated programs (emacs, etc), basic data structures, the ability to use tools used to manage large programs ( ivy, maven, etc) is all you need for a generic "sofware engineering" position
Yes, for generic code monkey position at some web startup perhaps. Kind of ironic, because I work with people like that. Tried to explain to the "database experts" among them, what kind of SQL structure we need using set theory, which is perfect for exactly that, but they didn't understand.
I see their code, and find performance sink holes every time, because they have no fucking clue about algorithms and function growth rates.
One time I used the cross-product in a bit of code, I had to dumb it down because my self-taught colleagues were unable to understand it, which means they won't be able to maintain it if I should ever leave.
Only a self-taught idiot believes that the majority of a CS degree is useless. The one time I can imagine it being useless is if you're a front-end designer making pretty pictures in Photoshop and your biggest programmatic challenges are using jquery functions.
>>17149352
>Knowing OOP, Git, how to use unix and associated programs (emacs, etc), basic data structures, the ability to use tools used to manage large programs ( ivy, maven, etc) is all you need for a generic "sofware engineering" position
This is like saying that if you can use CAD and understand the difference between metal, concrete and wood, then you don't need an engineering degree...
In engineering people like that make million dollar bridges collapse, in CS they make million dollar systems collapse.
>>17149352
>nobody is quizzing you on if you know the difference Kruksal's and Dijkstara's algorithm in the industry.
https://www.quora.com/Are-Facebook-Interview-Questions-on-Dijkstras-Algorithm-typical
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/data_structures_algorithms/data_structures_algorithms_interview_questions.htm
Top kek. Self-taught code monkey detected. Go make your pretty pictures and use Angular, earning 27K in Shithouse, Ohio.
>>17149372
>>second one is just a shithead claiming he can do shit
Keep in mind I said also build a portfolio. If you can show you built an application or a game that does shit, that's more impressive than showing people a degree.
Here is a link to Blizzard's request for a lead java developer:
"http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id=16000D4"
"Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or equivalent experience"
So they've had experience with people who are self taught, obviously, due to the fact that they say " or equivalent experience". This is not anecdotal, its the case for almost every single CS related job posting
I agree some form of formal education is necessary for some positions in CS, but formal education can be self taught.
Top schools offer their shit online for free, along with problem sets, solutions, and projects.
Why waste money on a tier 3 univeristy when you can have stanford and MIT's best professor literally copy paste their courses online for you for free?
CS is a unique field in that almost EVERY single class that is taught in a traditional CS degree that could be useful to a developer is offered online for free on one of the numerous MOOC platforms.
If he's motivated, i'd say stick with self taught.
If he's not and needs that extra push, a degree would be a better option.
But saying that you can't get the same or a better understanding of CS on your own over a formal degree if you are sufficiently motivated is silly.
>>17149396
Facebook is a social networking site. Its probably implied that you need to have a strong background in algorithms/data structures to work on their backend.
Additionally, let not pretend that one of the biggest software companies' requirements are the standard for every other company.
Also, zuck was a dropout.
>>17149382
Engineering is like the natural sciences. You need labs with physical materials to practice/learn shit
Also there are legal barriers for professions like civil engineering and mechanical engineering where you absolutely need a degree
CS does not suffer from these limitations. Alll you need is a computer to do all of your reading, programming, and testing. No legal requirement for certification whatsoever either
I didn't say formal education was stupid, I said degrees are stupid because they tend to overload programs with useless shit that you may never use
My brother is a mechanical engineer and is a contractor . He said that outside of doing a basic integral and very simple shit using matlab, he does not use any of the higher order math that he learnerd (PDEs, Lin Alg, etc) in the stuff he does.
So even in the engineering example: degrees tend to stuff more courses than are needed by everyone. Is every engineer like my brother? No. Will engineers for other comapnies need to use more complex math? Yes.
The problem with higher education today is that degrees tend to stuff more than is necessary to do many of the jobs in that profession.
With engineering their is a legal barrier to work if you don't have a degree, so you have to suck it up and take that math.
CS you have the luxury of no laws against slef-taught professionals working. So you can literally learn everything for free, and in a much shorter time frame by focusing on the most important stuff.
>>17149415
>I agree some form of formal education is necessary for some positions in CS, but formal education can be self taught.
That is correct and even though I fully support MOOCs, the people will equivalent skillsets and a formal degree will always be preferred.
There's also the fact that self-taught people earn less than their colleagues with formal degrees, even if they are equal in skill and all. The company can always say "we can't give you that much, you don't have a degree". This is true for web development ( http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/04/formal-degree-vs-self-taught/ ) and doubly so for everything else. If you consider that gap in your calculation, you're actually losing money in the long run despite doing the same work.
On top of that, self-taught people are less likely to rise to prominent positions in a company, because they don't want some dropout loser or no degree dingus as the person representing them.
So aside from the lack of skill and analytical understanding that is often VERY apparent with self-taught people due to their lack of exposure to them in the so-called "practical" world, they're at a disadvantage career-wise.
>>17149425
Facebook isn't the only company asking questions like that. If you search for any catalog of interview questions for programming positions, you will find many about algorithms.
>Also, zuck (gates, jobs, etc.) was a dropout.
Survivorship bias.
OP, if you like your job and you're on a good track then you don't necessarily need to go back to school. That being said, if you really want to go back to school for personal reasons, then go for it. The company might be able to work something out with you (pay for a portion, give you time off for it, whatever). There's no reason you can't have both if the company is willing to train you, and being close to the CTO gives you a good chance at that.
As for being too old, definitely don't feel that way. My classes were always filled with older students. They worked hard and did well. Actually, I'd say older students were more common than younger ones, at least in my discipline. Most of us were young to mid 20-somethings, with the next largest group being late 20s to early 30s. If there were younger students in the mix, they were pretty mature.
Idk OP, I'd say talk to your boss about ir. Say you've been considering going back because you think it will help your growth in the company.
>>17149415
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1209859
Specifically:
>I was self-taught. I learned I didn't know shit the first 2 weeks of college. I learned more in 1 year than I learned in 10 years on my own.
Self-taught just indicates a level of desire, not level of competence. Being proud to be only self-taught to me means proud to be ignorant. It's a heuristic at best, but it's not too far off base.
Something that many self-taught code monkeys feel once they enter college. Many of them fail through calculus or linear algebra before even getting to algorithms and data structures.
>>17149425
Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard, not some no-name shit tier school. What school do you think OP dropped out of?
>>17149276
Can confirm. I went to college at the same time as my uncle.
>>17149268
It's worth it if you aim to be a scientist or engineer. If not check out skilled trade jobs.
nevr to old for anything knowledge is powet
>>17149268
Professor writing here.
College isn't just for 18 year olds any more. In most US universities 25 to 50% of the undergrads are your age or older. Most have a story similar to yours - essentially they weren't ready for college at 18 but now want to go back.
I will note that in most cases it is more an abstract desire for education or chance to prove something to themselves than a career-advancing move.
That may be one reason that, in my experience, older students are always among my best. They're more mature and focused, bring life experience to their studies, really want to learn, and are not just (like too many 18 year olds) going through the motions because someone told them it was the way to get a good job.
If you don't want to give up your career, see if you can work out a part-time arrangement with your company, working, say, 3 days a week and in school the rest.
>>17149268
I'm 27 right now and in college for the second go around. I also found it a hell of a lot easier to make friends this time around.
I'm not even the oldest person in my classes. He's like 35.
>>17149877
Thank you a lot. If you're really a prof, then I really appreciate your input on this.
Anecdotal evidence here but hopefully it's worth something. I'm a web developer that spent 4 months learning programming on my own then spent 4 months at a "bootcamp." 1 month after the bootcamp I got a job making 72K. Just recently got a raise+bonus making my total comp 100K+ after 9 months of working as a front-end engineer.
I know basic data structure but to be completely honest I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed and still struggle with some pretty basic algorithms.
>>17149839
Good spelling is a worthwhile thing as well!
how did lose your gf because of that
>>17150664
She didn't want to date someone who dropped out of college?
I went to a college graduation over the weekend and the oldest person accepting their degree was 72. It's definitely not too late; however, the sooner you enroll, the better. As long as you can pay for it or earn financial aid/grants, you should be good to go if you are willing to learn and work hard. Good luck!
Hey OP, the most positive scenario involves you turning 40 anyway. You can be a 40 year old without college or with it
