Even small 3 man startups in Shoreditch get 100s of applications daily.

Sounds like every person in the world is a programmer, the way you say it

Even small 3 man startups in Shoreditch get 100s of applications daily.

Sounds like every person in the world is a programmer, the way you say it

It definitely has become a popular major as of late as a lot of people see it as a easy way to make a lot of money. The thing is a lot of those people aren't very good and have flooded the market making it hard to find the people who can actually do the job. The rise of tools like Unity hasn't helped as now a lot of people who figured out how to make a cube move now think they are programmers and are looking for jobs. Employers need an easy way to filter the hundred of applications they get for a position. For entry level jobs, not having a degree is a good place to start. It sucks and has led to a lot of qualified people not getting a job but that is the way it goes. You need to do everything in your power to rise above the cruft and stand out to the HR drones.

It was already mentioned, but if school is this easy for you then you should have lots of time to work on your own projects. Having a great portfolio is also important to getting a job. Or maybe you have a great game idea and can turn it in to your own company. The fact that you have a couple of years to live free of any real responsibility will never happen again. The bit of debt you have to take on to get a degree is greatly offset by the larger income potential you are going to have by getting a degree.

It definitely has become a popular major as of late as a lot of people see it as a easy way to make a lot of money. The thing is a lot of those people aren't very good and have flooded the market making it hard to find the people who can actually do the job. The rise of tools like Unity hasn't helped as now a lot of people who figured out how to make a cube move now think they are programmers and are looking for jobs. Employers need an easy way to filter the hundred of applications they get for a position. For entry level jobs, not having a degree is a good place to start. It sucks and has led to a lot of qualified people not getting a job but that is the way it goes. You need to do everything in your power to rise above the cruft and stand out to the HR drones.

I haven't thought about that. And your suggestion is pretty solid, in my opinion. One thing I have noticed this year is that the smartest people at the uni haven't applied for any internships AT ALL because they think that they don't stand a chance, while the stupidest guys I've ever seen and that have reshaped my understanding of stupidity have applied for American Express, Bank of America, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and dozens more.

I wish they could read that link in the multiplayer networking forum faq that hplus posted. I remember reading this when I wanted to make my own mmorpg, it was really helpful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

I don't know why this dunning-kruger effect is working every time, but it's working.

"Once you're working a few years, no-one (apart from a select few companies like Google) cares about your degree."

This used to be the case a few years back.

It's not any more.

Why?

Everyone's a "coder". About half of world+dog has gone on one of those "learn to code in six weeks" things and converted from pretty much any boring job you can think of into the exciting world of tech. (The other half who failed to pass even that are hordeing the PR and management bits of the companies). They all have 'tude, a macbook and check shirts.

They're *shit*, obviously, but the only way to distinguish the blaggers without investing yonks in screening is to ask for actual Honours papers upfront -- and we're also back in a world where the place *named on the paper* is important as well. No more free rides if you graduated from the University of North-Eastern Easypass Ex-Polytechnic.

Friend recently landed a bonkers gig at a London fintech and they wanted to see not only a degree but A and GCSE certificates. Who keeps *those*???

Seriously. Saturated.

I recently had a bunch of interviews with people who said I was the first person they'd seen in months who could actually string code together and they weren't lying based on my exp on the other side of that desk; everyone's a "techie" and it's making it murder finding the actual techies. When I bounced their offers they sounded like they were going to cry. Not from the prospect of losing me -- I'm not that egotistical, and also they'd MET me by then which has to temper the disappointment at never seeing me again a bit -- but I suspect from the prospect of many more depressing months of talking to enthusiastically thick zombies.

I blame the lightweight tech reportage shows on the news channels. They make it look like *anyone* can join in as long as they have nice hair.

Even small 3 man startups in Shoreditch get 100s of applications daily.

Sounds like every person in the world is a programmer, the way you say it

Not everybody is but, everybody and his dog wants to be. The Startup culture has gentrified most of the East End part of London and has pushed property prices through the roof. This is because lots of people think they can become a millionaire / billionaire overnight with the next "me-too" Tinder or Instagram clone. Then there are all the online youtube blogs showing how cool the office space is and that the staff spend more time playing table-tennis than actual work and all of a sudden being a Ruby on Rails or Android developer has become up there with being a pop star or premiership footballer.

A lot of these companies are started up by friends with no programming experience but, when their business ultimately fails because they've burned through their seed funding throwing parties and paying ridiculous office rent they can now say that they have 2 years on the job experience. They may even have a flashy web site or an app still in the store with lots of (paid for) reviews. Possibly even a Github account with some interesting code snippets. The problem is the code snippets will have been written by good quality contractors that they pulled in when they realised a particular task was more involved than parsing some json and showing an image.
You now have somebody with no comp science degree 2 years commercial experience a GitHub profile and examples of commercial work and a previous job title of Lead Programmer who cannot actually write decent quality code.

Degrees are overrated

I beg to differ. Degrees are everything that matters.

You don't go to university so the professor teaches you something. You don't even strictly go to university to learn something either (well, in theory you do... but in practice 99% of what you learn is just shit, the stuff that really matters you learn during the two years after university).

You go to university because you get a degree, which is the difference between a wannabe loser and someone who gets hired for a high-5-digit job. Those are harsh words (you didn't expect much different from me, did you!) but they're true. No degree, no luck. For any job that is truly interesting, you will not be considered to begin with. Nobody cares if you maybe are the best programmer in the world, it's just not important.

So... what's so important about a degree if all you learn is crap? It's not about what you have learned, or what you've learned and forgotten. It's not about what you know. It's about having proven that you are able to learn and able to work scientifically. You have proven that you are able to adapt to specific demands and acquire the necessary level of knowledge within adequate time. You have proven that you have the necessary discipline. That's what the degree says, nothing else -- and that's just why you get a favorable job and someone else without a degree doesn't.

1. You don't go to university to become a "specialist in X"... you don't even necessarily go to learn anything. From my own expierience, university is a terrible place to learn anything specialized.

If university teaches you anything, its a) giving you a broad view into the basics of the field you are studying in, and b) teaching you how to learn things on your own.

But mostly, you go to university for the degree. This is something university can give you that might prove invaluable later on on the job market.

Sadly, today, many jobs are advertised as applicants needing a degree. From my own expierience, that is mostly BS, as many jobs in the software field are actually not that... errrhhh... mentally taxing, or needing a person that spent 5 years learning theory and basics instead of spending those 5 years working in the field. I really hope in the future some employers wake up to the fact that not EVERY job needs one of the top 2% best programmers in the world, and not EVERY job needs to filled with a PhD and whatnot.

But sadly we are not there yet. And even though your future boss might not care too much about your degree, and will be more interested in your portfolio if you have one, and your work expierience if you have any, the HR reps might need to filter the list of applicants first, and you can bet they look for a degree first.

2. You are good / clever enough to be able to skip classes without your degrees dropping. Good for you! Use that time to learn all the things you are not learning in university! Use it to build a portfolio of your own works, work on projects you can show off later on.

And after that, enjoy university life! You might not have so much time to socialize and party later on when you are working full time.

Really, many students find that some classes can be skipped, many "weasel" their way through university. As long as it works out well for your degrees, and you are not bored to death, more power to you if you can skip classes.

3. That costs for studying though. 9000 bucks a year is REALLY expensive. Are you sure there is not a different, cheaper uni near where you live? Because really, no matter what SOME people think or say, a more expensive uni seldom is teaching you "better"... if anything, you might get access to more interesting study projects when going to the most famous unis like the MIT. And true enough, SOME companies and people MIGHT favor people with degrees from the more famous uni when it comes to jobs.

Mostly it will not matter. A similar degree from a less famous, cheaper uni will count just as much. And in the end, your work expierience will quickly make your degree less important when looking for a new job.

I would, if anything, look into finding a cheaper university. IDK about where you live, but around here the normal, public unis cost 500 bucks per semester... about 1000 a year. I have heard even in the US, costs for public universities can be as low as 2000 bucks per year.

9000$ sound quite high.

To address the person you were quoting:

Sometime around your 30th birthday you'll leave the industry in disgust

I'm 8 years past that, even having come back to the industry after time elsewhere.

with nothing to show for the last decade of your life except unhealthy weight gain

Your eating habits are your own choice. I'm in great shape.

a crippling pile of debt

The only debt I have is what I incurred while working outside of games.

and your name in the credits of a bunch of 6-out-of-10 video games.

Okay, so that bit's right. ;) But it's better than being uncredited in 6-out-of-10 business software. I'm not going to magically end up in 8/10 games by quitting the industry.

Just to add some more to this:

Please ignore people who advise you to drop out based on their experience of American education. They are thinking of the expense and debt as it would relate to them, and what they say makes sense in their position. But the system in the UK is significantly different. The amount you would need to repay does not function in the same way as 'real' debt and is not a burden in that sense. Similarly, when they tell you to transfer, or remark that 3 years sounds short, this is because they don't understand our system (and how transferring after year 2 is impractical, or that we do 3 years of focused study rather than the American approach which is more well-rounded but takes longer).

For that same reason, the discussion over whether your course is worth £27K becomes less relevant. You will only pay £27K for it if you do well enough in life that those repayments are clearly affordable. Research showed that UK graduates stand to earn more than an extra £100K over their lifetime as a result of getting a degree. It's worth the time and monetary investment. Worth reading this, if you're still worried about the money side: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-tuition-fees-changes

Sure, it is a shame that not every British university gives you the education that the fee deserves, but I can guarantee you that the education you're getting is better than you think you're getting. It's all about those "unknown unknowns", things that will help you later. You said something about "nobody looking at the code" but that's missing the point. A computing course isn't about 3 years of code reviews. It's about you understanding the difference between aggregation and composition, it's knowing what a Fourier transform is used for, it's being able to prove that a multithreaded algorithm will always complete successfully, it's about knowing how different image processing algorithms can extract different types of information from a graphic. And it's about being able to show that you can put your mind to a sometimes tedious task and deliver results - you'll need that in a software development career, whether you get the degree or not. So you may as well get it, to prove you have that skill.