The TRUTH About Computer Science Degrees in 2024

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Stack overflow actually has a survey where most professional software engineers have a CS degree. CS degree people are still preferred over people with any other degree or no other degree. People hiring software developers prefer people with CS degree or people with Engineering, Math or Physics degree. You don't need a degree is a myth perpetuated by online influencers and bootcamps to sell their courses.

Another reason to get a degree is job requirements. Some of companies instantly eliminate candidates without a degree.

The bootcamp/self-taught era is pretty much over. CS is a popular degree now and tons of graduates each year. If you are self-taught you are competing with new grads with a formal education, and experienced professionals who were laid off. Companies got burned by bad bootcamp grads. A goofy 3-month bootcamp isn't going to make you competitive. Colleges also provide internship/networking/career fair opportunities.

You HAVE to get your degree in 2024+. You don't know how privileged you are when you have a degree in software or cs

I dropped out 25 years ago and I am now back with only two more years left to get my computer science degree. I highly recommend getting a CS degree there’s more to it than just programming and it opens up way more doors than just being a self taught programmer.

A portfolio is better than a degree. As a software company owner, I've met with multiple local universities looking for opportunities to hire grads or offer internships. The curricula are generally theoretical or outdated tech where they attempt to be hands-on. Sitting on the sidelines for 4-5 years in a fast-moving field like software is obviously going to leave you behind. To pay $100K-$200K for that downtime could permanently derail your personal finances. I'd only recommend a degree if you do it in parallel with working on learning skills on practical projects which could help you launch a product or build a good portfolio.

Yeah the degree route was much better for me. Started self teaching myself and had personal projects, but didn’t actually start getting interviews until I started a post bacc in computer science that was less than $10K from a state school. I know you’re trying to sell your course, but there are definitely affordable CS degrees out there, and you’re qualified for internships whereas before you were not. You can really stand out from the crowd with a degree with all the competition out there.

Back in the day....(aka late 70's early 80's). IT gigs were pretty easy to get. I "dropped out" from a "big 10" school with a background in EE and CS. I took a job in Fortune-500 company on the East coast in IT Computer Operations. The shop was implementing DEC systems into their remote locations. I was one of the few people there who had extensive (albeit academic) training on DEC systems. One year later, they promoted me into "development". They kept promoting me...and I stayed there for 4+ years. I was also lucky that my "boss" (aka project leader) was also my technical "mentor". That's when I really learned about development vs. production, platform interfacing, real world "problems" and my favorite...memo writing and user-level communications. Mentoring, speaking&writing and overall "social comfort" (with other peers) are really important in your first job.

I have yet to see a job posting for data science that does not have a degree requirement. A lot of them require a minimum of masters too. Which is dumb because almost all my learning has come from Codecademy and building my own projects. I think no degree is more for SWE.

Degrees Can only give you fundamentals but that is important too. Details comes from your own time. My fundamentals still help (34 years later) to take IT decisions.

As a CS degree holder, this is actually a really good video about the topic. And I really agree with the part of you still need to learn outside the degree

Self taught here. I self studied for 1 year, 6-7 hours a day. I live in Europe, and got a job six months ago. You just have to love it to succeed.

I am 42 I landed a job that is a hybrid network engineer : software engineer. I started college at 40 because job paying for it. I am almost done 6 months left. I would say I have learned like Tim said about 25% useful things. I also agree it takes a certain person to do this. I don’t think I am a good coder but I am a good network engineer so combining software makes me acceptable.

I used to think back in january 2021 that I'd take a few CS courses at a local institute of technology and get a certificate and work as a software dev. Turns out after 24 credits, I realized I needed to know WAY more. Now, with 54 credits under my belt, I have a junior dev job, but I still feel I should know more if I ever want to work as a senior dev and plan to finish at least another 21 credits part time. But I'll probably realistically take another 30 credits or more.

Excellent !!!

Hey Tim, just a quick question are you using any sort of AI filters in your video editing? Just wondering as I have been searching for some myself

There are colleges in Europe which includes practical work experience as part if their program so once you graduate, you actually have both the degree and experience to land a job and to make it even better it's totally free for EU citizens and in fact many countries here in the EU offer free University degrees such as Germany and Malta.

I went to school for CS (online postbacc program) in my late 20's after completing a degree in music at age 22. I am 2 classes away from finishing my degree after 3 years as a part-time student. I got a really good job in support software engineering after my first year of school, largely due to the skills I gained in school. However, I cannot recommend getting a CS degree if you already have a college degree because of how much time/money it takes to complete. I think having a bachelor's degree is useful, and getting one in CS is especially useful, but if you already have a degree or have no interest in going to college, then don't do it. There are more time/financially efficient ways to do so. I definitely could have got my same job or a different one in software engineering without being in the degree program, and now it feels like I'm just finishing the program for the sake of it.

Thanks alot Tim I was so stressed in choosing a carrer and now I'm pretty that I'll be better off somewhere like a data science since I am intrested in business more