Should I go to college or keep working in Silicon Valley?

14 points by testerofwaters 12 years ago | 27 comments

I'm working at a startup as a Rails developer. I was hired straight out of high school, which meant being underpaid, though I've spent my time improving my skills. Long story short, the job market in Silicon Valley is really hot - I now have 2 outside offers in the $110-120k range (0-0.5% equity) at early to late-stage startups, and I might be able to bid the offers up to the 130k+ range. At the same time, I'm thinking about going back to college - a non-Ivy but top CS school (think Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, UIUC).

One thought I have is that we're possibly at the high point of the current tech boom and that I should take a job while the market is hot, then go back to school when there's a cooldown. There's also the fact that as a fresh CS grad, 4 years down the line, I would be making roughly the same, or maybe just slightly more, as I could make right now (100-120k).

But I wonder whether going back to school after being in the industry for 2-3 years will even make sense.

Ultimately, I don't know how to weigh the social and educational experience of college against starting my career 4 years early. I'm not particularly concerned that a lack of a degree itself will hold me back in the future. Any thoughts?

Update: no college debt, parents thankfully have enough to pay for it.

RogerL 12 years ago |

What I learned at college: physics, chemistry, optics, lots of heavy duty math - statistics, calculus, linear algebra, numeric computing, electrical engineering (analog and digital), how to write and publish, accounting, algorithms, a bit of management/business, and probably few other things I'm forgetting at the moment.

In my career I have done: computed cancer statistics for NIH, worked on a flight computer, done tons of avionics code, worked on a tank robot, computer vision, machine learning, and so on. Almost none of that would have been possible for me without at least a significant portion of the above skills. Chemistry comes in lowest, but it was still somewhat useful for the cancer stuff. And a tiny change in what jobs I had would have made the chemistry highly relevant (say, computational chemistry - tons of that going on around the beltway where I lived for a number of years). From here I can go most anywhere - finance quant jobs at 250K+, machine learning/big data, more computer vision, or what have you. You can .... write some more rails apps. If you are really good, sure, write the next rails, but I would say your options are far more limited than mine.

It's up to you and what you want to do, and what kind of potential you want to have available to you. University is not for learning a trade (by and large, medical school nonwithstanding); it's an opportunity to take in a lot of subjects at a depth you will never achieve on the job or part time (unless you have an ~170 IQ).

I'm sure people will post counterexamples to the above, and surely they exist; I argue simply that education == opportunity. If you have any kind of mind, 5 years of writing yet another rails app will start to bore you to tears. So, the question is, what will keep you from being bored? Inventing a new social app or such? Maybe school is less relevant. Taking on difficult intellectual challenges? It's pretty darn hard (not impossible, just very hard) to make your way without a strong math/science foundation. Also of note is how many people change their careers. Burn out in writing sw is pretty high. What skills will you have if in 5-10 years you want to be management, that CFO job starts to seem very interesting, and so on?

In short, I found my education exceptionally useful. You won't even be able to get an interview for many jobs, not because of snobbery (as is often claimed), but because there is no way you have the background to jump in and read original research in a new topic and deal with the math and algorithms in a sophisticated way. Only you can decide if that is of value to you or not.

caw 12 years ago | |

I agree with the opportunities, though in this case it sounds like the OP wants to do both. In this case, maybe it makes sense to take the job, so long as the OP really intends to go through college.

There's a lot of companies who will pay you to get your degree. Most of the college degree reimbursement plans are for Bachelor's, though some are for higher education. He can go to work now, then work, and go to school and have someone else pay for it that's not his parents.

Very hard route to do both at the same time though. I know a few people who did it, so it is possible.

mswen 12 years ago |

Take the money and practical experience. Give yourself solidly to whichever job offer you except, but don't work 70+ hours a week. Work a highly productive 50 to 55 and take the difference to learn new skills. Always have a side project that is helping you master a new domain within CS and related fields.

Spend less money than you make! Save and invest. Put some into a retirement account but also build up a healthy fund for going to college. Set a start date for college. Fall of 2016.

With your experience and proven skills working PT freelance/consulting while going to college should be easy. Work your way through college freelancing about 10-15 hours a week during the regular term. Travel internationally during the summer while still working some remote projects.

Consider a double major combining CS with statistics or computational linguistics or something in the liberal arts.

Also if you find that you really love university, then just keep going and get a Masters.

FurrBall 12 years ago |

Math time! Lets assume you do not work during college and must pay with loans. Here is where you could be in 4 years time with each path.

College: -50k (debt) and a degree in CS.

Work: 480k (cash) and 4 years experience.

There's 530k difference between these two options. The math is a bit off since I didn't factor in tax, but I also did not factor in interest for the debt.

If you really have the skills to get a 120k job then there is no financial reason to go to college. Go to college if you feel the experience is worth a 530k sway in 4 years.

rdouble 12 years ago |

I think you are right that we are at the high point of the current tech boom. The emergence of dozens of pay-to-play "coding boot camps" is a good signal of this. Milk it for a while, save money, and then go back to school.

bookreader 12 years ago |

I don't really have any advice here, because I'm in a somewhat similar situation myself.

But I'm curious about what your skillset and CS knowledge are, since I'm trying to decide whether I should go back to college or continue working (I'm a little worried about how hard it might be to get a job in the future).

I'd definitely appreciate it if you could describe your skillset and CS knowledge, so I can get an idea of how talented a programmer needs to be to get jobs without a degree. Thanks!

testerofwaters 12 years ago | |

I know about basic data structures and know about order of growth. That (and intelligence) will get you through most CS-y interview questions.

Otherwise, the reason I get these offers is because 1) I'm skilled in something that is in particularly high demand (Ruby), so people are more willing to excuse inexperience (but I get rejected often anyway), and 2) I apply to a lot of companies/startups - you only need to have a good day once.

bookreader 12 years ago | | |

Thanks for the response. That's interesting to know. What are these interview questions like?

Are they basic questions about lists, stacks, trees, and graphs (and the corresponding algorithms)? Or are they puzzle type questions that you're just naturally good at?

Also, have you mostly had success with startup companies? I'm slightly worried about a bubble in the startup space, though I really have little idea how valid my worries are.

auganov 12 years ago |

Well do you want to? Will you enjoy it? Will you indeed build a network that everyone is always talking about? Some people just thrive in an environment like that and can use it to their advantage. It gives them leverage. They're work it. If that kind of resonates with you then there's no doubt going to college might make some great things happen.

Otherwise I'd just cut every corner possible and get the diploma in like 2 years.

Personally schools just make me feel sick. And truly sick too. Since leaving school I've never been sick once. No need to skip school I guess. Oh and the whole "college is nothing like HS, THIS IS THE REAL DEAL" crowd. Gosh. No! They'd tell me the same stuff in primary school about middle-school. By the first year of middle school I was begging my mom to let me home-school myself. Wish had more courage to actually drop out of that.

Got no clue what's financially better. If you can thrive there do go! And leverage the hell out of it.

But whether or not you go do continue academia-level self-studying. There's little excuse not to.

ktavera 12 years ago |

This is just my personal experience but I was in a similar situation.

I dropped out of high school to do web application development. Tried going to a technical college to get some kind of degree while working full time and I eventually had to choose work or go to school.

I chose to work. I was making $100k+ by the time I was 19 and kept advancing my career steadily. To this day probably 90% of the jobs I've applied to haven't questioned the fact that I do not have a degree, it's all about ability and what I have done. Startups make up that other 10% - even though I now have 10 years (i'm 27) of professional, proven development experience I've experienced a lot of apprehension in interviews because I didn't go to college.

So there is definitely some upside financially, but also you may not be able to land your dream job one day because you lack the college experience.

bookreader 12 years ago | |

I feel like it's a little odd when you say that startups make up the other 10% that care about a degree.

Conventional advice on HN seems to be that startups are the kinds of companies that don't care as much about the degree. What are the other 90% of jobs you've applied to? Are they also at tech companies?

ktavera 12 years ago | | |

Typically financial companies or IT consulting firms (IBM, CSC, etc) - the exact type that you would expect would ask you about your education. Sometime last year I interviewed with a startup, they loved my resume. Did a skype interview and things were great. Then they put me on a call with their CTO, first question - "Where did you go to school and when did you graduate?"... He cut the interview short and I never heard back.

shahed 12 years ago |

I just graduated high school (2 months ago) and got a few offers right after I graduated.

I'm currently doing a summer internship in Silicon Valley and plan on staying here for at least a year and improve my skills as a designer.

I've been offered a few great full time offers already, but still exploring my paths to make sure whichever decision I make, is the right one.

I plan on going to college (that's definitely something I want to do), but I'm on the same boat right now, and want to take advantage of the offers on the table right now that might not be there after I get out of college.

Any advice for me?

bitops 12 years ago |

Go back to school - you can never be too educated, especially if you go to Cal. Part of going to school is networking and making connections too. In a place like Berkeley you can have one foot in the university and one foot in the street.

kansface 12 years ago | |

I couldn't disagree more unless he wants to do it part time. University is largely valuable for the piece of paper, not for learning. He is already educated in his field as evidenced by his current level of success. He will make just as many connections in the real world. Going to school just for something to do is a huge waste, particularly when our field doesn't particularly value degrees.

tryitnow 12 years ago |

I know a lot of people in their 30s and 40s who don't have a college degree. They make no less and have no fewer job offers because of it.

Go to school because you enjoy learning something(1), not for better job offers. In the technical realms nobody is going to care about that. It's more important to show that you can do good work.

(1) and honestly even if you want to go to school just because you're curious about a subject I'd recommend checking out MOOCs like Coursera and Udacity first.

EliRivers 12 years ago | |

Conversely, I know lots of people in their 30s and 40s who don't have a degree, clearly make a lot less and don't (and didn't when they were younger) have access to many, many job opportunities because of it.

bookreader 12 years ago |

I'm mostly wondering right now whether there is a bubble in the startup space. I don't think I understand the market very well right now, and I'm not sure whether most startups are profitable or just being funded.

Does anyone have insight into whether there's a significant bubble in parts of the industry? Of course, this is hard to evaluate without some concrete data, and I'm not sure if any such data exists.

testerofwaters 12 years ago | |

I don't think there is a bubble. What I mean is that there probably won't be a huge crash or anything like that. But there may or may not be a gradual cooldown coming.

sredne 12 years ago |

Recent UIUC Alum.

I'm not sure if this will sway your decision, but a lot of lower level CS classes there have "proficiency exams". These exams allow you to test out of certain classes, so if you don't want to take the intro to CS you can just get the credit by passing the test. This could cut your time at school from 4 years to 3 and possibly even 2 if you're smart about it.

nicholas73 12 years ago |

Work now: high pay in a great market, great resume experience, open doors for other opportunities

College: losing money, boring classes, possibly jobless upon graduation if there is a bust in 4 years. But you get to meet a lot of girls.

Btw, save your money... it's not always easy to make it.

livestyle 12 years ago |

Do me a favor and read Andrew Chen's brillant piece on this topic.

http://andrewchen.co/2013/06/03/new-college-grads-dont-sell-...

piratebroadcast 12 years ago |

Make the money now while you can dude. School may also be cheaper in a few years.

arjunnarayan 12 years ago |

Take the money. You can always go to college. I still would go to college, just after a while. And you can pay cash for tuition too, and never take out any loans.