This almost reads like conspiracy. There’s barely anything like that in reality, and the kind of network people finds at school is usually extremely weak. Otherwise, job boards wouldn’t exist.

I’ve never felt like doors have been closed or that others doubt me because of my lack of education. I’ve interviewed at Google and Citadel, had an offer from Meta, etc. It doesn’t feel like anyone has denied me opportunities outright.

I make north of $200k/year cash plus the equity and perks at an early stage startup. I’ve been through two exits so far. Nothing outrageous but I’m rich by most peoples standards. It doesn’t feel like lack of schooling has impacted me financially.

I did start programming and doing the startup thing at 19, so maybe the early start was an advantage. I could just be mind numbing lucky. But, from my point of view, warning the up and coming youngin’s off the self taught path is a disservice.

I myself was lucky enough to jump on the javascript train before javascript ate the world. 8 years in I switched over to elixir because i saw in it the potential to be the best stack to build MVPs in. These days, I'm maintaining one of those projects as CTO and we are interviewing candidates for a position. I can tell you personally, I value what you did at your last job and your side projects more than what you did in university 10 years ago. The one issue as someone from the interviewing side is that it takes a lot of effort to actually do an interview properly. I spent a lot of time putting together a coding test to test specifically for the tasks you'd be workin on as well as doing it with our applicants to make sure they aren't using vibe coding to do a half assed job. Its worth it though to make sure we make the right hire. when you're a startup, every hire can potentially make or break the company.

The route up is just more steep but in the end you end up more valuable experience and within 15 years time you then can cash it all in for a fortune 100 company. As that's where I am and I am only in my mid-thirties

You should go to college however if university isn't your thing, don't feel like your forever going to be an entry grade tech.

The route is more steep but it's all worth it; just keep seeking higher jobs with every departure.

As a college drop out, i have a few friends from university in the various big companies but none of my jobs came through them (even when i want to work in a faang: i just didn’t need it).

The "you'll be stuck with all the jobs other people don't want" thing is risible.

a data point for your second paragraph: i play D&D weekly with a woman that got hired at google straight out of high school and worked there for 10 years.

This seems completely untrue in my 20 year career experience. I have hired dozens of people for both large and small companies, and networks do matter… but I have never once seen the network be from school. It is always about people you have worked with before. Even my coworkers with degrees don’t have contact with their schoolmates anymore, it is always people they worked with.

What college can give you at the beginning of a career, beyond the premise of a guided education in the field of study, is a piece of paper that says "I really did learn some relevant stuff and have the ability to follow through" before you have a chance to prove these things in the field by already having had a job in it. It also gives you an initial chance to build a network but that's true of however you manage to spend your first 2-4 years getting into the field. After that initial in-field job or two the non-educational related value of a degree falls off a cliff (and the educational portion becomes an ever decreasing slice of job specific knowledge you acquire over decades).

My anecdote (that's all it is) comes from starting out without a degree and then getting a degree for the fun of it over a decade later. It's provided 0 value in any job, they've all come from references or recommendations from people I've worked with previously at this point. It was fun though, a chance to get involved with topics you wouldn't normally have a reason to touch.

I know people hate to hear it cause it sounds like a magic bullet and it does and I don’t like having to market myself either but it does work.

You don’t even really need to have an alumni for networking, just a few relatively nice / ok projects, a website and some business cards and you’re off!

I went to university but only apply maybe 5% of what I learned there in my day job. I founded and grew a company, also worked in senior roles at others. When I interview for engineering positions, I'm much more interested in other factors than what school you went to or who you've brushed shoulders with.

I recognize parent commenter's experience may be different, and give solid props for their self-taught journey. (In fact someone who can figure things out without having to be spoon fed is exactly the kind of person I want on the team).

Tried college three times and dropped out every time due to expense, boredom, and personal issues like my father passing away from cancer when I was 21.

I went into software development via tech support for a C compiler company, and worked up from there.

Worked for the NY stock exchange, two top tier brokerages, several prominent Fintechs and ultimately consulting into banks and payments companies.

It worked for me because I am largely an auto didact and do terribly in a school environment.

The lack of degree came up only a few times, and no one has cared.

At least in software development careers, degree matters very little to not at all.

The size and value of this club of alums depends _entirely_ on where you went to school. Not everyone gets into MIT.

I’m a much better developer after spending 3 years (already had 90 hours worth of a history degree) studying a prepared curriculum instead of bouncing around learning about whatever interested me.

I think it’s possible to do that on your own but the vast majority of people will never come close.

I’ve also definitely worked with self taught programmers who were better than me. But I’ve also noticed gaps they had and to a person I think they’d have been even better if they’d spent 4 years in a decent CS program.

One that I did not expect but that seems obvious in retrospect: It’s really easy to start reading Reddit or watching Twitch streams of developers ranting about the industry and think that actual skills don’t matter any more. There’s a temptation to think that you’re a fool to study and practice the job skills because what you really need to do is optimize for interview skills. So they drop everything and starting grinding LeetCode, putting unfinished “side projects” on their GitHub that have all the right things in the README.md (just hope nobody actually looks at the code) and memorizing S.T.A.R. format responses for the common behavioral interview questions.

This strategy actually worked reasonable well for a few years, but the game has changed and most companies are better at catching professional interviewers who don’t know how to do much else.

I should note that this mindset isn’t unique to self-taught people: There’s a parallel epidemic of cheating in college among students who see it as “just a piece of paper” and think they’d be foolish to actually learn the subject material. This also hits hard when they reach graduation and are faced with the current style of interviews which are not as easy as they expected to bluff your way through.

Couldn't agree more regarding taking English/History courses. I find that understanding and dissecting good English literature isn't any less challenging than any computer science problem.

It kind of reminds me of the whole "luck is not a strategy, but increasing your number of attempts is". Having a network increases the number of chances you have to get lucky. I have a friend that joined a work softball league, and that network eventually led him to a role with another company participating in the league.