By definition, notable people are a minority. When you're recruiting John Carmack, you don't care about degrees because he's John Carmack. But most people are not, and for those, college degrees are considered some kind of safety net.
I would say that while they may not be John Carmack, pretty much all of the best people I've met in this industry did not have a college degree, and many of the worst did. Anecdotal yes, but suffice it to say I put very little stock into paper.
I myself attended university for a single year before deeming it completely not worth the time and money (which I couldn't really afford) and instead acquired several associates degrees (which I paid for with a menial job). Because of this, I admit to some bias on the matter.
Up to half my graduating class drifted by with “help” from friends / could barely code. They eventually figured out that leetcode exists and now they all have high paying jobs
>I myself attended university for a single year before deeming it completely not worth the time and money
almost the same with me. i was already living by myself went i started to go to college. where i live, college is not a "full time job" -- i had to work all day long then attend classes at night. it was basically exhausting.
i decided to quit college and instead focus on my career -- which was absolutely the right idea. i learned more by doing than by going to college.
A good person with a degree likely works at Google or equivalent. If you don't work at such a place then likely the places you went to are just very non-degree friendly and therefore gathered a lot of good people without degrees that had a hard time getting jobs elsewhere.
Is this true? I remember reading a few years back that Google had plenty of engineers without a degree, that they allegedly hired based on their side projects, free software contributions, etc.
When I worked at Google I never met anyone without a degree. They don't have it as a hard requirement but they are still very rare, since those without degrees rarely pass Googles interview process.
I did meet many with math/physics etc degrees, so not everone has a computer science degree.
- The outliers of the billionaires and big names are kinda making people reconsider though. e.g Zuckerberg, Gates (maybe dropout to do something is better signal)
I remember reading somewhere that something important to keep in mind is that Zuckerberg and Gates didn't really "drop out" as they could go back to college at any time if they wanted to. However once they succeeded there was no need. This was not a choice between "a degree and a shot at something" but "a degree, or either something that works, or a degree later".
