Is a CS degree necessary for a future SWE job change if I can get SWE experience at my current company? If not would a CS degree from WGU or a “lighter” program check the box off? I’m currently in OMSCS and balancing it with full time product management role is painful. It would be way easier to focus on just coding after work and self studying. TC: 145k
Very important, university is where you get to make friends, have fun !
Oh I went to university already (and had way too much fun)! My degrees are just in civil engineering(BS+MS) and I’m looking at going from software product manager to software engineer.
Usually industry experience is fine, probably better
Well that’s reassuring, my degrees are in civil eng but I’m a software pm and can definitely take some engineering tasks on in my role to get experience. Im not looking to target any kind of crazy AI/ML work either.
No degree here, had to take a non traditional route to get in but once you’re in no one cares about your education.
Holy shit that’s an awesome accomplishment! Did you go the bootcamp path?
I’m a swe with an Econ degree. Self taught, got several certs. You can either code or you can’t. If you’ve got the soft skills to match your coding skills, I doubt anyone will care what your degree is in. If they care then, you didn’t want to work there anyways 😂 good luck op
Thanks! At this point my soft skills are way stronger than my coding skills for now. I’ve been moving in baby steps, went from civil engineer to software product manager and will put in the effort to learn the codebase/take some tickets. How was the transition for you and how hard was getting the first job?
It was journey for sure. I was working in finance and I finally built up the courage to quit. I studied for a cloud cert(not for the cert itself but to learn what it was all about). I took my first job as a cloud admin. That was my “in.” From there just kept practicing and learned a lot of cs theory. It took another 1.5 years to land a swe role after getting that cloud admin role. The swe role wasn’t for a top company but that didn’t matter, I just needed the experience. I hear of some people also have success starting out as data analysts. Hope this helps
It's just not about the degree or completing the degree as well. It's about the fundamental concepts that you get to learn in CS degree that matters the most. Most bootcamp folks would disagree with me and say anyone can pick up coding but there is a lot more that goes behind the scenes. You can happily keep coding by using libraries but it's a big learning curve to get to understand what goes behind. So it's upto you. If you want to see how the Matrix works then you ll have to go through the CS degree more than just getting a degree.
Totally understood, but outside of the degree what’s the difference between doing a coursera mooc on networks, operating systems and databases?(did take a college level comp arch class already) Sure it’s arguably more high level but conceptually I won’t be far off from what the average CS grad retains after graduation?
You will be just fine with self study material and can be a good swe . No doubt. But if you would like to explore things which are complex in nature your knowledge on basics will help. For example in my case I leaned Microprocessor and assembly language in my CS degree. The concepts i acquired is helping me even now. Concepts like how code works at machine level helps you to grasp any future concepts faster coz you know how it all works behind the scenes. But again it's upto your interest. If you are not interested then even if you have 10 degree it won't matter. Most folks now a days are not that interested in knowing what goes on at hardware level. Which is fine but it helps in the long run. But at the end having a degree or not doesn't matter all it matters is how much interested are you to learn and apply new concepts and how curious you are. That's all that matters. You are good either way.
I’ve been a dev for 10 yr am a millionaire and got an IT degree back in the day. I self taught myself everything starting in middle school. At this point for me it doesn’t matter. Maybe recruiters are using CS degree to gate keep nowadays but idk. I’d say it’s not the end of the world if you don’t finish but it would be a nice check box. Is it worth the suffering though? Idk tbh
It’s important until you have 5-10 years of experience culminating in senior engineering work handling all aspects of 6+ month projects including leading small teams.
Wish I had one tbh. But it’s hard to get one while working.
if bootcamp grads with no degree can get a job, you can definitely get a job if your current company gives you SWE experience
Don't listen to this. A degree is becoming increasingly necessary
CS degree or any degree? I have a BS+MS in Civil Engineering, would a less than impressive BSCS degree be okay? (WGU) or should I at least aim for a more middle of the road online masters (ASU/UC-Boulder)?