For programming jobs, how important is a college degree?
I know successful technical people who are literally high school dropouts, and others with PhDs. There are some companies that won’t even look at you unless you have the right credentials to start with–those are typically your really large companies. Your HPs, your Texas Instruments, your large corporate America where they have job grades. The job grade says you have to have this education, and you have to have this experience, and this is the salary range of that job grade, and for you to get in there, the round pegs need to fit in the round holes. If they don’t fit, you won’t even get to present yourself to them. These days, most of the employment is coming from smaller companies–startups or companies that have fewer than a few hundred employees. They’re not nearly as regimented or critical about having that piece of parchment. What they want to know is, “Can you walk in this door tomorrow and be up and running, not tripping over your feet, helping us get our product to the marketp
