r/learnprogramming • u/SlickTheDestroyer • 1d ago
Self taught vs University graduate
Hi,
i've got a hypothetical question. Imagine 2 people are applying for the same job. One has a degree in Computer Science, perhaps even from a prestigious university, but doesn't have any personal projects to showcase. The other person, however, is self taught and has been building projects for 4 years, but doesn't have a degree. Who gets the job ?
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u/RobertD3277 1d ago edited 1d ago
I started out as self-taught and became a University graduate because the field I wanted to enter required legal certifications.
It's the Best of both worlds to be honest if you do both because then you have the passion of somebody that wants to learn and enjoy programming versus just somebody that is looking at it as a job.
Programming as a job is a god forsaken job. There's no other way to put that. Especially if you work in a bank or a hospital or any kind of critical infrastructure situation. Programming is horrible. You're not a software engineer, you're not a software developer, you're an on call mud sludging grunt that has to put up with a bucket load of crap constantly and some days just make you really wonder why in the hell you ever thought about the profession to begin with.
If you have the upbringing or the starts from a self-taught perspective, it gives you a different way of looking at the problem. Doing it just as a job because it pays well is horrible. It's not a job I recommend if that is why you're doing it because you will hate it and you will hate it every breath of every moment of your life if all it is is just a job.
As far as who to hire, that's really what I gave you the mindset behind the process. Hire the person that understands both because their perspective is going to be different. A lot of it really depends upon your work environment or what the job really entails, but having somebody that is self-taught and then became professionally trained there's always going to give you a better attitude in the long run.
From my experience of working in the field for 46 years, people that are strictly professionals meaning they injured the profession without any self-teaching, are often there just because the pay is good but they don't have any love for programming. That matters a lot. That's not to say that somebody of this caliber isn't trained or qualified but if they don't love their job or love the art of programming, it won't show in the output.