Kinda off-topic but I have to agree with the "it doesn’t matter where you come from" and myself am very grateful to the tech industry for that. If it wasn't the case I'd probably still be working at a fast-food chain currently, as in my country without years of formal education you're pretty much considered worthless - if it wasn't for tech I'd be doomed.
Similarly here. School wasn't the best fit for me and tech was great because (like politics, which I also spent ~5 years in) you didn't need a fancy degree to get a job.
What's wrong with a fancy degree? I don't understand why fancy degree is used as a pejorative around here. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that most people these days that come from bootcamps make more money than people with "fancy degree"s.
It is not that there is anything wrong with a fancy degree per se.
The problem is the opposite. People with fancy degrees often look down on others who DON'T have fancy degrees.
Thus, other people often engage in defense, counter ribbing at the other side. But we need to be aware that the current culture context of this it is very common for Fancy Degree people to be praised and everyone else to be looked down upon.
> The problem is the opposite. People with fancy degrees often look down on others who DON'T have fancy degrees.
Arrogance is not a desirable trait in any person, but doesn't a fancy degree take work? I find it interesting that on HN we seem to hold up startup employees as shining examples but fancy degree holders as corrupt power brokers, when both take quite a bit of effort.
> But we need to be aware that the current culture context of this it is very common for Fancy Degree people to be praised and everyone else to be looked down upon.
Right, but in tech, where most are paid astronomically high salaries, if the Fancy Degree is looked down upon, then aren't the non-Fancy-Degree people in a fairly privileged position? Maybe this attitude is only prevalent in the online HN forum, and Fancy Degrees are actually valued in industry.
A fancy degree is certainly an accomplishment and potentially a good path to follow, but it is one path among many.
There are lots and lots of other paths that one could follow, and they all have both advantages and disadvantages. One path is not automatically better than any of the others 100% of the time.
The problem is that the common, pro-fancy degree perspective comes from a very hierarchical perspective that just isn't true at all.
It assumes that Harvard is better Stanford which is better than a tier 2 or tier 1.5 school.
There is even a hierarchy AMONG similar fancy degrees. IE, Computer Science is better than Information Systems.
Many an Information Systems major will be able to talk about their experience of being shit on for their choices because apparently everyone thinks that the only reason to do Information Systems is because you didn't get accepted to computer science.
Because of the hierarchical cultural context in which we are in, I am not going to criticize Info systems majors for making fun of CS majors, nor will I criticize startupy, non-fancy degree holders on HN for making fun of the fancy degree holders.
>Because of the hierarchical cultural context in which we are in, I am not going to criticize Info systems majors for making fun of CS majors, nor will I criticize startupy, non-fancy degree holders on HN for making fun of the fancy degree holders.
Sure but then we're just replacing one form of hierarchy with another, where we replace company tiers with school tiers, and job titles with degrees.
> The problem is that the common, pro-fancy degree perspective comes from a very hierarchical perspective that just isn't true at all.
You don't think there's any truth in that an Ivy League school is more selective than a community college? I'm not saying that it makes sense to say that Harvard > Stanford, in all ways, or even that these schools have a fair selection system, but it seems to me that this has become a black-and-white affair (pro-degree vs. anti-degree, pro-hierarchy vs. anti-hierarchy) rather than a nuanced issue.
1 who went to an ivy league and gets a great job at an investment bank and another who went to a community college, but spent most of their free time self studying and building a startup that ends up being valued at, say, 10 million dollars.
Which of these two people is smarter, more successful, and/or a harder worker?
My answer is "I don't know". Both people have their strengths and weaknesses.
The school that you went to, no matter if it is an ivy league or a community college, is just a single aspect about you.
There are many paths to success and aspects about you as a person, and I would not say that what college degree someone got is even close to the most important or predictive factor about a person's life or how successful they are going to be.
A fancy degree not being a prerequisite for a job doesn't mean it's a negative indicator - there are plenty of people with fancy degrees(degrees from prestigious colleges) in the tech industry.
Nothing is wrong with a fancy degree, and I don't think OP is invalidating or shining a negative light on a fancy degree. OP is just saying that you could also get into tech/politics without the necessity of requiring one
Nothing wrong per se, but personally I see it as a waste of time - you could've built real products and actually improved the world during the time wasted on that fancy degree.
Okay, so does the vast majority of degrees improve the world? Even if 1 out of 1000 startups improved the world it's still an improvement over students writing (often crappy) code just to prove their university they're worth enough to get that degree.
