A thread about college and programming, and why I think this Google thing is a little silly. https://twitter.com/reflected_sky/status/1290276841362604033

So first, I agree you don't need a CS degree to be a software engineer. I've worked with, including hiring and mentoring, a boatload of engineers, and many very good ones had degrees in other stuff, and a few had no degrees at all.

So why go to a college at all? And if you do, why get a CS degree? Why go to a "nicer" college instead of a cheap one? Couldn't you just replace that with a cheap course?

No, I don't think so.

The college degree provides two things, or tries to: a) signaling and b) skills.

For (a), people have a sense that the signaling function makes it fake in some way, and from an education policy standpoint, that makes sense. But from a hiring standpoint, it's totally valid.

If you're going to take a risk in hiring someone out of school, you want to know that they're smart, work hard, and can learn fast. A degree, especially one from a "rigorous" school, gets you that signal. Doesn't mean people who don't have the signal lack the qualities, but if

you compare two resumes, your evidence for the one with the fancy degree tells you more.

(b) is something people debate often, but in my experience, people with CS degrees have a head start. It's not really about the skills you would otherwise learn in the first 6 months of a

job. I agree those could be replaced with a quick course. It's about the CS principles you use as you grow your scope. You can certainly learn them the hard way and many people do, but you're getting a very big head start.

Is that worth it for *you*? Maybe not. But Google

pretending it's not worth it to them is just silly, and it's hard to imagine them ignoring both (a) and (b) when hiring, because you took this 8 week course.

Should we move to a model that demands less upfront investment in sometimes questionable education, and make firms find clearer signals (test) and their own training programs? We should.

Is Google going to unilaterally make that happen? I would be shocked.