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Software Engineer
Should I go for a bachelor's degree?
Hey everyone, I am a self taught programmer. I did my undergraduate in mechanical engineering and after doing a lot of grind, I pursued my career in data science first and then transitioned to full stack development.
I would consider myself decent software engineer however I get confused if I should get a formal degree from computer science or not.
Knowledge wise I feel I am doing great and learning a lot of things by myself and sometimes I also pickup freelance projects with agressive deadlines which keeps me updated with different technical trends.
I plan to build a SaaS however I do feel empty at times and have not got some good freelancing opportunity to enhance my learning for about 6 months now.
I believe joining an online bachelor's program in computer science would help me strengthen my computer science skills further and keep me disciplined to keep learning and keep growing. But I am little confused if I should really do it or try an MBA program?
I am passionate about tech and people around me love me for my understanding and interest in solving technical problems. However I feel like I need to do more to grow further. I am planning to either go back and do some freelancing along with my full time work or go and get a formal computer science degree. When I say freelancing, I ensure that whichever project I pick doesn't conflict with my organisation interests and is perfectly fine.
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typescriptdevSoftware Engineer
I agree to what you said... But I feel I lack commitment. Going with formal degree will force it back to my routine and then I'll make some great connections and also explore more opportunities. Currently I am not bounded and only have my full time work and it gives me liberty to disrupt my discipline of continuously doing and learning things.
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I am not going to try to convince you not to go get a bachelor degree in computer science, it’s a good thing, school is good because of the connections you get ( one of the good things )
but I’m not sure if they will teach you anything that’s more than what you’ve learned yourself (or you can learn) online, and since you have a degree in Mechanical Engineering you don’t have any issues concerning education when it comes to applying for jobs that require degree
If you’re thinking of improving your skills, there are many great resources online both free and paid that you can learn from to keep improving yourself
My main point is: you don’t need a degree in computer science to be the “greatest”developer
Mark Zuckerberg among others dropped out of school when he was building Facebook and it was after his software becomes big that he went back to complete his studies
If you’re going to apply for jobs in big companies like Google, Amazon, Tesla (and all Elon Musk’s companies) and many more they will not ask you to provide a computer science certificate, and even I can say like 85% to 90% of (well paid) tech jobs will not require you to provide a degree in any field