This is a great episode. I’ve personally found that since I’ve been in the industry, CS grads are far better at passing technical interviews in terms of most optimized solution and flexibility in multiple languages whereas bootcamp grads can build things from the ground up super efficiently and are very proficient in a specific stack.
80% of software engineering jobs have very little computer science in them. You shouldn't need a CS degree to do those jobs. If you want to work in the other 20% though the CS degree is very helpful. It's also very niche so breaking into the market requires building a network while in the college and is best if it's top tier for that reason. That said it is possible to learn the stuff needed for the other 20% it's just harder without a university.
I don't have a formal degree, I only went to college for a few semesters and didn't like it (management), and right now I'm taking the self-taught route and looking forward to freelance.
I definitely think its a case by case kindve thing. For me I served 7 years in the military. So now I'm out of the military and use my benefits to pay for school. So I get to do both. I'm trying to go to codesmith starting next month AND I'm currently in school.
Yeah, my main concern is really about the massive debt that people accrue in college. The GI bill is definitely a good reason to seriously consider a CS degree.
Hey Don one new subscriber from South Africa Im new to your channel and loving your videos bro, it has opened eyes to CS and made a informed decision that saved me thousands of rands, keep the videos coming and looking forward TO THE NOTIFICATIONS on the new content
I think the goals of a bootcamp and a modern university are quite different. By completing a bootcamp you have essentially proven that you are competent in some technology at a specific point in time. Universities are no longer about general knowledge or teaching you the latest tech stacks, rather they are designed to develop your critical reasoning skills and prepare you for solving complex, abstract problems later on in your career. They are certainly not the only means of doing this, but they offer an industry proven, structured curriculum to achieve this. Remember most of what you are taught is lost with the effluxion of time without practice. Our brains are simply not optimised for short term learning and our memory retention is quite bad in that respect. It takes years to develop neural pathways in the brain which is why degree programs are typically of the order of a few years.
I would say many 4 year degrees should be shorten to 5 months trade schools to compete globally. Half your undergrad is liberal arts classes which companies dont pay for.
Half the degree is general education. That is the liberal arts education model all degrees in the US are based on. In the UK they don't do that. I'm in the US and hated the CS degree. The general education just drained my time and energy so I couldn't focus on the CS classes and the CS classes were totally irrelevant to any vocation and computer science is not a vocation except for maybe university researchers, which requires a PhD and is a very small job market and not related to IT or software development much.
25:50 You can't show your projects you do because those are graded assignments and if you post them online then the students use those to give them the solution. Also the university created the project and you just implemented it. Also the projects the university gives you would not impress any company anyway because they don't match what is being done in the real world and would be considered amature or foolish to program something in assembly or LISP, or implement a linked list to do something very simple.
@@portfedh Every project fit all of that description. But, in general it doesn't work well. If you were a painter that would probably work though. Or, if they were better about allowing you to create good projects. Some later projects may be more practical and you could demonstrate it. But, in general it is just not a real benefit. The education system is incredibly corrupt where they have little interest or incentive to provide a real education. The courses are not designed by proper industry leaders, with rare exception. The academic researchers to instructors for classes and have no business doing so. The university also requires 50% classes to be taken outside your area of study in the USA, which is insanely corrupt. You should be able to start career based studies and apprentice after 9th grade.
Omg thank you so much Don and guests for this video! This resonated with me a lot and gives me some hope for my future. I have a CS degree and have struggled unfortunately to find a job for a some time. College didn't really prepare me at all for the real world and job interviews, which is very sad. But I don't necessarily regret it since I was still figuring out what I wanted to do (I did not start out as a CS major). And even now I still am. Also recently found your channel and I've been really enjoying all your bootcamp review content!
Of course. I just heard this story way too many times, and it just needed to be said. You may just have to supplement a little and you'll have a bright future ahead of you. I'm glad you're liking the content!
One thought on the salary difference between computer science degrees and bootcamps. Graduates from top colleges, like Stanford, are getting top tier full software engineering jobs paying at the high end. Some bootcamp grads are also getting those same jobs, but a lot of bootcamp grads are also getting tangentially related engineering jobs, like quality assurance engineers, test engineers, web developer, contract jobs, and those jobs just naturally pay less.
That's definitely the result of many coding bootcamps underdelivering - hence the whole point of my review episodes. Too many people see these non-software engineering positions as stepping stones to becoming a software engineer. For most situations, I'm an advocate against that, but sometimes you just have to accept a job temporarily to pay the bills.
It really depends on the person and the college that you got a degree from. Based on all my experience, going to a top computer science school is a safer path to getting an entry level job at a top company than self learning. There's a lot of nuance in that statement. It applies to top companies like Facebook Google and Amazon. And it applies to top schools, which you can ballpark that at the top 10 ranked computer science schools in the United States and Waterloo from Canada. This applies to entry level jobs, like new grad jobs and junior roles. Finally I said safe, in terms of probabilities: nothing is guaranteed or certain. There are a ton of different other paths so there really isn't any single right answer.
Alot of people ignore the fact that not everyone lives in a big, expensive city. With remote work, especially due to covid, you could move to a small or mid-sized city and have a pretty high standard of living. For example, I live in Indiana and it's one of the cheapest states to live in. I've met junior software and web developers making $50-90k/year and you could live a very satisfying life on this here. So even if it pays "less" than some big role at a big tech company paying you $150k, if you live in a cheap state or city and work remotely, you can still live a pretty good life on the lower salary.
This was very helpful--as all your vids are. I loved high school, mainly for the electives and so I wasn't too fond of college for many reasons, the main reason being the cost. So I appreciate the opportunity to more or less fast track to a great job in a great industry. I tried the self-taught route for 1.5 years and found out I needed that little extra push, structure, and accountability from a bootcamp. Now that I've gotten older I do kind of want a degree for personal reasons, so I may go back and do it later.
Your path sounds really similar to mine! (1.5 years self-study, then a coding bootcamp). If you do end up going back to college, good luck. If you're like me, you'll probably take it more seriously now that you're older.
If you're in the USA, do a bootcamp. If you're anywhere else, do university. The degree combined with mathematics and statistics, has been invaluable. You can't practically self-teach that stuff. University provides a very solid foundation to develop your problem solving abilities. These "bootcamps" are only teaching very simple problems, and mainly syntax of the languages. Software engineering is not about syntax at all, it is computational problem solving. I went the self-taught route before university as well, so that is my perspective.
I only got a degree because my job paid for it. I only paid for the last 2 semesters so 11k for a 4 year degree. Otherwise I would have done a bootcamp.
"Keeping up with frameworks" is the wrong way to think about a programming education. It removes the focus away from the fundamentals which (despite frameworks changing) haven't changed much. The core concepts remain. Bootcamps (most) teach a specific framework/tech stack and hopefully they can find a job that matches exactly that. They can sometimes then struggle to pick up new things. Furthermore the bootcamps heavily teach web development which is only fragment of the programming job market. I do agree a CS degree is bloated and could be heavily pared down; it shouldn't be 4 years. And as mentioned it takes a very motivated person to gain material value from a bootcamp. ("attitude not aptitude") My experience has been with large tech companies which require college degrees or heavily favor them. Maybe it is all the small businesses and startups that are hiring bootcamp graduates because I have not seen any shift towards that in the companies I've worked at.
I agree. This is why I believe in thoroughly studying the fundamentals of a language before going to a bootcamp. This is exactly what i'm doing. I'm taking 2 months to study the fundamentals so I have a deep understanding of it before I enroll in a bootcamp.
Personally, I'd rather not work for a big company because of the bureaucracy and feeling like your input in the business matters less. I'd rather stick with companies less than 100 employees. Yes, i'll make less, but I could easily freelance or find other sources of income if I wanted to make extra money.
@@painexotic3757 out of curiosity, how do you know if/when you have achieved that deep understanding of the fundamentals? or how you test yourself to check your skill level after that 2 months?
@@michael.novati There are alot of online tests you can take if you literally just search up "free online test" after whatever language you're learning. That's what I'm doing. But there's a good site called w3schools and they specifically have quizes for several different languages. But i'd say to use alot of the tests from several different websites. But the best way, aside from tests, is to actually do basic projects from what you're learning.
True story, 2 kids in my class got chosen to help with a “secret project” told not to talk about it. 1 told me it was just for a side project for the professor side company. The other told me “I can’t say” how robotic and stupid do you sound to agree to that? I don’t think they realized how stupid they sounded.
a video is not like reading an article especially if you bring people with experience in both fields to talk about it and say there opinion about what a person should choose... and there is only one video on UA-cam about that
I would think software engineering is designing software that works on a computer or web and computer engineering is the hardware. Like a electrical engineer could become a computer engineering. I could be wrong but that what I thought. A electrical engineer at work told me if to get a CS degree you are not going to design hardware but if you get a electrical engineer degree you can do both, software and hardware.
I don't plan to anytime soon. To be honest, I don't know a whole lot about data science. I'm the wrong person to ask. I bet you there are tons of channels focused on it though!
I think everyone should get a college degree nowadays. Art, CS, Math, chemistry, anything. There are jobs that require a degree and it give you more option later in life if you want to change careers.
As far as internships go most companies require a 3.0 gpa or higher, which is going to be only the top %30 to %50 of the class at most. That excludes a huge percentage of students who won't get the value of the degree with practical experience. You would have more luck applying for a low level job that is partially related, without even being a student.
This is a great episode. I’ve personally found that since I’ve been in the industry, CS grads are far better at passing technical interviews in terms of most optimized solution and flexibility in multiple languages whereas bootcamp grads can build things from the ground up super efficiently and are very proficient in a specific stack.
80% of software engineering jobs have very little computer science in them. You shouldn't need a CS degree to do those jobs. If you want to work in the other 20% though the CS degree is very helpful. It's also very niche so breaking into the market requires building a network while in the college and is best if it's top tier for that reason. That said it is possible to learn the stuff needed for the other 20% it's just harder without a university.
I don't have a formal degree, I only went to college for a few semesters and didn't like it (management), and right now I'm taking the self-taught route and looking forward to freelance.
I definitely think its a case by case kindve thing. For me I served 7 years in the military. So now I'm out of the military and use my benefits to pay for school. So I get to do both. I'm trying to go to codesmith starting next month AND I'm currently in school.
Yeah, my main concern is really about the massive debt that people accrue in college. The GI bill is definitely a good reason to seriously consider a CS degree.
Hey Don one new subscriber from South Africa Im new to your channel and loving your videos bro, it has opened eyes to CS and made a informed decision that saved me thousands of rands, keep the videos coming and looking forward TO THE NOTIFICATIONS on the new content
😊
I think the goals of a bootcamp and a modern university are quite different. By completing a bootcamp you have essentially proven that you are competent in some technology at a specific point in time. Universities are no longer about general knowledge or teaching you the latest tech stacks, rather they are designed to develop your critical reasoning skills and prepare you for solving complex, abstract problems later on in your career. They are certainly not the only means of doing this, but they offer an industry proven, structured curriculum to achieve this.
Remember most of what you are taught is lost with the effluxion of time without practice. Our brains are simply not optimised for short term learning and our memory retention is quite bad in that respect. It takes years to develop neural pathways in the brain which is why degree programs are typically of the order of a few years.
I would say many 4 year degrees should be shorten to 5 months trade schools to compete globally. Half your undergrad is liberal arts classes which companies dont pay for.
I don't miss my money being wasted on electives..
Half the degree is general education. That is the liberal arts education model all degrees in the US are based on. In the UK they don't do that. I'm in the US and hated the CS degree. The general education just drained my time and energy so I couldn't focus on the CS classes and the CS classes were totally irrelevant to any vocation and computer science is not a vocation except for maybe university researchers, which requires a PhD and is a very small job market and not related to IT or software development much.
25:50 You can't show your projects you do because those are graded assignments and if you post them online then the students use those to give them the solution. Also the university created the project and you just implemented it. Also the projects the university gives you would not impress any company anyway because they don't match what is being done in the real world and would be considered amature or foolish to program something in assembly or LISP, or implement a linked list to do something very simple.
thanks for explaining this. I was curious about that point.
@@portfedh Every project fit all of that description. But, in general it doesn't work well. If you were a painter that would probably work though. Or, if they were better about allowing you to create good projects. Some later projects may be more practical and you could demonstrate it. But, in general it is just not a real benefit. The education system is incredibly corrupt where they have little interest or incentive to provide a real education. The courses are not designed by proper industry leaders, with rare exception. The academic researchers to instructors for classes and have no business doing so. The university also requires 50% classes to be taken outside your area of study in the USA, which is insanely corrupt. You should be able to start career based studies and apprentice after 9th grade.
Omg thank you so much Don and guests for this video! This resonated with me a lot and gives me some hope for my future. I have a CS degree and have struggled unfortunately to find a job for a some time. College didn't really prepare me at all for the real world and job interviews, which is very sad. But I don't necessarily regret it since I was still figuring out what I wanted to do (I did not start out as a CS major). And even now I still am. Also recently found your channel and I've been really enjoying all your bootcamp review content!
Of course. I just heard this story way too many times, and it just needed to be said. You may just have to supplement a little and you'll have a bright future ahead of you. I'm glad you're liking the content!
One thought on the salary difference between computer science degrees and bootcamps. Graduates from top colleges, like Stanford, are getting top tier full software engineering jobs paying at the high end. Some bootcamp grads are also getting those same jobs, but a lot of bootcamp grads are also getting tangentially related engineering jobs, like quality assurance engineers, test engineers, web developer, contract jobs, and those jobs just naturally pay less.
That's definitely the result of many coding bootcamps underdelivering - hence the whole point of my review episodes. Too many people see these non-software engineering positions as stepping stones to becoming a software engineer. For most situations, I'm an advocate against that, but sometimes you just have to accept a job temporarily to pay the bills.
But then bootcamps are only 6 months compared to a 4 year degree. Four years of studying on your own gives you better skills than the degree
It really depends on the person and the college that you got a degree from. Based on all my experience, going to a top computer science school is a safer path to getting an entry level job at a top company than self learning.
There's a lot of nuance in that statement. It applies to top companies like Facebook Google and Amazon. And it applies to top schools, which you can ballpark that at the top 10 ranked computer science schools in the United States and Waterloo from Canada. This applies to entry level jobs, like new grad jobs and junior roles. Finally I said safe, in terms of probabilities: nothing is guaranteed or certain.
There are a ton of different other paths so there really isn't any single right answer.
Alot of people ignore the fact that not everyone lives in a big, expensive city. With remote work, especially due to covid, you could move to a small or mid-sized city and have a pretty high standard of living. For example, I live in Indiana and it's one of the cheapest states to live in. I've met junior software and web developers making $50-90k/year and you could live a very satisfying life on this here. So even if it pays "less" than some big role at a big tech company paying you $150k, if you live in a cheap state or city and work remotely, you can still live a pretty good life on the lower salary.
Thank you Don and guests for another great episode!
This was very helpful--as all your vids are. I loved high school, mainly for the electives and so I wasn't too fond of college for many reasons, the main reason being the cost. So I appreciate the opportunity to more or less fast track to a great job in a great industry. I tried the self-taught route for 1.5 years and found out I needed that little extra push, structure, and accountability from a bootcamp. Now that I've gotten older I do kind of want a degree for personal reasons, so I may go back and do it later.
Your path sounds really similar to mine! (1.5 years self-study, then a coding bootcamp). If you do end up going back to college, good luck. If you're like me, you'll probably take it more seriously now that you're older.
If you're in the USA, do a bootcamp.
If you're anywhere else, do university.
The degree combined with mathematics and statistics, has been invaluable. You can't practically self-teach that stuff.
University provides a very solid foundation to develop your problem solving abilities. These "bootcamps" are only teaching very simple problems, and mainly syntax of the languages. Software engineering is not about syntax at all, it is computational problem solving.
I went the self-taught route before university as well, so that is my perspective.
I only got a degree because my job paid for it. I only paid for the last 2 semesters so 11k for a 4 year degree. Otherwise I would have done a bootcamp.
If your company pays for it, that's definitely a good reason to get a CS degree.
You shouldn't do either boot camp or degree. You should spend time working on your programming skills if you want to be a programmer.
"Keeping up with frameworks" is the wrong way to think about a programming education. It removes the focus away from the fundamentals which (despite frameworks changing) haven't changed much. The core concepts remain. Bootcamps (most) teach a specific framework/tech stack and hopefully they can find a job that matches exactly that. They can sometimes then struggle to pick up new things. Furthermore the bootcamps heavily teach web development which is only fragment of the programming job market. I do agree a CS degree is bloated and could be heavily pared down; it shouldn't be 4 years. And as mentioned it takes a very motivated person to gain material value from a bootcamp. ("attitude not aptitude") My experience has been with large tech companies which require college degrees or heavily favor them. Maybe it is all the small businesses and startups that are hiring bootcamp graduates because I have not seen any shift towards that in the companies I've worked at.
I agree. This is why I believe in thoroughly studying the fundamentals of a language before going to a bootcamp. This is exactly what i'm doing. I'm taking 2 months to study the fundamentals so I have a deep understanding of it before I enroll in a bootcamp.
Personally, I'd rather not work for a big company because of the bureaucracy and feeling like your input in the business matters less. I'd rather stick with companies less than 100 employees. Yes, i'll make less, but I could easily freelance or find other sources of income if I wanted to make extra money.
@@painexotic3757 out of curiosity, how do you know if/when you have achieved that deep understanding of the fundamentals? or how you test yourself to check your skill level after that 2 months?
@@michael.novati There are alot of online tests you can take if you literally just search up "free online test" after whatever language you're learning. That's what I'm doing. But there's a good site called w3schools and they specifically have quizes for several different languages. But i'd say to use alot of the tests from several different websites. But the best way, aside from tests, is to actually do basic projects from what you're learning.
So would it be hard for someone to get a job as a developer for someone who has no college education and only the self-taught experience.
True story, 2 kids in my class got chosen to help with a “secret project” told not to talk about it. 1 told me it was just for a side project for the professor side company. The other told me “I can’t say” how robotic and stupid do you sound to agree to that? I don’t think they realized how stupid they sounded.
Thank you for this video!
You're welcome!
Thank you for your work really appreciated!
can you please talk about the difference between software engineering and computer engineering?
That feels like something you could just google. I'm not sure that would be worth making a video over.
a video is not like reading an article especially if you bring people with experience in both fields to talk about it and say there opinion about what a person should choose... and there is only one video on UA-cam about that
@@aneel190 It's not a topic I have any interest in gathering people to talk about.
@@DonTheDeveloper ok I understand..
I would think software engineering is designing software that works on a computer or web and computer engineering is the hardware. Like a electrical engineer could become a computer engineering. I could be wrong but that what I thought. A electrical engineer at work told me if to get a CS degree you are not going to design hardware but if you get a electrical engineer degree you can do both, software and hardware.
In my experience it is too much theory, and not enough coding
Hello, will you interview anyone taking Data Science bootcamps? What do you think of Data science?
I don't plan to anytime soon. To be honest, I don't know a whole lot about data science. I'm the wrong person to ask. I bet you there are tons of channels focused on it though!
Depends on how you understand higher education. So much to apprehend during those years.
I think everyone should get a college degree nowadays. Art, CS, Math, chemistry, anything. There are jobs that require a degree and it give you more option later in life if you want to change careers.
As far as internships go most companies require a 3.0 gpa or higher, which is going to be only the top %30 to %50 of the class at most. That excludes a huge percentage of students who won't get the value of the degree with practical experience. You would have more luck applying for a low level job that is partially related, without even being a student.
I think if someone obtains a 4 year CS degree and self-taught themselves, they will be successful.
47:15