Once upon a time, I believed that getting a CS degree was highly correlated with being a mediocre engineer; the REAL stars were dropouts and liberal arts majors. (And other adventures in self-justifying heuristics ☺️) charity.wtf/2025/04/28/o... - ThreadSky

charity.wtf • 30 days ago

Once upon a time, I believed that getting a CS degree was highly correlated with being a mediocre engineer; the REAL stars were dropouts and liberal arts majors.

(And other adventures in self-justifying heuristics ☺️)

https://charity.wtf/2025/04/28/on-dropouts-and-bootstraps/

Comments

mattjohnsonpint.bsky.social•29 days ago

Same.

st8l3ss.bsky.social•30 days ago

lamers

sbisinger.bsky.social•30 days ago

Had I given up when things got hard, instead of powering through it, I too would be a great engineer today 😖

davidwhitney.co.uk•30 days ago

Taking your own culpability in your hubris is one of those big personal growth moments (my 20s: my CS degree sucked! That's why I almost failed it!, Actual: You fucked around and needed to do your homework).

Absolutism is failure by default, and generalisations always include exceptions.

davidwhitney.co.uk•30 days ago

The subculture hacker path was delicious and intoxicating but also rife with this kinda of thought that I was part of for probably decades.

Imagine how well my liberal arts loving ass could have been if I also did my homework rather than remembering how much I loved learning once I left university.

davidwhitney.co.uk•30 days ago

Intoxicating culture, in fact, also contains toxins.

Who knew :)

productnerd.bsky.social•29 days ago

Luck has so much to do with it. It's like how support carries so much water for software companies, but the people on those teams often make 1/3 of what everyone else does.

The inequity in tech salaries scare me.

hollycummins.com•30 days ago

I held (well, and still hold, a bit) a similar self-justifying heuristic that the best computer people studied either physics or English. Confirmation bias allows me to notice all the examples that confirmed the theory, and ignore all the ones that didn't. 🫤 Ta for the nicely-written reality check!

vestigialhe.art•30 days ago

So there's hope for me yet?

superroy.bsky.social•29 days ago

I’ve had similar thoughts about luck. But I’ve come to believe that opportunities come (by chance) more often than we think, and that what we call luck are the opportunities we remember that we took. And then some people are just very good at seeing opportunities; that’s a skill IMO.

kiraisgr8.bsky.social•30 days ago

i think i'm a drop-in, i started getting interviews immediately before the ai+layoff era and then it got so bad that i went back to school

raedwald.bsky.social•30 days ago

Admirable self critique. To suggest a grain of truth in your original heuristic: internal drive, intrinsic motivation, helps a lot. Computing is a mainstream career, so some do it for socio-cultural reasons other than love of geekery. Getting a CS degree will be seen as the ticket for that career./1

raedwald.bsky.social•30 days ago

Someone who has done a non-CS degree however has probably chosen to enter the field *despite* lacking the formal education, suggesting some internal motivation.

[Ob. disclaimer: I work in the field and do not have a CS degree]./2

billkarwin.geek.org•30 days ago

To many juniors who have asked the best way to become expert in their field, I have recommended:

1. Study
2. Practice

One or both can be self-directed, or part of an organized education. But both are necessary.

I think this answer is the same in any professional field, not just CS.

billkarwin.geek.org•30 days ago

My answer may seem so simple and obvious that it goes without saying, but given how many people still try to do one without the other, and find it limits their success, I think it is not so obvious, and still needs to be said.

arvid.io•30 days ago

As someone with no degree, I concur. ;)

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