Programmers and Software Developers is one of the highest paid people in our society. The main reason for this is that the skillset needed to become a good programmer is not commonly seen in everyone. But, it comes this one question, do you need a degree to be a successful programmer?
Read: How to become a Good Programmer?
A degree in computer science is a symbol of dedication and stands as a proof that you have spent a lot of your time reading and researching various technologies. When a company wants to hire an individual, they have to judge the individual based on some criterion, so they choose the degree. But this is not going fine now. A lot of degree holders are not really good at programming which is sad to hear.
Nowadays various companies are considering the efforts an individual has put into doing projects or contributing to open source software or having a good GitHub profile. These provide an insight to the recruiter that the individual has a real world experience in dealing with projects.
Now coming to our question, do you need a degree to make a successful career in CS? The answer is a resounding No. Most of the companies are not stuck with the old ways of judging you based on your degree and grades, They want some practical proof that you can deal with the stress, programming and all. Without a degree, you can gain a sufficiently good knowledge in CS from online courses, MOOC, educational websites like Treehouse and Linda.
You might face a little tough time in the beginning since you got no proof to show that you are good. But in time, you will get better. The most important part is not to lose the curiosity to learn new technologies because without that, you cannot survive in CS.
Just remember, more than 14% employees at Google has no professional degree. So, you always have a chance. This is possible because unlike any other course or profession, you don’t need to know a lot of stuff to start learning the CS concepts. Which makes it a simple and newbie friendly profession.
