Computer programmers without a degree how did you break in ?

[Neosutra]

Or get a degree thats not in CS and get a job that pays more than 30k a year.

(Prepare for onslaught of people with CS degrees that make more than 30k a year posting in anger).

Seriously though, any engineer or scientist is expected to know how to program, get an engineering degree and open up your options alot more than the overflooded CS market.

All I have to say is lol, CS degree here, and triple your moronic salary estimation.

Did you miss the bolded part? Obviously there are a few people that vary in the salary distribution and that is also heavily based on where you live.

And you make 100k a year out of college with a CS degree? Where lol? I know of a handful of jobs that would pay that much out of college, let alone for CS related activity ,and those are mostly due to location on the west coast.

Average CS salary in 2007 ranged from 35-50k a year on average depending on where you are (35k in alabama, 50++ in california).

[MisterBob]

Or get a degree thats not in CS and get a job that pays more than 30k a year.

(Prepare for onslaught of people with CS degrees that make more than 30k a year posting in anger).

Seriously though, any engineer or scientist is expected to know how to program, get an engineering degree and open up your options alot more than the overflooded CS market.

All I have to say is lol, CS degree here, and triple your moronic salary estimation.

Did you miss the bolded part? Obviously there are a few people that vary in the salary distribution and that is also heavily based on where you live.

And you make 100k a year out of college with a CS degree? Where lol? I know of a handful of jobs that would pay that much out of college, let alone for CS related activity ,and those are mostly due to location on the west coast.

Average CS salary in 2007 ranged from 35-50k a year on average depending on where you are (35k in alabama, 50++ in california).

It's obviously company policy to not disclose your place of work on internet forums for obvious reasons, but yes, location is a big deal.
However, 30k is very very low on the spectrum. Perhaps you're talking about people who go to pseudo-schools like Devry and ITT Tech, but an actual respected university will generally get you at least 50-60 for a starting CS job.

[Neosutra]

Or get a degree thats not in CS and get a job that pays more than 30k a year.

(Prepare for onslaught of people with CS degrees that make more than 30k a year posting in anger).

Seriously though, any engineer or scientist is expected to know how to program, get an engineering degree and open up your options alot more than the overflooded CS market.

All I have to say is lol, CS degree here, and triple your moronic salary estimation.

Did you miss the bolded part? Obviously there are a few people that vary in the salary distribution and that is also heavily based on where you live.

And you make 100k a year out of college with a CS degree? Where lol? I know of a handful of jobs that would pay that much out of college, let alone for CS related activity ,and those are mostly due to location on the west coast.

Average CS salary in 2007 ranged from 35-50k a year on average depending on where you are (35k in alabama, 50++ in california).

It's obviously company policy to not disclose your place of work on internet forums for obvious reasons, but yes, location is a big deal.
However, 30k is very very low on the spectrum. Perhaps you're talking about people who go to pseudo-schools like Devry and ITT Tech, but an actual respected university will generally get you at least 50-60 for a starting CS job.

35k was the average starting salary in the South East(I used to live in alabama, now in the mid west), while 45-60 is what ive seen in the midwest and west. Typically the average salary across the US out of college goes

Petrolium Engineers (80k) <- Electrical/Nuclear Engieneers (60-70k) <- Chemical Engineers (non petrolium) (55-65k) <- Mechanical Engineers (45-55k) <- Civil and Aero Engineers (40-50k) <- CS majors (35-50k, wildly differs by job recieved).

This has been the tiered base salaries (changing over the years, but remaining typically in order) for a while now, though there has been a large shift in multi-displinary engineering making it very hard to say "youll make this much out of college with XXX degree" because people were hiring engineers/physicists to be problem solvers and not restricting their hiring to specific skill sets in an attempt to broaden their employee resource base.

As can be expected, the ranged overlap and there will often be people that get CS majors and get a lucky 80k job somewhere and even EEs who graduate and get a 40k job another place, but statistically it evens out. CS isnt a "bad" degree, but any of those above engineering or hard science degrees will afford you with more options.

And you dont have to tell me WHERE you work, but are you saying you got a $100k job out of college with a CS degree, because 100k jobs out of college are in the extreme minimum on any degree program(for B.S.)? And what state was this in?

[Furtwangler]

Right now I'm in high school and taking a comp repair and networking class that takes up half my day at a vocational school, will get A+ by the end of this year and the curriculum has us getting our Microsoft certified professional degree next year, is that worth getting? (I will anyway probably).
From what our teacher told us we can put the school down as having experience in the field for the two years I've been there- and just looking online at jobs even a little experience or knowledge + those degrees seem to be worth getting.

@ whoever said their friend works on his own repairing ppls stuff, I've thought about that too since I also live in the middle of no where are there are very few if any(none I can think of atm) computer repair places around, could probably make a decent amount of money.. hmm...

[Korietsu]

Right now i'm a Computer Engineering student, and I'm required as part of my degree program to learn fields of study from 4 other degrees to actually get my degree. Not only do I have to learn the majority of CS/SE/EE/TE information, I have to learn my CE stuff on top of it for my degree. I'd have to say, with how the markets are going, and most of jobs now require a degree to actually get your foot in the door.

Currently, my university is showing an estimated ~50k a year starting salary for my degree, and slightly lower for CS, and more for EE, however, since ill be double majoring CE/EE, ill end up with two degrees for nearly the price of one. Right now i've been speaking to people from Boeing/Raytheon/Texas Instruments, and even with an internship with them through our Industrial Practice Program, you're required to have an associates just to intern with them, and most of the jobs that pay well (75k+) within those companies require masters degrees.

My father who was drafted during his college into the military pretty much got boned on his degree because he couldn't complete it on his way back into the states. I'd have to say you definitely need the degree to ensure your job security and to make sure you get what you want.

[wyrmtung]

I was reading this article about the iPhone SDK and this line reminded me of this thread:

Come June, Apple gets a pass to brag about its mobile OS all it likes. That's when Apple is slated to deliver its SDK for iPhone, and from the work I'm doing with the publicly available preview tools and documentation, I can attest that iPhone will be the simplest, best-documented, and most enjoyable experience for mobile application developers. I have coded fairly extensively with Symbian, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry. iPhone just blows them away, making me wonder who decided that mobile development had to be difficult. I'll take that a step further: If you're new to programming, iPhone or iPod Touch is a splendid place to start.

The SDK is $99 so maybe that is a economical way for you to play around with programming? Programming for mobile devices is going to be a growth industry come Jume and beyond as Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM scramble to keep up.

[Naobi]

Or get a degree thats not in CS and get a job that pays more than 30k a year.

(Prepare for onslaught of people with CS degrees that make more than 30k a year posting in anger).

Seriously though, any engineer or scientist is expected to know how to program, get an engineering degree and open up your options alot more than the overflooded CS market.

Yeah, I'll be one of those lol. I'm currently making about 60k a year with no certifications or degree as a network administrator. I know and see that the majority of this thread is about programmers generally speaking but... it falls into the category of CS (since that was what I was attempting to get my degree in). As of September/october I'll be bumped up to 90k a year doing layer 2 and layer 3 networking. I was offered 140k a year if I was willing to spend 6 months to a year overseas... but i didn't really think that putting myself in the line of fire/death wuz worth the extra 50k. During my scouting for a new job in different areas of the US, my lowest offer was 68k a year which was in Georgia. NC, SC, FL, NY, and Cali all offered approximately 75k (with in a 5k range of differences). Texas and 1 company from Cali and GA offered the 90k.

I'll admit that I made an attempt to get a CS degree.... I got a little bit less than half way through it before finally throwing in the towel. Also, I noticed someone mention something about DeVry being considered a tech/vocational school but it has actually been bumped up to be considered a full university now. (not saying it will be the most popular on the "universities to graduate from" list but... yea.

I do plan to finish out my degree though. It won't be for a job or anything but more for a sense of accomplishment on my part and to finish what I already started.

[Dolmen]

I made 6 figures/year without a degree (thank you tech bubble). A degree for an IT job highly depends on where you're going to work. For instance, it's hard to get a job in IT in the Washington, DC metro area due to most of the companies being government contractors (no degree means they can't set your billing rate that high). A degree gets you in the door, but ultimately means jack shit. If you're going for a job that actually means something, a (respectable, non-lol) company will have one of the people on the team be there for the interview. They will know if you're talking shit, or talking sense.

Having a degree does not mean you know how to do the job, and doesn't mean you have the mental capacity to do the job. College CS = theory, and theory does not work in the real world of IT. Microsoft courses also do not teach viable, real world information either... Don't let yourself get sucked into those certification courses either, most of them are insanely overpriced.

These days, if you want to be a programmer with no prior work experience, and no degree, it's pretty simple:

Learn how to code, write some of your own apps (FFXI bots don't count), and show competence in your coding structure. When I first started we had someone apply with a code sample that had an insane memory leak... Don't be that guy. Perhaps get involved with some open source projects, those can go on your resume (shows the ability to work with a diverse team).

Like I've said, a degree ultimately means shit except that you'll have to work harder to get your start. Take initiative, bust your ass, and you'll make it. However, take this all with a grain of salt as I'm retired from IT (the field is full of worthless derelicts), trying to decide if I want to go back or start my own business again. Thus the scathing words.

[Norelco]

I was reading this article about the iPhone SDK and this line reminded me of this thread:

Come June, Apple gets a pass to brag about its mobile OS all it likes. That's when Apple is slated to deliver its SDK for iPhone, and from the work I'm doing with the publicly available preview tools and documentation, I can attest that iPhone will be the simplest, best-documented, and most enjoyable experience for mobile application developers. I have coded fairly extensively with Symbian, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry. iPhone just blows them away, making me wonder who decided that mobile development had to be difficult. I'll take that a step further: If you're new to programming, iPhone or iPod Touch is a splendid place to start.

The SDK is $99 so maybe that is a economical way for you to play around with programming? Programming for mobile devices is going to be a growth industry come Jume and beyond as Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM scramble to keep up.

Well...$99 plus the price of an iPhone.

Still, pretty cool that they're doing this. If iPhone comes to Verizon I will consider buying this SDK.