The Importance of Formal Education in C# Careers: College Degree vs. Self-Taught
I'm currently exploring the world of C# development and am curious about the importance of formal education in our field. I've seen many paths people take, from university degrees to self-taught journeys supplemented with online courses.
I'm reaching out to this community to gather insights on how much weight a college or university degree holds in our industry, especially for those of us focusing on C# development. Especially for American companies.
For those of you working in the field, how crucial has your formal education been in your career?
Have you noticed a difference in career opportunities or advancement for those with a degree versus those without?
In your experience, are employers open to candidates who have primarily learned through online courses and self-study?
I'm particularly interested in hearing both sides of the story.
Thank you in advance for your input!
4 Replies
Fyi you might get better responses in #career-talk
I've managed to score a job when I was just about to start studying at uni. So I didn't have a degree at the time. I've got a bachelor's degree and see no point in getting masters or whatever. My work experience and personal experience is more than enough to land a six figure job
At the time of writing I have 7 years of experience
to me school has been more useful in math, mathematical logic, statistics, etc, than programming
knowing a bit of this stuff can sometimes avoid you a headache
for programming, if you want to do theoretical stuff then doing it without formal education can be difficult
for the rest, accumulating experience on real projects is the most useful thing you can do imo
I think you posted a question in the wrong way. More likely you are asking what is the requirement set by the hiring managers, whether they care about a university certificate or not. While not anyone here can easily help you out, you can dig into public sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, and others to analyze recent openings.
You also need to consider the factors on how companies run their recruiting processes. When many resumes come for the same position, the way of filtering (sometimes) includes education background check and people without a university certificate might fail to move any further.