Do I need a degree?

I had/have this same exact issue, with the same points. What I'm currently doing is taking general ed courses at my local community college, then later transfer to a bigger university for the main degree. While getting a degree in computer science may not actually teach you anything, it will help separate you from the crowd when an employer is looking through applicants. When I look at job openings for sites like Stackoverflow, Digg, or Facebook, they generally require a CS degree. However, I'm not sure how strict they are with enforcing this requirement. Personally, I would love to be able to skip school. I would rather get to work, and learn everything on the job than spending four years of mostly useless studying.

Hello Phlo, you wrote:
>1. Do I need a degree?
>2. So, to re-articulate my question, Should I:
>A) Forget the degree, keep working at my current job, hope that having years of experience will get me future jobs when this job eventually runs out (at the moment, there appears to be no danger of this).
>B) Take out student loans, lose sleep, risk my current job (I will have to cut some hours to attend classes during my normal work hours), spend the next four years getting a computer science degree.
>C) Get a different, less math-intensive/cheaper/and or easier degree (Business, maybe MIS, are there online colleges/degrees worth getting?).

1. YES. YOU NEED A DEGREE.

2. YOU SHOULD GET A 4-YEAR DEGREE. The details you can work out based on your best judgment and your life circumstances.

But don't take my word for it. In the thread "Am I doing the right things to get into the industry" on this forum, see the wise words written by "MadApples" if you want a second opinion.

If you are having trouble making this important decision, maybe my article on Decision Grids will be helpful.
http://www.sloperama.com/advice/m70.htm

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Original post by Phlogiston I was under the impression a CS degree would be almost essential to be a successful game programmer.

Not exactly. A degree (of any sort really) is almost essential to get hired. Success depends on a lot more things.

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About four months ago I got an "internship" (they're calling it that but what it means is that I'm just too inexperienced for them to justify hiring me yet, but once I've worked there long enough I will be hired)

No, what it means is that they get a decent developer for free. If you kick ass and take names they might think about paying you a below average salary since most people take the first offer they get.

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None of the programmers there have a degree, and none of them recommend getting a degree. They are all self-taught.

I do not have a degree and am self taught. Get a degree.

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I'm self-taught as well, as the community college I attend doesn't offer any advanced courses, and school's teaching pace is far too slow for my patience.

Of course. Community college sucks.

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So, to re-articulate my question, Should I: A) Forget the degree, keep working at my current job, hope that having years of experience will get me future jobs when this job eventually runs out (at the moment, there appears to be no danger of this).

Independent game studios are always in danger of failure. Unpaid internships are always in danger of failure (or at least indefinite unpaid status).

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B) Take out student loans, lose sleep, risk my current job (I will have to cut some hours to attend classes during my normal work hours), spend the next four years getting a computer science degree.

You also might be able to test out of some classes or apply your internship towards college credits.

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C) Get a different, less math-intensive/cheaper/and or easier degree (Business, maybe MIS, are there online colleges/degrees worth getting?).

Calculus isn't that hard. Some reputable colleges offer full-online education, though it is of course worse for you than attending classes.


My advice is to get a degree. No degree will get your resume an auto-reject by the majority of HR departments in the country, regardless of how much skill or practical experience (under 5-8 years or so) you have.

Thank you for the well-explained advice Teslastyn. You've convinced me. CS degree, here I come.

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Original post by Phlogiston ...None of the programmers there have a degree, and none of them recommend getting a degree.

Given none of them have a degree they are therefore unqualified to discuss the value of a degree.

Stick with your new plan to get a degree and forget this idea of working cheaply at a job that others are getting well paid at. A few years of letting yourself be undervalued will result in you hating the industry and leaving. Do a job you enjoy and make sure you get paid properly for it and you will enjoy it a lot more.

If it later turns out you want to move on then having a degree will be a massive help.

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Original post by Phlogiston I'm currently enrolled in community college, planning to transfer and get a 4 year computer science degree. I was under the impression a CS degree would be almost essential to be a successful game programmer. About four months ago I got an "internship" (they're calling it that but what it means is that I'm just too inexperienced for them to justify hiring me yet, but once I've worked there long enough I will be hired) at a successful independent game development studio as a programmer working on their map editor.

As Telastyn noted, this means they get free work from you, at low risk to themselves, both financially and in terms of whether or not they have to keep you (it's a lot easier to dispose of an unpaid intern than a full employee in most places). If they aren't willing to pay you a fair market salary then I wouldn't rely on them for job security -- especially not in today's economic climate.

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Original post by Phlogiston None of the programmers there have a degree, and none of them recommend getting a degree. They are all self-taught.

Telastyn beat me to this one as well, but just in case you need an extra data point: I am also self-taught, and have no formal educational qualifications (yes, that means I have no high school diploma or GED).

Get a degree.

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Original post by Phlogiston I'm self-taught as well, as the community college I attend doesn't offer any advanced courses, and school's teaching pace is far too slow for my patience.

Chances are you will never find a teaching pace that 100% suits you. Accepting that and learning to deal with it is an important part of the college education experience. In fact, that's part of what a degree proves to prospective employers: that you can put up with suboptimal conditions (from your own perspective) and still get work done.

I took some formal CS courses and hated them. I learned nothing from them. They were - and are - still beneficial.

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Original post by Phlogiston One last issue I have with college is the courses. I will not learn anything from the actual computer courses I don't already know, I'm only attending to get a degree so that when/if this independent game studio lays me off/gets hit by a meteor/whatever I will be able to get an interview with another game studio. Also, while the computer courses are easy for me, advanced math is not. Calculus and on will be a nightmare for me, especially when combined with the 40-50 hours a week I'm working and the freelance work I do on top of that.

Don't be so sure that you won't learn anything [smile] There's a lot of esoteric stuff in the areas of algorithms and formal reasoning that is not really learned by most self-taught programmers, but can be incredibly beneficial to study. For instance, things like time and space complexity analysis are fundamentals of CS, but many self-taught people have a subpar grasp of how to work with them. There's more in the upper level courses as well that would be good to know.

Now, a very small segment of the population can just buy the textbooks and learn that stuff themselves, so I'm not saying it's impossible to know more advanced CS subjects without a classroom environment to study in. But for the vast majority of people, that environment is crucial.

In any case, it's not just the CS material itself that is valuable in a degree; it's the combination of proving your dedication and reliability (getting a degree is not easy and requires work) as well as rounding out your overall education (in your case, learning calculus will help you immensely in doing non-trivial work in games programming).

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Original post by Phlogiston I've made it sound like college is not an option for me, but if it really is necessary, I can and will find a way. Student loans, 4 hours of sleep a night, etc, I'm willing to do if it is the right decision.

Good! You've already posted that you're making this decision, which is a great step. Being willing to make sacrifices and do the hard (but right) thing is a very important trait. Keep up that attitude and you can go far.


Best of luck, and stick with it; accomplishing your goals is extremely rewarding and well worth the unpleasantness that inevitably occurs along the way.

Again, thank you all for the in-depth advice. I never expected I would receive such well-articulated and honest responses from veterans of the industry. I'm meeting with a college counselor tomorrow to work out the details of transferring to a four year college once I finish my current classes at the community college.

See if you can postpone your degree as others have said. Its not really uncommon here to do 2 years of a degree, work for a year (paid or otherwise) and then do a final year. In fact alot of employers would rather hire someone like that over hiring someone who just did 3 years straight.

Whatever you do, don't completly drop out and give up on the degree. If this company is intending to pay you then go for it, save up and finish your degree later on. While its not impossible to get a job without a degree it will certainly help if you ever need to find another job elsewhere.

You've got a good oppotunity here, I would definatly take the job but no way would I givve up on the degree. Also maths is pretty important, after a year working perhaps your outlook on things will have changed and you'll be fine with the degree.

Get a degree.

But here is some more (unsolicited) advice that you might want to consider. What you get out of your degree is proportional to what you put into it. Actually that's pretty much true of your internship and, heck, life.

You say that you are just doing the degree to get the qualification. There's nothing wrong with that. But having that attitude is going to make getting the degree a real chore. Ok, so you know a lot of the stuff they are teaching you. Great! But what about the stuff that your teachers are not mentioning in class? Try to go beyond the course. All courses are limited by the resources available to the school. If you keep looking beyond, questioning, pushing you are going to find stuff that you don't understand. You may find that you're doing something that is not just a stepping-stone to something else, but something you actually enjoy.

You are more likely to succeed in life through your attitude than through a degree. You're young, you have awesome potential, go and make the most of it!

I'm thoroughly confused with the responses here. I've always viewed the Video Game Industry as somewhat unique, in that it was all about substance over style -- in other words, if you could produce an impressive portfolio, no one would care where (or if) you went to school.

It frustrates me to read, again and again, especially by those that DID NOT go to college, that a degree is necessary. I can only speak for myself, but (humility aside) I went to a very good school, went for a CS degree, and would up with just that -- a very, very expensive degree and 4-year incubator. I did not wind up with a job in the games industry. Yes, I'm bitter. Yes, I mostly have myself to blame, but that's besides the point.

"YES. YOU NEED A DEGREE. YOU SHOULD GET A 4-YEAR DEGREE"

Why? What is it that you all think college provides, that you couldn't learn from a book?

Some thoughts:
1) Most games are programmed in C++. Most CS students will not end up working in games or in an environment where efficiency is king, so many universities now cater to the higher-level languages used in business, like Java.
2) The price of your education is supposedly justified because you are learning from experts. With the absence of a select few names, most CS professors are NOT experts on anything game related (except AI and "graphics"). Even if there is a games course at your school, the professor has not necessarily worked in the games industry.

Someone pointed out earlier in this thread that a degree is only worth what you put in. I agree 100%, and that is why I lay the bulk of the blame on myself. But, if you are 17, know you want to program games, and are motivated enough to milk your college for all it's worth, how are those 4 years going to be more valuable to you than simply learning on your own? If you're reading this, you already know the game resources that exist on the Internet. How would college be better than:
1) Picking up the handful of programming books you need, that are actually recommended by game programmers.
2) Moving to a gaming hotbed, joining the IGDA chapter in the area.
3) Programming your own games

You'll wind up with profession-specific knowledge, contacts in the industry, and a portfolio. You'll be local to apply to game companies (take a testing role while you're studying on your own). You'll also do it for a lot less than college would have been, which, if you were so inclined, you could probably use to have an AI/Graphics expert mentor you.


Like I said, I'm confused -- I can think of only a few justifications for college:
1) Safer. If a CS graduate changes his mind, he'll have an easier time finding another job.
2) Pay. I'd hope the game industry is different, but IT companies will pay you less without a degree. Again, it's the safer route. If you don't go into games, you'll get a better salary with a degree.
3) "Life Experience". Maybe you think its necessary to take the non-gaming required courses most colleges have. Maybe you think its important to be in that environment. Maybe you think there's some great value to binge drinking and frat parties...

And honestly? If I didn't know someone, I'd tell them to go to college too. It would take a hell of a lot of motivation to do it all on their own, and I don't place that kind of belief in strangers. But this forum is about breaking into the games industry, not how to play it safe, make a lot of money, and be well-rounded.

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Original post by SpriteChild "YES. YOU NEED A DEGREE. YOU SHOULD GET A 4-YEAR DEGREE" Why? What is it that you all think college provides, that you couldn't learn from a book?

If you are really, really, really motivated, you migth get as much out of the book as you get out of the college courses. In fact, you will probably get a lot more out of the book, and your explorations of the topic beyond what the book offers.

But most people don't have that sort of drive or discipline. University forces you to sit down and become acquainted with the topic, offers insights that you won't find in the book, and exposure to other smart, motivated people you can bounce your ideas off.

But above all, university offers courses outside of the CS department. Honestly, if you go to university and only take CS/Math/Physics courses, then you missed half the point: go take a history course, an art course, a philosophy course. Nobody wants to work with a robot, no matter how much of a wizard they may be at C++ [smile]

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Some thoughts: 1) Most games are programmed in C++. Most CS students will not end up working in games or in an environment where efficiency is king, so many universities now cater to the higher-level languages used in business, like Java.

Really? Most of our courses (apart from the intro course in Java, the programming languages course in Scheme, and the assembly course in x86/SPARC assembly) are taught in plain old C.

That said, no course is going to teach you how to write idiomatic, micro-optimised C++, but that is what learning on your own is for - I learned a fair bit of that kicking around GameDev.

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2) The price of your education is supposedly justified because you are learning from experts. With the absence of a select few names, most CS professors are NOT experts on anything game related (except AI and "graphics"). Even if there is a games course at your school, the professor has not necessarily worked in the games industry.

In my view, game development topics are some of the very topics that you can easily pick up from a book, or the many web resources around the net - but only if you have a strong grounding in programming, networking, OS fundamentals, etc.

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Like I said, I'm confused -- I can think of only a few justifications for college: 1) Safer. If a CS graduate changes his mind, he'll have an easier time finding another job.

In today's economy, that is a pretty big checkmark right there.

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2) Pay. I'd hope the game industry is different, but IT companies will pay you less without a degree. Again, it's the safer route. If you don't go into games, you'll get a better salary with a degree.

It is possible that you take a salary hit for lacking a degree, but most likely, if you have the requisite skills, you can negotiate the salary you deserve.

However, the degree also makes sure that an HR drone doesn't trash your resume before anyone reads it. That right there may be worth 4 years of your life...

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3) "Life Experience". Maybe you think its necessary to take the non-gaming required courses most colleges have. Maybe you think its important to be in that environment. Maybe you think there's some great value to binge drinking and frat parties...

Ixnay on the drinking, frat parties and dorm lifestyle. But the liberal arts curriculum, yes. You would be surprised just how much a few courses on higher mathematics and philosophy can change your outlook on programming.

University is good for making lots of contacts, you can't get from your chair at home, these contacts on forums aren't real contacts, and you can only get these, if you learn for your own IMHO.

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Original post by SpriteChild I'm thoroughly confused with the responses here. I've always viewed the Video Game Industry as somewhat unique, in that it was all about substance over style -- in other words, if you could produce an impressive portfolio, no one would care where (or if) you went to school.

That was true 5-10 years ago. It's not anymore. If you've worked on and published 5+ AAA titles, then yes no one cares about your degree. If you have a napkin resume: i.e. you worked on World of Warcraft, Diablo II and Halo, yeah no one cares about your degree.

However, if you have not shipped several very successful or famous titles you will almost certainly not make it past the resume screening without a diploma. There are obviously exceptions, but much like there are exceptions to the rule "you will never win the lottery" it's not good to count on those exceptions [smile]

A college degree is the new high school degree: minimum bar to entry in 99.9% of cases.

The point most people are making here is not "a degree makes you a better programmer" the point we are making is that "a degree is required to get hired".

-me

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Original post by SpriteChild I'm thoroughly confused with the responses here. I've always viewed the Video Game Industry as somewhat unique, in that it was all about substance over style -- in other words, if you could produce an impressive portfolio, no one would care where (or if) you went to school.

Where you went to school, no.
IF you went to school, absolutely yes.
Unless you've already been working as a professional programmer for several years and have an impressive portfolio, the degree is essential.
No matter how you've always viewed things.

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Original post by swiftcoder Really? Most of our courses (apart from the intro course in Java, the programming languages course in Scheme, and the assembly course in x86/SPARC assembly) are taught in plain old C.

For your reading pleasure:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/3722876

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Ixnay on the drinking, frat parties and dorm lifestyle. But the liberal arts curriculum, yes. You would be surprised just how much a few courses on higher mathematics and philosophy can change your outlook on programming.

You have me laughing to myself here. I majored in CS, minored in Philosophy. Realistically, I think understanding why people enjoy a game as stupid as Beer Pong is ultimately more useful, from a games perspective, than knowing Kant.

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The point most people are making here is not "a degree makes you a better programmer" the point we are making is that "a degree is required to get hired".

Other threads in this forum will tell the poster to "get an education", not "take care of the prerequisites." But it is helpful to know that ultimately that is how it is viewed.

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Original post by SpriteChild Quote: Original post by swiftcoder Really? Most of our courses (apart from the intro course in Java, the programming languages course in Scheme, and the assembly course in x86/SPARC assembly) are taught in plain old C. For your reading pleasure: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/3722876

I am aware of both those articles, and I think they tie in nicely with my point. While a bunch of schools did go the 'dumbed down' route, there are still plenty that haven't - mine included. If one can't hack together a parallel program that scales seamlessly across a hundred node cluster, implemented in plain old C with no supporting libraries beyond BSD sockets, by the time one graduates, then one probably didn't do well here.

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Quote: Ixnay on the drinking, frat parties and dorm lifestyle. But the liberal arts curriculum, yes. You would be surprised just how much a few courses on higher mathematics and philosophy can change your outlook on programming. You have me laughing to myself here. I majored in CS, minored in Philosophy. Realistically, I think understanding why people enjoy a game as stupid as Beer Pong is ultimately more useful, from a games perspective, than knowing Kant.

I was being a little facetious, and to be honest I was more referring to the formal logic courses than the transcendentalists.

However, the fact that you can discuss Kant intelligently, gives you an edge in many areas of our (admittedly elitist) society. Game development is not just sitting in a cubicle outputting code (though one can approach it that way) - at some point, one has to leave the cubicle and discuss player motivation with the designer, tone and timbre with the composer, and light and mood with the artist. If one doesn't have at least a glancing familiarity with psychology, music theory and art, these are going to be short and one-sided conversations [smile]

I go to a university and its nice as You get to meet like-minded people, which really makes a hard discipline also of fun. Even though I do not see myself working in the industry being a CS/Math major really covers all the basic's you may see in game development minus the industry specific stuff. I'm doing a concentration in graphics which taught me most of the basic linear algebra and graphic stuff you may encounter in a beginning 3d programming book. If what people say are true and that most companies are only willing to hire people with a degree then you should def go for it.

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Original post by Phlogiston I'm not eligible for any real financial aid because my crazy parents are semi-wealthy, but I do not live with them or receive any money from them.

If you do not live with your parents, then they can not claim you as a dependent. Thus, you do not have to use them when applying for financial aid. The only factor should be how much you make. As long as there are no tax ties (dependent status claimed on you by anyone), then you are in the clear. Reapply and simply state you live on your own.

Sorry, but I have to raise a red flag on these people claiming that online tutorials and a few books are enough to bypass a formal education. As was mentioned, schools put you through everything. If a particular section is easy or "old news", so be it. Blast through it. However, you will always run into that topic you tried so hard to avoid. School not only helps you become familiar with that topic, it makes you experience it through homework and/or labs.

I have worked with both varieties of programmers: the ones who go to school, and the ones who tough it out through tutorials/books. The difference is night and day. Working with students is a much more straightforward experience. I can rely on his/her knowledge of math, algorithms, code structure, etc. and work through any problem. We can bounce ideas off one another and find a strong solution. Non-students? They "know everything". I cannot propose my solution because they "know a better way of doing it". After a little digging, I usually discover that this programmer skipped studying a particular algorithm or that he/she was misinformed into believing that STL or OOP is of the devil. They know a little bit of everything but a whole lot of nothing.

Living off online tutorials is dangerous. Without the proper background knowledge, you have no idea how much validity there is to the tutorial. Tutorials should supplement your existing knowledge, not serve as its foundation. Books are generally safer in that they are more often more thorough and produced from reliable sources.

I will say this about students: if they are too focused on that 4.0 GPA, they are generally useless. They never go home and experiment with what they learned and gain the necessary experience to apply it in the future. In some senses, these people are worse than those who never went to college, but at least they have that degree, and companies look for that.



In short... go to school. Stop pretending you can just weasel your way into a good position by goofing around at home with the Internet as your guide. If you're going to skip school, I really hope you have a job offer and a paycheck to back yourself up. If not, go to school and goof around between classes. You'd be surprised how much you can learn while doing homework. :)