I've commented elsewhere here, but I realized something else relevant:
In my experience — and this has been confirmed by the university CS professors I've worked with! — a CS degree does not map to real world experience! Graduates must seek out real-world experience through internships or entry-level jobs before they can hope to be an asset to any team. This is because CS degrees teach theory, but very little in the way of practical application. College projects, even the much touted "group projects" and "final projects," barely manage a superficial resemblance to actual software development.
I've observed this with every single intern I've ever trained. Despite attending superb universities, maintaining high grades, and having all the right classes from excellent instructors, nothing could prepare them for a real project. They all spent the first couple of months with the "deer in the headlights" look about them. Despite their professors' warnings that the classroom doesn't map to reality, they were unprepared for just how different the real industry was.
To put that another way, without real world experience, a CS degree is just a very expensive piece of wall art. With real world experience, it can be helpful...but then, you can learn anything any university could ever teach you, on your own, from books, courses, and real-world experience. (Whether to get a CS degree should depend solely on your individual learning needs. It's a good option if you work best with guided learning.)
Guess what interviewers asked those internship graduates about? It wasn't the degree or the final projects for school (despite those being brought up)...it was the internship. The real-world industry experience was all that mattered in the end.
What does this mean? Assuming the same topics have been studied, the only difference between a BSCS and a self-trained/alt-trained programmer is a piece of paper. If the self-trained programmer has the experience, guess who's the bigger team asset? Guess who gets the job?
QED: a BSCS degree means literally nothing on its own vis-a-vis "equivalent experience".
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I've commented elsewhere here, but I realized something else relevant:
In my experience — and this has been confirmed by the university CS professors I've worked with! — a CS degree does not map to real world experience! Graduates must seek out real-world experience through internships or entry-level jobs before they can hope to be an asset to any team. This is because CS degrees teach theory, but very little in the way of practical application. College projects, even the much touted "group projects" and "final projects," barely manage a superficial resemblance to actual software development.
I've observed this with every single intern I've ever trained. Despite attending superb universities, maintaining high grades, and having all the right classes from excellent instructors, nothing could prepare them for a real project. They all spent the first couple of months with the "deer in the headlights" look about them. Despite their professors' warnings that the classroom doesn't map to reality, they were unprepared for just how different the real industry was.
To put that another way, without real world experience, a CS degree is just a very expensive piece of wall art. With real world experience, it can be helpful...but then, you can learn anything any university could ever teach you, on your own, from books, courses, and real-world experience. (Whether to get a CS degree should depend solely on your individual learning needs. It's a good option if you work best with guided learning.)
Guess what interviewers asked those internship graduates about? It wasn't the degree or the final projects for school (despite those being brought up)...it was the internship. The real-world industry experience was all that mattered in the end.
What does this mean? Assuming the same topics have been studied, the only difference between a BSCS and a self-trained/alt-trained programmer is a piece of paper. If the self-trained programmer has the experience, guess who's the bigger team asset? Guess who gets the job?
QED: a BSCS degree means literally nothing on its own vis-a-vis "equivalent experience".