Dropping out of school. So many lost years on keeping up with stupid and incompetent shits, with the piece of paper at the finish line not obtained. I did that twice and lost.. what, 5 years on that? Time I could've spent doing self-study instead. I'm not saying that anyone else should drop out - don't! - but for me, going to school doesn't seem worth it when I can learn on my own, and do it much faster. Unfortunately however those stupid pieces of paper are still regarded as valuable by some.. so whether refusing to get those is a good or a bad idea, only time can tell...

Honestly I think it just makes it a lot easier to get an interview. That's about it

Preach, I'd say it depends on the candidate and career path.

Wait, so you went to school twice and didn't get a degree either time?

@Puddinglord First time was high school, second time was evening classes for basics in networking.. I wanted the fancy piece of paper essentially. But after reporting a vulnerability to them, teachers conspired against me as "he hacked our servers!!!" and I left them with a big "fuck you, incompetent pieces of shit!"

I also feel that my school was a waste personally.

I went twice as well and got both slips of paper in the end, this is basically what I learned.

First time around I was too young to care. Drank a lot of beer, smoked a LOT of weed, and got 60/70s. Didn’t care.

Second time around I knew it was a waste of my time but also knew I needed the paper. So, while in school I joined a startup accelerator and built a small company...

I learned more in the 12 weeks in the accelerator than I did in the 7 years of post-secondary education.

I also self educated a LOT. Ran through Pluralsight classes like they were going out of style.

Note: I lived in nowhere and needed the piece of paper to ensure that when I moved to a major city I could get my first job and hopefully not be homeless.

It all worked out I guess...

I left school before finishing high school. It's for the best. Luckily most people in our industry don't really judge too much on schooling and instead largely focus on skills.

Going to school is not about learning, pretty much everything useful I know I learned it somewhere else, going to school is about the connections you make!

@nilson meh, devRant and the technical types that make up most of my Facebook friends are (IMO) a better alternative to that.. considering that nobody even in those stupid tech classes knew what sudo is etc 😕

@Condor I get that being consipred against isn't fun but fighting a system when you are part of a small group that is fighting it doesn't really help you. I had a really rough time in college, they wanted me to stay an extra year and pay for it and made me redo every application I ever made it several other languages to prove my competence, but in the end I did it because I knew that having that "piece of paper" was better in the long run and also the experience made me a stronger person. Walking away really doesn't solve much. Unless you are trying to walk away from lava, that is 99.9% of the time a very good idea.

Also @nilson is right, the connections are huge. Because most of those people know even more people who are probably in a place of power which you could try to leverage further. Networking is #1!

@Puddinglord So, I should've apologized to incompetent pieces of shit for lying against their own superiors in order to save their own face (which wasn't event the point of the vulnerability report, it was rather something of "here's the proof of concept against my own devices, please fix it") and being one of ARP poisoning because their Moodle wasn't TLS-secured (which means that anyone in class could intercept everyone else's login data).. hacking into their servers? Heck, I even did the ARP poisoning test from my home.

I get that pieces of paper may be regarded as important by some, but I personally value honesty more. I've been honest there, and have been shat on. And honest me is NEVER going to abide by the lies of incompetent pieces of shit that call themselves teachers. If they want to act like incompetent pieces of shit, I call them out as incompetent pieces of shit. If that costs me my degree, to me it's goddamn fucking worth it. Employers can just fucking test me and check that I send mail from my own domain, one that I actively administer the servers of.. plenty of proof to be able to tell that I am a real sysadmin. Compare that to a piece of paper, given by a random school, from random course, from incompetent teachers.. yeah. Also it's just as much a test for me as it is for a potential employer. If they aren't willing or even able to test me on their own accord, I regard them as shit. Papers are worthless, seeing with your own eyes what your potential employers are worth, that's key.

As for the relations.. well, again, devRant is that. That's why I attend as many meetups in the Western European area as I possibly can, like the one in The Hague, the one in Brussels etc. It may sound harsh, but I wouldn't ever want to work with any of the people that I had to work with in my class. Maybe one of them, because he was an oddball in class, and kind of a class mascot as well. I liked the guy, but that was also pretty much the only one.