I'm going to discuss a very
controversial topic today which is the
importance of a college degree in
building
a data science or coding career. In the
end of the video I will discuss
some of the real life cases of those
people
who build a great career in coding or
data science
without a relevant college degree. And we
will divide this
video in two sections, first we'll
discuss the situation in
U.S or european countries and then we'll
talk about the situation
in India. So let's first see what
big entrepreneurs like Elon Musk has to
say on the importance of a college
degree.
There's no need even to have a college
degree
at all or even high school but
I mean if somebody graduated from a
great university that may be an
that may be an indication that they will
be capable of great things but it's not
necessarily the case.
You know if you look at
say people like Bill Gates or Larry
Ellison,
Steve Jobs, these guys didn't graduate
from college
but if you had a chance to hire them of
course that would be
a good idea. I was reading this article
on Business Insider where
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that you don't
need a college degree in order to become
successful.
In fact, majority of the Apple's
employee that they hire don't have
four-year degree.
Tim Cook is saying that this because
he sees a big mismatch between the
skills that are learnt in college and
the skills which are required
in the industry. So you can read through
the article to understand his reasoning
on why college degrees are not as
important as you think they are. Also
on glassdoor which is an employer review
website
there was this article where they listed
15 companies where you don't need a
college degree
in order to get hired and these
companies are Google
Ernst and Young, Costco, Whole Foods.
You know Apple so these are some of the
big names
that they are hiring without any college
degree
and they look at certain other aspects
which we'll discuss a little later.
But college degree is not as important.
If you go to youtube search for
importance of college degree in coding
career
you will find many examples. For example
this video
where many successful people like Mark
Zuckerberg,
Warren Buffet they explain
why college degrees are useless. There is
this video by
this lady who became a software engineer
without a computer science degree. You
know right now
there are many boot camps like two
months or three month boot camps which
you can take learn coding
and get hired as a software developer.
I'm looking at a Google
software engineer position in Bangalore
India
and their minimum qualification is
bachelor degree in computer science
or equivalent practical experience. Now
this is important. What does equivalent
practical experience means? So I went to
Quora to read this insightful article
where they say okay do you need a degree
to get hired in
Google and couple of folks from Google
see this person is working
at Google and he's replying saying that
you don't need a college degree to get
hired at Google.
There's other person who replied and
explained that if
the meaning of equivalent practical
experience what they're saying is
by combination of looking at your resume
to see what you've already done in your
career so far
which means your freelancing project,
open source contribution Kaggle
coding competition whatever
if they realize that your experience is
equivalent to
you earning a degree they would call you
for an interview
and if you perform in the interview they
will hire you.
Now many of you would argue with me that
okay these things are good in U.S but in
India situation is different
most of the employers are asking for
bachelor's in computer science degree.
Well, I agree.
They're asking for the degree today but
things are changing very very fast and
let me mention
few examples which happen in India. So
recently I came across a LinkedIn post
where a person his name is Abdul he was
a security guard
in this company called Zoho in Chennai
and he learned html, css and web
programming on his
own and he got hired as a software
engineer. He completed
eighth year in Zoho as a software
engineer, very successful software
engineer.
He's only tenth pass he doesn't have any
college degree
he was a security guard in the company.
Okay
so please read through his inspirational
LinkedIn post
so that you get a confidence that even
in
India people are hiring
without college degree. Second example is
Tanul Singh
who was a mechanical engineer and during
his b tech in mechanical engineering
he picked up the interest in data
science then he goes on to Kaggle
and he keeps on practicing and he earns
a good rank
on Kaggle and then he directly gets a job
as a data scientist.
His first job after mechanical
engineering is a data scientist job he
doesn't have any computer science degree
data science degree just based on his
kaggle performance so you realize that
that based on kaggle performance stack
overflow
community participation such as open
source you know participating in
conferences
all these activities help you make
your resume very strong, so that
you can get a job. Singh got a job in
India by the way all these examples that
I'm mentioning
are in india he got a job as a data
scientist.
Eventually he become an ML engineer
machine learning engineer is
little complex you know you need to have
computer science degree but here's the
person
real life example. I did a video with him
I strongly suggest
you watch a video that I did with
Singh to get an idea on you know how
he made this transition. The third
example I want to mention
is one of my subscribers. He's a boy
living in a small town of
Rajasthan, India and this person started
freelancing on upwork when he was in a
third year
of his computer science engineering. Now
although he's he was in a college he
barely manages to pass you know
he gets maybe 50 percent in his
college studies
he told to me when I talk with him on
phone that
he's not learning anything from his
college. He learned
all the coding on his own so although
he's in computer science
degree even if he was not going to
college he would be doing still
good on upwork. He used to earn one lakh
rupees a month
five years back right now he's earning
much more than that.
He is top rated freelancer on upwork
the person who did not learn anything
from college
and he learned everything on his own
using YouTube videos and internet and
very successful freelancer. He's earning
much more
than what you can earn in your regular
job.
Now I mentioned only three examples I
interact with so many people on my
YouTube channel
so many of my subscribers have this
successful stories
and I'm seeing many examples today.
Friends trust me many examples today
where
people don't have a relevant degree or
they don't have a degree and they are
getting a job they are building a
successful career. I agree
still there are many companies who are
stringent they will say oh no you need
to have a degree otherwise you're not
getting interview call
as of 2021 this is the situation
but the situation is changing very fast
more and more companies are becoming
open-minded so in next five years
we will see a trend where significant
amount of companies will not require you
to have a college degree.
If you want to build a career in data
science or computer programming
because the way this works is fang
companies you know Google, Facebook
Amazon they set some example
and rest of the companies they follow
them right?
This happened in the case of cloud fan
companies started doing cloud
you know a few years back and now
every company
they are all on Amazon Google cloud.
Azure fan company started
data science AI you know two three years
back
now every company you know TCS, Infosys
every service based company is doing
AI data science AI data science so you
have
already seen this strand that fan
companies will do something
and this rest of the companies you know
they will just follow them.
So if you are in Bangalore, Google
you know Google Bangalore when they hire
they don't need a college degree
the rest of the companies if they're not
following
this fan companies today in next few
years they have to follow otherwise
they'll be out of the competition.
I want to take a moment and leave this
quick message about my brother's company
AtliQ technologies which is a
software development and digital
marketing company
based in Gujarat, India. AtliQ
technologies provide
services in terms of software
development, mobile app development, data
analytics, AI,
digital marketing, RPA development
business consulting etc.
You can check the project portfolio here
they have built projects for many
international clients and they have a
team of
more than 60 talented engineers who can
build
a high quality software for you
so if you or anyone whom you know is
interested
in doing a software development or
digital marketing services
click on contact button and fill out a
quick form it will take you only five
seconds
and someone will get back to you. We need
to understand the situation from
a recruiter standpoint as well let's say
a good company is hiring
with a good perks and benefits and then
for one position they might get 50
resumes now they have to use some
criteria
to filter those resumes right they can't
just call all 50 people for an interview
so if you don't have a college degree
and if you don't
have any special achievement such as
special Kaggle rank, open source
contribution,
freelancing, coding challenges etc then
of course you will not get an interview
call.
You have to do lot of hard work there is
no shortcut
so if you don't have any of the special
achievements and college degree
and if you're not getting an interview
call. Well it's obvious there is
something missing
you need to have something special in
your resume
that catches the recruiter's eyes.
Networking on LinkedIn is important
getting referrals from the employees who
are working in that company
is another important thing and then we
can have a discussion separately on all
these topics.
But you need to do all these activities
friends
otherwise you're not going to get an
interview call and
you know like people say that okay I
don't have a college degree you're
teaching false motivation but it's not
false motivation I'm
I have mentioned the real life examples
there are
many benefits of going to college when
you go to college
you make friends you have fun you
participate in sports
activities now when you participate in
sports and activity
let's say I am managing some cultural
activity
I will learn lot of soft skills such as
team management ego management conflict
resolution
how to do project planning you know
event planning
these skills are extremely useful when
you build a career even if you are
becoming a programmer.
You will get a lot of benefits of the
soft skills
that you learn during the college if you
are participating in sports you are very
good in sports then you have fighting
spirits
you know the rules of the game you know
and
working in a company working on a
project you also like a game
and you need to understand how you can
win then win that game
so going to college has all these
beautiful advantages
that you can benefit from but my point
is if you don't have money
to afford college education then don't
worry. Even without college education
you can build successful career you need
to be disciplined you need to
do certain other activities
the disadvantage that I see personally
going to college
are following number one many times
the college curriculum is outdated as of
2021 you will find many colleges
which are not teaching Python for
example which are not teaching
uh the things which are happening in the
industry they are still teaching
an old or deprecated legacy technologies
the second problem is the teachers or
professors
many times they will not work in the
industry so they don't
have that industry exposure and they
cannot you know connect well with the
industry. There are great teachers you
know all the time
who can teach theory well but when it
comes to practical
if you have not worked in the industry
it becomes difficult you know
to teach from that industry
mindset perspective the biggest problem
that I see with the college is
not with the college it is with the
student itself.
I was approached by a college recently
where they said that there are some 600
people
you know computer science students who
wants to
hear from me on data science career
so they arranged a webinar. I went on the
webinar
and I was expecting 600 people but what
I saw was only 35 people
attending it and I immediately realized
that
only 35 people are genuinely interested
remaining people are doing computer
engineering just because
maybe their parents told them to do
computer engineering
in countries like India especially your
parents
your friends your uncles aunties will
say hey
your kids should become computer
engineer because my neighbor's son
is working in Amazon earning 30 lakh
rupees a year
and for that reason your son should also
become a computer engineer
but they don't look at person's interest
the skills
etc. There is this famous bollywood movie
called three idiot
where they say if you try to teach
cricket
to Lata Mangeshkar who is a famous
singer or if you try to teach
singing to Sachin Tendulkar who is a
famous cricketer
they both would be a horrible failure
because that's not
their passion. Problem with colleges is
that students become computer science
engineer or mechanical engineer just
because someone else decided
that future for them. They themselves are
either not interested or maybe they are
not clear
on what they want to do. But let's say if
I'm not clear what I want to do
why should I commit myself into
four-year
college degree four-year college degree
is a big commitment
and now you do four-year computer
engineering after
fourth year you realize you are good in
sales so maybe you want to become a
salesman
then you have just wasted your four
years so that
you you kind of get the point the
students enrolling in the
degree they don't give enough thought
and
that becomes a reason why spending time
in colleges becomes useless or worthless
almost. So I hope you liked the
opinion that i shared in this video if
you have any questions or comments
please post in a comment box below also
if you have seen
any successful stories where people
build a great career
without a college degree or without a
relevant college degree
please mention those stories in the
video comment below. Maybe I can
interview them
on my channel at some future point. Thank
you very much for watching.
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