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What makes me feel insecure is the fact that I have no college degree. I'm planning to start a undergrad next year, but I know beforehand that I won't be able to get through the end of the course unless I quit my current job, specially when the course reaches more advanced subjects I'm less familiar with, like Compilers and Physics.
I've self-taught myself in some theoretical subjects, like Linear Algebra, Discrete Optimization, Type Theory, Algo Complexity and such, but since I have no degree, I have no way to “prove” I'm not just a “bootcamp coder” and I fear this may impact my job prospects in the future. On the other hand, I also fear that working hard to get the full diploma may not payoff the effort — the old saying that things you learn in college have little to no application in most jobs. I also have no interest in pursuing an academic career.
Should I get that degree?
I'm 23 and I've been programming since my teenages and found no problem being hired short after high school.
However, since January I've been working at a company where there are academic and non-academic engineers in a split proportion. Since then, I've been under a constant impostor syndrome pressure inside my head.
Before joining my current workplace, I always thought I was a good programmer for my level and that during time I would become a Senior one after getting more experience. I just needed to keep working and learning new languages/frameworks.
Now, I'm being exposed to more theoretical concepts all the time and after looking at the curriculum of my co-workers and their Masters/PhD thesis I started to fell like I know nothing, I just know how to press keys and watch the compiler do its work.
Since then, I feel like I'm just a replaceable worker in an industry that now just employs me/pays me well because we are in the middle of a tech bubble that will inevitably end — leaving behind only those that know well the hard science stuff. This feeling started to worsen as I read articles foreseeing that developers will be replaced by neural networks some time in the future. How would you approach this issue?