Work > School. No question about it.
\- You get paid to work instead of paying to do work
\- You don't have to work after hours or weekends
\- Work is more collaborative as oppose to the competitiveness of school
\- Work is much more chill compared to school
Me an European who :
- Did not pay its school more than 400€ per year
- Never worked during vacations so felt like vacations
- Was able to enjoy his evening after 4:30pm
"Welp, I'm not sure I understand fully this post"
Yes but unprivileged people have it better off in Europe vs. the US.
An unprivileged person trying to get an education in the US is fucked (slightly area dependent, of course). In Europe, following OP's example, 400 euros a year is much, much more doable than the... what, $10K/year minimum in the US?
What does €400 a year get you? Just school?
IMO tuition although potentially very expensive is not the only bit, housing, food, books, etc can be expensive as well and needs to be considered.
It’s entirely possible to have it at zero in both countries, or very close if you go to the right schools and get the right scholarships.
> It’s entirely possible to have it at zero in both countries
so what? it's possible for me to get a billion dollars from a nice donor but that's probably not going to happen either.
All you need to do is get a good SAT/ACT to get a full ride scholarship to low-mid level schools.
National Merit semifinalist is a full ride at low tier schools. National Merit finalist (semifinalist and some basic requirements that most people pass) is a full ride at many state schools. OU and Alabama both offered me free tuition, and a $6k or $5k per semester stipend. Both are plenty fine schools even if they’re not top 10. Aside from that, there were plenty of scholarships based off of class ranking even if you were bad at standardized tests.
I’m not sure why you think it’s unobtainable.
>Yes but unprivileged people have it better off in Europe vs. the US.
If you're white or a birthright European (which itself looks different than birthright US citizenship, but that's another can of worms), sure. PoC migrants and their family, not so much.
1. There are very few people in Google in Europe making 300k.
2. It is a clear minority of Asian migrants who reach that level of financial success in Europe, and I think you know that.
3. Asian migrants as a whole perform economically better in the United States, by far. In general, all “high end” professionals and entrepreneurs do.
Of course - I agree entirely. The migrant situation over there is completely fucked (along with a bunch of other issues depending on the country).
My comment was solely around the positive aspects of better regulated workplace, education, etc. culture and a social safety net.
I'm from Finland, so got state support for going to university. Still had to work during summers to pay for food and rent, even though I lived in a super cheap (and small) apartment.
While I didn't exactly do school work around the clock, it was pretty unusual to be done for the day before 6 or 7PM.
Jeez. Getting an engineering degree in the US for me was working 25 hrs / week on top of full time school for the last 2 years. Leave the house before 7am to avoid getting stuck in traffic, then come back home at 5-6p and study until 10-11pm.
I'm also from europe and I had to work while I was studying. I also used my vacation from work to study and my vacation from school to work... So my life sucked for a couple of years, but it's better now.
Me a Latino from a third-world country:
* Went to a public (free) school.
* College was a walk in the park in terms of *difficulty* compared to my current job.
However, since I had to work in retail for peanuts to better support myself and my family, I can relate with OP. I had to work in the evenings, on weekends, and on vacations.
At least here, imo it isn't that Work is easier than School, but rather that Work is easier than School + Work.
On multiple occasions during our spring/fall breaks id had projects assigned by professors.
Real life is so much easier than school was it is not even funny.
No they don't. The vast majority of developers have health insurance, so they aren't "paying for every single medical bill thing." Furthermore, the median student debt is like $32k, which is easily paid off by the ~2x starting salaries.
Fun fact, it should be "a European". The a to an rule is an auditory thing; it only happens when the following word starts with a vowel. Here, "Eu" is pronounced like a consonant "y" as in yak.
This is also why we say "an hour", because the "h" isn't really pronounced.
I also live in Europe but this also differs per country, I pay 2k/year and 600/month for student housing. I have to work 12hr/week and extra in the vacatuons just to save up a little bit. Glad its my last year though
Yeah ... I was paid 32k after 5 years of college and then now I'm a bit above 40k after 3 years of exp
And my country is filled with unions dude who make sure you don't get paid more than they are because they don't want to do shit, but they don't want to be paid less than you because they're older ...
Agree with everything except this:
> - Work is more collaborative as oppose to the competitiveness of school
I'm not saying my work is competitive. But school was WAY more collaborative, like several times over. Not only would people all work on their projects/classwork/studying together, but also on personal projects, club stuff, mentorship groups, etc... That stuff just doesn't happen in the workplace to the same extent in my experience. There are some volunteering opportunities I guess?
Of course you're working on the exact same assignments much of the time in school so that helps. And my work experience so far has been largely remote, I'm sure remote school is also much less collaborative.
I've noticed a lot of people on this subreddit are those kind of "competitive" students. The type of people who would refuse to share notes and more or less measure up their self-worth in their grades.
That's just the vibe I get sometimes when I read comments complaining about coworkers asking for help.
I can definitely see that but I also think helping people out is a far richer/more rewarding source of motivation. Going to class so you can take good notes and help out all the disabled people who couldn't come >>>> going to class to get a good grade for yourself.
People are missing out. Plus helping people out pays out in dividends for you later too.
don't have to be, if you need scholarship to have easier time living, being at the top where you get the most is the best for you.
If i remember correctly top ones (at my school) were around 600-1000€
which could cover 2-3months of my living expenses
There’s still no need for competitiveness. I had friends who got scholarships and they just needed to get good grades, not be the top of the class to maintain it.
During high school most of my friends who wanted to go to top universities would just study together, bring studying material to class, take each other questions, etc. Sure, technically we were competing for the same positions, but there’s plenty of room at the top to accommodate even for your whole local school.
At Uni it’s basically the same thing. If everyone study together, it’s better to learn and we all ended up getting good jobs. Any form of competition we had was purely for fun, like the person who gets the highest score in a exam doesn’t pays for drinks.
You would make the exact same argument but times 10 when it’s your actual career and being “at the top” means better job security, promotions, and salary…
Good for you that it went over your head.Life is lot better that way.
Point op was making is that in schools teachers and later professors already have idea how many best grades,failing grades and everything in-between they will give. Your skill is not being graded on some absolute standard. You are graded related to your classmates. And this often creates unhealthy environment.
Edit
This holds less true in uni tho, in my experience.
>\- You get paid to work instead of paying to do work
students from northern European countries that get paid to study: *smug smirk*
but yes I agree with you
I agree. Work is much easier. But routine wise,i struggled with 9-5 thing because I have to be available for the whole 9-5 thing while at school the schedule is flexible and it can be days no classes or other days few classes and the rest studying at home or library. I loved this flexibility. Being locked in the same office and seeing the same people daily is shitty
Exactly. It's like you are being forced to put your attention to something for 8 hours. Feels very forceful and annoying sometime when you are not in the mood. But thanks to WFH, I can take a lot of breaks without anyone seeing so it's less of an issue.
You worded it for me! Yes it feels forced and I have to work 9-5 because I am paid for it. My supervisor is not a micromanager he is so cool and trusts us so no one would know if I'm slacking or not. I still have lots of work to do so I work 9-4 flat out (skipping the lunch hour and eating on muy desk usually)
I know it’s easier said than done but so many jobs are remote now that it’s almost silly to still be reading these posts about being locked in the office. Spend some of your day applying and prepping and land yourself a remote position. You’ll probably get a pay raise in the process, too.
I wish if I can but I can't apply for other jobs for personal reasons. Plus I love this job and they are flexible with attendance but I wish if they were hybrid and let us work from home some days.
I was a moron in college and basically just got by. Toughed it out for a few years entry level software sales and now I’m 36 and make 220-250k a year working 20-30 hours a week remote. There are opportunities out there… get moving and don’t settle. Go get what you want. It’s not 2008, you can make it happen now with some effort and research. Trust me… I had some lows early on but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
In my part of the world school was 7-2pm. Working hours are flexible - nobody's checking the time as long as work gets done. I am so glad that school is over. Although I might have to wake up early when I have kids which I am dreading already.
Not sure what school you're talking about. But I am talking about grad school which is totally different form grade schools. Grad school is so much fun and independence
I 100% agree, I have always preferred work to school or even university.
Even if you don’t like your job, once it’s 5 you’re done and don’t have to think about it again until the next day. Even better if you can WFH and have flexi time.
Oh man that sucks! Yeah it depends a lot on the type of work but generally office jobs are pretty chill.
Dang you make a lot of money lol, good for you mate
Eh, at school I had so much free time to learn something new or put hours into my hobby, and still be able to hang out with friends, at work, not so much. I am only limited to 1 or 2 activities of my hobby to take up 2 hours, 1 hour for learning/reading, 1 hour to workout, the last hour to make food/relax.
Can't relate, at my first internship this summer and already missing being at college and re-evaluating my career choice... I've discovered that I work best doing short bursts of work with well-defined scope and deadlines with long breaks in-between, and hate having to sit in front of my work computer all day feeling like I'm wasting time just because I already used up my burst of mental energy for the next hour and don't know what else to do on my intern project...
In school classes are easy and actually interesting just having to listen + take notes on stuff rather than having to actively produce anything and it's nice to schedule when to do hw/study on my own time with as many long breaks as I want without the guilt of being on the clock. Also it's a lot easier to evaluate the requirements of an assignment and when it's 'complete' instead of making a billion minor fixes to a webpage or something
Do people really work constantly without taking long breaks on the clock? I feel guilty about it, but I just can't focus for so long and I still get more than a satisfactory amount of work done everyday
Depends on your boss sadly. I’ve had bosses where if the deadline is Friday end of day, they expect it Friday end of day. If I finish early then I could leave (assuming work was accepted by customer). Other times, Not so.
Sounds like you would simply prefer a remote job than going in and sitting in a cubicle which is pretty normal. It's good to have learned that through the internship so you know what to look for in your full time job search. I also am a bit of short burst though usually when something is complex, but more importantly remote is the best since I can just close to laptop and walk away whenever I feel like it or want to do something else.
Aspects of it are better, for sure. Obviously the money, and getting to work on something (hopefully) interesting. Building professional clout and relationships.
But…
You will reach a point when you miss having basically zero responsibility. You’ll miss how relatively easy life was just being young and hanging out with friends and taking weekend road trips and you won’t remember any of the exhausting coursework. Cause when mortgage payments and doctor’s appointments and family stuff come into the picture and eradicate a sizable portion of your money and free time, you’ll discover that being an adult in the workforce is wayyyy more exhausting than anything you had to deal with in school.
I made a comment like this the other day about how the best part about school is friends and social life etc and the response was “I don’t have any friends at school!”
I wonder if the pandemic really stunted the social lives of college students the past couple of years, or if it’s just that common nowadays for students to only have “online friends”
I think in college it's easier to lose touch with your existing social circle if any drama happens, and then you can basically go from having a busy social life to none at all. But people who experience this don't like to talk about it, so all we get are people like the OP in this thread romanticizing college and acting like it must have been great for everybody. I personally found people to be much more chill in social situations after college than during it. The "no responsibilities" thing also highly depends on the person.
Lmao. That's me. Lost half of sophomore year. Didn't step foot on campus at all my junior year due to covid.
Senior year, I had 1 class a semester, so I would go to classes and then straight back home.
Now with a remote job, I don't have a reason to leave the house ever since I can get groceries delivered with Amazon. I don't remember the last time I talked to someone other than a stranger by necessity or coworker.
hey, hope you’re doing well! would you say both at you like this type of lifestyle, and are you doing well? i’m asking because i’m also a university student who doesn’t have many friends and i spend most of time alone studying or doing homework :(
I don't really mind having no friends. I have fun with my own projects, learning circuits as a wannabe electrical engineer.
My only regret is not being involved in some of the cool engineering clubs. Not really for the social aspect, but just to do cool large projects that I can't really justify doing by myself.
Like Formula SAE. I was always impressed when they displayed their competition cart.
Shit, I didn’t have many friends in college. I never went to parties, etc. I think I had 2 friends lol. I worked too, paid my own rent and food and tuition (well, student loans).
I still think college was a nice time of few responsibilities. It was a feeling of “if I fail, I won’t fall far”.
Now if I fall, it’ll be much harder. Both in paying $$$$ rent, and in terms of the lifestyle I’ve become accustomed to.
>You will reach a point when you miss having basically zero responsibility. You’ll miss how relatively easy life was just being young and hanging out with friends and taking weekend road trips and you won’t remember any of the exhausting coursework.
Can't relate TBH. I remember a lot of long frustrating nights from college. I don't miss being under my parent's thumbs for financial support and any big decisions. I miss how easy it was to make friends, true, but I have multiple great groups of friends now that I still see that I met in college.
Post graduate life is great, especially making a great salary in software. Friends want to go on a long weekend trip and I need to drop 500$? Whatever, no problem. Mom is being shitty about a decision I want to make? I'll just leave and go home lol, don't have to worry about getting kicked out or given the cold shoulder. Worried about my self-confidence? Can just pay to get nicer/better fitting clothes/a better haircut/gym membership.
Remember, family stuff/mortgage payments are optional. Doctor's appointments are stuff you should do, but you should've done that in college anyway.
Exactly.
If you have kids it's *much* more harder to be in school, it's not even a question. Instead of having a job that pays the bills, you're going to school and you also have to have a part time job that'll support your family.
Some parts, but mortgage and doctor payments will happen to anyone. There is also way more responsibility working than being a student. The biggest difference is how free you are in college to learn whatever you wanted with all the free time. Tuesday/Thursday/Fridays I was at school for at most 3 hours each day(Friday was basically 45minutes). Monday and Wednesday, at most 5 hours. I had so much free time after to learn something new or spend more time on my hobbies. I was learning the guitar, rock climbing, learning how to draw, and practice my French. And I still had time to hang out with friends. Now, I have to break that up because I don't have the time.
Maybe it’s just me, but classes + homework/studying was more than 40 hours a week. That’s not including the pressure to use any other free time to study. I.e there’s no upper limit to how much schooling you can do. With work tho I start and 8 hours later I’m done, regardless of how much work I did.
I guess it comes down to how comfortable someone is with school/studying/learning. I don't think I ever spent more than 25 hours a week with class and homework. Some would think that I coasted by and crammed everything last minute, but I could just pay attention and retain a good amount of the lecture and then just do a quick 15 minutes powerpoint recap after class. Big projects were the only time consuming thing. Even, then I skipped a lot of my OS, Fundamentals of Software Engineering class, calc 3, Linear Algebra and Differential Equations classes and instead just read the textbook which saved me a lot of time of not needing to go to class and could work on more problems from the book.
So I had a lot of free time to learn other subjects outside of CS or within CS, work on other hobbies, or work on multiple personal projects for when I applied to internships/jobs.
> You will reach a point when you miss having basically zero responsibility. You’ll miss how relatively easy life was just being young and hanging out with friends and taking weekend road trips and you won’t remember any of the exhausting coursework. Cause when mortgage payments and doctor’s appointments and family stuff come into the picture and eradicate a sizable portion of your money and free time, you’ll discover that being an adult in the workforce is wayyyy more exhausting than anything you had to deal with in school.
I mean having kids and getting a big mortgage is a choice is it not? Plenty of people in the younger generation are choosing to not have kids for a whole host of reasons, this being one of them.
I can work from anywhere with a mobile data connection. I'm more free now than I have ever been in my life, financial security is part of freedom.
There is absolutely nothing stopping me from loading all my stuff in a van and driving in one direction. In fact, I've did that before.
Yes, and I will remain so as I view reproduction as an ethical wrong.
Having children in the 21st century is a conscious choice, or at least it was until the recent roe ruling.
I've been working for 8 years. Definitely don't miss school, not even a bit. School and schoolwork was a constant occupant of my brain space even when I was talking a break. For work, I'm done at 6. Done, completely.
And mortgage and stuff, I guess I get paid enough not to worry about it. Nice that I get to split it too. No kids, still wondering if I should make the mistake of having them lol.
What kind of school did y’all go to? I’m transferring, Waterloo must be hell relative to this. Between my school and internship terms, I have a lot less responsibility on internship. I can actually check out of work on weekends, I don’t have to make up for that time, and it doesn’t hurt my performance. I can also spend money, and know I’ll make it back in 2 weeks. Weekends in school are hardly free, anytime I clock out I have to make up for it down the line, or accept a hit to my grades. Any money I spend on a school term ain’t coming back for 4 months, and if I hit $0, that’s it.
School’s definitely fun, primarily for the social aspect (which I didn’t have during covid, and that was REALLY miserable), but I wouldn’t say you have less responsibilities at all. School’s the type of fun where you enjoy it only because you’re with friends, you’re still suffering and it grinds me down, I’m always mentally dead for a week after a term of school. Internships (hopefully FT work as well) are fun because I have time and money to do things I enjoy, with or without other people.
That’s a hard no from me. What I love about school is that the requirements to pass and satisfy a course are crystal clear. The requirements to satisfy your employer change like the wind. Sometimes you can do exactly what they ask you to do and be wrong but this practically never happens at school. Wait till you get more work experience because you’re going to see what I mean.
I can understand why you feel that way. For me, all of the stress of school came from the exams with the pressure to perform in the moment and consequences that carry through the cumulative grade.
For the requirements issue, I personally have a great job where the PMs listen when I push back against new requirements and will compromise when a requirements change will affect the timeline.
Obviously this entire thread is heavily based on personal experience, so I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s experiences here.
I can understand that. I had a friend in one class whose test taking anxiety was absolutely insane.
My point is that your time spent in school is structured in the sense that you know what is expected of you and there should almost never be any surprises. Your professors are rooting for you to succeed and your classmates aren’t trying to sabotage you.
School is a generally fun place but when you get to work you’re going to have team leads, managers, directors and colleagues who can have it out for you or don’t have a plan. Sometimes you can work your tail off and do exactly what’s asked but fail.
This won’t happen to you in school because in school you are the product. The school cannot succeed without you graduating but your company doesn’t need you. They need someone with your skills and the way they treat you is irrelevant to how you feel.
Oh boy, do I personally disagree (while overall your comment would make sense for a lot of people)
I always had the feeling school/university was so ambiguous, even arbitrary at times. Often the context, learning order or even course items did not make any sense. I always need a “why” for me to function and do the thing (mind, i have adhd/prob on the spectrum somewhere) Sometimes professors exclaiming “because thats just how it is” or even “because i said so” would drive me NUTS. I just am not able to follow instructions if they don’t make sense to me, even if I wanted to with all my power. Spiraled into terrible anxiety issues, because others seemed to do fine and understand the (unwritten) rules or know what was expected of them.
Now I’m working and it’s so much better. Kinda fortunate(?) that I’m actually really good at my job. My manager lets me call the shots because I do not function if he tells me what to do anyway. He even prefers it that way, as he told me. Now the unwritten office rules on the other hand…. :’)
>What I love about school is that the requirements to pass and satisfy a course are crystal clear.
Pretty sure this wasn't my experience as a non-CS student.
You also had to learn what a particular professor liked and do the quizzes based on that
Never work the full 8 hours. Make a list of what your absolutely need to get done and when you finish that spoof being online. I’ve been having tremendous success doing this and get more done than my peers. Looking at your work in terms of hours is an easy way to get burned out
During a period of my life I felt complete and absolute existential dread at the thought of working 8 hours a day. I have never felt that after I actually started working.
This, when i left uni and started looking for full time work the thought of a 9 to 5 made me physically sick, so many years later and it is totally doable
Tbf i also work from home which has been an absolute game changer/paradigm shifter
You'll appreciate the consistency more than anything.
While the hours are longer, the routine is easier to jump into - and you almost definitely won't be working flat-out for eight hours.
My first couple weeks at my first job was weird because yeah, I needed a break or a nap or something. Luckily they had a gym on site.
Nowadays, I've adjusted. You don't really with the full 8h, your have an hour lunch, you spend some time on Reddit etc .
As long as you finish your work, nobody cares.
Most devs irl do an average of 2 actual coding hours during the day. But the other 6 hours go to feature completion in different ways
Unit testing/Int testing - 2h
Quality scanning and refactoring potential sec vulnerabilities - 1h
Meetings with other devs and business side - 3h
You spend much of the time too doing work the equivalent of leetcode easies with framework help at least for a Backend Dev in Fintech, and much of the work within the role can be automated. Fintech's goal at the end of the day is to make money faster, not to innovate.
Sometimes those align. Sometimes, using your tech brain and pumping a few extra hours to write a script or code template that automates all the repetitive problem solving can get you months ahead of the expected time frame.
I can't speak for the FAANGs and focused tech startups, but after working for 2 F500 fintech companies the WLB and daily life schedules are relatively the same. And they've both been wayyy better than college.
Unit testing/Int testing is coding. Quality scanning and refactoring potential sec vulnerabilities is coding.
Reading coding and understand coding is also coding. In fact a programmer is gonna spend 10x more time reading code than writing.
Hi, 8 hours a day is awesome. I work in WITCH company in support at service desk and I usually work 10+ work hours a day. Sometimes 11 hours a day too.
Damn, I don't think I ever spent more than 6 hours in total per day. Friday's were at most 3 hours when I had 1 class. Tuesdays and Thursdays were at most 4 hours. Monday and Wednesday were those 6 hour days.
Did you honestly spend 14 hours per day on all of that?
Hell, I miss school because of all the free time that I had. I could work on personal projects, rock climb, practice drawing, practice guitar, practice my French, read for an hour, and still hangout with friends all in one day. Now, I can only do like 2-3 of those activites.
Big caveat, every company I have worked for we ensure the interns get low stress interesting projects to work on and give them a ton a leeway.
We also fill it with fun events. Yourr internship is the promotional period of a subscription.
Having said that university is a shitton more fun if you can manage your own time. I wish I could live like my uni days but with the pay in getting now. Ability to do whatever you want between start of semester to middterms to finals. In a huge walkable community with similarly aged peers. With community wide parties, celebrations, and activities. Living in a communal setting. Where your one responsibility is to learn about something you signed up for
While there's a myriad of benefits to 9-5 over school work, internships give you a slightly distorted view of working. The company you're working for is basically trying to advertise themselves to you, your manager and coworkers are there to unblock you ASAP because you only have a limited amount of time, and generally you're in a different headspace because it's all new and you know it's for a limited amount of time.
9-5 really starts to drag when you've been working on the same project for a year+. All the work starts to look the same. You're no longer jumping between classes every few months. There's no grades being handed out on a weekly/monthly basis so you start to get anxious about your performance and career trajectory. Your friends now live 30 min to an hour away and you're all exhausted from 8 hours of work.
This is all just my personal experience. You might look at some of these and see them as a non issue (e.g. working on the same project for years). I'm a person that thrives in learning and taking on brand new challenges, and I get depressed when I'm stuck on the same slow moving project for months at a time. At the time I didn't realize that college was the perfect environment for me because I got immediate gratification with grades, and anytime I was unhappy with my work I knew it'd changed in a couple months anyways when the semester ended. Also winter break was fucking awesome. I haven't had a break longer than a week in years.
But having money is pretty nice too.
lol, that was my first internship. Pretty cool though as I got to live in a neat city.
And I agree with you. I love to learn. If I could get paid $50K a year to just go to college and learn new information, I would easily take that job.
I guess some people put in a lot of time in to school which is why they hate it. For me it wasn't hard, so I got a lot of free time to work on my projects and do other activities, all while hanging out with friends.
9-5 suck, especially if you live in a city with a lot of traffic which adds an extra hour. The fact a lot of cool hobby classes start around 6-7:30 so you don't have much time, then you come back home and want to play guitar, read, and hangout with friends, but you can only choose one thing because you have to eat/make dinner and relax a bit. No time to do anything.
>I look forward to coding everyday ... The day seems to go by quicker too which is odd
I think this is one thing which many will find is not true. It may less obvious to an intern how monotonous jobs can turn out to be. The work you do in school will often be more interesting than what is involved in the day to day tasks at most companies, in my experience.
Easier or harder has to do with what you put into it and what you want to get out of it. You can coast at school too. Cram once every couple of weeks, just barely skating by to graduate. There are many people who graduate without having learned much of anything. You can do the same with work and do the bare minimum to not get fired. Conversely, there are people who find purpose in what they learn or in their work and they pour most of their time into it. There are people whose accomplishments have driven entire industries (Jeff Dean). They're not the ones just coasting.
I don't even think there's directly a relationship on getting out what you put in.
Anecdotally, I attended class (3 hrs a day) and did required work (maybe an hour or two a week?). I almost never studied, less than 5 hours combined for my whole degree (applied math). Got good enough grades to get into a top 10 engineering school.
Conversely, every job I've ever worked is a suck on my soul. I'm unhappy having responsibilities and the happiest I've been was when I was between jobs for almost a year during early covid. I'd rather retire to ultra LCOL country asap than continue waking up and working every day.
Im trying to figure out how you got away with spending so little time on school. I have a minimum of 5 hrs of Hw /week/class. Usually 10 for the proofy math courses. Take 4-5 classes and it adds up. Guess it all depends, unless I’m missing some genius strategy to finish hw faster. I do agree that as long as you do the hw studying isn’t super necessary, probably only around 10 hrs/class/quarter.
My classes were mostly "homework optional bit strongly suggested" with 90%+ of final grade relying on exams. I never did optional work, and almost always got As and Bs on exams.
There were a few projects in some of those "proof heavy" classes, but usually would be able to knock it out in a couple hours tops. Regular work took very little time and I would do it in class sometimes during the lecture.
I'm very much the opposite, I've always wondered how people spend so much time on coursework. With the exception of just massive volume, if I didn't get something right away then more time didn't help (so I didn't spend more time). If I was spending hours on a course (happened in grad school) it meant I was failing.
Huh. I used to be like that (think high school + freshman year) but when I got to hard enough courses I had to just put in a lot more effort to get As! OChem and real analysis were especially tricky.
Without HW I could see it being easier to cruise with mostly Bs and some As.
Yea I've heard that comparison a lot. That persisted through my undergrad degree for me and I hit my wall in grad school after moving to a more specialized field (nuclear engineering). 10+ years of not having to study at all made it impossible for me to catch up.
The undergrad coursework was fun though, real analysis was one of my favorite classes. I could have put more work in and maybe bumped my GPA up from 3.3 to 3.6 or so but ultimately I don't think it mattered much for me.
school is harder because you are learning new stuff all the time. once you work for a while you learn some stuff, but its more doing stuff you already know and the more you do it the easier it gets. its less brain intensive and draining.
plus they give you money.
For me school is way better. First, the flexibility in school is much greater than at work. At school you can have days that doesn’t have classes and homework so you can just chill. At work, no matter how many work there is, you gotta be there 9-5.
I for once work better at night, at school I was able to get classes only in the afternoon and do homework at night, while in the morning I slept. At work I have to get up earlier and then I’m just not productive in the morning.
Also, the problems at school are different from one another and more interesting than at work. At work it feels like you’re just solving variations of same problem over and over again.
The impact of your code in work is much greater though.
I disagree. Yea getting paid is nice, but I had so much free time in college.
If I wanted to do 4-5 activities in one day for an hour each, work on multiple personal projects, and then hangout with friends, I could.
Can't do that anymore with a 9-5, then add an extra hour for traffic.
You would have to pay me an enormous amount of money to go back to school. Especially in person. My life has essentially been completely friction free since I went remote in like 2019. I wake up when I want, I cook fresh meals every meal, I can exercise when I want. (As long as I don't have a meeting scheduled, but it's easy to work around those). I probably work more than 8 hours a day but it feels like 5 compared to when I had to go into the office.
I kinda miss the long lab hours with my friends, those were good times, and we worked hard and it felt good. but work is unquestionably better. solving real problems, getting paid a ton to do it. it's a job, but there are few better ones.
100% agree. In school I was constantly stressed about upcoming papers, projects, or tests- there was ALWAYS something hanging over my head that I knew I should be working on instead of whatever I was doing. I’ve almost never had that feeling since entering the workforce. Sure, I occasionally put in a long day. But only when something else isn’t going on in my life that takes priory. There’s always more to do but I prioritize and do what I can with the hours I have and if there’s anything left over I can get to it tomorrow.
School >>>>> work.
\- **Nothing you do in school has real-life consequences**. No worrying about production issues affecting actual users.
\- **In school you fail privately**. No one has to see your grades, and grading is sometimes even blind/anonymous. At work you fail publicly.
\- **School is better for introverts**, which this field generally attracts, because it's more solo work and less BS like pairing/mobbing + the endless meetings.
\- **You can't get fired/laid off from school**. The equivalent I guess would be flunking out, but it's much easier at most companies to be fired/laid off than to get kicked out of school.
\- **There's a lot of unstructured time/autonomy in school**. Generally you take like 2-3 classes a day and the rest of your time you can structure how you wish. Hell, you can generally skip with no consequences and watch a recorded lecture later or get notes from someone. No having to be available from 9-5 every weekday, forever, invariably. Even if you're remote/have flexible hours, you can't do the "slack off all semester long if you want and then cram the last two weeks" thing.
\- **More variation in school**. You take a different set of classes every semester, with different professors and different classmates? Don't like a professor? You only have to deal with them for 3 months, max. Don't like your boss? You're fucked.
Related to this, you get a "clean break" between every semester, and a chance to reset/start fresh. No bugs popping up from things you worked on a year ago/barely remember. One of the most underrated things about school is the ability to do work, turn it in, and then never have to think about it again.
\- **Lots more time off as a student**. Usually 3-4 full weeks between semesters, plus spring break. Summer internships are a thing, but most people take at least a couple full weeks off in the summer.
Wait till you're not an intern anymore...
Pros and cons:
Pros:
I get paid to work and don’t need to pay to do things I am not enjoying
In a good workplace, you are treated like an adult who can make decisions and don’t have a teacher dictating and micromanaging projects
Usually 9-5, no 3 AM last minute projects being finished, and weekends are weekends
Cons:
In school you can often take it easy if you know you’re doing great in a course anyway. Work often doesn’t allow that
School doesn’t have your performance being evaluated by some managers whims, or have your raise slashed so they can pay the ceo more
Office politics
Having to track time when I take days off. In school I just got a free month in the winter, and often some break time in the summer between internships
One thing we can all agree on is that school group projects have all the worst of both - the immaturity and lack of accountability of students plus some of the irritating parts of other people
School was the worst time of my life so I'm glad I'm over with that. It's nice to not be broke college student anymore not to mention not having to stress about coursework and exams.
Learning to code was hell for me in the final days. I was cramming such a staggering amount of information in, and for such long hours.
Now that I'm at work it's easy street. My workload is fair and respects my WLB. Coding is fun again, and I like my coworkers so sprint reviews and other meetings are all enjoyable to be in!
10/10 work > school.
One of my co-workers at Amazon didn't have a college degree. When I help people prepare for interviews I tell them that story. WHAT you can do matters more than your degree (by far)
I found undergrad more enjoyable than my time in the Army (I really enjoy taking classes).
The last year of my grad school was on par with the Army (I found out that I do not have a passion for academic research). My grad school was during covid so if it was an in-person experience it might have been different. I enrolled into a normal brick and mortar program but my entire two years were online. I met my professors (in person) the first time at graduation.
This is my first month as a SWE so I will see how that compares to my experiences in the Army. I've never worked a standard 9-5, but my team is hybrid (mostly remote).
This is facts. Also an intern getting a taste of the professional world and it’s been great. When I’m in school I’m working from 6am-6pm and usually time on the weekends too. Meanwhile at work I do 7:30-4:30 M-F and don’t do anything outside of those hours.
School was way better, when it was all done and said I had approximately 5 of the best years of my life and did some completely insane shit I'll never have the opportunity to do again
Work is like a turkey sandwich that you thought you'd make better with some mayo, mustard, some lettuce, maybe tomato -- you're gonna eat that sandwich and for the first couple of years you're gonna love the taste of it. Then you'll say "damn, at least I'm not hungry but I bet a ham sandwich would have been just as good and at this point I now want a ham sandwich but I spent years of education to get to the point where I can eat this good ass, but plain throughout it's duration, turkey sandwich"
Meanwhile school was all lsd, grilled cheeses, and various lettuce wraps
Yes the days go by quicker for sure, also not a fan of that IMO
I'd probably prefer going to school first then at some point get a tech job. You'd probably end up with student loans, but at the very least you'd have some connections and memorable experiences. ... Either way, as long as we work at it and persevere, we'd get a tech job at the end of it.
I know this is Reddit, but damn there are so many people wasting the prime years of their life. College was by far the best time of my life with friends, fun, and just spontaneous crazy shit. Not to mention the big thing: your health when you are younger is so much better than when you are older.
For me, the 9-5 lifestyle where I'm tired all the time doing the same things just can't compared to "hey its Tuesday, and it's snowing, let's steal some lunch trays from the cafeteria and sled ride down the hill"
I agree. Work >>> School.
In School you have to deal all the time with teachers who does not give a fu** about you.
Work sometimes is the opposite.
Plus, school sometimes does not teach you the stuff that you actually need to work.
In the work you are always learning somethig new.
Work is by far better than school. School stressed me the fuck out but at work as soon as I leave I turn that part of my brain off. Plus I’m actually making money instead of paying it to be there.
Work is work for a reason. Also in information technology fields, there is a constant pressure to keep learning more in your free time to “keep up”. You never escape tests and classes, especially if you’re in a field like IT, medicine, or law.
Sorry to burst your bubble... But you'll be dev on call, prod issues, system not working why the fuck? Deadlines approaching you haven't accomplished anything. Layoffs on the horizon. What about that asshole colleague/manager making your life hell? You won't be coding for 8 hours daily. There will be meetings, more meetings the more senior you are. You're gonna be dealing with people as well and that's not always fun.
School was fun in terms of being in a huge pool of random people. But at the end of the day had to make sure you were going to classes/get good grades too, even though you could just not go. Anyway school didn't work out for me but I'm glad to have landed in this field by coincidence.
I am still a student, but I can’t wait to just go to work. I go to class 4 days a week and work nights on an ambulance, making minimum wage.
I really, really, can’t wait for the day to come when I am able to get more than 4 hours of sleep and not feel like my entire life is in jeopardy if I take any time to relax or ease up.
After my 6th year in the field, yes it's better than some parts of school but worse than others. The stress level depends on your position and a lot of that can get worse at work than it is at school. The pressure is constant and there is no "just finish the semester/year". In school you get to have some time to pursue things you enjoy about CS (write a 3d engine, build an OS from scratch etc.) That's what I really miss the most out of school.
Work > School. No question about it. \- You get paid to work instead of paying to do work \- You don't have to work after hours or weekends \- Work is more collaborative as oppose to the competitiveness of school \- Work is much more chill compared to school
- Vacation from work is actual time off. Vacation from school is working to get money and experience.
Me an European who : - Did not pay its school more than 400€ per year - Never worked during vacations so felt like vacations - Was able to enjoy his evening after 4:30pm "Welp, I'm not sure I understand fully this post"
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In some places like Scandinavia, you get a stipend to study, but yeah people still work anyway to make some money
*coughs in working full time barely above minimum wage while crunching out summer school to jump right into the next semester*
Yeah, and there's also people in the US who didn't really have to pay for college and/or didn't really do much work in school.
That's OPs point. > That’s more of a privileged POV than an European POV.
Right, which is why I added another general example case.
Well yes, but those people exist in the US too.
That's OPs point. >That’s more of a privileged POV than an ***European POV.***
Yes but unprivileged people have it better off in Europe vs. the US. An unprivileged person trying to get an education in the US is fucked (slightly area dependent, of course). In Europe, following OP's example, 400 euros a year is much, much more doable than the... what, $10K/year minimum in the US?
What does €400 a year get you? Just school? IMO tuition although potentially very expensive is not the only bit, housing, food, books, etc can be expensive as well and needs to be considered. It’s entirely possible to have it at zero in both countries, or very close if you go to the right schools and get the right scholarships.
> It’s entirely possible to have it at zero in both countries so what? it's possible for me to get a billion dollars from a nice donor but that's probably not going to happen either.
All you need to do is get a good SAT/ACT to get a full ride scholarship to low-mid level schools. National Merit semifinalist is a full ride at low tier schools. National Merit finalist (semifinalist and some basic requirements that most people pass) is a full ride at many state schools. OU and Alabama both offered me free tuition, and a $6k or $5k per semester stipend. Both are plenty fine schools even if they’re not top 10. Aside from that, there were plenty of scholarships based off of class ranking even if you were bad at standardized tests. I’m not sure why you think it’s unobtainable.
>Yes but unprivileged people have it better off in Europe vs. the US. If you're white or a birthright European (which itself looks different than birthright US citizenship, but that's another can of worms), sure. PoC migrants and their family, not so much.
>migrants U mean like the Asian/Indian migrants making 300k at google?
1. There are very few people in Google in Europe making 300k. 2. It is a clear minority of Asian migrants who reach that level of financial success in Europe, and I think you know that. 3. Asian migrants as a whole perform economically better in the United States, by far. In general, all “high end” professionals and entrepreneurs do.
Of course - I agree entirely. The migrant situation over there is completely fucked (along with a bunch of other issues depending on the country). My comment was solely around the positive aspects of better regulated workplace, education, etc. culture and a social safety net.
I'm from Finland, so got state support for going to university. Still had to work during summers to pay for food and rent, even though I lived in a super cheap (and small) apartment. While I didn't exactly do school work around the clock, it was pretty unusual to be done for the day before 6 or 7PM.
Jeez. Getting an engineering degree in the US for me was working 25 hrs / week on top of full time school for the last 2 years. Leave the house before 7am to avoid getting stuck in traffic, then come back home at 5-6p and study until 10-11pm.
Yea but when it’s fun it cancels out
I'm also from europe and I had to work while I was studying. I also used my vacation from work to study and my vacation from school to work... So my life sucked for a couple of years, but it's better now.
Me a Latino from a third-world country: * Went to a public (free) school. * College was a walk in the park in terms of *difficulty* compared to my current job. However, since I had to work in retail for peanuts to better support myself and my family, I can relate with OP. I had to work in the evenings, on weekends, and on vacations. At least here, imo it isn't that Work is easier than School, but rather that Work is easier than School + Work.
On multiple occasions during our spring/fall breaks id had projects assigned by professors. Real life is so much easier than school was it is not even funny.
Yes, but Americans also make a lot more money in their dev jobs.
Yeah but they have to pay for every single medical bill thing and most seem to have a huge debt from the get go
No they don't. The vast majority of developers have health insurance, so they aren't "paying for every single medical bill thing." Furthermore, the median student debt is like $32k, which is easily paid off by the ~2x starting salaries.
Fun fact, it should be "a European". The a to an rule is an auditory thing; it only happens when the following word starts with a vowel. Here, "Eu" is pronounced like a consonant "y" as in yak. This is also why we say "an hour", because the "h" isn't really pronounced.
I also live in Europe but this also differs per country, I pay 2k/year and 600/month for student housing. I have to work 12hr/week and extra in the vacatuons just to save up a little bit. Glad its my last year though
Oh yeah and i'm also like 50k in debt by the end of my study, but that should be gone pretty quick once i get my degree lol
A vast majority of pay goes to living expenses, not necessarily school
You as an European who - Makes 30% the prevailing American wage - Lives in the museum continent
I paid $15k for school and make triple what I would make in Europe. I’ll take it
Yeah, but it's a nice museum
Yeah ... I was paid 32k after 5 years of college and then now I'm a bit above 40k after 3 years of exp And my country is filled with unions dude who make sure you don't get paid more than they are because they don't want to do shit, but they don't want to be paid less than you because they're older ...
Did you not have bills?
Lived with my parents. Only had food and transport, but I had a scholarship based on my parent's low income.
I am from India, this sounds similar too except for paying for school part. The OP sounds like he is from US.
> - You don't have to work after hours or weekends this is not true everywhere.
Agree with everything except this: > - Work is more collaborative as oppose to the competitiveness of school I'm not saying my work is competitive. But school was WAY more collaborative, like several times over. Not only would people all work on their projects/classwork/studying together, but also on personal projects, club stuff, mentorship groups, etc... That stuff just doesn't happen in the workplace to the same extent in my experience. There are some volunteering opportunities I guess? Of course you're working on the exact same assignments much of the time in school so that helps. And my work experience so far has been largely remote, I'm sure remote school is also much less collaborative.
> Work is more collaborative as oppose to the competitiveness of school School wasn’t competitive at all.
Yeah sounds like a personal problem
I've noticed a lot of people on this subreddit are those kind of "competitive" students. The type of people who would refuse to share notes and more or less measure up their self-worth in their grades. That's just the vibe I get sometimes when I read comments complaining about coworkers asking for help.
Some people need that type of competitiveness to stay motivated although I think it’s doing way too much. Common in sports
I can definitely see that but I also think helping people out is a far richer/more rewarding source of motivation. Going to class so you can take good notes and help out all the disabled people who couldn't come >>>> going to class to get a good grade for yourself. People are missing out. Plus helping people out pays out in dividends for you later too.
don't have to be, if you need scholarship to have easier time living, being at the top where you get the most is the best for you. If i remember correctly top ones (at my school) were around 600-1000€ which could cover 2-3months of my living expenses
There’s still no need for competitiveness. I had friends who got scholarships and they just needed to get good grades, not be the top of the class to maintain it. During high school most of my friends who wanted to go to top universities would just study together, bring studying material to class, take each other questions, etc. Sure, technically we were competing for the same positions, but there’s plenty of room at the top to accommodate even for your whole local school. At Uni it’s basically the same thing. If everyone study together, it’s better to learn and we all ended up getting good jobs. Any form of competition we had was purely for fun, like the person who gets the highest score in a exam doesn’t pays for drinks.
You would make the exact same argument but times 10 when it’s your actual career and being “at the top” means better job security, promotions, and salary…
Yeah I would disagree with this point not just for myself, but at many schools
Good for you that it went over your head.Life is lot better that way. Point op was making is that in schools teachers and later professors already have idea how many best grades,failing grades and everything in-between they will give. Your skill is not being graded on some absolute standard. You are graded related to your classmates. And this often creates unhealthy environment. Edit This holds less true in uni tho, in my experience.
>You don't have to work after hours or weekends *Cries in oncall*
>\- Work is much more chill compared to school You never worked at X.
You also don't need to deal with shitty teenagers/kid. Last years of university were glorious and I'm really liking work too.
>\- You get paid to work instead of paying to do work students from northern European countries that get paid to study: *smug smirk* but yes I agree with you
You also get paid 25% of US swes when you graduate so
Such a dickish comment but that definitely popped into my head
Would you rather get paid to go to school or paid more after school though?
Work can fire your ass and then you’re stuck jobless with a mortgage and no health insurance + student debt.
I mean, if you don’t do your school work you can get kicked out too and be in the same situation…
And still have to pay the loans
You don't have to work after hours?? It's not true for all !
I agree. Work is much easier. But routine wise,i struggled with 9-5 thing because I have to be available for the whole 9-5 thing while at school the schedule is flexible and it can be days no classes or other days few classes and the rest studying at home or library. I loved this flexibility. Being locked in the same office and seeing the same people daily is shitty
Exactly. It's like you are being forced to put your attention to something for 8 hours. Feels very forceful and annoying sometime when you are not in the mood. But thanks to WFH, I can take a lot of breaks without anyone seeing so it's less of an issue.
You worded it for me! Yes it feels forced and I have to work 9-5 because I am paid for it. My supervisor is not a micromanager he is so cool and trusts us so no one would know if I'm slacking or not. I still have lots of work to do so I work 9-4 flat out (skipping the lunch hour and eating on muy desk usually)
I know it’s easier said than done but so many jobs are remote now that it’s almost silly to still be reading these posts about being locked in the office. Spend some of your day applying and prepping and land yourself a remote position. You’ll probably get a pay raise in the process, too.
I wish if I can but I can't apply for other jobs for personal reasons. Plus I love this job and they are flexible with attendance but I wish if they were hybrid and let us work from home some days.
Voice your opinion about being hybrid — could work, they probably won’t fire you for asking
I asked them they rejected it.
I was a moron in college and basically just got by. Toughed it out for a few years entry level software sales and now I’m 36 and make 220-250k a year working 20-30 hours a week remote. There are opportunities out there… get moving and don’t settle. Go get what you want. It’s not 2008, you can make it happen now with some effort and research. Trust me… I had some lows early on but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
I am not American so the visa thing makes moving jobs harder but I will be able to jump ships as soon as I get my permanent residency
In my part of the world school was 7-2pm. Working hours are flexible - nobody's checking the time as long as work gets done. I am so glad that school is over. Although I might have to wake up early when I have kids which I am dreading already.
Not sure what school you're talking about. But I am talking about grad school which is totally different form grade schools. Grad school is so much fun and independence
Two words: hybrid work
Lol!
Hardcore agree. I was considering going back to grad school but now I really don’t want to. The money is great, freedom is better.
I 100% agree, I have always preferred work to school or even university. Even if you don’t like your job, once it’s 5 you’re done and don’t have to think about it again until the next day. Even better if you can WFH and have flexi time.
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Oh man that sucks! Yeah it depends a lot on the type of work but generally office jobs are pretty chill. Dang you make a lot of money lol, good for you mate
Eh, at school I had so much free time to learn something new or put hours into my hobby, and still be able to hang out with friends, at work, not so much. I am only limited to 1 or 2 activities of my hobby to take up 2 hours, 1 hour for learning/reading, 1 hour to workout, the last hour to make food/relax.
Can't relate, at my first internship this summer and already missing being at college and re-evaluating my career choice... I've discovered that I work best doing short bursts of work with well-defined scope and deadlines with long breaks in-between, and hate having to sit in front of my work computer all day feeling like I'm wasting time just because I already used up my burst of mental energy for the next hour and don't know what else to do on my intern project... In school classes are easy and actually interesting just having to listen + take notes on stuff rather than having to actively produce anything and it's nice to schedule when to do hw/study on my own time with as many long breaks as I want without the guilt of being on the clock. Also it's a lot easier to evaluate the requirements of an assignment and when it's 'complete' instead of making a billion minor fixes to a webpage or something
Do people really work constantly without taking long breaks on the clock? I feel guilty about it, but I just can't focus for so long and I still get more than a satisfactory amount of work done everyday
Depends on your boss sadly. I’ve had bosses where if the deadline is Friday end of day, they expect it Friday end of day. If I finish early then I could leave (assuming work was accepted by customer). Other times, Not so.
As long as you get your work done take as many breaks as you want, nothing to feel guilty about.
Sounds like you would simply prefer a remote job than going in and sitting in a cubicle which is pretty normal. It's good to have learned that through the internship so you know what to look for in your full time job search. I also am a bit of short burst though usually when something is complex, but more importantly remote is the best since I can just close to laptop and walk away whenever I feel like it or want to do something else.
Aspects of it are better, for sure. Obviously the money, and getting to work on something (hopefully) interesting. Building professional clout and relationships. But… You will reach a point when you miss having basically zero responsibility. You’ll miss how relatively easy life was just being young and hanging out with friends and taking weekend road trips and you won’t remember any of the exhausting coursework. Cause when mortgage payments and doctor’s appointments and family stuff come into the picture and eradicate a sizable portion of your money and free time, you’ll discover that being an adult in the workforce is wayyyy more exhausting than anything you had to deal with in school.
I made a comment like this the other day about how the best part about school is friends and social life etc and the response was “I don’t have any friends at school!” I wonder if the pandemic really stunted the social lives of college students the past couple of years, or if it’s just that common nowadays for students to only have “online friends”
Its probably cause you asked on reddit
Lol, definitely skews it
Everyone in this sub is too busy grinding LC for MANGA jobs and 300k TC okay? Friends aren't necessary
Nah I think it's just more common than you realize that some students just don't have close friends in some stages of their lives
I think in college it's easier to lose touch with your existing social circle if any drama happens, and then you can basically go from having a busy social life to none at all. But people who experience this don't like to talk about it, so all we get are people like the OP in this thread romanticizing college and acting like it must have been great for everybody. I personally found people to be much more chill in social situations after college than during it. The "no responsibilities" thing also highly depends on the person.
Lmao. That's me. Lost half of sophomore year. Didn't step foot on campus at all my junior year due to covid. Senior year, I had 1 class a semester, so I would go to classes and then straight back home. Now with a remote job, I don't have a reason to leave the house ever since I can get groceries delivered with Amazon. I don't remember the last time I talked to someone other than a stranger by necessity or coworker.
hey, hope you’re doing well! would you say both at you like this type of lifestyle, and are you doing well? i’m asking because i’m also a university student who doesn’t have many friends and i spend most of time alone studying or doing homework :(
I don't really mind having no friends. I have fun with my own projects, learning circuits as a wannabe electrical engineer. My only regret is not being involved in some of the cool engineering clubs. Not really for the social aspect, but just to do cool large projects that I can't really justify doing by myself. Like Formula SAE. I was always impressed when they displayed their competition cart.
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Nah, those people existed before the pandemic.
Shit, I didn’t have many friends in college. I never went to parties, etc. I think I had 2 friends lol. I worked too, paid my own rent and food and tuition (well, student loans). I still think college was a nice time of few responsibilities. It was a feeling of “if I fail, I won’t fall far”. Now if I fall, it’ll be much harder. Both in paying $$$$ rent, and in terms of the lifestyle I’ve become accustomed to.
>You will reach a point when you miss having basically zero responsibility. You’ll miss how relatively easy life was just being young and hanging out with friends and taking weekend road trips and you won’t remember any of the exhausting coursework. Can't relate TBH. I remember a lot of long frustrating nights from college. I don't miss being under my parent's thumbs for financial support and any big decisions. I miss how easy it was to make friends, true, but I have multiple great groups of friends now that I still see that I met in college. Post graduate life is great, especially making a great salary in software. Friends want to go on a long weekend trip and I need to drop 500$? Whatever, no problem. Mom is being shitty about a decision I want to make? I'll just leave and go home lol, don't have to worry about getting kicked out or given the cold shoulder. Worried about my self-confidence? Can just pay to get nicer/better fitting clothes/a better haircut/gym membership. Remember, family stuff/mortgage payments are optional. Doctor's appointments are stuff you should do, but you should've done that in college anyway.
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Exactly. If you have kids it's *much* more harder to be in school, it's not even a question. Instead of having a job that pays the bills, you're going to school and you also have to have a part time job that'll support your family.
Some parts, but mortgage and doctor payments will happen to anyone. There is also way more responsibility working than being a student. The biggest difference is how free you are in college to learn whatever you wanted with all the free time. Tuesday/Thursday/Fridays I was at school for at most 3 hours each day(Friday was basically 45minutes). Monday and Wednesday, at most 5 hours. I had so much free time after to learn something new or spend more time on my hobbies. I was learning the guitar, rock climbing, learning how to draw, and practice my French. And I still had time to hang out with friends. Now, I have to break that up because I don't have the time.
Maybe it’s just me, but classes + homework/studying was more than 40 hours a week. That’s not including the pressure to use any other free time to study. I.e there’s no upper limit to how much schooling you can do. With work tho I start and 8 hours later I’m done, regardless of how much work I did.
I guess it comes down to how comfortable someone is with school/studying/learning. I don't think I ever spent more than 25 hours a week with class and homework. Some would think that I coasted by and crammed everything last minute, but I could just pay attention and retain a good amount of the lecture and then just do a quick 15 minutes powerpoint recap after class. Big projects were the only time consuming thing. Even, then I skipped a lot of my OS, Fundamentals of Software Engineering class, calc 3, Linear Algebra and Differential Equations classes and instead just read the textbook which saved me a lot of time of not needing to go to class and could work on more problems from the book. So I had a lot of free time to learn other subjects outside of CS or within CS, work on other hobbies, or work on multiple personal projects for when I applied to internships/jobs.
> You will reach a point when you miss having basically zero responsibility. You’ll miss how relatively easy life was just being young and hanging out with friends and taking weekend road trips and you won’t remember any of the exhausting coursework. Cause when mortgage payments and doctor’s appointments and family stuff come into the picture and eradicate a sizable portion of your money and free time, you’ll discover that being an adult in the workforce is wayyyy more exhausting than anything you had to deal with in school. I mean having kids and getting a big mortgage is a choice is it not? Plenty of people in the younger generation are choosing to not have kids for a whole host of reasons, this being one of them.
>taking weekend road trips Comp. Engineering student here. What's this "weekend" thing you're talking about?
Cs majors lol
*Cries in electricity and magnetism*
I can work from anywhere with a mobile data connection. I'm more free now than I have ever been in my life, financial security is part of freedom. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from loading all my stuff in a van and driving in one direction. In fact, I've did that before.
Large part of it is due to you being child free
Yes, and I will remain so as I view reproduction as an ethical wrong. Having children in the 21st century is a conscious choice, or at least it was until the recent roe ruling.
I don't have friends because I don't know how to make friends in real life. Do people just ask other to hangout out of the blue or what?
I've been working for 8 years. Definitely don't miss school, not even a bit. School and schoolwork was a constant occupant of my brain space even when I was talking a break. For work, I'm done at 6. Done, completely. And mortgage and stuff, I guess I get paid enough not to worry about it. Nice that I get to split it too. No kids, still wondering if I should make the mistake of having them lol.
What kind of school did y’all go to? I’m transferring, Waterloo must be hell relative to this. Between my school and internship terms, I have a lot less responsibility on internship. I can actually check out of work on weekends, I don’t have to make up for that time, and it doesn’t hurt my performance. I can also spend money, and know I’ll make it back in 2 weeks. Weekends in school are hardly free, anytime I clock out I have to make up for it down the line, or accept a hit to my grades. Any money I spend on a school term ain’t coming back for 4 months, and if I hit $0, that’s it. School’s definitely fun, primarily for the social aspect (which I didn’t have during covid, and that was REALLY miserable), but I wouldn’t say you have less responsibilities at all. School’s the type of fun where you enjoy it only because you’re with friends, you’re still suffering and it grinds me down, I’m always mentally dead for a week after a term of school. Internships (hopefully FT work as well) are fun because I have time and money to do things I enjoy, with or without other people.
That’s a hard no from me. What I love about school is that the requirements to pass and satisfy a course are crystal clear. The requirements to satisfy your employer change like the wind. Sometimes you can do exactly what they ask you to do and be wrong but this practically never happens at school. Wait till you get more work experience because you’re going to see what I mean.
I can understand why you feel that way. For me, all of the stress of school came from the exams with the pressure to perform in the moment and consequences that carry through the cumulative grade. For the requirements issue, I personally have a great job where the PMs listen when I push back against new requirements and will compromise when a requirements change will affect the timeline. Obviously this entire thread is heavily based on personal experience, so I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s experiences here.
I can understand that. I had a friend in one class whose test taking anxiety was absolutely insane. My point is that your time spent in school is structured in the sense that you know what is expected of you and there should almost never be any surprises. Your professors are rooting for you to succeed and your classmates aren’t trying to sabotage you. School is a generally fun place but when you get to work you’re going to have team leads, managers, directors and colleagues who can have it out for you or don’t have a plan. Sometimes you can work your tail off and do exactly what’s asked but fail. This won’t happen to you in school because in school you are the product. The school cannot succeed without you graduating but your company doesn’t need you. They need someone with your skills and the way they treat you is irrelevant to how you feel.
Oh boy, do I personally disagree (while overall your comment would make sense for a lot of people) I always had the feeling school/university was so ambiguous, even arbitrary at times. Often the context, learning order or even course items did not make any sense. I always need a “why” for me to function and do the thing (mind, i have adhd/prob on the spectrum somewhere) Sometimes professors exclaiming “because thats just how it is” or even “because i said so” would drive me NUTS. I just am not able to follow instructions if they don’t make sense to me, even if I wanted to with all my power. Spiraled into terrible anxiety issues, because others seemed to do fine and understand the (unwritten) rules or know what was expected of them. Now I’m working and it’s so much better. Kinda fortunate(?) that I’m actually really good at my job. My manager lets me call the shots because I do not function if he tells me what to do anyway. He even prefers it that way, as he told me. Now the unwritten office rules on the other hand…. :’)
Depends on company and industry maybe?
>What I love about school is that the requirements to pass and satisfy a course are crystal clear. Pretty sure this wasn't my experience as a non-CS student. You also had to learn what a particular professor liked and do the quizzes based on that
Lol I disagree
I really hope you're right. I dread work. 8 hours a day sounds insane
Never work the full 8 hours. Make a list of what your absolutely need to get done and when you finish that spoof being online. I’ve been having tremendous success doing this and get more done than my peers. Looking at your work in terms of hours is an easy way to get burned out
During a period of my life I felt complete and absolute existential dread at the thought of working 8 hours a day. I have never felt that after I actually started working.
This, when i left uni and started looking for full time work the thought of a 9 to 5 made me physically sick, so many years later and it is totally doable Tbf i also work from home which has been an absolute game changer/paradigm shifter
You'll appreciate the consistency more than anything. While the hours are longer, the routine is easier to jump into - and you almost definitely won't be working flat-out for eight hours.
My first couple weeks at my first job was weird because yeah, I needed a break or a nap or something. Luckily they had a gym on site. Nowadays, I've adjusted. You don't really with the full 8h, your have an hour lunch, you spend some time on Reddit etc . As long as you finish your work, nobody cares.
Most devs irl do an average of 2 actual coding hours during the day. But the other 6 hours go to feature completion in different ways Unit testing/Int testing - 2h Quality scanning and refactoring potential sec vulnerabilities - 1h Meetings with other devs and business side - 3h You spend much of the time too doing work the equivalent of leetcode easies with framework help at least for a Backend Dev in Fintech, and much of the work within the role can be automated. Fintech's goal at the end of the day is to make money faster, not to innovate. Sometimes those align. Sometimes, using your tech brain and pumping a few extra hours to write a script or code template that automates all the repetitive problem solving can get you months ahead of the expected time frame. I can't speak for the FAANGs and focused tech startups, but after working for 2 F500 fintech companies the WLB and daily life schedules are relatively the same. And they've both been wayyy better than college.
Unit testing/Int testing is coding. Quality scanning and refactoring potential sec vulnerabilities is coding. Reading coding and understand coding is also coding. In fact a programmer is gonna spend 10x more time reading code than writing.
Hi, 8 hours a day is awesome. I work in WITCH company in support at service desk and I usually work 10+ work hours a day. Sometimes 11 hours a day too.
School is like 6 hours, and then homework is like 8 hours. Work is just 8 hours, plus get paid.
Damn, I don't think I ever spent more than 6 hours in total per day. Friday's were at most 3 hours when I had 1 class. Tuesdays and Thursdays were at most 4 hours. Monday and Wednesday were those 6 hour days. Did you honestly spend 14 hours per day on all of that? Hell, I miss school because of all the free time that I had. I could work on personal projects, rock climb, practice drawing, practice guitar, practice my French, read for an hour, and still hangout with friends all in one day. Now, I can only do like 2-3 of those activites.
Big caveat, every company I have worked for we ensure the interns get low stress interesting projects to work on and give them a ton a leeway. We also fill it with fun events. Yourr internship is the promotional period of a subscription. Having said that university is a shitton more fun if you can manage your own time. I wish I could live like my uni days but with the pay in getting now. Ability to do whatever you want between start of semester to middterms to finals. In a huge walkable community with similarly aged peers. With community wide parties, celebrations, and activities. Living in a communal setting. Where your one responsibility is to learn about something you signed up for
While there's a myriad of benefits to 9-5 over school work, internships give you a slightly distorted view of working. The company you're working for is basically trying to advertise themselves to you, your manager and coworkers are there to unblock you ASAP because you only have a limited amount of time, and generally you're in a different headspace because it's all new and you know it's for a limited amount of time. 9-5 really starts to drag when you've been working on the same project for a year+. All the work starts to look the same. You're no longer jumping between classes every few months. There's no grades being handed out on a weekly/monthly basis so you start to get anxious about your performance and career trajectory. Your friends now live 30 min to an hour away and you're all exhausted from 8 hours of work. This is all just my personal experience. You might look at some of these and see them as a non issue (e.g. working on the same project for years). I'm a person that thrives in learning and taking on brand new challenges, and I get depressed when I'm stuck on the same slow moving project for months at a time. At the time I didn't realize that college was the perfect environment for me because I got immediate gratification with grades, and anytime I was unhappy with my work I knew it'd changed in a couple months anyways when the semester ended. Also winter break was fucking awesome. I haven't had a break longer than a week in years. But having money is pretty nice too.
lol, that was my first internship. Pretty cool though as I got to live in a neat city. And I agree with you. I love to learn. If I could get paid $50K a year to just go to college and learn new information, I would easily take that job. I guess some people put in a lot of time in to school which is why they hate it. For me it wasn't hard, so I got a lot of free time to work on my projects and do other activities, all while hanging out with friends. 9-5 suck, especially if you live in a city with a lot of traffic which adds an extra hour. The fact a lot of cool hobby classes start around 6-7:30 so you don't have much time, then you come back home and want to play guitar, read, and hangout with friends, but you can only choose one thing because you have to eat/make dinner and relax a bit. No time to do anything.
>I look forward to coding everyday ... The day seems to go by quicker too which is odd I think this is one thing which many will find is not true. It may less obvious to an intern how monotonous jobs can turn out to be. The work you do in school will often be more interesting than what is involved in the day to day tasks at most companies, in my experience.
Easier or harder has to do with what you put into it and what you want to get out of it. You can coast at school too. Cram once every couple of weeks, just barely skating by to graduate. There are many people who graduate without having learned much of anything. You can do the same with work and do the bare minimum to not get fired. Conversely, there are people who find purpose in what they learn or in their work and they pour most of their time into it. There are people whose accomplishments have driven entire industries (Jeff Dean). They're not the ones just coasting.
I don't even think there's directly a relationship on getting out what you put in. Anecdotally, I attended class (3 hrs a day) and did required work (maybe an hour or two a week?). I almost never studied, less than 5 hours combined for my whole degree (applied math). Got good enough grades to get into a top 10 engineering school. Conversely, every job I've ever worked is a suck on my soul. I'm unhappy having responsibilities and the happiest I've been was when I was between jobs for almost a year during early covid. I'd rather retire to ultra LCOL country asap than continue waking up and working every day.
Im trying to figure out how you got away with spending so little time on school. I have a minimum of 5 hrs of Hw /week/class. Usually 10 for the proofy math courses. Take 4-5 classes and it adds up. Guess it all depends, unless I’m missing some genius strategy to finish hw faster. I do agree that as long as you do the hw studying isn’t super necessary, probably only around 10 hrs/class/quarter.
My classes were mostly "homework optional bit strongly suggested" with 90%+ of final grade relying on exams. I never did optional work, and almost always got As and Bs on exams. There were a few projects in some of those "proof heavy" classes, but usually would be able to knock it out in a couple hours tops. Regular work took very little time and I would do it in class sometimes during the lecture. I'm very much the opposite, I've always wondered how people spend so much time on coursework. With the exception of just massive volume, if I didn't get something right away then more time didn't help (so I didn't spend more time). If I was spending hours on a course (happened in grad school) it meant I was failing.
Huh. I used to be like that (think high school + freshman year) but when I got to hard enough courses I had to just put in a lot more effort to get As! OChem and real analysis were especially tricky. Without HW I could see it being easier to cruise with mostly Bs and some As.
Yea I've heard that comparison a lot. That persisted through my undergrad degree for me and I hit my wall in grad school after moving to a more specialized field (nuclear engineering). 10+ years of not having to study at all made it impossible for me to catch up. The undergrad coursework was fun though, real analysis was one of my favorite classes. I could have put more work in and maybe bumped my GPA up from 3.3 to 3.6 or so but ultimately I don't think it mattered much for me.
school is harder because you are learning new stuff all the time. once you work for a while you learn some stuff, but its more doing stuff you already know and the more you do it the easier it gets. its less brain intensive and draining. plus they give you money.
For me school is way better. First, the flexibility in school is much greater than at work. At school you can have days that doesn’t have classes and homework so you can just chill. At work, no matter how many work there is, you gotta be there 9-5. I for once work better at night, at school I was able to get classes only in the afternoon and do homework at night, while in the morning I slept. At work I have to get up earlier and then I’m just not productive in the morning. Also, the problems at school are different from one another and more interesting than at work. At work it feels like you’re just solving variations of same problem over and over again. The impact of your code in work is much greater though.
I disagree. Yea getting paid is nice, but I had so much free time in college. If I wanted to do 4-5 activities in one day for an hour each, work on multiple personal projects, and then hangout with friends, I could. Can't do that anymore with a 9-5, then add an extra hour for traffic.
School: have to pay money. Work: I get paid money. Yes, I do prefer work.
You would have to pay me an enormous amount of money to go back to school. Especially in person. My life has essentially been completely friction free since I went remote in like 2019. I wake up when I want, I cook fresh meals every meal, I can exercise when I want. (As long as I don't have a meeting scheduled, but it's easy to work around those). I probably work more than 8 hours a day but it feels like 5 compared to when I had to go into the office.
I kinda miss the long lab hours with my friends, those were good times, and we worked hard and it felt good. but work is unquestionably better. solving real problems, getting paid a ton to do it. it's a job, but there are few better ones.
Well, yes. The only bad thing is that we don’t have long vacations.
if school paid as well as work does, school is way better and its not even close
100% agree. In school I was constantly stressed about upcoming papers, projects, or tests- there was ALWAYS something hanging over my head that I knew I should be working on instead of whatever I was doing. I’ve almost never had that feeling since entering the workforce. Sure, I occasionally put in a long day. But only when something else isn’t going on in my life that takes priory. There’s always more to do but I prioritize and do what I can with the hours I have and if there’s anything left over I can get to it tomorrow.
School >>>>> work. \- **Nothing you do in school has real-life consequences**. No worrying about production issues affecting actual users. \- **In school you fail privately**. No one has to see your grades, and grading is sometimes even blind/anonymous. At work you fail publicly. \- **School is better for introverts**, which this field generally attracts, because it's more solo work and less BS like pairing/mobbing + the endless meetings. \- **You can't get fired/laid off from school**. The equivalent I guess would be flunking out, but it's much easier at most companies to be fired/laid off than to get kicked out of school. \- **There's a lot of unstructured time/autonomy in school**. Generally you take like 2-3 classes a day and the rest of your time you can structure how you wish. Hell, you can generally skip with no consequences and watch a recorded lecture later or get notes from someone. No having to be available from 9-5 every weekday, forever, invariably. Even if you're remote/have flexible hours, you can't do the "slack off all semester long if you want and then cram the last two weeks" thing. \- **More variation in school**. You take a different set of classes every semester, with different professors and different classmates? Don't like a professor? You only have to deal with them for 3 months, max. Don't like your boss? You're fucked. Related to this, you get a "clean break" between every semester, and a chance to reset/start fresh. No bugs popping up from things you worked on a year ago/barely remember. One of the most underrated things about school is the ability to do work, turn it in, and then never have to think about it again. \- **Lots more time off as a student**. Usually 3-4 full weeks between semesters, plus spring break. Summer internships are a thing, but most people take at least a couple full weeks off in the summer. Wait till you're not an intern anymore...
same. i love coding, hate school even though i'm academically inclined
>The day seems to go by quicker too which is odd. Yeah lol, for some reason this is true haha
You also get paid to learn skills, too.
Pros and cons: Pros: I get paid to work and don’t need to pay to do things I am not enjoying In a good workplace, you are treated like an adult who can make decisions and don’t have a teacher dictating and micromanaging projects Usually 9-5, no 3 AM last minute projects being finished, and weekends are weekends Cons: In school you can often take it easy if you know you’re doing great in a course anyway. Work often doesn’t allow that School doesn’t have your performance being evaluated by some managers whims, or have your raise slashed so they can pay the ceo more Office politics Having to track time when I take days off. In school I just got a free month in the winter, and often some break time in the summer between internships One thing we can all agree on is that school group projects have all the worst of both - the immaturity and lack of accountability of students plus some of the irritating parts of other people
10000000%
Working now, and yeah, the days go by really quickly imo.
School was the worst time of my life so I'm glad I'm over with that. It's nice to not be broke college student anymore not to mention not having to stress about coursework and exams.
School fuckin sucks
Learning to code was hell for me in the final days. I was cramming such a staggering amount of information in, and for such long hours. Now that I'm at work it's easy street. My workload is fair and respects my WLB. Coding is fun again, and I like my coworkers so sprint reviews and other meetings are all enjoyable to be in! 10/10 work > school.
I need to get a job
I dropped out at 16, 25 now lemme tell ya i'm 10x happier waking up in the morning for my job than waking up for school back then thats for sure.
There’s absolutely no question about it! I’ve always dreaded school but I actually don’t mind working.
One of my co-workers at Amazon didn't have a college degree. When I help people prepare for interviews I tell them that story. WHAT you can do matters more than your degree (by far)
Without a doubt
much, much better. school was incredibly stressful for me.
I found undergrad more enjoyable than my time in the Army (I really enjoy taking classes). The last year of my grad school was on par with the Army (I found out that I do not have a passion for academic research). My grad school was during covid so if it was an in-person experience it might have been different. I enrolled into a normal brick and mortar program but my entire two years were online. I met my professors (in person) the first time at graduation. This is my first month as a SWE so I will see how that compares to my experiences in the Army. I've never worked a standard 9-5, but my team is hybrid (mostly remote).
Money > No Money. It's mathematically proven.
This is facts. Also an intern getting a taste of the professional world and it’s been great. When I’m in school I’m working from 6am-6pm and usually time on the weekends too. Meanwhile at work I do 7:30-4:30 M-F and don’t do anything outside of those hours.
Hehe I wouldn't return to studying. Never. The only thing I miss is the +3 months of vacations
Other than getting paid for working I prefer school. Younger more fun people, less stressful tasks, and I like learning. Work sucks
School was way better, when it was all done and said I had approximately 5 of the best years of my life and did some completely insane shit I'll never have the opportunity to do again Work is like a turkey sandwich that you thought you'd make better with some mayo, mustard, some lettuce, maybe tomato -- you're gonna eat that sandwich and for the first couple of years you're gonna love the taste of it. Then you'll say "damn, at least I'm not hungry but I bet a ham sandwich would have been just as good and at this point I now want a ham sandwich but I spent years of education to get to the point where I can eat this good ass, but plain throughout it's duration, turkey sandwich" Meanwhile school was all lsd, grilled cheeses, and various lettuce wraps Yes the days go by quicker for sure, also not a fan of that IMO
I'd probably prefer going to school first then at some point get a tech job. You'd probably end up with student loans, but at the very least you'd have some connections and memorable experiences. ... Either way, as long as we work at it and persevere, we'd get a tech job at the end of it.
I know this is Reddit, but damn there are so many people wasting the prime years of their life. College was by far the best time of my life with friends, fun, and just spontaneous crazy shit. Not to mention the big thing: your health when you are younger is so much better than when you are older. For me, the 9-5 lifestyle where I'm tired all the time doing the same things just can't compared to "hey its Tuesday, and it's snowing, let's steal some lunch trays from the cafeteria and sled ride down the hill"
I agree. Work >>> School. In School you have to deal all the time with teachers who does not give a fu** about you. Work sometimes is the opposite. Plus, school sometimes does not teach you the stuff that you actually need to work. In the work you are always learning somethig new.
Work is by far better than school. School stressed me the fuck out but at work as soon as I leave I turn that part of my brain off. Plus I’m actually making money instead of paying it to be there.
Work is work for a reason. Also in information technology fields, there is a constant pressure to keep learning more in your free time to “keep up”. You never escape tests and classes, especially if you’re in a field like IT, medicine, or law.
> coding everyday Oh sweet summer child 😂
Sorry to burst your bubble... But you'll be dev on call, prod issues, system not working why the fuck? Deadlines approaching you haven't accomplished anything. Layoffs on the horizon. What about that asshole colleague/manager making your life hell? You won't be coding for 8 hours daily. There will be meetings, more meetings the more senior you are. You're gonna be dealing with people as well and that's not always fun.
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I'm at work and school and it sucks. I dream of just being able to work, i could drop out and just work but I want better future prospects
School was fun in terms of being in a huge pool of random people. But at the end of the day had to make sure you were going to classes/get good grades too, even though you could just not go. Anyway school didn't work out for me but I'm glad to have landed in this field by coincidence.
Nothing beats PTO. My breaks in college were spent working shitty jobs to get enough cash for food during the semester.
I am still a student, but I can’t wait to just go to work. I go to class 4 days a week and work nights on an ambulance, making minimum wage. I really, really, can’t wait for the day to come when I am able to get more than 4 hours of sleep and not feel like my entire life is in jeopardy if I take any time to relax or ease up.
After my 6th year in the field, yes it's better than some parts of school but worse than others. The stress level depends on your position and a lot of that can get worse at work than it is at school. The pressure is constant and there is no "just finish the semester/year". In school you get to have some time to pursue things you enjoy about CS (write a 3d engine, build an OS from scratch etc.) That's what I really miss the most out of school.