"A degree isn't worth anything, but you have to have one to be able to say that."
I went back and got my CS degree after 10 years of programming experience.
From what I've seen, degrees don't matter when the economy is good (as it appears to be at the moment), but the lack of a degree can become a "reason" to lay off, not to hire, or to assign to drudgework projects, when the economy is bad.
This also requires guessing what the economy will be like when you expect to get out, because it's hard to get a good job as a new graduate when times are bad as well.
Ideally, you want your degree and a couple of years of new, full-time, experience before the next recession. Your pre-college experience will become nearly worthless during the 4+ years you're "away" from day-to-day production programming.
What you learn in college is focused on theory, so won't generally be on cutting-edge languages, libraries, and APIs, or the sorts of equipment that will become available out in the world in the interim (Is cloud computing anything more than a specialty elective class yet?).
Longer term, having the piece of paper will show employers that you can stick to something for the years needed to complete it, and you'll vaguely-but-well-enough remember the algorithms that you'll call as existing libraries rather than ever hand-coding again, but mostly your degree will be a check in the box.
Will your dream job require that box to be checked?
Just my opinion, but from having worked both without and with a degree. All-in-all, I'm glad I have the degree, but it took several more years than I originally anticipated to catch up and surpass where I feel I would have been without it.
Google has to deal with some manufacturing issues related to their phones and tablets, but does not entirely depend on China for manufacturing.
Apple is overly-dependent upon Chinese manufacturing to have hardware at all. Leaves them beholden to Chinese rules, whereas, if they had manufactured elsewhere, China would have to deal with demand for a needed foreign product.
Now, however, if Apple pulled out, they would leave all that manufacturing expertise behind, and would face a lack of skilled labor elsewhere that they largely caused in the first place.
So, yes, ethics and money clash yet again, as money was designed to make happen. If they didn't pay people, a lot of dirty work wouldn't happen, and a lot of goods would be unavailable as a result.
If you tweet about ethics on a computer, chances are, that computer's hardware makes you complicit.
I didn't understand your Google hardware comment. Google search in China predates any hardware by years. Google search(Google China) is 2005 and the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 isn't until 2008.
Apple isn't dependent on the Chinese for manufacturing they are dependent on Foxconn, a Taiwanese company. And China wants Foxconn there. They greatly incentivized Foxconn to set up shop there.[1]
There's no reason Apple with its' hundreds of billions in cash reserves couldn't finance an "iPhone City" like China did in Zhengzhou and put it elsewhere.
And seeing how Foxconn is looking towards automation which isn't dependent on human labor, they could set it up an automated iPhone City anywhere, including the US.[2]
> Google has to deal with some manufacturing issues related to their phones and tablets,
No. It was way before phone manufacturing. China wanted to censor google searches but Google did not approve this so at the end they pulled out their servers from China and hosted it in Singapore.
"We voted for you, comrade. Here is old malware from deepnet kiddy porn site post for to confuse."
Could be Russia pissed about puppet twitching without permission, or could be Bannon (via Cambridge Analytics?) pissed about puppet twitching without permission.
I went back and got my CS degree after 10 years of programming experience.
From what I've seen, degrees don't matter when the economy is good (as it appears to be at the moment), but the lack of a degree can become a "reason" to lay off, not to hire, or to assign to drudgework projects, when the economy is bad.
This also requires guessing what the economy will be like when you expect to get out, because it's hard to get a good job as a new graduate when times are bad as well.
Ideally, you want your degree and a couple of years of new, full-time, experience before the next recession. Your pre-college experience will become nearly worthless during the 4+ years you're "away" from day-to-day production programming.
What you learn in college is focused on theory, so won't generally be on cutting-edge languages, libraries, and APIs, or the sorts of equipment that will become available out in the world in the interim (Is cloud computing anything more than a specialty elective class yet?).
Longer term, having the piece of paper will show employers that you can stick to something for the years needed to complete it, and you'll vaguely-but-well-enough remember the algorithms that you'll call as existing libraries rather than ever hand-coding again, but mostly your degree will be a check in the box.
Will your dream job require that box to be checked?
Just my opinion, but from having worked both without and with a degree. All-in-all, I'm glad I have the degree, but it took several more years than I originally anticipated to catch up and surpass where I feel I would have been without it.