Here’s reality. (Data from the 2016 Stack Overflow survey of 56,033 coders):
- Mentorship programs have a stronger correlation with higher pay than a university degree
- There is less than 1% difference in pay between masters degree holders and bootcamp graduates
- 69% of working software developers are self-taught
- 43% cite on-the-job training as their primary learning resource
- 25% used online courses
- Only 19% have a masters degree related to CS
- Only 8.5% have a B.A. in CS
- 6.5% graduated from a Bootcamp (this number is growing fast)
The best way to become a professional software engineer is to start engineering software. Make a web app. Don’t know how? Start with a google search “Learn to make a web app” and see where that takes you.