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Can you become a computer programmer with an associate's degree
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The real question is, will your associate's degree actually... What's up? I'm James and I am a self-taught programmer. In this video, I'm going to be
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talking about how you can become a programmer with a limited amount of education. And yes
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it can be done. I was able to do it with a completely unrelated degree and so can you
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I know several programmers who have become software engineers without having any degree
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So having an associate's degree definitely allows you to become a software engineer. And I'll even
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share a video link here and down in the description below on how you can become a software engineer
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in nine months. But what the real question is, will your associate's degree actually help you
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as a programmer? Now, is your associate's degree related to software? If it is
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then it definitely can have some benefits. If it is completely unrelated to software engineering
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then it's not really going to provide much value at all. And the reason for that is that there
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aren't a lot of companies that look at, oh, we'll only hire people who have an associate's degree
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But there are a lot of companies who have requirements that in order to get certain
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raises and promotions, you have to have at least a bachelor's degree. Even if that isn't
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necessarily related to software, there are HR requirements that will definitely affect your
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long-term career growth. Not so much for an associate's degree. So if you're at this point
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where you have an associate's degree and you're wondering whether you should make that jump over
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into becoming a software engineer or continuing on with your school, I would actually recommend that
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you get a computer science degree, you know, as a bachelor's degree and invest that time right now
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especially if you can afford to in your life and you don't have a lot of commitments. Maybe you don't have a large family and you have more flexibility to dedicate that time. Now is the
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time to get the computer science degree. And I definitely think it is better to do that. And it'll
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open up a lot more opportunities than not having a computer science degree. If you're just starting
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out and you're contemplating whether you should be getting a degree at all and whether an associate's
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degree will be enough, then I would just strongly recommend, again, you go and actually get a
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computer science degree and get that bachelor's degree. Now, if you're a little bit later on in
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life or, you know, already established in a career and you're just looking to make that transition to
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another career and it just doesn't make sense to go back and get any more education, then definitely
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don't let it hold you back. There are ways that you can become a programmer and learn to write code
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without having to go back and get education. It's not that it's going to be easy. It's definitely
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a hard path to take, but it's very doable. It's the path that I ended up taking. And so if you're
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going to go down that path, then I would highly recommend that you actually look at a boot camp
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still try to put aside at least, you know, a couple months to get some very focused training
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on what it would take to become a software engineer so that you can develop some of the core skills to help make you more competitive. I went down the self-taught route and then it's
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really easy to get distracted and go off on like tangents or learn things that aren't going to be
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super practical for you and can actually, you know, waste your time. It's not that it's not valuable
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it's just it's harder to stay focused on what matters most because you just don't have that
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guidance and that narrow focus that you would get from something like going to a quality boot camp
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And the other thing that you should be looking at is how can you get some experience? If you
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are going to continue on with education and decide that it would be worth it to get a bachelor's
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degree, I would still recommend trying to get experience, get a part-time job that is, you know
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doing something related to software and preferably actually writing code and building applications
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if you can and do that part-time while you're finishing up the degree because having that extra
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experience on top of a degree will really help you be more competitive and will help you move
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along faster in your career. So now that you know you can become a programmer with just an
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associate's degree, you should watch one of these videos up here on how to become a programmer fast
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and I'll see you in the next one. Lates
