I’m Michael. I was a principal engineer at Facebook from 2009 to 2017, where I was the top code contributor of all time and also conducted hundreds of interviews. I recently co-founded Formation.dev, an engineering fellowship that trains and refers engineers directly into big tech. Ask me Anything!

Hi! That's a great question. There's this ongoing tension that's been around for a while and I don't think what we resolved immediately between a traditional college path and a more self-taught alternative path. Colleges have had a hard time keeping up with the latest and greatest skills that you need on the job, but the top tier colleges still have the most consistent deterministic outcome to getting to a top company out of school. Part of the reasons is top tier colleges accept highly competitive students from top tier high schools and those people might just succeed on their own regardless. But the result is a very strong network of people that keep the cycle going. Another difference about college is that the top-tier schools focus on academics and to some degree they would love it if you went to do a PhD and stay in academia, so their goal isn't necessarily even to get you into a job. This kind of thinking is needed in the world and we shouldn't just scrap college even if it was provably less effective than other options for getting a job. At Facebook I didn't really notice a difference between people who went to college and didn't. Facebook didn't care and their hiring process was fairly agnostic to the actual credentials, and rather focused on the skills. That said I'm talking top tier colleges and top-tier companies and a suggestion for someone would highly depend on their goals, their larger ambitions, their existing experience in high school, and also your geography and family support or friend support, as many many factors so I can't give a general answer.