No Degree? No Problem. How Young Geniuses Are Disrupting Silicon Valley

(MENAFN- Live Mint) The tech world is increasingly welcoming young, self-taught talents without college degrees. Major firms like IBM, google , GM, and Apple are dropping degree requirements for tech roles. According to a report in The New York Post, this trend is gaining momentum, with companies prioritising skills over formal education.

Musk's team led by young talent

Elon Musk 's hand-picked staff at the Department of government Efficiency (DOGE ) consists of employees aged 19 to 24, including a high school graduate and a former SpaceX intern who received a $100,000 grant from billionaire investor Peter Thiel to drop out of college, The New York Post reported.

Thiel, who has long advocated for skipping college, has been funding young entrepreneurs since 2010. Among the recipients this year are DOGE employee Luke Farritor and 24-year-old Augustus Doricko, who left UC Berkeley to launch Rainmaker, a startup developing technology to modify weather patterns.

“There's definitely respect in Silicon Valley for those that drop out,” Doricko told the Post.

More companies relax degree rules

IBM , Accenture , and Amazon Web Services are among firms loosening degree requirements, said The New York Post. In February 2023, IT firm Accenture hired 21-year-old Seth Gallegos as a network engineer despite his lack of a degree, the news report stated.

“I think 95% of any tech job can be done without a degree,” Gallegos told the Post, adding that he took a 15-week cybersecurity boot camp instead of pursuing a costly four-year degree.

Similarly, 20-year-old Alejandro Ceniceros secured a job as a cloud technician at a hospital chain after a boot camp programme, skipping the traditional degree route.

“I didn't want to get into a huge amount of debt over schooling, because you're not even guaranteed a job with a degree anymore in this market,” he was quoted as saying.

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