A friend
@PixeIUIs asked me to give a little background about my computer science degree in 1 year challenge.
I became a software engineer in 2019 as a self-taught front-end dev after about 10 months of studying.
I started my career in Saigon, Vietnam earning just $700/month and I was thrilled to earn anything tbh because I knew being paid to learn and get better would pay off in the future.
I worked at a few companies from 2019-2024 before failing to launch an MVP-as-a-service agency in summer 2024.
I didn't yet have the distribution, portfolio, and actual business skills necessary to succeed in generating enough leads to build my own business.
I also ran out of savings after my brother ran into big financial troubles and badly needed a five figure loan.
Minimal traction and out of cash, in late 2024 I moved back to the US and got a dev job in Dallas paying ~9k USD/month after failing the 3rd (and final round) interview with two companies paying ~12k/month.
My new company offered tuition reimbursement fees as one of its benefits so feeling a bit discouraged from my startup failure, I decided I'd go back and earn a CS degree for greater life stability and career prospects.
I'd previously graduated with a business degree in 2018 that I earned over the course of 1.5 years while working multiple jobs.
I earned that degree through a mix of CLEP exams, third party credit providers like
@Studydotcom and
@StraighterLine, and by choosing to attend a university with a generous transfer credit policy and minimal residency credit hours required
@tesu_edu.
This time, however, I decided I'd earn a computer science degree from
@wgu.
WGU is actually the largest US university by enrollment and they have an ABET accredited computer science degree program.
The thing that makes them special, however, is that they have a credit by competency approach.
This meant that instead of signing up for a couple 16 week courses each semester, I could instead build projects or pass exams to prove my competence with a given subject.
Once I proved I was competent at a subject like Discrete Math or Linux, WGU would allow me to move on to the next course.
This was HUGE because it allowed me to FLY through topics that I was already skilled in like web development and java fundamentals.
Like TESU, WGU also provides a generous transfer policy. Because of that, in November 2024 I started working on courses from various third-party providers.
By May 2025, I was able to transfer 6 courses from @sophia and 7 courses from
@Studydotcom.
I then paid the $4,295 tuition and started a 6-month term at WGU at the beginning of June.
Now, I'm down to my last five courses and with some hard work will finish an entire CS degree before the end of November 2025.
In the end, I'll have learned a lot about computer science, became a better engineer, and the degree plus knowledge I gained along the way will make getting better full-stack jobs in the future easier.
If I could go back in time a year would I do this again? Maybe not. I probably would've focused on building an audience or getting better at marketing to generate leads so my MVP-as-a-service business could get traction.
Yet, I chose this road because alternating higher and lower risk moves is a good way of maintaining motivation while still keeping the habit of taking action.
If you only do 9-5 type stuff, your life and trajectory become very predictable.
Yet, only trying indie hacking type stuff can also drive you a bit crazy. Not everyone has the mental fortitude
@marclou had to build stuff for 6 years while often feeling like a loser until something eventually made decent money.
And while I applaud the persistence of Marc Lou and
@levelsio to keep going until some shots on goal land (he's the GOAT and even he said only ~5% of his startups became highly profitable), they're likely significantly outnumbered by those that ship one or two startups, earn $12mrr, and then give up for good.
I just took a break from startups to let the fire burn again and I will give it another go in a few months being better prepared than I was last time :D