Are you looking to make a big difference and make lots of money? Be an entrepreneur. Who was that famous entrepreneur 80 years ago that said, when he was being questioned by an expert in court, that he didn't know the answers himself but he could easily hire someone who does?
If you are looking to get a job, then get the credentials AND be able to help them with what THEY need. Just like you need a product-market fit, you need an employee-job fit. If you are applying to a high speed trading firm, you'll probably need to know C++ and Java and low level concurrency mechanisms (this is what I was interviewed on), and if you know math and stochastic calculus you can make more money as a quant. I didn't like those jobs, so I got out of it. But you can still make a lot. Chances are though, you don't want to make money that way.
If you are looking to understand things better, then LEARN. It doesn't have to be in school. Personally I learned a lot from Wikipedia. Before that, I was coding on my own.
It has a lot of math in it, but in an accessible way. Why? Because I liked it.
So to summarize: it depends on what you want. If you don't have what it takes to help THEM and back it up with information, then do something else. Finding and picking your opportunities is often the secret!
Are you looking to make a big difference and make lots of money? Be an entrepreneur. Who was that famous entrepreneur 80 years ago that said, when he was being questioned by an expert in court, that he didn't know the answers himself but he could easily hire someone who does?
If you are looking to get a job, then get the credentials AND be able to help them with what THEY need. Just like you need a product-market fit, you need an employee-job fit. If you are applying to a high speed trading firm, you'll probably need to know C++ and Java and low level concurrency mechanisms (this is what I was interviewed on), and if you know math and stochastic calculus you can make more money as a quant. I didn't like those jobs, so I got out of it. But you can still make a lot. Chances are though, you don't want to make money that way.
If you are looking to understand things better, then LEARN. It doesn't have to be in school. Personally I learned a lot from Wikipedia. Before that, I was coding on my own.
At 17 I enjoyed math and computer science. Check this out: http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Theory_Practice-Issue_00_In...
It has a lot of math in it, but in an accessible way. Why? Because I liked it.
So to summarize: it depends on what you want. If you don't have what it takes to help THEM and back it up with information, then do something else. Finding and picking your opportunities is often the secret!