Hmmm well I'm not sure how much I can help, but nevertheless: I went to a small community college in the US for computer networking. Shortly after graduating I applied for a visa and left the country. So I'm not sure how great my advice will be lol. I have a pretty substantial list of open source projects and contributions to large projects which is what I list on job apps. My associates degree is at the bottom of my Resume/CV, if I list it at all. I pretty much only got the degree to apply for visas.
In the country where I live now remote jobs are fairly common. Maybe a bit more than the US, but I imagine it's similar. I applied to both remote listings and some non-remote (with the intention of saying I'm not willing to move and would want to work remote and sometimes they're fine with that). For the job I'm at now they did read far enough to notice I had a degree, but that's about it lol. Perhaps if I went to some large school they would've commented on it a bit. They were much more interested in things I'd actually worked on. I'm sure in your case this would be much more important. Honestly, I think this just varies drastically from place to place.
IMO if you go to CSUN you're pretty much guaranteed a job in "Big Tech" if you wanted one. I've heard the least horrible things about Github and they definitely let people work remote (although likely pressure you a bit into going to their offices). That said I'm sure a degree from Indiana would be very similarly valued and if you're okay at interviews (i.e. memorize stupid bullshit beforehand and get a bit lucky) it wont make much difference. For non-big tech companies it depends a lot more. Smaller places tend to be more willing to let you work remote and in general are less cult-like. For non-tech companies the degree and or specific school you went to tends to matter a bit more since they won't always have other engineers interviewing you, but those are both nice schools so I doubt the difference between these two matters much.
Personally, I would rather live just about anywhere other than LA so it'd be an easy pick for me haha
Hmmm well I'm not sure how much I can help, but nevertheless: I went to a small community college in the US for computer networking. Shortly after graduating I applied for a visa and left the country. So I'm not sure how great my advice will be lol. I have a pretty substantial list of open source projects and contributions to large projects which is what I list on job apps. My associates degree is at the bottom of my Resume/CV, if I list it at all. I pretty much only got the degree to apply for visas.
In the country where I live now remote jobs are fairly common. Maybe a bit more than the US, but I imagine it's similar. I applied to both remote listings and some non-remote (with the intention of saying I'm not willing to move and would want to work remote and sometimes they're fine with that). For the job I'm at now they did read far enough to notice I had a degree, but that's about it lol. Perhaps if I went to some large school they would've commented on it a bit. They were much more interested in things I'd actually worked on. I'm sure in your case this would be much more important. Honestly, I think this just varies drastically from place to place.
IMO if you go to CSUN you're pretty much guaranteed a job in "Big Tech" if you wanted one. I've heard the least horrible things about Github and they definitely let people work remote (although likely pressure you a bit into going to their offices). That said I'm sure a degree from Indiana would be very similarly valued and if you're okay at interviews (i.e. memorize stupid bullshit beforehand and get a bit lucky) it wont make much difference. For non-big tech companies it depends a lot more. Smaller places tend to be more willing to let you work remote and in general are less cult-like. For non-tech companies the degree and or specific school you went to tends to matter a bit more since they won't always have other engineers interviewing you, but those are both nice schools so I doubt the difference between these two matters much.
Personally, I would rather live just about anywhere other than LA so it'd be an easy pick for me haha