5 ms·

On the developer side I have seen studies showing those with less college actually make more than those with the most college education. Good programmers are se

On the developer side I have seen studies showing those with less college actually make more than those with the most college education. Good programmers are self taught. It is in their blood. Getting a masters degree in computer science doesn't guarantee you are a good developer. It isn't a requirement or necessary like some other careers. It's meaningless compared to on the job experience. At my last startup, the first 3 developers, including myself, all lacked a college degree. We kicked butt and knocked it out of the park.

quaffapint 11y ago
Depends upon where you want to work. If you want to work for smaller or startups, I would imagine you could get away with less college education if you have the background and skills, but for fortune 500 enterprise type gigs, the paper is still often required to even be considered.
- santaclaus 11y ago
  I have a good friend who has been a developer at various hedge funds and financial institutions for a while now, and his applications were highly focused on credentials across his educational career. They wanted everything from his SAT and GRE scores to his transcript and grades from his masters.
nickff 11y ago
This is survivorship bias in action. If you compared all university-educated developers to all self-taught developers, you might have a valid comparison. If you only compare startup-employed university-educated developers to their self-taught brethren, you run into selection bias issues. For one thing, you are discarding all unemployed self-taught programmers (who may be very motivated, but not very good). Another issue is that university-educated programmers have various other characteristics (such as greater conformism) that reduce the likelihood they will want to work at a startup, or be successful in that environment. Self-taught developers who get hired to 'good' startups are also likely to have achievements that made their resume more appealing to the interviewer than a university degree; this means the self-taught developers who get hired are probably more accomplished.
- tonyedgecombe 11y ago
  I think you need to compare people who have an offer to study and refuse it to those who have an offer and accept. I'd be surprised if the difference in this case was large for developers.
  - nickff 11y ago
    I would not be surprised if there was a large difference between those two groups. The people who refuse to study are likely to be non-conformists and/or have another plan (such as a job offer due to extraordinary previous work).
morgante 11y ago
If your sample size is your coworkers, there's a giant selection bias. You're ignoring the countless developers who didn't graduate from college but also can't get a good job. I know plenty of them and they're basically stuck on a treadmill of making crappy WordPress sites. While it's true that great developers will probably do well degree or no degree, it's definitely a boon for average developers. Also consider that even for good developers the additional offers which might come from a degree can drive up their salary. Even if you have no intention of working in finance, a $300k offer from Goldman (which generally requires a degree) can help to empower your negotiations elsewhere.
- dsacco 11y ago
  I agree with you that the OP has selection bias, but I'd like to pick a nit in your example. Goldman Sachs does not generally require a degree for developers, which means that it's not a suitable example for your argument. A better argument would be some Fortune 500 company that offers high salaries with a hard rule on credentials. Goldman's careers portal certainly makes it annoying to try and apply without one (but you can!), and of course their job ads mention it as a qualification, but I can tell you from personal experience they don't require a degree. Google also lists a degree as a qualification for their engineering roles; they don't care either. Like almost every other credential in the software industry, a degree is mostly useful for getting to the actual interview as a blind, poorly networked applicant. But if you're being invited to interview, or you contact a hiring manager directly - no, they don't care. While we're on the topic, I'll throw this in since a lot of the HN crowd seems to be unaware - if we are comparing salaries to financial companies primarily based in New York, you can make $300k at any large tech company like Google or Facebook once you're at T5 or higher in New York. While finance companies can greatly inflate developer salaries beyond tech companies, $300k is not the floor at which you'd make that comparison. That comparison is made in the seven figure salary range. The roles in that range are out of reach for general engineers at Google et al because they deal in specialized trading disciplines, which means they are still not comparable. This leads me to the next note - all the large tech companies are pretty much explicitly ambivalent about degrees, even for landing an interview as a lowly, unconnected candidate.

quaffapint 11y ago

Depends upon where you want to work. If you want to work for smaller or startups, I would imagine you could get away with less college education if you have the background and skills, but for fortune 500 enterprise type gigs, the paper is still often required to even be considered.

santaclaus 11y ago
I have a good friend who has been a developer at various hedge funds and financial institutions for a while now, and his applications were highly focused on credentials across his educational career. They wanted everything from his SAT and GRE scores to his transcript and grades from his masters.

nickff 11y ago

This is survivorship bias in action. If you compared all university-educated developers to all self-taught developers, you might have a valid comparison. If you only compare startup-employed university-educated developers to their self-taught brethren, you run into selection bias issues. For one thing, you are discarding all unemployed self-taught programmers (who may be very motivated, but not very good). Another issue is that university-educated programmers have various other characteristics (such as greater conformism) that reduce the likelihood they will want to work at a startup, or be successful in that environment. Self-taught developers who get hired to 'good' startups are also likely to have achievements that made their resume more appealing to the interviewer than a university degree; this means the self-taught developers who get hired are probably more accomplished.

tonyedgecombe 11y ago
I think you need to compare people who have an offer to study and refuse it to those who have an offer and accept. I'd be surprised if the difference in this case was large for developers.
- nickff 11y ago
  I would not be surprised if there was a large difference between those two groups. The people who refuse to study are likely to be non-conformists and/or have another plan (such as a job offer due to extraordinary previous work).

morgante 11y ago

If your sample size is your coworkers, there's a giant selection bias. You're ignoring the countless developers who didn't graduate from college but also can't get a good job. I know plenty of them and they're basically stuck on a treadmill of making crappy WordPress sites. While it's true that great developers will probably do well degree or no degree, it's definitely a boon for average developers. Also consider that even for good developers the additional offers which might come from a degree can drive up their salary. Even if you have no intention of working in finance, a $300k offer from Goldman (which generally requires a degree) can help to empower your negotiations elsewhere.

dsacco 11y ago
I agree with you that the OP has selection bias, but I'd like to pick a nit in your example. Goldman Sachs does not generally require a degree for developers, which means that it's not a suitable example for your argument. A better argument would be some Fortune 500 company that offers high salaries with a hard rule on credentials. Goldman's careers portal certainly makes it annoying to try and apply without one (but you can!), and of course their job ads mention it as a qualification, but I can tell you from personal experience they don't require a degree. Google also lists a degree as a qualification for their engineering roles; they don't care either. Like almost every other credential in the software industry, a degree is mostly useful for getting to the actual interview as a blind, poorly networked applicant. But if you're being invited to interview, or you contact a hiring manager directly - no, they don't care. While we're on the topic, I'll throw this in since a lot of the HN crowd seems to be unaware - if we are comparing salaries to financial companies primarily based in New York, you can make $300k at any large tech company like Google or Facebook once you're at T5 or higher in New York. While finance companies can greatly inflate developer salaries beyond tech companies, $300k is not the floor at which you'd make that comparison. That comparison is made in the seven figure salary range. The roles in that range are out of reach for general engineers at Google et al because they deal in specialized trading disciplines, which means they are still not comparable. This leads me to the next note - all the large tech companies are pretty much explicitly ambivalent about degrees, even for landing an interview as a lowly, unconnected candidate.