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I often hear "You weren't a CS major?!?!". My common response is "You were?!?!". I worked in finance as an equities trader for 6 years before taking a boot cam

I often hear "You weren't a CS major?!?!". My common response is "You were?!?!". I worked in finance as an equities trader for 6 years before taking a boot camp and switching over. I was heavily involved in hiring while in my prior role. One thing I found is that I was drastically more inclined to hire the English major over the Finance major. If they've managed to overcome the commonplace cognitive biases that work against them, chances are they are more intelligent/hard-working than the relevant educational background. None of this is meant as a slight to CS grads, I'm simply pointing out the somewhat irrelevant dependence on an undergraduate degree. Technical mindedness is much more important than a 4 year rubber stamp.

geccan 9y ago
It seems you're guilty of the same cognitive biases. "Screw those finance guys! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern over Oskar Morgenstern!" Edit: On my first job interview out of college I was turned down by the head of engineering because I didn't have enough experience in C++. "Silly college kid can't do shit." I was called back and offered a job because another manager was impressed by my work at the speech recognition lab at my school. Three months into my employment they filed a patent on an algorithm I devised to build databases that were searchable through speech interfaces. The engineering head ate crow. Hiring developers is a crap shoot, but it's hard nowadays to hire a truly incompetent developer. I've really only encountered one in my lifetime who was incapable of basic development tasks. In the 15 years I've been a working engineer (and 25 in general programming), I've noticed the level of knowledge and skill required to build usable products has been greatly reduced. Why? Because there's been 15 years of advancement by seasoned engineers, prompted by business people, to build tools and frameworks that fit large swaths of business needs. That cycle is ever present in tech. The obscure things become clearer and more accessible to laymen through the efforts of the experts. And you can bet those experts have deeply studied CS topics, whether at a college or on their own.

geccan 9y ago

It seems you're guilty of the same cognitive biases. "Screw those finance guys! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern over Oskar Morgenstern!" Edit: On my first job interview out of college I was turned down by the head of engineering because I didn't have enough experience in C++. "Silly college kid can't do shit." I was called back and offered a job because another manager was impressed by my work at the speech recognition lab at my school. Three months into my employment they filed a patent on an algorithm I devised to build databases that were searchable through speech interfaces. The engineering head ate crow. Hiring developers is a crap shoot, but it's hard nowadays to hire a truly incompetent developer. I've really only encountered one in my lifetime who was incapable of basic development tasks. In the 15 years I've been a working engineer (and 25 in general programming), I've noticed the level of knowledge and skill required to build usable products has been greatly reduced. Why? Because there's been 15 years of advancement by seasoned engineers, prompted by business people, to build tools and frameworks that fit large swaths of business needs. That cycle is ever present in tech. The obscure things become clearer and more accessible to laymen through the efforts of the experts. And you can bet those experts have deeply studied CS topics, whether at a college or on their own.