3 ms·

Guess it depends on where you live. Here a lot of smaller companies won't hire below a bachelors degree, and at many larger companies you'd need a candidate/mas

Guess it depends on where you live. Here a lot of smaller companies won't hire below a bachelors degree, and at many larger companies you'd need a candidate/master. It's been a bit more open for programmers as there has been a real lack, but these days you won't go far in that profession either if you're self-taught. I'm not judging by the way, it's just how it is here.

charlesdm 9y ago
Where is "here"? You can get great tech jobs in most Western European countries without a degree, but getting your first job will probably be the hardest. Experience > degree. In Europe, where (in most countries) education is free, I would say a degree is even worth less. There is massive "degree inflation". Like, everyone has one. And you can take 5-7+ years to complete undergrad, no problem. I don't know when it became customary to only hire people with a bachelors degree for jobs like a receptionist or a PA, but I don't even understand what a degree signals these days. In most professions it definitely doesn't signal you are capable, not that you are smart.
- eksemplar 9y ago
  I'm danish, I'm also a manager who's interviewed and hired 31 people. I network quite a bit with other digitizing managers in the public sector, and oversee around 350 contracts for different systems. So I guess you can say I get around our tech scene. I can't think of a single reputable company which hires non-educated tech staff these days unless they have a really solid record somewhere and a good excuse for not taking a diploma degree while working. 10-15 years ago it was a completely different story, but these days it's hard to get hired without an education. We do have targeted programming/operations/support academy degrees that are 1-2.5 years though, and those are typically enough unless the company is extremely elitist.
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    Not having a formal education doesn't mean not having the knowledge or not the ability to, though? People obviously need to be "of ability". But I've talked to plenty of people with degrees who are dumb as a rock, and others without who are sharp and have many relevant achievements. Of course the same applies in reverse: there are plenty without a degree that aren't worth talking to. Say you found someone who ticked all the boxes, was absolutely great across the board, yet just said: "I didn't bother finishing the degree, because I didn't feel it would teach me any new skills". Would you pass on that person, and if so, why? I personally don't see any reasons why I would, but I'm curious to know why others would.
    - Tyrek 9y ago
      It's a capacity issue - you wouldn't 'find somebody who ticked all the boxes, but didn't have a degree' in the first place, because their resume would simply not make it into the interview pile. Now that may be shortsighted or suboptimal on the part of the hiring company, but it's a quick and dirty heuristic to reduce the pile of resumes to something more manageable.
    - eksemplar 9y ago
      Most places an application without a degree wouldn't make it far enough through the hiring system for anyone to actually read it. I have interviewed a few youngsters who were self taught though, but they lacked a lot of the basic theoretical knowledge about things like best practices. So while they may have been superstars at producing interesting prototypes I frankly couldn't use them in an enterprise environment. On the other hand I've interviewed a lot of people with degrees who couldn't get their code up and running in a production environment because they had never actually done that. This is a lot easier to rectify than someone who doesn't understand how our peojects are run. I'm sure this is different from place to place, but in Denmark where education is free, and the government pays you to go to school, it's really rare that talented people haven't gotten some sort of degree.

charlesdm 9y ago

Where is "here"? You can get great tech jobs in most Western European countries without a degree, but getting your first job will probably be the hardest. Experience > degree. In Europe, where (in most countries) education is free, I would say a degree is even worth less. There is massive "degree inflation". Like, everyone has one. And you can take 5-7+ years to complete undergrad, no problem. I don't know when it became customary to only hire people with a bachelors degree for jobs like a receptionist or a PA, but I don't even understand what a degree signals these days. In most professions it definitely doesn't signal you are capable, not that you are smart.

eksemplar 9y ago
I'm danish, I'm also a manager who's interviewed and hired 31 people. I network quite a bit with other digitizing managers in the public sector, and oversee around 350 contracts for different systems. So I guess you can say I get around our tech scene. I can't think of a single reputable company which hires non-educated tech staff these days unless they have a really solid record somewhere and a good excuse for not taking a diploma degree while working. 10-15 years ago it was a completely different story, but these days it's hard to get hired without an education. We do have targeted programming/operations/support academy degrees that are 1-2.5 years though, and those are typically enough unless the company is extremely elitist.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  Not having a formal education doesn't mean not having the knowledge or not the ability to, though? People obviously need to be "of ability". But I've talked to plenty of people with degrees who are dumb as a rock, and others without who are sharp and have many relevant achievements. Of course the same applies in reverse: there are plenty without a degree that aren't worth talking to. Say you found someone who ticked all the boxes, was absolutely great across the board, yet just said: "I didn't bother finishing the degree, because I didn't feel it would teach me any new skills". Would you pass on that person, and if so, why? I personally don't see any reasons why I would, but I'm curious to know why others would.
  - Tyrek 9y ago
    It's a capacity issue - you wouldn't 'find somebody who ticked all the boxes, but didn't have a degree' in the first place, because their resume would simply not make it into the interview pile. Now that may be shortsighted or suboptimal on the part of the hiring company, but it's a quick and dirty heuristic to reduce the pile of resumes to something more manageable.
  - eksemplar 9y ago
    Most places an application without a degree wouldn't make it far enough through the hiring system for anyone to actually read it. I have interviewed a few youngsters who were self taught though, but they lacked a lot of the basic theoretical knowledge about things like best practices. So while they may have been superstars at producing interesting prototypes I frankly couldn't use them in an enterprise environment. On the other hand I've interviewed a lot of people with degrees who couldn't get their code up and running in a production environment because they had never actually done that. This is a lot easier to rectify than someone who doesn't understand how our peojects are run. I'm sure this is different from place to place, but in Denmark where education is free, and the government pays you to go to school, it's really rare that talented people haven't gotten some sort of degree.