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Yes, sure. But shouldn't degrees teach (or improve) skills as well? So, shouldn't they be useful, at least for tech/stem/engineering jobs? I agree that strictl

Yes, sure. But shouldn't degrees teach (or improve) skills as well? So, shouldn't they be useful, at least for tech/stem/engineering jobs? I agree that strictly requiring a Bachelor even for candidates with years of experience is pointless. But would you hire a zero experience programmer without a Bachelor? Sure, for a lot of administration/sales/marketing positions a degree may be an excessive requriment. But isn't the real problem that a) sometimes universities don't teach enough actual skills and b) they are too expensive?

maxerickson 7y ago
Why not hire someone you think is smart but inexperienced into a low level programming job? There's lots of chores that don't exactly take a lot of deep knowledge. (Of course the answer is that companies have discarded the idea of having a training pipeline)
- alanfranz 7y ago
  > There's lots of chores that don't exactly take a lot of deep knowledge. I think you're doing it wrong. I don't work this way. If it's a low level job, I'll find a way to automate it. I want all my coworkers to grow to a good level. At my company, we do train newcomers and young people, and we then hope they stay. But it's an investment that doesn't pay off every time. Other companies just hire experienced developers, by paying more than us... but they don't have a training pipeline. And we can't pay more (we're a small company) because we already spend a lot in training... sob.
- mattkrause 7y ago
  The frustrating thing is that how comically adverse some places are to training. One place recently passed on me for an R&D position because I had experience with Torque rather than Slurm. I have a PhD and a bunch of research experience—-it would take maybe an afternoon to figure out how to submit jobs on their system...
  - alanfranz 7y ago
    I hope it was an HR screening, not a technical interview.
- marcinzm 7y ago
  The problem with training is that you hire 10 people. 3 of them pan out. Then they leave for 100% more salary from a company that doesn't need to make up for hiring those other 7 in the first place. In my experience companies that rely on armies of junior programmers to do things manually tend to end with horrible code bases and a lot of technical debt. Few abstractions, lots of repetition, little automation and so on.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    How many people are panning out in the non training scenario?
- codingdave 7y ago
  If you have two people in front of you, both equally smart, both equally inexperienced, one straight out of high school, one graduating with a degree, why would you not hire the one with more education and years of analytical thought under their belt? When I got out of college, I took the same low-paying entry level jobs that the 18 year old high school graduates did. I didn't get a jump start because of my degree. But I was able to use the skills I had learned (even in my Fine Arts education), to more deeply approach problems and I moved in my career more quickly. I'm still in touch with some of the folks from that very first job. They are struggling -- they spent decades in tech jobs, advancing, making more money, doing bigger things... but all eventually experienced a layoff, and can't get re-hired despite their skills and experience because younger folk, cheaper folk, with 10 years experience can do everything they can, and demand less salary. Nobody cares that you know 25 year old tech. So the usefulness of a degree isn't about day one of your career. It is about years 3-5, when you have a few years of skills built up, and then can synthesize them into something bigger and better, and start to make bigger jumps on your career, and put yourself in a position that you are more than just your tech knowledge. And that is what employers care about once you get old.
  - jandrewrogers 7y ago
    I think this improperly assumes the possible and even probable level of sophistication of people without a degrees. To reframe the question you initially posed: if you have two inexperienced but otherwise technically indistinguishable people in front of you, which is more impressive? The one that spent four years sitting in classes or the one that did it entirely by self-study? For the rest of your career, almost all of your future ability and value will be the product of ongoing self-study, not what you studied in class.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    If you beg the question, you get the framing you want. What if you've got 3 inexperienced candidates in front of you?
jandrewrogers 7y ago
I've hired "zero experience programmers without a Bachelor". If there is a clear modicum of ability and desire, I'll give a person a chance to prove themselves. At least for me, this has generally worked out brilliantly. A few of those hires turned into some of the most technically competent programmers I've ever worked with, and none turned out poorly. Some people are capable of educating themselves to a very high standard in a relatively short period of time. This is a primary characteristic of highly successful inexperienced programmers with degrees as well.
- alanfranz 7y ago
  > I've hired "zero experience programmers without a Bachelor". If there is a clear modicum of ability and desire, I'll give a person a chance to prove themselves. Did they do something at home? Some hobby project to show? Or they couldn't turn a computer on? At my company (and in a previous one) we have hired - and still hire - people without degrees and minimal experience. But they should show us something. A github repo, taking some MOOCs, doing a "bootcamp". How do you tell they have ability and desire if they've got absolutely nothing to show? I have a liberal arts degree, and I entered the "professional" software engineering world by being hired at a serious company at 26, despite being a passionate PC and Linux user since I was 15. But, heck, at that age I could show some more than decent knowledge of operating systems, Python programming, networking, web protocols, and desktop GUIs. All things that I coded in my spare time or to do small jobs for friends or small family businesses. You could say I had no formal education, but not that I had zero experience. > A few of those hires turned into some of the most technically competent programmers I've ever worked with, And, all of them stayed at your company? I'm not saying that's not possible - it TOTALLY is. I'm saying that it's risky from an economical POV.
  - jandrewrogers 7y ago
    The "zero experience" doesn't imply they've never programmed, just that they've never applied it in a job-like setting. It was entirely a side effect of personal interest and curiosity, often without any intent to make a job of it. MOOCs, bootcamps, github repos, etc are recent things, they didn't even exist for most of my career. A few such hires literally lived in rural flyover country with limited economic means, which created few opportunities to do things the formal way. It didn't stop them from learning though. But if you had an in-depth conversation with them about what they had built, how they had built those things, and why they designed things the way they did, you could immediately see that they had a deeply intuitive understanding of computer science that went beyond just programming. And often they had other valuable skills, like being atypically literate writers or having a thorough understanding of how real silicon works (rare knowledge these days, sadly). And a couple stood out as being seriously deep on the theoretical CS side in their areas of interest. I never said they stayed at my company, and I don't currently work with any of them. They all went on to have very successful careers working at the top tech companies. They just needed an opportunity. The vast majority of software engineers that have worked for me over the years have gotten a CS degree at some point in their life.
HNLurker2 7y ago
In Romania we say without bachelor degree you are nobody. So it doesn't matter what you do or where you studied or even if you are Elon musk.

maxerickson 7y ago

Why not hire someone you think is smart but inexperienced into a low level programming job? There's lots of chores that don't exactly take a lot of deep knowledge. (Of course the answer is that companies have discarded the idea of having a training pipeline)

alanfranz 7y ago
> There's lots of chores that don't exactly take a lot of deep knowledge. I think you're doing it wrong. I don't work this way. If it's a low level job, I'll find a way to automate it. I want all my coworkers to grow to a good level. At my company, we do train newcomers and young people, and we then hope they stay. But it's an investment that doesn't pay off every time. Other companies just hire experienced developers, by paying more than us... but they don't have a training pipeline. And we can't pay more (we're a small company) because we already spend a lot in training... sob.
mattkrause 7y ago
The frustrating thing is that how comically adverse some places are to training. One place recently passed on me for an R&D position because I had experience with Torque rather than Slurm. I have a PhD and a bunch of research experience—-it would take maybe an afternoon to figure out how to submit jobs on their system...
- alanfranz 7y ago
  I hope it was an HR screening, not a technical interview.
marcinzm 7y ago
The problem with training is that you hire 10 people. 3 of them pan out. Then they leave for 100% more salary from a company that doesn't need to make up for hiring those other 7 in the first place. In my experience companies that rely on armies of junior programmers to do things manually tend to end with horrible code bases and a lot of technical debt. Few abstractions, lots of repetition, little automation and so on.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  How many people are panning out in the non training scenario?
codingdave 7y ago
If you have two people in front of you, both equally smart, both equally inexperienced, one straight out of high school, one graduating with a degree, why would you not hire the one with more education and years of analytical thought under their belt? When I got out of college, I took the same low-paying entry level jobs that the 18 year old high school graduates did. I didn't get a jump start because of my degree. But I was able to use the skills I had learned (even in my Fine Arts education), to more deeply approach problems and I moved in my career more quickly. I'm still in touch with some of the folks from that very first job. They are struggling -- they spent decades in tech jobs, advancing, making more money, doing bigger things... but all eventually experienced a layoff, and can't get re-hired despite their skills and experience because younger folk, cheaper folk, with 10 years experience can do everything they can, and demand less salary. Nobody cares that you know 25 year old tech. So the usefulness of a degree isn't about day one of your career. It is about years 3-5, when you have a few years of skills built up, and then can synthesize them into something bigger and better, and start to make bigger jumps on your career, and put yourself in a position that you are more than just your tech knowledge. And that is what employers care about once you get old.
- jandrewrogers 7y ago
  I think this improperly assumes the possible and even probable level of sophistication of people without a degrees. To reframe the question you initially posed: if you have two inexperienced but otherwise technically indistinguishable people in front of you, which is more impressive? The one that spent four years sitting in classes or the one that did it entirely by self-study? For the rest of your career, almost all of your future ability and value will be the product of ongoing self-study, not what you studied in class.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  If you beg the question, you get the framing you want. What if you've got 3 inexperienced candidates in front of you?

jandrewrogers 7y ago

I've hired "zero experience programmers without a Bachelor". If there is a clear modicum of ability and desire, I'll give a person a chance to prove themselves. At least for me, this has generally worked out brilliantly. A few of those hires turned into some of the most technically competent programmers I've ever worked with, and none turned out poorly. Some people are capable of educating themselves to a very high standard in a relatively short period of time. This is a primary characteristic of highly successful inexperienced programmers with degrees as well.

alanfranz 7y ago
> I've hired "zero experience programmers without a Bachelor". If there is a clear modicum of ability and desire, I'll give a person a chance to prove themselves. Did they do something at home? Some hobby project to show? Or they couldn't turn a computer on? At my company (and in a previous one) we have hired - and still hire - people without degrees and minimal experience. But they should show us something. A github repo, taking some MOOCs, doing a "bootcamp". How do you tell they have ability and desire if they've got absolutely nothing to show? I have a liberal arts degree, and I entered the "professional" software engineering world by being hired at a serious company at 26, despite being a passionate PC and Linux user since I was 15. But, heck, at that age I could show some more than decent knowledge of operating systems, Python programming, networking, web protocols, and desktop GUIs. All things that I coded in my spare time or to do small jobs for friends or small family businesses. You could say I had no formal education, but not that I had zero experience. > A few of those hires turned into some of the most technically competent programmers I've ever worked with, And, all of them stayed at your company? I'm not saying that's not possible - it TOTALLY is. I'm saying that it's risky from an economical POV.
- jandrewrogers 7y ago
  The "zero experience" doesn't imply they've never programmed, just that they've never applied it in a job-like setting. It was entirely a side effect of personal interest and curiosity, often without any intent to make a job of it. MOOCs, bootcamps, github repos, etc are recent things, they didn't even exist for most of my career. A few such hires literally lived in rural flyover country with limited economic means, which created few opportunities to do things the formal way. It didn't stop them from learning though. But if you had an in-depth conversation with them about what they had built, how they had built those things, and why they designed things the way they did, you could immediately see that they had a deeply intuitive understanding of computer science that went beyond just programming. And often they had other valuable skills, like being atypically literate writers or having a thorough understanding of how real silicon works (rare knowledge these days, sadly). And a couple stood out as being seriously deep on the theoretical CS side in their areas of interest. I never said they stayed at my company, and I don't currently work with any of them. They all went on to have very successful careers working at the top tech companies. They just needed an opportunity. The vast majority of software engineers that have worked for me over the years have gotten a CS degree at some point in their life.

HNLurker2 7y ago

In Romania we say without bachelor degree you are nobody. So it doesn't matter what you do or where you studied or even if you are Elon musk.