10 ms·

I don't have a degree (though I do have a few years of college in the CS /engineering fields) and I'm pretty sure every programming job I've ever had required a

• wvenable 7y ago
  As a hiring manager, I fully agree. All our job postings say "CS degree required". But if you have experience and a good resume it absolutely doesn't matter. It matter a lot more for juniors who lack any sort of experience. I think it make good sense for young people to get a degree but it makes less sense for seasoned professionals to go back and get one. If you don't have a degree but have experience, don't let the degree requirement stop you from applying.
  • asdf21 7y ago
    >If you don't have a degree but have experience, don't let the degree requirement stop you from applying. Then don't list it as a requirement..?
    • Pete-Codes 7y ago
      Indeed.
    • wendyshu 7y ago
      Maybe it's some company level HR policy? Certainly drives me up the wall.
  • dragonwriter 7y ago
    > All our job postings say "CS degree required". But if you have experience and a good resume it absolutely doesn't matter. So, you lie about your actual requirements (how hard is it to add the classic “or equivalent experience” qualification?) and expect potential applicants to intuit your hidden meaning?
    • wvenable 7y ago
      Don't hate the players, hate the game. With job applications and resumes, hidden meaning is all part of the game. I have some input in the job description but for all kinds of political reasons it's not complete control. All requirements on a job application, from degrees to the technical, are all subject to negotiation. If a job requires JavaScript but you can demonstrate that your other skills more than make up for it (and you can learn) then maybe you'd still be a hire.
    • scarejunba 7y ago
      If you don't do that stuff it becomes harder when you want to apply for permanent residence for the guys you want.
      • dragonwriter 7y ago
        Ah, so it's lying to applicants, but that's just incidental, the real target is lying to government to support immigration fraud. That makes sense. Ethics are another question, but the rationale is clear.
        • scarejunba 7y ago
          Yep, it's just one of the hacks that everyone's on board with. Like how we allow cash-tipped employees to not report tips, we allow this because (while politically unpalatable to change the law) it's better for the country this way. After all, it's the law that fails to recognize that 7 years of experience in different environments may trump having a degree. Policy makers recognize this and allow the situation to exist because they know that you're not going to get residence for the 7-year-no-degree dude, you're going to get it for the 5-year-Masters-from-CMU fellow and it's better to have that guy in than out.
  • Pete-Codes 7y ago
    Don't want to pile on but please put "or a great portfolio" as well.
  • samstokes 7y ago
    In case you're not aware, there is evidence [1] that this sort of "required but not really" job posting deters a lot of people, and especially women, from applying even if they would actually meet the (unstated) actual requirements. Making it explicit that you will accept "experience and a good resume" in place of a CS degree might increase the diversity of your applicant pool. [1] https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless-theyre-100-qualified https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless...
    • wvenable 7y ago
      The whole point of my comment is to encourage people to who don't exactly meet the requirements to apply. I might attempt to make that more explicit next time but it's a slow process.
      • samstokes 7y ago
        And kudos for doing that - but what about candidates who don't read Hacker News (or happened not to see this exact thread)? HN isn't exactly the most welcoming environment for women either.
        • deleted 7y ago
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      • deleted 7y ago
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      • joshmanders 7y ago
        Why would I waste my time applying if it specifically states a CS degree is required? If you don't REQUIRE it, state that. It's not encouraging at all. Last time I was applying for work, I sent out 150 applications/resumes, every single one I look at the list of requirements, if I don't meet one of them, I don't apply because it's a waste of my time.
        • new_guy 7y ago
  • WhitneyLand 7y ago
    Then why the heck would you say that on your job postings, or not pitch that it be changed to whomever runs HR? As a hiring manager you probably dream of finding more people like your best performers, yet this makes it harder. I agree there is value in a theoretical foundation and would also encourage people to pursue it. However it seems like a separate point from the reality of the market today. Even historically, could you have lost out on a chance to hire Faraday or Ramanujan because they were scared off from applying by boilerplate text?
    • wvenable 7y ago
      On the other side, the vast majority of applicants are completely unqualified. Do I want to increase that problem? Not at all. To be fair, I may have lost people with lower confidence in their abilities and a greater fear of failure. That doesn't sound like a great loss. I'd rather encourage people to have confidence and get over their fear than lower the requirements. It's not as if these aren't important requirements; everyone in the department has a CS degree right now. If we put background in a technology, it's because we use that technology. But I'd open to the possibility that an applicant who isn't a perfect match might still be a great candidate. That's all. I suspect most hiring managers feel the same way.
      • quaquaqua1 7y ago
        It sounds like the best way to land a job is to talk directly to you and show you what (a candidate) is capable of, filters and applications be damned!
      • WhitneyLand 7y ago
        Are you not conflating two related but separate hiring issues here? 1) Are there diamonds to be found in the hiring pool of candidates without a CS degree? 2) Whats the most efficient way to hire people in an era where a hiring managers or company HR can receive thousands of resumes for a position? You're refuting my point on the basis of (2) for which I made no claim. To that point, yes obviously any process chosen has to be practical and take into account many requirements. However (2) is an issue whether or not you screen based on CS degree. Moreover, it doesn't necessarily get worse. Any major change to evaluation process should be holistic and take into account number of evaluations, time and money invested to evaluate, and where resources are spent in the process. You could come out the same or better in time and complexity, hence "process optimization". Lots of approaches have been tried and some are anecdotally successful. The biggest obstacle I've seen to improving process is scaling it up to large numbers. What's optimal for organizations of every size and requirement set can't be written in stone. I would just hope that whatever the policy at my organization would have been, still someone would have whispered Faraday's name to me, along with countless other folks who wont be famous but who we've all seen make great contributions.
  • ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > All our job postings say "CS degree required". But if you have experience and a good resume it absolutely doesn't matter. These days, even job descriptions at a lot of the FAANG and other big tech companies phrase it as "CS degree or equivalent experience required". Hopefully that's a practice that will trickle down to smaller companies over time.
  • yitchelle 7y ago
    My view is if the applicants did a self assessment and meet 75% of the requirements but could cover the gaps through some other way, they should apply.
• busterarm 7y ago
  > I would have done a lot better having one even though I got by without it. Also, my career path was ridiculous and is entirely non-replicable. I don't know. I have to say "me too" here and I've encountered enough of us over the years that I think it's just a big lie. There are a certain number of high paying companies that perhaps overvalue a college education and algorithmic competence. But overall I think about half of the colleagues I've worked with either had no degrees or had degrees that didn't do them any favors in this career. Our career paths are certainly replicable. In fact, I'm always impressed by the people I meet that don't have the education but have incredibly strong CS fundamentals.
  • zzzeek 7y ago
    I meant, my particular career path was ridiculous and non-replicable. it was very dependent on the specific time and place that I was living for starters and overall everything about my career was based on very unlikely things that aren't occurring anymore (such as getting a job in the same 6 month period that the "internet" first became monetized, with a very specific set of people, etc.)
• wendyshu 7y ago
  You say "I would have done a lot better having one". Explain?
  • Spoom 7y ago
    As someone in a comparable situation, I would have skipped the 5-7 years it takes to be considered "or equivalent experience". I don't speak for OP though. (That said, I also paid off what little student loans I had much quicker than some of my friends, so...)
  • zzzeek 7y ago
    if you scroll up you can see jedberg (one of the original founders of Reddit) saying how these days it seems most people know what A* is even if they don't have a CS degree. I didn't :). Just wikipedia'ed it, and sure, I've seen this kind of thing before but I've never had to actually use a shortest distance algorithm. So I'd fail jedberg's interview (even though reddit uses my software, at least they were some years ago :) )
• bbojan 7y ago
  Totally off-topic, but thank you so much for all the fantastic software you've written!
• tombert 7y ago
  > Now, you should definitely get a CS degree or similar if you want to be a programmer. I would have done a lot better having one even though I got by without it. Also, my career path was ridiculous and is entirely non-replicable. I agree completely. As a dropout, I've had people bother me asking how they should go about a career in tech, and I will tell them unambigously "for the love of god, please go to school". Self-studying enough to be competitive with classically-trained people is really hard, and while I've done ok, it's not something I'd recommend for most humans. I like to think I'm fairly competent now, but even after doing this stuff for nearly a decade, I will still occasionally turn up blind spots of fairly-critical information that I never learned about because it was never immediately interesting to me. Being self-taught is fun, but without credentials you end up having to work at companies that are willing to take chances, and as a result of that these companies have a propensity towards going bankrupt, or being run by scumbags who will run away with all the investor money (true story). I'm not even 100% sure what advice I could give people trying to imitate my career..."Hey kids, repeatedly fail upwards until you accidentally end up working for a company that happens to get acquired by Walmart which will somehow legitimize your experience".
  • mywittyname 7y ago
    > Being self-taught is fun, but without credentials you end up having to work at companies that are willing to take chances, and as a result of that these companies have a propensity towards going bankrupt This is one of the notable difference between my pre- and post-degree careers: a degree opened the door to jobs with stable Megacorps. I still get the opportunity to work on cool, cutting-edge stuff, while also having a good salary & health insurance with reliable raises, decent vacation, and a lot of intangibles (nice equipment). Plus, if you enjoy programming, CS is an incredibly fun degree (when you take the right courses).
    • tombert 7y ago
      I mean, I work for one of the biggest tech megacorps now (not going to say which one but I can guarantee you've heard of it), so it's definitely possible to get the stable job eventually as a dropout. That said, it was a rocky and scary road to get to this point; if you get your degree you can often start out immediately with some stability. I never took CS, as I was a math major before dropping out. Honestly, math is still more of a passion for me than CS (despite me loving programming), and I consequently do have some regrets about how I handled school; specifically, I'd like to get a job doing research, but as it stands that would require me first finishing my bachelor's, then getting at least a masters, and probably a PhD. Doing night school for a bachelor's is definitely doable, but I don't think I've heard of a single success story of people trying to work full time (which I would need to do to pay my mortgage and support my wife) and doing a PhD. If I had finished school the old fashioned way, I could have conceivably gone straight to grad school before entrenching myself into my current (admittedly comfortable) lifestyle.
• thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
  but, it's really sad that circumstances are such that people need to get useless degrees to compete for a job that doesn't really need the degree. A CS degree teaches you so much more than what is needed for a software engineering job (it goes far beyond SE and teaches you about compiler design, networking, OS algorithms, analysis of algo, etc) I have a 4 year degree in CS and a masters in CS. Despite over 15 years of SE experience, I haven't had much use for 80% of the stuff a CS degree teaches you. However, as the poster has said, it's very useful for getting your foot in the door.
• optimuspaul 7y ago
  > If it's known that you can do the work (which is the kicker of course), I've never seen an employer hiring people to write code actually care about the degree. Even in academic environments I've been offered programming jobs (obviously not teaching jobs). I have recently started getting doors shut for me because of lack of degree. I have 20+ years of experience though and in many of those cases am/was already doing the job they would be hiring me for. I don't know that I'd be doing any better now if I had the degree. I'm at the top in my market already, in fact most opportunities for me tend to not work out because my base exceeds their willingness to pay (without regard for the lack of CS degree).
• TrackerFF 7y ago
  Straight out of college, I applied to this engineering job which looked pretty sweet. Big reputable company, seemingly interesting work, rumored to pay well - but one problem, I was woefully underqualified. Ad stated "3-5 years of professional experience", I had _zero_ experience. Ad stated "Masters degree, or Bachelors for very experienced candidates" Ad had a laundry list of software and tools, I had experience with one CAD program. But what the hell, I didn't have anything to lose, and the company was located a 10 min walk from me. So I applied. Got called in for interviews, which lasted a couple of rounds, but managed to land the job. I know people with very similar stories. So yeah, my advice would be for people to just apply, if they see something they'd like. Worst thing is you don't get the job, companies won't ridicule or blackball you for applying.
  • dmoy 7y ago
    Eli the computer guy has a video on youtube describing how these job ads get created. It's a riot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3kQyqMFpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3kQyqMFpQ
  • nitrogen 7y ago
    companies won't ridicule or blackball you for applying. I have had an experience to the contrary. Of course, it's a good sign you don't want to work for such a company anyway.
• b212 7y ago
  "Now, you should definitely get a CS degree or similar if you want to be a programmer. I would have done a lot better having one even though I got by without it. Also, my career path was ridiculous and is entirely non-replicable." I'm wondering for how long Americans are going to be exploited like that. I mean getting a degree is never a bad idea but in my country (Poland) unis are FREE yet I never went to one and roughly 80% of my programming friends never did or they studied something entirely different. And we're working everywhere from big banks in London through Swiss pharma companies, European Commission in Belgium, to Opera or Google. I never got asked if I have any formal education after my first 2 years in IT. The best programmers I know are mostly all self-taught. Almost all the successful ones are. The "educated" ones often become corporate slaves making pennies in places like Samsung's R&D. I know American unis are top-notch but I suppose it's still better to start learning on your own than to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for something else than TOP5 or TOP10 unis. And most likely it's even not worth (money-wise) paying that much for those. I suppose we will need not thousands but millions of coders in next decades, right now I'm getting like 50 messages from headhunters any given day, I don't think even if we tried it will be virtually impossible to push so many people through education system at that pace. Also, especially programming is virtually impossible to learn in any other way than coding for years. It's really handy to have some strong technical background but once you put the time and work in it will work out regardless. Of course again it's better to have the education, but hey, if costs as much as a house maybe it's not the best idea after all. Furthermore ot everyone has to be an architect or CTO (BTW I still know extremely good architects and CTOs without degrees). tl;dr there are possibly millions of degreeless programmers in Europe, can't wrap my mind around the US education situation, could someone clarify why are things the way they are?
• jart 7y ago
  I've conducted maybe like 50+ interviews for a big tech company. The only thing a CS degree would consistently tell me, isn't that the candidate had an understanding of CS, but rather that they'd be more likely to be happy existing in a corporate environment, because they were able to follow through on a four year long commitment doing what authority figures tell them to do in their schooling environment. It's worth pursuing a CS degree if you're the sort of person who will be accepted by one of the best schools. If the schools that teach computer science won't accept you, then please don't let it turn you off to the idea of computer science. If you can code, you're already a programmer, no matter how young you may be. If you've got grit and a positive attitude, you can absolutely be successful.
• tryitnow 7y ago
  Where are you located? I'm in the SF Bay Area and your experience is pretty common here, but I'm wondering if translates to other geographies.