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“Software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers typically need a bachelor’s degree in computer and information technology or a related field. Some

“Software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers typically need a bachelor’s degree in computer and information technology or a related field. Some employers prefer to hire developers who have a master’s degree.“ Interesting that the government continues to peddle credentialism for software developers. I personally think a CS degree is still a strong positive signal but it’s hardly a requirement anymore

tcmart14 4y ago
I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it is peddling. I am guessing they get a large part of this data from scraping job postings. Sure, companies will be willing to look at people who don't have formal education, which is great. But most job posting probably still have the wording "required or preferred or strongly preferred." If they are scraping data from job postings, then their statement is completely reasonable. I was job hunting earlier this year and every software development job pretty much had that wording.
- shagie 4y ago
  The BLS page on their data collection: https://www.bls.gov/oes/ https://www.bls.gov/oes/ > The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program produces employment and wage estimates annually for nearly 800 occupations. These estimates are available for the nation as a whole, for individual states, and for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas; national occupational estimates for specific industries are also available. On this page is https://www.bls.gov/oes/mb3-methods.pdf https://www.bls.gov/oes/mb3-methods.pdf > Probability sample panels of about 180,000 to 200,000 establishments are selected semiannually. Responses are obtained by mail, Internet or other electronic means, email, telephone, or personal visit. Respondents report their employees’ job titles or occupations across 12 wage ranges. The job titles and descriptions are used to classify workers into occupations in the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. > Estimates of occupational employment and wage rates are based on six panels of survey data collected over a 3-year cycle. The final in-scope sample size when six panels are combined is approximately 1.2 million establishments. Total 6-panel unweighted employment covers approximately 80 million3 out of the total employment of over 140 million4. They're not scraping. They are calling up a hundreds of thousands of companies and asking them "how much are you paying people with this classification?" They occasionally redo the classifications based on industry trends. Currently, the programmer related job listings https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm#15-0000 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm#15-0000 15-1251 Computer Programmers 15-1252 Software Developers 15-1253 Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers 15-1254 Web Developers 15-1255 Web and Digital Interface Designers (note that the OOH and OES can get out of sync) Go back to 2020 and you'll see https://web.archive.org/web/20200508015238/https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20200508015238/https://www.bls.g... 15-1251 Computer Programmers 15-1256 Software Developers and Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers 15-1257 Web Developers and Digital Interface Designers And going further back, in 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20140704000413/http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20140704000413/http://www.bls.go... 15-1131 Computer Programmers 15-1132 Software Developers, Applications 15-1133 Software Developers, Systems Software 15-1134 Web Developers And even further back, you won't see the Web Developers https://web.archive.org/web/20060813114102/http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20060813114102/http://www.bls.go... 15-1021 Computer Programmers 15-1031 Computer Software Engineers, Applications 15-1032 Computer Software Engineers, Systems Software These classifications are buckets that the BLS creates trying to loosely get a single mode in the wage data (if there is a bimodal distribution of the wage data, then there are two different classifications). When someone applies on a work visa, they have to fit into a bucket somewhere. The definition of that bucket determines which type of visa they may be approved for. If it requires a degree, then its the H-1B. If it doesn't require a degree, its likely a H-2B... and that in turn leads to other implications (the H-1B is dual intent and can lead to a green card while the H-2B isn't).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
It is interesting, because ( admittedly based on limited anecdata, so please correct me if you think it is not representative of what you saw ) the interview processes I was a part of favored non-academic, non-credentialled applicants ( sometimes due to petty stuff like being able to pay less and sometimes due to anti-academic stance ) for technically oriented positions.
bradlys 4y ago
Unless you have really good projects to show off and have been studying LC a lot in your spare time - it’s gonna be hard to get a job for normies without one. Entry level is absolutely flooded with overqualified candidates. It’s no surprise that almost all boot camp grads I’ve seen in the industry come from Ivy league colleges or are URT.
- blahyawnblah 4y ago
  URT?
  - notch656a 4y ago
    "Underrepresented in tech" AKA when you use racism / sexism to hire people.
    - bradlys 4y ago
      The way I’ve seen it is also underrepresented talent.
coffeeblack 4y ago
I have not seen any correlation between a person’s abilities as a developer and their university credentials.
- xwdv 4y ago
  I have, you really start to see the difference between developers without formal education and those who have computer science backgrounds once you start going into deeper things than CRUD applications or other solved problems, the kinds of things you can’t just google a solution for. Kind of like how most boot camp grads will do the specific things they learn in boot camp very well but then fall apart when you change it up on them.
- jcpst 4y ago
  I second this. I’ve seen great developers with degrees, and awful developers with degrees. And haven’t noticed one more than the other. Just that I’m more surprised when I see an awful dev with a degree, because they had years to study. The thing I see is, either it clicks or it doesn’t. And when it does click, you can go deeper.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
I mean - you're going to be incredibly hard pressed to get an interview at FAANG with no work experience and no degree. But, yes, if you're willing to work your way up the ladder - you don't need any school. You can probably get a good job faster by graduating from a good school, though.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dimroc 4y ago
This is probably skewed by H1B applications, where employers have an easier time with the lottery with a more advanced degree. Bachelor's fall into the common 65k/year bucket that puts applicants at risk regardless of qualifications.
lofatdairy 4y ago
I think there was a comment on HN once to the effect of "Imagine you had 2 candidates, same work experience, both at a fairly prestigious company, one with a degree, one without, which do you hire? Personally, I think the fact that the non-degree holding one is more likely to be the better hire, just because of how much harder they had to work to get into that position". Not saying that not having a degree is somehow a more-positive indicator, just that I agree with your sentiment that it's hardly a requirement, and that it's just one signal among many. FWIW, I have an inclination to believe the reason why node+express+react stacks are so popular among startups (at least in the NY scene) is because all the full stack bootcamps use that stack, so it makes it easier to hire. I also decided to use a similar stack that only used JS for the same reason. I feel as though some aspects of "software development" are closer to to a trade skill. Certainly there are far more complicated directions, and that's where degrees and advanced education are meaningful, but if you just need a simple CRUD app you probably don't need a masters in anything.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  A lot of software development is just bricklaying. Issue tho is that reading on a forum about a design pattern or good practice doesnt make you a good engineer. Neither does a pdf certificate issued by a “bootcamp”. Thats why the webdev world has ended up with tons of poorly designed libraries and frameworks and each day there’s a new library coming out. Folks have no clue what they are doing, they just follow trends.
  - diob 4y ago
    I think it's more due to Sturgeon's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law). It's not unique to any one thing / field / area.
  - entropicdrifter 4y ago
    >Folks have no clue what they are doing, they just follow trends. And you think that a degree helps with that? I've had coworkers with MS in comp-sci who had no idea how to implement stuff in a practical, efficient manner, and other coworkers with no degree who were able to grasp the best practices from the get-go. I don't think the degrees are the problem. The problem is that the demand for software engineers has wildly outpaced our society's ability to produce quality ones, regardless of their educational path. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority (80%) of professional software developers already have a bachelor's degree or higher: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021/#education-ed-level-prof https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021/#education-ed...
irrational 4y ago
Anymore? When was a CS degree a positive signal? I don’t work with any programmers who have a CS degree (or even a STEM degree). Most of us have been in the field for 20+ years. We have degrees in ancient history, music performance, educational psychology, linguistics, etc. I read thousands of resumes over the years and have never paid any attention to what someone studied in college.
- ndriscoll 4y ago
  It's certainly a positive signal vs. not having a degree, in that the probability that they understand the topics that a CS degree covers is higher. Of course it's not a guarantee that they understand that content, and people without CS degrees can also teach themselves using books, online lectures, etc. And of course it's a young field, so more experienced people without degrees may have invented some of the contents of those books. A masters degree is probably a negative signal though unless they did something completely unrelated like music for undergrad, in which case it's similar to a BS.
aliasxneo 4y ago
I would say it's a soft requirement in most cases. One must be prepared for an extra uphill battle trying to secure a job without one. As someone who just broke into the industry this month (with no degree), my biggest assets were an existing portfolio of work and leveraging my ten years of professional experience working on complex/critical problems in various fields. I don't think this is strictly related to software engineering, though. I think most people doing horizontal career transfers use some form of the above to achieve success.
- minsc_and_boo 4y ago
  Right. I would also say that this is more of a symptom of university degrees being a title system, rather than strongly signalling candidates' capabilities.
  - Test0129 4y ago
    As an emphasis of your point consider the two statements "Our engineering is backed by MIT graduates" "Our engineering is backed by the best engineers" One sounds a LOT better to a client. It's a lot easier to sell a product when you can lean on an actual credential than a vague superlative. Even if your vague superlative is absolutely true.
    - highwaylights 4y ago
      So strong is MIT’s brand that it sounds really convincing to the rest of us with technical experience too (I’m assuming S/E’s with years of experience). Unless it’s crypto. Then I’m still “yeah but nah tho”.
- Test0129 4y ago
  I'm not convinced of the uphill battle of securing a job. Credentials seem to matter in that they modify the gradient you advance in ranks with. I have a degree. It has certainly helped the speed at which I advanced. But I don't believe it helped me actually get the job. My first job was 10 years ago and it still wasn't that big of a deal to not have one at most jobs. However, government jobs almost always have a hard degree requirement. I'm not sure why this is. I wouldn't take government jobs as representative of the industry.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Anymore? In 1995 I worked full time at Netscape without a college degree and had a good career in the valley. I eventually went to UIUC in CS as an late student. It allowed me to get jobs I couldn’t, but not in the software area - I didn’t know advanced math, and I learned it at school, and worked at the intersection. There has been opportunities without degrees throughout my 30 years, but there are some opportunities that definitely need them.
- pirate787 4y ago
  It is changing -- a CS degree is far more of a requirement today than the 1990s.
shagie 4y ago
The credential for the job listing is related to the treaties and visas for people applying to work in the US. If the job listing on the BLS didn't specify that it needed a degree, then the software developer wouldn't fall under the H-1B or the TN visa. Instead of the H-1B (which is a specialist worker) it software developer would fall under the H-2B and anyone (degree or not) could get a visa because no skills are required... however that also means that it would fall into the "one time occurrence", "seasonal need", "peak load need" or "intermittent need" for people working on the H-2B visa. Another "this makes things interesting" with a switch from a specialist worker to a non-specialist one, is that there is a list of countries that may apply to work on a H-2B visa... and it doesn't include India. --- The job listing defined by one agency BLS has impacts on the way people can get visas and which visas. Removing the degree requirement would effectively make it so that there are no even marginally qualified applications with a visa.
bushbaba 4y ago
When 99% of the workers in the space have a degree, it’s a fair statement.
kube-system 4y ago
That statement is 100% accurate. One does typically need a related bachelors to be considered for a typical software job. There are absolutely places with more progressive hiring practices, but this is not the norm. If you apply to XYZ Corp in any random city or town, they will have “bachelors in computer science or related degree” in the requirements section of the job posting.
- randomdata 4y ago
  > If you apply to XYZ Corp in any random city or town, they will have “bachelors in computer science or related degree” in the requirements section of the job posting. Of course, the purpose of a job advertisement is to compel workers to apply. Companies don't write "bachelors degree" because they expect you to have a bachelors degree, they make note it because if you have a bachelors degree it will pique your interest: "Wait, I have a bachelors degree! I should apply." One of those fun marketing tricks.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Parts of job posting are marketing, especially the unquantifiable parts. Other parts are real indicators of what they’ll filter incoming applications by. Education and experience are absolutely quantifiable indicators that recruiters or HR will often filter by before that resume lands on the desk of a hiring manager.
    - randomdata 4y ago
      > Other parts are real indicators of what they’ll filter incoming applications by. That may end up being incidentally true, but not the reason for sharing that information on the job ad. After all, there would be no reason for HR to apply said filters if the posting was prescriptive. It is there merely to grab your attention. It is kind of like prices on product advertisements. If you fail to successfully barter with the merchant you very well may pay the price listed on the ad, but the price isn't listed as a commandment of what you will pay, but rather it is listed in order to capture your attention. "Huh, that's not a bad price. I should buy that." It's a marketing trick, is all. That said, these days everyone has transitioned to "Bachelors degree or equivalent experience" so even if HR does hold firm to what the ad says, they aren't filtering by bachelor degrees anyway. That is a long outdated relic of the past that isn't subscribed to anymore as it has been realized that the 'indicator' doesn't actually indicate anything.
hahaxdxd123 4y ago
That is a positive statement, not a normative one.
yrgulation 4y ago
I agree, there is no need for a degree in order to re-invent the wheel or practice pseudo engineering. The lower the bar the better, just look at the state of webdev.
ReptileMan 4y ago
And of course in the real world the problems most developers waste our time have nothing to with CS. Like xaml live preview somehow disappeared in my visual studio... And everything short of windows reinstall - it is still missing. Without errors or nothing. Please Mr HR that wants people with CS - send one of those to help me.
topkai22 4y ago
As plenty of others have said, they see just reporting actual findings, not pushing anything. The stackoverflow developer survey, which is completely unaffiliated the government as far as I know, suggests >80% of professional developers have some form of higher educational attainment. That definitely meets my definition of “typically” https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#education-ed-level-prof https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#education-ed-...
Apofis 4y ago
Capital One is the only company I've ran across so far that wouldn't take on a developer with equivalent experience, or maybe the recruiter was badly misinformed.
KronisLV 4y ago
> I personally think a CS degree is still a strong positive signal but it’s hardly a requirement anymore. I have a Master's degree and would say that it was overall a useful experience, given that many of the aspects of software engineering/development that I explored in certain courses I'd have glanced over entirely in a more self taught approach - something like risk analysis and business continuity plans (and how those might affect system design and development), deeper exploration of testing and in-database processing (though also the limitations of testing/debugging DB-side logic became more apparent), model driven development and codegen, as well as a dive into the system analysis aspects and something like 4EM and BPMN (the latter of which actually feels more useful). Note: some of this was probably in my Bachelor's as well. For most positions, however, I'd suggest that such a degree probably isn't necessary, even though some bootcamps might also be lacking (they'll teach you how to get things up and running, but not necessarily the implications of the implementation, e.g. ORM vs no ORM, aspects of distributed systems and fallible networks, backpressure etc.). Nothing that working as a part of a team on an existing project couldn't fix, though. > Interesting that the government continues to peddle credentialism for software developers. At the time, however, I'm studying up for Java certification, which I haven't needed up until now, but there are some governmental projects where they are mandated and you don't get a choice. If you're working for a SaaS company or purely work in private sector projects (outside of consulting), credentialism probably won't be as common, but in other circumstances you'll have to deal with a bit more red tape.

tcmart14 4y ago

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it is peddling. I am guessing they get a large part of this data from scraping job postings. Sure, companies will be willing to look at people who don't have formal education, which is great. But most job posting probably still have the wording "required or preferred or strongly preferred." If they are scraping data from job postings, then their statement is completely reasonable. I was job hunting earlier this year and every software development job pretty much had that wording.

shagie 4y ago
The BLS page on their data collection: https://www.bls.gov/oes/ https://www.bls.gov/oes/ > The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program produces employment and wage estimates annually for nearly 800 occupations. These estimates are available for the nation as a whole, for individual states, and for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas; national occupational estimates for specific industries are also available. On this page is https://www.bls.gov/oes/mb3-methods.pdf https://www.bls.gov/oes/mb3-methods.pdf > Probability sample panels of about 180,000 to 200,000 establishments are selected semiannually. Responses are obtained by mail, Internet or other electronic means, email, telephone, or personal visit. Respondents report their employees’ job titles or occupations across 12 wage ranges. The job titles and descriptions are used to classify workers into occupations in the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. > Estimates of occupational employment and wage rates are based on six panels of survey data collected over a 3-year cycle. The final in-scope sample size when six panels are combined is approximately 1.2 million establishments. Total 6-panel unweighted employment covers approximately 80 million3 out of the total employment of over 140 million4. They're not scraping. They are calling up a hundreds of thousands of companies and asking them "how much are you paying people with this classification?" They occasionally redo the classifications based on industry trends. Currently, the programmer related job listings https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm#15-0000 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm#15-0000 15-1251 Computer Programmers 15-1252 Software Developers 15-1253 Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers 15-1254 Web Developers 15-1255 Web and Digital Interface Designers (note that the OOH and OES can get out of sync) Go back to 2020 and you'll see https://web.archive.org/web/20200508015238/https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20200508015238/https://www.bls.g... 15-1251 Computer Programmers 15-1256 Software Developers and Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers 15-1257 Web Developers and Digital Interface Designers And going further back, in 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20140704000413/http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20140704000413/http://www.bls.go... 15-1131 Computer Programmers 15-1132 Software Developers, Applications 15-1133 Software Developers, Systems Software 15-1134 Web Developers And even further back, you won't see the Web Developers https://web.archive.org/web/20060813114102/http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20060813114102/http://www.bls.go... 15-1021 Computer Programmers 15-1031 Computer Software Engineers, Applications 15-1032 Computer Software Engineers, Systems Software These classifications are buckets that the BLS creates trying to loosely get a single mode in the wage data (if there is a bimodal distribution of the wage data, then there are two different classifications). When someone applies on a work visa, they have to fit into a bucket somewhere. The definition of that bucket determines which type of visa they may be approved for. If it requires a degree, then its the H-1B. If it doesn't require a degree, its likely a H-2B... and that in turn leads to other implications (the H-1B is dual intent and can lead to a green card while the H-2B isn't).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

It is interesting, because ( admittedly based on limited anecdata, so please correct me if you think it is not representative of what you saw ) the interview processes I was a part of favored non-academic, non-credentialled applicants ( sometimes due to petty stuff like being able to pay less and sometimes due to anti-academic stance ) for technically oriented positions.

bradlys 4y ago

Unless you have really good projects to show off and have been studying LC a lot in your spare time - it’s gonna be hard to get a job for normies without one. Entry level is absolutely flooded with overqualified candidates. It’s no surprise that almost all boot camp grads I’ve seen in the industry come from Ivy league colleges or are URT.

blahyawnblah 4y ago
URT?
- notch656a 4y ago
  "Underrepresented in tech" AKA when you use racism / sexism to hire people.
  - bradlys 4y ago
    The way I’ve seen it is also underrepresented talent.

coffeeblack 4y ago

I have not seen any correlation between a person’s abilities as a developer and their university credentials.

xwdv 4y ago
I have, you really start to see the difference between developers without formal education and those who have computer science backgrounds once you start going into deeper things than CRUD applications or other solved problems, the kinds of things you can’t just google a solution for. Kind of like how most boot camp grads will do the specific things they learn in boot camp very well but then fall apart when you change it up on them.
jcpst 4y ago
I second this. I’ve seen great developers with degrees, and awful developers with degrees. And haven’t noticed one more than the other. Just that I’m more surprised when I see an awful dev with a degree, because they had years to study. The thing I see is, either it clicks or it doesn’t. And when it does click, you can go deeper.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

I mean - you're going to be incredibly hard pressed to get an interview at FAANG with no work experience and no degree. But, yes, if you're willing to work your way up the ladder - you don't need any school. You can probably get a good job faster by graduating from a good school, though.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dimroc 4y ago

This is probably skewed by H1B applications, where employers have an easier time with the lottery with a more advanced degree. Bachelor's fall into the common 65k/year bucket that puts applicants at risk regardless of qualifications.

lofatdairy 4y ago

I think there was a comment on HN once to the effect of "Imagine you had 2 candidates, same work experience, both at a fairly prestigious company, one with a degree, one without, which do you hire? Personally, I think the fact that the non-degree holding one is more likely to be the better hire, just because of how much harder they had to work to get into that position". Not saying that not having a degree is somehow a more-positive indicator, just that I agree with your sentiment that it's hardly a requirement, and that it's just one signal among many. FWIW, I have an inclination to believe the reason why node+express+react stacks are so popular among startups (at least in the NY scene) is because all the full stack bootcamps use that stack, so it makes it easier to hire. I also decided to use a similar stack that only used JS for the same reason. I feel as though some aspects of "software development" are closer to to a trade skill. Certainly there are far more complicated directions, and that's where degrees and advanced education are meaningful, but if you just need a simple CRUD app you probably don't need a masters in anything.

yrgulation 4y ago
A lot of software development is just bricklaying. Issue tho is that reading on a forum about a design pattern or good practice doesnt make you a good engineer. Neither does a pdf certificate issued by a “bootcamp”. Thats why the webdev world has ended up with tons of poorly designed libraries and frameworks and each day there’s a new library coming out. Folks have no clue what they are doing, they just follow trends.
- diob 4y ago
  I think it's more due to Sturgeon's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law). It's not unique to any one thing / field / area.
- entropicdrifter 4y ago
  >Folks have no clue what they are doing, they just follow trends. And you think that a degree helps with that? I've had coworkers with MS in comp-sci who had no idea how to implement stuff in a practical, efficient manner, and other coworkers with no degree who were able to grasp the best practices from the get-go. I don't think the degrees are the problem. The problem is that the demand for software engineers has wildly outpaced our society's ability to produce quality ones, regardless of their educational path. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority (80%) of professional software developers already have a bachelor's degree or higher: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021/#education-ed-level-prof https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021/#education-ed...

irrational 4y ago

Anymore? When was a CS degree a positive signal? I don’t work with any programmers who have a CS degree (or even a STEM degree). Most of us have been in the field for 20+ years. We have degrees in ancient history, music performance, educational psychology, linguistics, etc. I read thousands of resumes over the years and have never paid any attention to what someone studied in college.

ndriscoll 4y ago
It's certainly a positive signal vs. not having a degree, in that the probability that they understand the topics that a CS degree covers is higher. Of course it's not a guarantee that they understand that content, and people without CS degrees can also teach themselves using books, online lectures, etc. And of course it's a young field, so more experienced people without degrees may have invented some of the contents of those books. A masters degree is probably a negative signal though unless they did something completely unrelated like music for undergrad, in which case it's similar to a BS.

aliasxneo 4y ago

I would say it's a soft requirement in most cases. One must be prepared for an extra uphill battle trying to secure a job without one. As someone who just broke into the industry this month (with no degree), my biggest assets were an existing portfolio of work and leveraging my ten years of professional experience working on complex/critical problems in various fields. I don't think this is strictly related to software engineering, though. I think most people doing horizontal career transfers use some form of the above to achieve success.

minsc_and_boo 4y ago
Right. I would also say that this is more of a symptom of university degrees being a title system, rather than strongly signalling candidates' capabilities.
- Test0129 4y ago
  As an emphasis of your point consider the two statements "Our engineering is backed by MIT graduates" "Our engineering is backed by the best engineers" One sounds a LOT better to a client. It's a lot easier to sell a product when you can lean on an actual credential than a vague superlative. Even if your vague superlative is absolutely true.
  - highwaylights 4y ago
    So strong is MIT’s brand that it sounds really convincing to the rest of us with technical experience too (I’m assuming S/E’s with years of experience). Unless it’s crypto. Then I’m still “yeah but nah tho”.
Test0129 4y ago
I'm not convinced of the uphill battle of securing a job. Credentials seem to matter in that they modify the gradient you advance in ranks with. I have a degree. It has certainly helped the speed at which I advanced. But I don't believe it helped me actually get the job. My first job was 10 years ago and it still wasn't that big of a deal to not have one at most jobs. However, government jobs almost always have a hard degree requirement. I'm not sure why this is. I wouldn't take government jobs as representative of the industry.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Anymore? In 1995 I worked full time at Netscape without a college degree and had a good career in the valley. I eventually went to UIUC in CS as an late student. It allowed me to get jobs I couldn’t, but not in the software area - I didn’t know advanced math, and I learned it at school, and worked at the intersection. There has been opportunities without degrees throughout my 30 years, but there are some opportunities that definitely need them.

pirate787 4y ago
It is changing -- a CS degree is far more of a requirement today than the 1990s.

shagie 4y ago

The credential for the job listing is related to the treaties and visas for people applying to work in the US. If the job listing on the BLS didn't specify that it needed a degree, then the software developer wouldn't fall under the H-1B or the TN visa. Instead of the H-1B (which is a specialist worker) it software developer would fall under the H-2B and anyone (degree or not) could get a visa because no skills are required... however that also means that it would fall into the "one time occurrence", "seasonal need", "peak load need" or "intermittent need" for people working on the H-2B visa. Another "this makes things interesting" with a switch from a specialist worker to a non-specialist one, is that there is a list of countries that may apply to work on a H-2B visa... and it doesn't include India. --- The job listing defined by one agency BLS has impacts on the way people can get visas and which visas. Removing the degree requirement would effectively make it so that there are no even marginally qualified applications with a visa.

bushbaba 4y ago

When 99% of the workers in the space have a degree, it’s a fair statement.

kube-system 4y ago

That statement is 100% accurate. One does typically need a related bachelors to be considered for a typical software job. There are absolutely places with more progressive hiring practices, but this is not the norm. If you apply to XYZ Corp in any random city or town, they will have “bachelors in computer science or related degree” in the requirements section of the job posting.

randomdata 4y ago
> If you apply to XYZ Corp in any random city or town, they will have “bachelors in computer science or related degree” in the requirements section of the job posting. Of course, the purpose of a job advertisement is to compel workers to apply. Companies don't write "bachelors degree" because they expect you to have a bachelors degree, they make note it because if you have a bachelors degree it will pique your interest: "Wait, I have a bachelors degree! I should apply." One of those fun marketing tricks.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Parts of job posting are marketing, especially the unquantifiable parts. Other parts are real indicators of what they’ll filter incoming applications by. Education and experience are absolutely quantifiable indicators that recruiters or HR will often filter by before that resume lands on the desk of a hiring manager.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    > Other parts are real indicators of what they’ll filter incoming applications by. That may end up being incidentally true, but not the reason for sharing that information on the job ad. After all, there would be no reason for HR to apply said filters if the posting was prescriptive. It is there merely to grab your attention. It is kind of like prices on product advertisements. If you fail to successfully barter with the merchant you very well may pay the price listed on the ad, but the price isn't listed as a commandment of what you will pay, but rather it is listed in order to capture your attention. "Huh, that's not a bad price. I should buy that." It's a marketing trick, is all. That said, these days everyone has transitioned to "Bachelors degree or equivalent experience" so even if HR does hold firm to what the ad says, they aren't filtering by bachelor degrees anyway. That is a long outdated relic of the past that isn't subscribed to anymore as it has been realized that the 'indicator' doesn't actually indicate anything.

hahaxdxd123 4y ago

That is a positive statement, not a normative one.

yrgulation 4y ago

I agree, there is no need for a degree in order to re-invent the wheel or practice pseudo engineering. The lower the bar the better, just look at the state of webdev.

ReptileMan 4y ago

And of course in the real world the problems most developers waste our time have nothing to with CS. Like xaml live preview somehow disappeared in my visual studio... And everything short of windows reinstall - it is still missing. Without errors or nothing. Please Mr HR that wants people with CS - send one of those to help me.

topkai22 4y ago

As plenty of others have said, they see just reporting actual findings, not pushing anything. The stackoverflow developer survey, which is completely unaffiliated the government as far as I know, suggests >80% of professional developers have some form of higher educational attainment. That definitely meets my definition of “typically” https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#education-ed-level-prof https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#education-ed-...

Apofis 4y ago

Capital One is the only company I've ran across so far that wouldn't take on a developer with equivalent experience, or maybe the recruiter was badly misinformed.

KronisLV 4y ago

> I personally think a CS degree is still a strong positive signal but it’s hardly a requirement anymore. I have a Master's degree and would say that it was overall a useful experience, given that many of the aspects of software engineering/development that I explored in certain courses I'd have glanced over entirely in a more self taught approach - something like risk analysis and business continuity plans (and how those might affect system design and development), deeper exploration of testing and in-database processing (though also the limitations of testing/debugging DB-side logic became more apparent), model driven development and codegen, as well as a dive into the system analysis aspects and something like 4EM and BPMN (the latter of which actually feels more useful). Note: some of this was probably in my Bachelor's as well. For most positions, however, I'd suggest that such a degree probably isn't necessary, even though some bootcamps might also be lacking (they'll teach you how to get things up and running, but not necessarily the implications of the implementation, e.g. ORM vs no ORM, aspects of distributed systems and fallible networks, backpressure etc.). Nothing that working as a part of a team on an existing project couldn't fix, though. > Interesting that the government continues to peddle credentialism for software developers. At the time, however, I'm studying up for Java certification, which I haven't needed up until now, but there are some governmental projects where they are mandated and you don't get a choice. If you're working for a SaaS company or purely work in private sector projects (outside of consulting), credentialism probably won't be as common, but in other circumstances you'll have to deal with a bit more red tape.