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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

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.
- bumby 4y ago
  >government jobs almost always have a hard degree requirement. There are a surprising number of loopholes. For example, many federal engineering jobs require any one of the following: 1) A bachelors degree in engineering 2) Sufficient college coursework without a degree with relevant experience 3) A non-engineering degree with sufficient engineering coursework 4) passing the engineers in training (EIT) exam with relevant experience (which doesn't necessarily require a degree to sit for) 5) A professional engineer (PE) license (which, in some cases, doesn't require any college) I do think HR is biased towards just looking for degrees. Probably out of either laziness or risk-aversion.
mywittyname 4y ago
I spent the first ten or so years of my career without a degree. And I can say with certainty that jobs are substantially easier to come by now that I have a CS degree. I'm not sure if this is still the case for people, but I faced a lot of discrimination from management over my lack of degree. Especially managers who "inherited" me. Some of it was petty too, like all the other devs on my team were software "engineers" but since I lacked a degree, I was a software "developer". AFAIK, it wasn't a salary thing either. It's not difficult to get a degree, especially if you have experience in the field. So I would say that it's worth it.
- foobarian 4y ago
  Is this in Europe? In some countries especially EE people tend to be very ornery with their papers.
  - taolegal 4y ago
    > In some countries especially EE people tend to be very ornery with their papers can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
- mgbmtl 4y ago
  To be honest I never understood the ubiquitous use of the word engineer. To me an engineer has a degree in engineering (including software engineering, which focuses on large-scale infrastructure, not algorithms). In many countries engineers are legally liable for what they implement.
maldev 4y ago
I feel like it also depends on the position. I have a buddy with a philosophy degree from a Ivy League, who wants to "Learn to code". Even with experience I see him getting into a high technical systems programming job very low without a degree. And I see his only future after his code bootcamp as a javascript code monkey, which is becoming more and more saturated, with lower pay and more work. I tell him alot since I want to be honest, I don't know how much longer extremely basic, low end website/api development will stick around. With Github Copilot currently I can see it almost replaced, but with what we get into in the future, I don't think we'll need people who at best call an api and display the data on a website with no other thought or architecture.
- lowercased 4y ago
  Philosophy degree-holder here. Was programming on home computers for ~8 years before university. Got a philosophy degree, then got a job in tech. Was doing 'web' stuff in early 96, and got 'full time web dev' job in early 98. Few had degrees in anything (IIRC a couple of older compsci folks) but ... there were no bootcamps or degrees or classes for Perl, ASP, or Java. Everyone just dug in. It was a simpler time though. blink tags, image maps, no CSS, no JS at first, then very primitive JS for years... I guess I've never seen a position which only did API calls from JS and formatted data. That's always been wrapped up with develop/implement parts of the API as well. Maybe I've not worked in enough "enterprise" shops?
- porknubbins 4y ago
  I don’t know, I work for a lot of companies where I see a huge need for good webdev skills combined with a high enough general intelligence (ie an ivy league philosophy major) to understand the domain well enough to know what needs to be coded.
- anongraddebt 4y ago
  I’m self-taught, with bachelors and grad degrees in non-STEM. Broke into the industry a little over two years ago. I currently have interviews with FAANG and FAANG-tier for SDE roles. In fact, I have a final round this week. You can teach yourself pretty much all of a CS curriculum by buying a stack of textbooks listed on CS syllabi, and then going to town. Naturally, you’ll build projects while doing this. Do some LC and prep for interviews. You don’t need to get a CS degree to get SDE interviews. It helps, but isn’t necessary. And to pass technical rounds, you don’t even need to have read most of that stack of CS textbooks. You need some bits and pieces from that stack of books, and be quick on your feet with LC medium. If your friend is good at standardized tests, then LC is right up their alley.

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.

bumby 4y ago
>government jobs almost always have a hard degree requirement. There are a surprising number of loopholes. For example, many federal engineering jobs require any one of the following: 1) A bachelors degree in engineering 2) Sufficient college coursework without a degree with relevant experience 3) A non-engineering degree with sufficient engineering coursework 4) passing the engineers in training (EIT) exam with relevant experience (which doesn't necessarily require a degree to sit for) 5) A professional engineer (PE) license (which, in some cases, doesn't require any college) I do think HR is biased towards just looking for degrees. Probably out of either laziness or risk-aversion.

mywittyname 4y ago

I spent the first ten or so years of my career without a degree. And I can say with certainty that jobs are substantially easier to come by now that I have a CS degree. I'm not sure if this is still the case for people, but I faced a lot of discrimination from management over my lack of degree. Especially managers who "inherited" me. Some of it was petty too, like all the other devs on my team were software "engineers" but since I lacked a degree, I was a software "developer". AFAIK, it wasn't a salary thing either. It's not difficult to get a degree, especially if you have experience in the field. So I would say that it's worth it.

foobarian 4y ago
Is this in Europe? In some countries especially EE people tend to be very ornery with their papers.
- taolegal 4y ago
  > In some countries especially EE people tend to be very ornery with their papers can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
mgbmtl 4y ago
To be honest I never understood the ubiquitous use of the word engineer. To me an engineer has a degree in engineering (including software engineering, which focuses on large-scale infrastructure, not algorithms). In many countries engineers are legally liable for what they implement.

maldev 4y ago

I feel like it also depends on the position. I have a buddy with a philosophy degree from a Ivy League, who wants to "Learn to code". Even with experience I see him getting into a high technical systems programming job very low without a degree. And I see his only future after his code bootcamp as a javascript code monkey, which is becoming more and more saturated, with lower pay and more work. I tell him alot since I want to be honest, I don't know how much longer extremely basic, low end website/api development will stick around. With Github Copilot currently I can see it almost replaced, but with what we get into in the future, I don't think we'll need people who at best call an api and display the data on a website with no other thought or architecture.

lowercased 4y ago
Philosophy degree-holder here. Was programming on home computers for ~8 years before university. Got a philosophy degree, then got a job in tech. Was doing 'web' stuff in early 96, and got 'full time web dev' job in early 98. Few had degrees in anything (IIRC a couple of older compsci folks) but ... there were no bootcamps or degrees or classes for Perl, ASP, or Java. Everyone just dug in. It was a simpler time though. blink tags, image maps, no CSS, no JS at first, then very primitive JS for years... I guess I've never seen a position which only did API calls from JS and formatted data. That's always been wrapped up with develop/implement parts of the API as well. Maybe I've not worked in enough "enterprise" shops?
porknubbins 4y ago
I don’t know, I work for a lot of companies where I see a huge need for good webdev skills combined with a high enough general intelligence (ie an ivy league philosophy major) to understand the domain well enough to know what needs to be coded.
anongraddebt 4y ago
I’m self-taught, with bachelors and grad degrees in non-STEM. Broke into the industry a little over two years ago. I currently have interviews with FAANG and FAANG-tier for SDE roles. In fact, I have a final round this week. You can teach yourself pretty much all of a CS curriculum by buying a stack of textbooks listed on CS syllabi, and then going to town. Naturally, you’ll build projects while doing this. Do some LC and prep for interviews. You don’t need to get a CS degree to get SDE interviews. It helps, but isn’t necessary. And to pass technical rounds, you don’t even need to have read most of that stack of CS textbooks. You need some bits and pieces from that stack of books, and be quick on your feet with LC medium. If your friend is good at standardized tests, then LC is right up their alley.