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You can't change how companies decide to hire. You can make yourself a more attractive candidate. In general employers look for people who have relevant experi

You can't change how companies decide to hire. You can make yourself a more attractive candidate. In general employers look for people who have relevant experience and the skills they think they need for the job. A degree communicates some level of study and practice in an environment that probably included teamwork and following instructions. If you teach yourself you have to prove you have the programming skills, and that you can work with a team and understand the business domain well enough to add value. To answer your question, an employer will hire a self-taught programmer if they think the programmer can do the job. I don't think the self-taught part causes skepticism, it's more the lack of experience in a business and team environment. A degree isn't a real track record of accomplishment but it's usually accepted as a proxy. I taught myself programming and got a job after a few years of study and practice (mostly while I was in high school and college). I got a job and never finished my degree. That was a long time ago (more than 40 years ago), and back then employers would more frequently hire people they expected to train and mentor. That doesn't seem to happen much these days, everyone has to prove they can fit in and produce right away.

jaclaz 4y ago
>I taught myself programming and got a job after a few years of study and practice (mostly while I was in high school and college). I got a job and never finished my degree. That was a long time ago (more than 40 years ago), and back then employers would more frequently hire people they expected to train and mentor. That doesn't seem to happen much these days, everyone has to prove they can fit in and produce right away. 40 years ago, very likely, your salary would have been a "normal" one, and your employer would have had less hurry in having you productive, letting you some more time to learn/adapt/etc. and - as well very likely - your attitude towards the employer would have been different from the one I see common today (let's work here for max 2 years then find another job) and - viceversa - you were likely seen as a resource on which it was worth to invest some time and money in the long run (as opposed to an expendable -and possibly micro-managed - employee that can be repolaced any time). The market has simply changed, not only in computer tech/programming, firms expect that the candidate is "ready" and use (as you say accepted as proxy) degrees and quick technical interviews to justify the choice (of hiring or not hiring you).
- gregjor 4y ago
  Yes the landscape for programming jobs has changed a lot. I still work as a programmer and system admin. I think employers miss out on developing and keeping good people by not offering a career path for enthusiastic beginners. No training, no mentoring, hit the ground running. And then they complain that people don't show any loyalty to the employer. My first job was with Nike, junior programmer brought on as a contractor with a big crowd of other young programmers looking to get training and experience. We got access to training and assigned two mentors. After two months we either got offered full-time jobs or let go. IT/software development didn't exist as a separate division in big companies back then. I worked in inventory/logistics, so I learned a lot about that business domain along with the programming stuff (DECSystem 20 BASIC, Fortran, COBOL, assembly language). That was a great opportunity to launch my career, and I met some great people there. Decades later one of my former Nike mentors hired me at a software company he had started up.
henrycodeproj 4y ago
What resources did you use to get experience, was it through networking with someone else or cold apply?
- gregjor 4y ago
  Taught myself programming in high school from books and other students who were into it. "Audited" (sat in for free) what few programming classes the local university offered. Read a lot of books. I got lucky and had a couple of good friends/mentors. When I enrolled at college (as a history major) I worked as a tutor in the computer center to pay my tuition. While at that job I got recruited by Nike. They sent people around to local universities recruiting tutors and students working in the computer center. I didn't apply for the job. I've worked in the software business for over 40 years and I don't think I have ever applied for a job. I always got hired because I knew someone, or someone knew me. Contacts and friends always worked best. I got a couple of jobs through recruiters but in both cases I had contacts inside the company.

jaclaz 4y ago

>I taught myself programming and got a job after a few years of study and practice (mostly while I was in high school and college). I got a job and never finished my degree. That was a long time ago (more than 40 years ago), and back then employers would more frequently hire people they expected to train and mentor. That doesn't seem to happen much these days, everyone has to prove they can fit in and produce right away. 40 years ago, very likely, your salary would have been a "normal" one, and your employer would have had less hurry in having you productive, letting you some more time to learn/adapt/etc. and - as well very likely - your attitude towards the employer would have been different from the one I see common today (let's work here for max 2 years then find another job) and - viceversa - you were likely seen as a resource on which it was worth to invest some time and money in the long run (as opposed to an expendable -and possibly micro-managed - employee that can be repolaced any time). The market has simply changed, not only in computer tech/programming, firms expect that the candidate is "ready" and use (as you say accepted as proxy) degrees and quick technical interviews to justify the choice (of hiring or not hiring you).

gregjor 4y ago
Yes the landscape for programming jobs has changed a lot. I still work as a programmer and system admin. I think employers miss out on developing and keeping good people by not offering a career path for enthusiastic beginners. No training, no mentoring, hit the ground running. And then they complain that people don't show any loyalty to the employer. My first job was with Nike, junior programmer brought on as a contractor with a big crowd of other young programmers looking to get training and experience. We got access to training and assigned two mentors. After two months we either got offered full-time jobs or let go. IT/software development didn't exist as a separate division in big companies back then. I worked in inventory/logistics, so I learned a lot about that business domain along with the programming stuff (DECSystem 20 BASIC, Fortran, COBOL, assembly language). That was a great opportunity to launch my career, and I met some great people there. Decades later one of my former Nike mentors hired me at a software company he had started up.

henrycodeproj 4y ago

What resources did you use to get experience, was it through networking with someone else or cold apply?

gregjor 4y ago
Taught myself programming in high school from books and other students who were into it. "Audited" (sat in for free) what few programming classes the local university offered. Read a lot of books. I got lucky and had a couple of good friends/mentors. When I enrolled at college (as a history major) I worked as a tutor in the computer center to pay my tuition. While at that job I got recruited by Nike. They sent people around to local universities recruiting tutors and students working in the computer center. I didn't apply for the job. I've worked in the software business for over 40 years and I don't think I have ever applied for a job. I always got hired because I knew someone, or someone knew me. Contacts and friends always worked best. I got a couple of jobs through recruiters but in both cases I had contacts inside the company.