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There's a story that goes: A man was tasked with hiring an employee. He got hundreds of resumes. His friend looks at the stack and asks him "how are you going t
by WorkerBee28474 1y ago
There's a story that goes: A man was tasked with hiring an employee. He got hundreds of resumes. His friend looks at the stack and asks him "how are you going to decide among all those?" The man grabs half the stack, throws it in the garbage and says "Simple, I don't hire unlucky people".
Degrees matter when employers don't have the time and/or ability to make a reasonable decision for every candidate. They need ways to eliminate chunks of the applications. Illogical ways of eliminating candidates are acceptable because they are better than having no way. One method that's not completely illogical is to only look at candidates who have degrees.
You can get degrees for <15K. For a BSCS you can do WGU for 5/10K. For a MSCS you can do GaTech OMSCS for 7K. Those numbers are small enough that they're almost definitely worth it. But those also cost time, which you will have to decide for yourself if you want to spend.
- dcreater 1y agoYes in this world of AI in everything, hiring tooling that is dog shit is the reason someone should go to college? I'm not commentating in where you're right or wrong, just want to point out what an utterly horrid reality.
- platevoltage 1y agoI mean, we live in a day and age where an entry level administrative job requires a degree. Gotta make sure to keep us trashy blue collar guys in our place.
- osigurdson 1y agoExcept that trades probably make more money.
- platevoltage 1y agoI was an autobody technician, and later. diesel mechanic. I make more now averaging 20 hours a week on Upwork. Unless you are a business owner or a union member, you're probably not doing particularly well.
- 2rsf 1y agoCome up with a better system and you will be rich. "Better" should be scalable, measurable, objective etc.
- taurath 1y agoHow about “just as good, without the human misery?”. Many shops are doing that, and have no problems hiring and retaining people.
- Workaccount2 1y agoIt cannot be long before anyone can apply for any job, and everyone gets an "AI interview" that does the actual screening. Not perfect, but far better than the current resume filtering.
- throwy98888 1y agoTrue enough, and given that no company under 1000 headcount bothers to verify bachelor's degrees, OP should just lie to get through the initial filter.
- platevoltage 1y agoFunnily enough, I tried wording my Berkeley Bootcamp a little differently on my resume to be a little more ambiguous at one point in time. I got called out on that pretty quick. Not my a company, but by someone I had review it.
- platevoltage 1y agoMost relevant response yet. Thank you. This is exactly the category that I'm in. A couple of years ago I applied to a large company, with a referral. 0-2 years experience and a non-specific bachelor's required. I got my rejection in 15 minutes, after business hours. My resume didn't even see human eyes. Did I mention I had a referral?
- Sammi 1y agoThat sounds hard. I got my bsc and msc in cs in 2015 exactly because I was afraid of this. I know maybe a couple of guys who've had successful careers in cs despite having no degree. Those guys are especially talented and industrious. Real rock stars. I'm an average slob in comparison and I feel lucky to have my papers, as I have a decent track record of getting interviews. Small local companies seem to respond the best to my resume. Big places and remote jobs seem to have a much higher bar to clear.
- platevoltage 1y agoTo be honest, Large financial organizations such as this one don't interest me much. I would rather work at a smaller company.
- taurath 1y agoThis is exactly it - I have been thrown out 3x with a referral because no degree. Almost all of these were Java shops doing absolutely fuck all in terms of innovation while having an engineering team of hundreds - it seems like the majority of coding roles are these design pattern and degree checkboxes with the slowest, most “enterprise” apps imaginable.
- platevoltage 1y agoI have an unrelated question. I'm not a Java dev, so I don't really get this, but I keep hearing it. I've heard, and maybe this is an exaggeration, that "scrappy innovative startup types" avoid candidates with only long term Java experience, because that tends to show a dispassion for programming. Is there truth to that? Do Java devs learn Java in college, and just do Java from then on without expanding their knowledge outside of that ecosystem?
- RainyDayTmrw 1y agoGeorgia Tech's Online Master of Science in Computer Science (GA Tech OMSCS) is really good about letting you go as fast or as slow as you want. If you are sufficiently motivated (and life circumstances permitting, granted), it's very doable as a nights and weekends type of thing.
- nvarsj 1y agoI did it over 5 years and it would consume all my free time during crunch periods. Definitely make sure your family is supportive - it’s like having a second part time job with occasional overtime. Having said that - I believe many companies view OMSCS as a strong signal. It’s a difficult degree with high drop out rate.
- mixmastamyk 1y agoHow is the privacy on that? Have an aversion to being watched on camera, etc.
- nvarsj 1y agoDuring exams you mean? They swapped to honorlock which seemed way better and less invasive than proctortrack. It’s a necessary evil unfortunately.
- mixmastamyk 1y agoSomeone mentioned going to a testing center, maybe it’s an option? Although they could put you on camera/facial recognition as well.:-/
- nvarsj 1y agoI think you had to use the proctoring software. Some people had a dedicated USB stick and would just boot onto that for exams specifically. TAs have to review any flagged exams. I'm pretty sure it's required for the degree's accreditation. Unfortunately, there is always a small percentage of people who will cheat if they can get away with it.
- qwe----3 1y agoWGU course content is a complete joke- I would look negatively on that if I saw it
- platevoltage 1y agoWell I hope you're not in charge of hiring people.
- scarface_74 1y agoI’ve known managers who automatically throw out resumes where candidates graduated from Devry or WGU unless they have really impressive work histories. And this is coming from someone who graduated from a no name state college.
- platevoltage 1y agoThat doesn't surprise me.
- scarface_74 1y agoI am 50 and don’t have anything to prove. I’ve done my time at a “FAANG” and the only reason I’m not at another one right now is that they insisted on RTO. Also I rather get an anal probe with a cactus than ever work for any large company again.
- platevoltage 1y agoI hear that. My 3 months with Akamai felt like the absolute best case scenario for big corporations. It was pretty good, but I am just not wired up for the corporate cringe that comes with any organization like this.
- scarface_74 1y ago(yes I’m throwing up in my mouth while responding) From the thousand-foot view, I actually saw a dynamic environment where operating within a matrixed organization and aligning cross-functional stakeholders were essential levers for driving scalable outcomes. While enterprise-level ecosystems inevitably present change management challenges, I found that viewing the experience through a lens of strategic growth and operational optimization made it incredibly rewarding.
- epolanski 1y ago> They need ways to eliminate chunks of the applications. Illogical ways of eliminating candidates are acceptable because they are better than having no way And this is how Apple/Google end up rejecting candidates to work on open source libraries...despite the candidates being the very authors they are wed out as they haven't spent months preparing for the interview.
- VirusNewbie 1y agoGoogle and Apple don't have degree requirements, there are many of us working there as engineers without any college, much less a CS degree.
- platevoltage 1y agoCan you confidently say that they don't use degrees to rank candidates in any way?
- VirusNewbie 1y agooh, for L3 or entry level, I'm sure they do. But they didn't even ask me about a degree, in fact my boss didn't ask until a year after i'd been working for him. So yes, there isn't a degree requirement, and for senior+ people, they don't care at all. For lower then that, I can't say, i'm sure it matters more the lower the level.
- platevoltage 1y agobut do you have a degree? and if so, was it on your resume. The place where I always got stuck was getting that first call. In the few interviews that I've had, I've done okay. I've moved past the technical interview in every case, although besides my internship, I wasn't given an offer. I was wondering if they use degrees to rank applications.
- VirusNewbie 1y ago
- bluecheese452 1y agoI tried to apply to wgu but got stuck in some bureaucratic hell. Have a degree in an unrelated field. Also have ap credits from 20 years ago. Wgu demands I send them the ap credits but at this point there is basically no way to get them from the college board.
- apercu 1y agoI feel like someone who has been employed in tech for 15 or more years should simply be able to test out of a lot of these requirements anyway.
- Suppafly 1y agoDidn't the AP credits go towards the unrelated degree already? I doubt you can use them twice. If anything you should be able to use whatever course credit they gave you the first time as evidence of completing the course using your transcript from the first degree.
- bluecheese452 1y agoWgu asked for my college transcript which listed the ap courses. After I sent them the transcript they asked for the ap scores. Telling them they are 20+ years old, I have no way of getting them, and I am fine retaking the courses led absolutely no where.
- Suppafly 1y agoweird, although college board is still around, if they aren't able to validate AP results, I don't know why they even exist.
- apercu 1y agoThe time sink is real, but (at least for me personally), there is a sense of accomplishment when I get a a credential that is rarely felt when completing a "project". (I control how I learn and absent a professor being a dick and purposely setting up an exam that 3/4 of the class bombs, learning is a joy compared to the politics, power games and sometimes even incompetence encountered at "work").
- investa 1y agoSo he went on to hire lucky people. They all left after a year. 6 had won the lottery, 10 had got rich betting on crypto and the other 12 had set up a business on the side and make more money from that. He had learned his lesson: next time he would discard the other half of the applicant pile.