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This mirrors my experience of nearly 40 years in tech as well. In the past when I was in roles where I was hiring SWEs, I would have definitely given an advant

This mirrors my experience of nearly 40 years in tech as well. In the past when I was in roles where I was hiring SWEs, I would have definitely given an advantage to a self-taught dev over a CS grad provided that they were generally equivalent in all other aspects for the role.

wakawaka28 1y ago
Are you self-taught? The only people I've seen who think self-taught is better are the ones that are themselves self-taught. A degree is like extra experience plus mentorship under your belt... Self-taught individuals don't understand what they're missing, in most cases.
- trchek 1y ago
  I gotta say I’ve heard this take a lot, and I find it regrettable because I think everyone doesn’t understand what they’re missing, this is a pretty human trait. It’s pretty impossible to just know it all and to not know it so much that you’re just miles from even realizing you aren’t even close. I’ve definitely first hand seen a lot of FAANG engineers (yes even them, some with PHDs) not realize something I had learned from experience during my first year working with computers and I’m certain I was missing things they learned early in university. In the end, together we solved some hard problems in spite of the unknown unknowns that each of us carried.
  - leptons 1y ago
    >I’ve definitely first hand seen a lot of FAANG engineers (yes even them, some with PHDs) not realize something I had learned from experience during my first year working with computers I have a close friend that's the smartest person that anyone who meets him knows, no question about it. He's got a PhD in Physics and has also contributed a huge technical achievement to a FAANG company, that everyone uses every day. He's great at a lot of stuff, but not everything. We work on side-projects sometimes, and I'm the self-taught guy in this scenario. I know that I bring just as much to the table as he does, just in different ways. If either one of us tried to do the things we do together, alone, the result would be less than 1/2 as good. Recognizing this and letting each other shine has served us well. I can only think that teams made up of a mixture of people with different backgrounds would do better than a team of all CS graduates, or a team of all self-taught developers.
    - tomasGiden 1y ago
      This! When you are doing something simple (as in there are known best practices) you do want people to have the same formal education. They’ll talk the same language and everything will be smooth. Nobody wants a self taught surgeon or pilot on the team. There is a best practice for washing your hands and you want your surgeon to know it. But when you are in the complex domain (as in there are no known good practices), what you want is many different viewpoints on the team. So getting people with different backgrounds (different academic background, tinkerers, different cultures, different work experience etc) together is the way to go. Same with the discussion about remote work. People do not seem to get that they’re no best way but it depends on the type of work. If it’s simple or complicated, let people stay at home to concentrate. If it is complex, give them the opportunity, and the knowledge it’s good, meet up by a whiteboard. And what’s best may of course differ from day to day.
  - wakawaka28 1y ago
    It's safe to say that everyone you meet knows something you don't, regardless of background. But in the context of this discussion, it is pretty obvious that self-taught people on average have nowhere near the hundreds of hours of experience solving theoretical problems. Not having that background will actually set people back when it comes to solving hard problems that occasionally (or often) arise. Watching self-taught programmers talk smack about degreed professionals is like watching a couch potato make sweeping generalizations about how sedentary people who don't go to the gym are more physically capable than people who do, because the people who don't are not limited to performing certain exercises.
    - parineum 1y ago
      The more apt comparison seems to be somewhere closer to an athlete that played sports with his friends all day instead of weight training for that same sport and getting instruction. Most people excell with guidance and instruction but there are plenty of people who excel on their own and occasionally, because they don't know any better, end up doing something nobody ever thought to do or were taught was impossible.
    - noduerme 1y ago
      >> it is pretty obvious that self-taught people on average have nowhere near the hundreds of hours of experience solving theoretical problems What makes you think that? Simple example: I'm self-taught. Failed pre-Calculus in high school, twice. Ten years in as a freelance programmer, I decided to build the first Bitcoin poker room, and therefore had to write my own poker hand evaluator. I had no example to work from. No logic flow-chart. I had to come up with the logic to parse, rank and show winning odds on anything from 5- to 7-card stud, hold'em and omaha hands. I had to dive deep into Monte Carlo methods, statistics, etc. Meanwhile, I'm writing a HUD for Star Citizen. I'm reading and learning about avionics, working out my own procedural generators in mixed 2D/3D. And this was just one year of my life as a developer. Working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. Couch potato? Forget about the fact that I was getting paid, not paying tuition to sit in a classroom. These were problems I had to solve, and the work output was immediately in production, and the results were immediately visible. Talk about sweeping generalizations...
    - 1y ago
- kcplate 1y ago
  I’m not a developer. My roots were in hardware engineering (communication/networking) in the 80s-mid 90s, moving into departmental IT leadership roles at senior levels in the mid 90s till around 7 years ago. I sit in the product arena now as I move towards the sunset. In a general sense, I find the self taught to be simply more inventive problem solvers. What you are using as a critique— “Self-taught individuals don’t understand what they’re missing” —I would say that can be a strength. However, you should perhaps think of it instead as “Because they are not prejudiced by what they were taught by others as ‘what is possible/impossible or ‘the best way’ they are often willing to try ans do the things that a degreed person won’t even attempt.”
  - wakawaka28 1y ago
    Given that you work in IT and not development, I should point out that IT is less intellectually demanding than software engineering. I am less skeptical of self-taught IT people because the nature of the work is almost entirely around familiarity with hardware that fits together like Legos, and proficiency with software tools that are designed for maintaining systems without much theoretical knowledge or mental reckoning required. >In a general sense, I find the self taught to be simply more inventive problem solvers. What you are using as a critique— “Self-taught individuals don’t understand what they’re missing” —I would say that can be a strength. It is true that an outside perspective can be useful sometimes. However, more knowledge tends to be a net benefit. If you don't have a certain amount of training, this ingorance-driven "inventiveness" overwhelmingly turns into reinventing wheels and spending major effort on naive approaches to problems that are known to be intractible. I think it is easier for a trained individual to learn to be creative, than it is for a self-taught individual to learn to not mess things up.
    - kcplate 1y ago
      > I should point out that IT is less intellectually demanding than software engineering In those roles I lead development teams that were producing software products used both for internal and external customers. In my current role which sits product-side, I work directly with SWEs to produce a successful complex software product. I am pretty sure I understand the complexities of software engineering and can speak to my experience with different developers from different educational paths considering it’s been a big part of my vocational journey for the last 27 years. You may not have chosen a self-taught path and that’s ok for you. You may not be bound by a pattern bias because of educational rigidity like some others, but watch out that you don’t fall into elitism.
- rustcleaner 1y ago
  I do hope they eventually let you guys bankrupt out of your student loan debts.
  - wakawaka28 1y ago
    I assume this is meant to be an insult but it fails. Not everyone paid exorbitant prices for their tuition. By the way, student loan debt is the largest thing on the asset side of the Federal balance sheet. They won't let it go unless they figure out a new way to screw everyone over.
tesrx 1y ago
This mirrors my experience as well. I have a masters in CS, but I have to admit that self-taught devs usually exhibit more tenacity.
- ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 1y ago
  I also have a masters in CS but I still consider myself to be “self taught” to a degree. I didn’t really learn anything in lectures or from my professors. Most of my learning came from doing homework, reading textbooks, studying for tests, exploring the material, being curious, experimenting with side projects. I’m sure my education was more structured than a developer who didn’t go to school, but I don’t feel like there’s a huge fundamental difference. Like if you’re only “learning” from what people teach you then how are you going to be successful in software?
  - noduerme 1y ago
    "being curious" carries a lot of weight here. I mean, I was so curious, I started coding as a kid and got a tech job right out of high school. But I quit it at 19 because it didn't answer any of my questions about life. I moved to another city, waited tables, bartended, joined a band, drove a taxi, wrote a few novels, and started making indie games on the side. Eventually, the thing I found that I was most curious about was actually the intersection of code and art, and the way those things could be made to play off each other. That was the language in which I could best express myself and do truly original things. To be intellectually curious is a rare thing these days. It's the main deciding factor if I'm hiring someone. Or going on a date.
    - jandrewrogers 1y ago
      > To be intellectually curious is a rare thing these days Absence of intellectual curiosity has always been the default state of humanity. I don’t think there has ever been a time when it wasn’t rare.
      - noduerme 1y ago

wakawaka28 1y ago

Are you self-taught? The only people I've seen who think self-taught is better are the ones that are themselves self-taught. A degree is like extra experience plus mentorship under your belt... Self-taught individuals don't understand what they're missing, in most cases.

trchek 1y ago
I gotta say I’ve heard this take a lot, and I find it regrettable because I think everyone doesn’t understand what they’re missing, this is a pretty human trait. It’s pretty impossible to just know it all and to not know it so much that you’re just miles from even realizing you aren’t even close. I’ve definitely first hand seen a lot of FAANG engineers (yes even them, some with PHDs) not realize something I had learned from experience during my first year working with computers and I’m certain I was missing things they learned early in university. In the end, together we solved some hard problems in spite of the unknown unknowns that each of us carried.
- leptons 1y ago
  >I’ve definitely first hand seen a lot of FAANG engineers (yes even them, some with PHDs) not realize something I had learned from experience during my first year working with computers I have a close friend that's the smartest person that anyone who meets him knows, no question about it. He's got a PhD in Physics and has also contributed a huge technical achievement to a FAANG company, that everyone uses every day. He's great at a lot of stuff, but not everything. We work on side-projects sometimes, and I'm the self-taught guy in this scenario. I know that I bring just as much to the table as he does, just in different ways. If either one of us tried to do the things we do together, alone, the result would be less than 1/2 as good. Recognizing this and letting each other shine has served us well. I can only think that teams made up of a mixture of people with different backgrounds would do better than a team of all CS graduates, or a team of all self-taught developers.
  - tomasGiden 1y ago
    This! When you are doing something simple (as in there are known best practices) you do want people to have the same formal education. They’ll talk the same language and everything will be smooth. Nobody wants a self taught surgeon or pilot on the team. There is a best practice for washing your hands and you want your surgeon to know it. But when you are in the complex domain (as in there are no known good practices), what you want is many different viewpoints on the team. So getting people with different backgrounds (different academic background, tinkerers, different cultures, different work experience etc) together is the way to go. Same with the discussion about remote work. People do not seem to get that they’re no best way but it depends on the type of work. If it’s simple or complicated, let people stay at home to concentrate. If it is complex, give them the opportunity, and the knowledge it’s good, meet up by a whiteboard. And what’s best may of course differ from day to day.
- wakawaka28 1y ago
  It's safe to say that everyone you meet knows something you don't, regardless of background. But in the context of this discussion, it is pretty obvious that self-taught people on average have nowhere near the hundreds of hours of experience solving theoretical problems. Not having that background will actually set people back when it comes to solving hard problems that occasionally (or often) arise. Watching self-taught programmers talk smack about degreed professionals is like watching a couch potato make sweeping generalizations about how sedentary people who don't go to the gym are more physically capable than people who do, because the people who don't are not limited to performing certain exercises.
  - parineum 1y ago
    The more apt comparison seems to be somewhere closer to an athlete that played sports with his friends all day instead of weight training for that same sport and getting instruction. Most people excell with guidance and instruction but there are plenty of people who excel on their own and occasionally, because they don't know any better, end up doing something nobody ever thought to do or were taught was impossible.
  - noduerme 1y ago
    >> it is pretty obvious that self-taught people on average have nowhere near the hundreds of hours of experience solving theoretical problems What makes you think that? Simple example: I'm self-taught. Failed pre-Calculus in high school, twice. Ten years in as a freelance programmer, I decided to build the first Bitcoin poker room, and therefore had to write my own poker hand evaluator. I had no example to work from. No logic flow-chart. I had to come up with the logic to parse, rank and show winning odds on anything from 5- to 7-card stud, hold'em and omaha hands. I had to dive deep into Monte Carlo methods, statistics, etc. Meanwhile, I'm writing a HUD for Star Citizen. I'm reading and learning about avionics, working out my own procedural generators in mixed 2D/3D. And this was just one year of my life as a developer. Working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. Couch potato? Forget about the fact that I was getting paid, not paying tuition to sit in a classroom. These were problems I had to solve, and the work output was immediately in production, and the results were immediately visible. Talk about sweeping generalizations...
  - 1y ago
kcplate 1y ago
I’m not a developer. My roots were in hardware engineering (communication/networking) in the 80s-mid 90s, moving into departmental IT leadership roles at senior levels in the mid 90s till around 7 years ago. I sit in the product arena now as I move towards the sunset. In a general sense, I find the self taught to be simply more inventive problem solvers. What you are using as a critique— “Self-taught individuals don’t understand what they’re missing” —I would say that can be a strength. However, you should perhaps think of it instead as “Because they are not prejudiced by what they were taught by others as ‘what is possible/impossible or ‘the best way’ they are often willing to try ans do the things that a degreed person won’t even attempt.”
- wakawaka28 1y ago
  Given that you work in IT and not development, I should point out that IT is less intellectually demanding than software engineering. I am less skeptical of self-taught IT people because the nature of the work is almost entirely around familiarity with hardware that fits together like Legos, and proficiency with software tools that are designed for maintaining systems without much theoretical knowledge or mental reckoning required. >In a general sense, I find the self taught to be simply more inventive problem solvers. What you are using as a critique— “Self-taught individuals don’t understand what they’re missing” —I would say that can be a strength. It is true that an outside perspective can be useful sometimes. However, more knowledge tends to be a net benefit. If you don't have a certain amount of training, this ingorance-driven "inventiveness" overwhelmingly turns into reinventing wheels and spending major effort on naive approaches to problems that are known to be intractible. I think it is easier for a trained individual to learn to be creative, than it is for a self-taught individual to learn to not mess things up.
  - kcplate 1y ago
    > I should point out that IT is less intellectually demanding than software engineering In those roles I lead development teams that were producing software products used both for internal and external customers. In my current role which sits product-side, I work directly with SWEs to produce a successful complex software product. I am pretty sure I understand the complexities of software engineering and can speak to my experience with different developers from different educational paths considering it’s been a big part of my vocational journey for the last 27 years. You may not have chosen a self-taught path and that’s ok for you. You may not be bound by a pattern bias because of educational rigidity like some others, but watch out that you don’t fall into elitism.
rustcleaner 1y ago
I do hope they eventually let you guys bankrupt out of your student loan debts.
- wakawaka28 1y ago
  I assume this is meant to be an insult but it fails. Not everyone paid exorbitant prices for their tuition. By the way, student loan debt is the largest thing on the asset side of the Federal balance sheet. They won't let it go unless they figure out a new way to screw everyone over.

tesrx 1y ago

This mirrors my experience as well. I have a masters in CS, but I have to admit that self-taught devs usually exhibit more tenacity.

ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 1y ago
I also have a masters in CS but I still consider myself to be “self taught” to a degree. I didn’t really learn anything in lectures or from my professors. Most of my learning came from doing homework, reading textbooks, studying for tests, exploring the material, being curious, experimenting with side projects. I’m sure my education was more structured than a developer who didn’t go to school, but I don’t feel like there’s a huge fundamental difference. Like if you’re only “learning” from what people teach you then how are you going to be successful in software?
- noduerme 1y ago
  "being curious" carries a lot of weight here. I mean, I was so curious, I started coding as a kid and got a tech job right out of high school. But I quit it at 19 because it didn't answer any of my questions about life. I moved to another city, waited tables, bartended, joined a band, drove a taxi, wrote a few novels, and started making indie games on the side. Eventually, the thing I found that I was most curious about was actually the intersection of code and art, and the way those things could be made to play off each other. That was the language in which I could best express myself and do truly original things. To be intellectually curious is a rare thing these days. It's the main deciding factor if I'm hiring someone. Or going on a date.
  - jandrewrogers 1y ago
    > To be intellectually curious is a rare thing these days Absence of intellectual curiosity has always been the default state of humanity. I don’t think there has ever been a time when it wasn’t rare.
    - noduerme 1y ago