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I don't know much about the situation in Europe, but between Oct-Dec'13, I informally surveyed ~30 Silicon Valley tech employers (recruiters and hiring managers

I don't know much about the situation in Europe, but between Oct-Dec'13, I informally surveyed ~30 Silicon Valley tech employers (recruiters and hiring managers) and asked them exactly this question ("Will you hire someone who doesn't have a CS degree but has taken the equivalent MOOCs?"). The research was for my startup, which is in the space. Here's a rough summary of the findings: -- Overall, in spite of there being a shortage of developers, there's a general reluctance to hire people without a CS degree. -- In general, hiring managers were more open than HR / recruiters to the idea of "self-taught" candidates. -- Startups much more open to hiring entry level folks without a CS degree than large companies who generally have more choice (and bureaucracy). -- Among those who were open to hiring self-taught candidates, 100% said they would like to see a strong portfolio of projects that the candidate has built. -- Greater willingness to hire for non software developer roles. e.g. I heard multiple stories of people without CS degrees getting a foot in the door as QA / testers, and then rising through the ranks into engineering (e.g. at Zynga). I believe the GaTech-Udacity degree costs ~$7k, BTW.

xiaoma 12y ago
My experience has been very different. My only degree was a BA in Japanese. When returning to the US after a long stint in Taiwan, I considered going for a name brand masters degree but instead chose to do online study and Hack Reactor. I don't think it's been a barrier at all. Sure a lot of start-ups are flexible, but I was also invited to interview at Apple, Amazon, Google, FB and other large companies before I chose to take the start-up entrepreneur path instead. I don't think the degree ever came up, except for during one interview with ZeroCater.
- gautambay 12y ago
  Super interesting! Very curious about a few things: -- How did the large company recruiters find you, and what do you think made them contact you (e.g. If through LinkedIn, what credentials / keywords did you showcase there)? -- How much of the attention do you attribute to Hack Reactor (which is selective, and hence has some of the signaling benefits of a name brand university) vs. your own online study? -- Did you pursue any of these conversations? If so, how did they go? I realize I'm asking a lot of questions, and am happy to take this offline if you prefer. I just love learning more about alternate education.
  - xiaoma 12y ago
    That is a lot of questions! I'll do my best here, and please just check out the links in my profile if this doesn't cover it. Hack Reactor has a brand now, but I was in it over a year ago. When I graduated it had no brand whatsoever. It was selective, but nobody had even heard of it. Worse still, employers I did tell about it, tended to immediately assume it was essentially the same as another coding school with barely half the instruction hours and a far worse student teacher ratio. For the most part, what I got from Hack Reactor was the hard skills. I presented prototype of a robot fighting game at an Backbone.js meet-up, I did a hackathon at fb and I went to a bunch of other meet-ups that focused on actually coding things as opposed to mixers. I also had profiles on AngelList, White Truffle and Stack Overflow, all of which linked to my Github account. The vast majority of the inbound messages I get on LinkedIn are pretty much just looking for me to work with exactly the same technologies or even just a subset of the technologies I worked with at Groupon. I ignore them. But sometimes, a company has noted the MOOCs and more often than not those opportunities involve learning something new and are much more interesting to me.
    - gautambay 12y ago
      Thanks for answering!
deleted 12y ago
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xiaoma 12y ago

My experience has been very different. My only degree was a BA in Japanese. When returning to the US after a long stint in Taiwan, I considered going for a name brand masters degree but instead chose to do online study and Hack Reactor. I don't think it's been a barrier at all. Sure a lot of start-ups are flexible, but I was also invited to interview at Apple, Amazon, Google, FB and other large companies before I chose to take the start-up entrepreneur path instead. I don't think the degree ever came up, except for during one interview with ZeroCater.

gautambay 12y ago
Super interesting! Very curious about a few things: -- How did the large company recruiters find you, and what do you think made them contact you (e.g. If through LinkedIn, what credentials / keywords did you showcase there)? -- How much of the attention do you attribute to Hack Reactor (which is selective, and hence has some of the signaling benefits of a name brand university) vs. your own online study? -- Did you pursue any of these conversations? If so, how did they go? I realize I'm asking a lot of questions, and am happy to take this offline if you prefer. I just love learning more about alternate education.
- xiaoma 12y ago
  That is a lot of questions! I'll do my best here, and please just check out the links in my profile if this doesn't cover it. Hack Reactor has a brand now, but I was in it over a year ago. When I graduated it had no brand whatsoever. It was selective, but nobody had even heard of it. Worse still, employers I did tell about it, tended to immediately assume it was essentially the same as another coding school with barely half the instruction hours and a far worse student teacher ratio. For the most part, what I got from Hack Reactor was the hard skills. I presented prototype of a robot fighting game at an Backbone.js meet-up, I did a hackathon at fb and I went to a bunch of other meet-ups that focused on actually coding things as opposed to mixers. I also had profiles on AngelList, White Truffle and Stack Overflow, all of which linked to my Github account. The vast majority of the inbound messages I get on LinkedIn are pretty much just looking for me to work with exactly the same technologies or even just a subset of the technologies I worked with at Groupon. I ignore them. But sometimes, a company has noted the MOOCs and more often than not those opportunities involve learning something new and are much more interesting to me.
  - gautambay 12y ago
    Thanks for answering!

deleted 12y ago

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