I don't have a degree (though I do have a few years of college in the CS /engineering fields) and I'm pretty sure every programming job I've ever had required a "degree", if you were to look at their posted job requirements. If it's known that you can do the work (which is the kicker of course), I've never seen an employer hiring people to write code actually care about the degree. Even in academic environments I've been offered programming jobs (obviously not teaching jobs).
Now, you should definitely get a CS degree or similar if you want to be a programmer. I would have done a lot better having one even though I got by without it. Also, my career path was ridiculous and is entirely non-replicable.
I've worked with a bunch of people who don't have degrees. At the more junior level, you can tell the difference, because while they tend to be really smart and can pick things up quickly, they have funny holes in their knowledge -- CS theory that you'd only pick up from a CS textbook, stuff like Big O notation or A* search (ok maybe that one is a bit more common now, but in the early 00s you didn't really learn that without a textbook).
By the senior levels you can't really tell the difference between someone with or without a CS degree. Experience definitely beats textbook knowledge after a couple of years.
Hiring manager here and I completely agree with this. In my experience there is almost zero difference between a junior engineer with a CS degree and a junior engineer who is self-taught or had a non-traditional CS education.
In actuality the things you learn in a 4 year CS program that you wouldn't get elsewhere (algorithm performance, theory, etc.) don't apply to all professional engineering jobs (especially at the junior level). Triplebyte has some great data on how bootcamp grads fair against CS grads (https://triplebyte.com/blog/bootcamps-vs-college) and my takeaway from this (and from personal experience) is that at the junior level it almost makes no practical difference.
I did Big O Notation in college and I still can't remember which notation is faster/slower.
After college/university you begin to forget a lot of the specific textbook stuff and begin to replace it with the put-food-on-your-table practical stuff.
The opposite is also true, for example, highly educated but still directly concatenating query parameters into SQL... "Oh yeah, the IDE provided warning was annoying, so I turned it off"
I did Chem engineering in college, but have been programming since I was 17.
Now I've moved to electrical design Engineering since it seems to be a hybrid of engineering and programming.
So far my job is understanding everything that goes into my complex system. I'm not sure if this or embedded programming is my future. What is more valuable?
What stands out to me (at my current workplace), is that the guys with a CS degree, tend to spend much longer on building features than the guys without a degree. Mostly because they have really intense arguments about best practices, and have very strong opinions on almost everything.
While the guys without a degree are able to have a quick discussion, and come up with an approach they think is best.
> they have funny holes in their knowledge -- CS theory that you'd only pick up from a CS textbook, stuff like Big O notation or A* search
I don't have a degree but made it far enough in school to take algorithms and we didn't learn A*.. I think there will always be holes in someone's knowledge since schools have different requirements.
> By the senior levels you can't really tell the difference between someone with or without a CS degree. Experience definitely beats textbook knowledge after a couple of years.
I have a degree in computer science and still think degree screening is bullshit.
Ironically, it probably hurts companies more than candidates.
If you really look into it there are some good ideas out there on how to do better.
One big problem seems to be that alternate approaches break down when scaling up. For example they can't be easily automated, or cant be easily handed to human recruiters with little tech understanding than are culling tons of candidates each day.
Screening based on college reminds me of screening based on an "IQ test", it may have some correlation to good candidates so people think it's good. However the correlation is weak and highly inefficient. Hard to imagine the productivity and opportunities lost compared to a high-correlation more fair process.
Hmm. Wouldn't this be just a regular job board where an applicant ignores any requirements in the postings that applicants have a degree?
For me, hiring, the criterion is more like "could get a degree". Whether or not you actually have the degree doesn't matter to me. Someone who isn't smart enough/motivated enough to get a degree, if they wanted to and had the time/money, well I'd probably not hire that person. Perhaps this is what folks are really getting at when they say you need a degree?
Hey, author here. You might remember me from posts such as "No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers".
I've made a job board for people without CS degrees. Since I am going to be applying for jobs soon and I am career-changer I figured I would make a solution for myself. It's really annoying to get to the end of a great looking job ad only to find they insist on a CS degree.
All of the job positions are fine with applicants being either self-taught with a good portfolio or having done a coding bootcamp. Let me know what you think!
How do you know someone doesn't have a CS degree? They'll tell you.
You're right: Nobody cares you don't have a degree. It's not impressive, it is just normal. What I have a problem with is the huge chip on people's shoulders about "not having a degree" and insisting on dissing anyone who chose to go a different route.
I have a CS degree, I went to school on a scholarship, did not have these massive loans and "wasted years" everyone keeps harping on about. I volunteered my time, I was on the programming team, I did internships, I got amazing insights and advice from my professors. I went to school at night and worked during the day.
I consider my CS degree the best decision I ever made. I found the training and education I received extremely valuable. However, not all degrees are created equal. I went to a really great school. Probably would have had a different experience if I went to whatever crappy state school was nearby.
I also don't think it is necessary to have a degree to be a great programmer. What I DO think is necessary is study and honing your craft. Experience for software development is worth much less than people give it credit for.
Hacking sucks. Just hacking at stuff for years on end leads to you being an expert beginner. Do you have 10 years of experience? Or have you done the same thing for 10 years. This applies to everything: You can get twice as far in half the time if you don't have to figure everything out for yourself, and listen to and learn from experts.
What I look for in a developer: READS BOOKS. ( Audio books count )
That's the only thing. I'm sorry, if you are not reading and studying to keep up, you are getting left behind. There are so many brilliant people writing amazing books on a huge array of subjects. If I could get every one of my developers to read ONE book in on software design[0] a year, I would die happy and the entire industry would be 10 years ahead.
They don't even have to be technical books. I just want to see intellectual curiosity and a commitment to self improvement.
- 0: In the vein of Clean Architecture, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Mythical Man Month, Designing Data-Intensive Applications, The Google SRE book, etc.
I dropped out of college about seven years ago, about 24 credit hours shy of getting my IS degree. The classes left were a mix of business classes I don't care for (Accounting) and generals I don't care for (Biology 100? PASS). I haven't had any problems finding great jobs as a software engineer throughout my career, including working at Apple in Cupertino straight out of college.
Recently, a guy in my neighborhood who works at the school I went to tried to talk me into going back and finishing up. He talked to the dean and said they could waive four of the eight classes I had left to do! So now I only have four classes left, all doable online, most of them easy generals like arts and letters...
That sounds pretty tempting and everything, but part of me has also enjoyed achieving success outside of the path that our society more or less mandates as a requirement. I almost want to skip the degree to continue showing that it isn't the paper that matters, but the line of work that you pursue and the effort you put into it.
Am I crazy? Should I just go get the silly degree?
The degree is an accredited qualification that checks boxes. It may not have short term career value for you, but my degrees have helped me in some situations.
I used it to get my TN1 work permit. If you ever find yourself emigrating, even temporarily or even on a client project, that degree will get you across most borders to work. If you don't have a degree, it is much harder.
I used it on my IRAP grant application. If you ever want a grant from the government for a startup research project, and it requires a qualified individual, the degree is proof you're qualified.
Can't tell you what you should do, but if it were me I would. Who knows if it could help get you a higher salary at some point in the future, for instance, if nothing else. Given the small amount of work remaining, I'd say go for it.
Who cares about showing people you can do something without a degree? It might get you more money or different opportunities at some point in life at the cost of doing some classes. Which in turn will teach you something you didn’t know already know, which is also a positive and possibly fun thing.
It isn’t as if people are sitting around saying “wow look at archeantus doing all that stuff without a degree, he is sure telling them.”
Does the idea of having a degree mean anything to you?
If the only thing between degree-you and non-degree-you is "4 easy online classes" would you be doing this for the accomplishment or the piece of paper?
>> Should I just go get the silly degree?
I loved school, valued my time there, feel it's had tremendous value in my life and am really proud of my degree. None of that seems true for you, so why not spend the time, effort and money doing something more important?
At the risk of committing a sunk cost fallacy, I would definitely say that's worth it since you are already so close and a sizable segment of society places a minimal expectation on having such a thing. Degrees are more a certificate that signal something to employers rather than actual vehicles of continued learning. Even if it's not needed now, it would certainly open more doors.
But that's just my opinion. Do whatever feels right for you.
My lack of degree has never been relevant in my 12-year-long coding career, I have never had issues getting jobs I want and often seen them choose me over someone with a degree.
Side projects, my obvious passion for coding, and eventually, of course, my experience got me where I’m at, making a triple-digit salary as a senior iOS developer at a major bank here in Canada.
I’m so very glad I avoided the horrors of student loans that half the people my age I know are going through.
I was able to see ‘higher education’ as the debt trap it was like I can see the sky is blue on a clear day.
At the age of 18, it was:
1) make $50k a year doing something I’ve been doing for ten years every day, know how to do well and love, or
2) go $50k in debt every year for four years paying to struggle through the school system - I hardly passed high school, the way school works just does not click with me or many others.
If you are a coder without a degree, even if it says a degree is required - just apply. This is how I got to work as an iPhone developer at LEGO, Winners, Universal Music, et cetera, until the list of these names became so notable they’d essentially be dumb to not at least look my resume over.
The other most solid piece of advice I can give - just keep doing side projects. If you’re going for your first job, an impressive side project is actually a way better way to get their attention than the dozens of people who will apply with degrees. It’s different, it will always be different, because you made it your way.
A degree isn’t anything unique, and is not actually any serious indication of actual programming talent. A degree in CS basically gives your potential employer the promise that you at least understand the fundamentals of computer science enough to slog it through school. Whoop-de-do. You meet the basic requirements and can even be considered.
Coded a custom instant messenger client while you were in your teens? Played around with ROM hacking, assembly language? Created a Mario fan game? Show them this.
You, your passion and your side projects are. I know this from the utmost experience - because those examples I just gave, I did all of, from the ages of 9-16, which got me doing web sites for real estate agents at 16, which got me working in software at Chase banks at 18. I’ve never looked back and watched my salary and experience grow year by year. :)
A lot of self taught programmers have gaps in knowledge especially when it comes to synchronization, how threading works, basic data structure and operation complexity on them. Whenever it's required they say "it's not required for web development". Of course I don't say this for all but many of them have this problem. Bootcamps don't help.
>At the age of 18, it was: 1) make $50k a year doing something I’ve been doing for ten years every day, know how to do well and love
Many self-taught developers in the industry share this story. They didn't go to college, but they did invest thousands of hours into learning before entering the job market. Very different story than your typical bootcamp/udemy student, or a typical college freshman for that matter.
I somehow did both. I spent a fortune on art school to be a painter, only to change course in my late 20's and teach myself how to code. So I don't have a (tech) degree to my name, but with all the associated debt. lol.
However, I have luckily had the same experience as you. It's never held me back.
My lack of degree has been relevant, stopping me from getting a visa to work for an IoT company in New Zealand. I actually have an accelerated Masters (first-class honours MEng after 4 academic years instead of BEng + reapply and study 12 months for MEng).
The case officer for my visa application still decided to deny my Work-to-Residence visa, because BEng is on his list, and MEng is not on his list.
The degree didn't matter for the company or the interview, but immigration care a lot about paperwork like this. I guess you started in Canada and didn't try moving overseas.
I feel like iOS development is especially lenient for degree requirements. Barely anyone learns Swift or dabbles with iOS while in school. I know that some places do offer specific iOS classes (e.g. Stanford), and some students will end up doing iOS internships, but the vast majority of students don't.
Many a time, I’ve hired software engineers without degrees over software engineers with Ivy League or top-10 school CS degrees, and I haven’t regretted it even once.
Nowadays, I don’t even put education “requirements” in job descriptions, and even if you mention your school during an interview, I don’t really care for it, to be quite honest. At the end of the day, our real technical/programming interview (no whiteboard nonsense) will tell me the things that I need to know about your technical abilities.
I remember interviewing one candidate with a CS degree from RIT, and I honestly spent a good portion of the interview genuinely feeling like this poor individual just flushed the tuition $ down the toilet, because he was just failing the interview miserably! Funny thing is, he knew a lot of theory, but when it came time to produce, it didn’t work out too well for him. (He could use whatever set-up that he preferred, Google usage was obviously allowed, he was given space to work without disruption at various points, and most importantly, the problem was a legitimate problem that we had to solve at the company.)
All of this to say: Just apply! If you have the skills and a company doesn’t give you a chance because of a stupid degree requirement, they aren’t a good fit for you and don’t deserve you! Cross them off of your list, move on, and apply to another company.
I've been on both sides. Sometimes you definitely care. If I have a small pile of resumes for a fairly specific job, I'll give each of them a lot of consideration and nobody will get tossed just because they have no degree. But if you hand me a stack of 300 resumes of [presumably] largely qualified individuals, I'm going to pick some reasons to make the stack more manageable. Some people definitely use degree status for that purpose.
It shouldn't be but while adding jobs to the site there were tons that require a CS degree. And I know people with 13 years of experience that have been turned down for jobs due to no degree.
I posted a job and you wouldn't believe the number of resumes I got that had neither the education nor the experience for the role. I can see past education -- but if you don't have either, and I'm trying to fill mid-level to senior engineering roles -- I just can't consider that candidate.
If it were a junior role, and they only had bootcamp experience, then I'd consider it.
Is this actually a problem still? I haven’t hopped around as much as most SWEs I suppose, but I’ve never faced an issue not having a degree in any of my previous hiring processes.
I work at a large bank and we don’t screen candidates for degrees.
Pete, just a heads up your copy in the about says $50 for a post and the button says $99. I don't have particularly good input on which price point makes more sense but you probably want it consistent to avoid confusion.
I hold a 4 year degree in Graphic Design and sort of fell into programming. I was working at a small print company as the only graphic designer and was being "groomed" to take over the management position. I was asked often to provide quotes, make orders, take calls from customers, etc. We didn't have a good system in place for quoting or keeping track of our workflow so I started building a dashboard with PHP. In the end I really loved the work I was doing, it felt good knowing I was providing a ton of value. When they asked me to take the management position I told them that I was going to work for another company as a web developer (they loved the dashboard there as well). I worked in that position for 2 years making similar dashboards/internal applications when the company decided it was time to start a Software Department and hired another developer to work beside me.
I've now been with the company for 5 years but things are starting to get a bit rocky with the lack of meaningful work to do. I'm dreading the interviewing process as I feel inadequate not having a formal CS degree - despite several years of experience in software development. We've made cool things (surgical training simulators, dashboards for manufacturing, custom BLE Mesh network, mobile applications to name a few) but I feel they may just be overlooked by the recruiters.
Very few "real" tech companies require degrees now, certainly none of the sensible ones do. Looking at the front page of job listings on this board, you see Dropbox, Google, Uber, Oracle, Amazon, Visa, Atlassian, and Bank of America all with serious tech jobs (some of them quite senior) with no education requirement.
But what you will need is the knowledge that you would have otherwise gotten with a CS degree. If you don't know a priority queue from a linked list, or you can't name an example of an O(nlog(n)) algorithm, then you're going to struggle in way more than just the interview; this crap comes up in real life more often than might be obvious.
Luckily there are more than enough free places to learn this stuff. It's far less structured than a college, and requires an absurd amount of discipline to do on your own time, but nothing is missing. Beyond the ad-hoc content, several top-tier universities put their CS courseware online for free, and you can totally get the same CS education that others pay $200K for. You don't get the paper that says you did it, but you don't really need it.
Getting through the resume barrier is a bit more tricky, but here's a tech recruiting open secret: Stack Overflow. It's gold for recruiters, and extremely heavily used. They find people who consistently post strong answers on topics relevant to the company they're recruiting for and directly recruit them to interview. Skip the job listings. If you have a strong S.O. profile and provide enough information for recruiters to track down who you are, you'll get no end of attention.
That and GitHub. Write some code that demonstrates good design and put it up. When I was doing talent vetting for small firms, a person's Github page was a far more valuable signal than their "qualifications".
I love this, though I'd be curious to know how often developers without degrees will actually get hired (versus those with degrees).
Some really quick feedback: I think multi-tag search is a must. As an example, I typed "nyc js" and got nothing, despite there very much being plenty of jobs in NYC with JS requirements.
Experience of the dozens of devs I know with no degree is that if you can manage to get 3 years of experience under your belt you're golden.
That's not to say there aren't doors that are closed to you, but by and large the industry just doesn't care.
The better you are, the truer this becomes. I know a highschool dropout I'd consider at least a 95th percentile developer, he turns down offers for work on a regular basis.
Hey, thanks for the nice comment - glad you love it! It's a good question but really there are lots of devs doing great now that do not have degrees. I dunno if it's ok to link here but if you check my other site https://www.nocsdegree.com there are lots of successful people there.
Yeah, that's a good point about the filter! Will change that :)
This is a tough one for me. I wish I had a CS degree, because, well, I just want one.
But I don't have one - I studied for a different BA degree, found computers, neglected classes, and then proceeded on to 27 years of programming. I'm nearly 100% self taught.
And here's the weird part. At the handful of companies I've worked at there has most certainly been mild disdain for those with degrees. Nothing overt, but it was understood that if you didn't have the passion to teach yourself, and went to school to learn your programming, you were somehow inferior. We did have lots of people with degrees who turned out great, but they were always considered the exceptions, not the rule. I found this fascinating. Nearly all the senior developers, even lead developers, had no degree.
> What's the relationship with the employers? I find the main issue with job website that are posted here is that there is usually zero relationship.
Meaning it's mostly information copied from the career page of companies. That's why most these job boards disappear after a couple years.
> I suggest if you gather enough interest here today, use it to get actual connections with employers, even if it's a handful.
Many jobs are CS degree
or equivalent experience but people misread them as CS degree only. The domain name is somewhat misleading and perpetuates a misconception. People without CS degrees sometimes have plenty of CS skills and knowledge.
(Off topic: This is a case of “naming is hard but not for the reasons you think.” Naming is hard in part because being picky about names has a social cost. My being picky about the name here, perfect example. How do you (other HN readers) feel about me being picky? I suspect many of you would think I’m kind of annoying for making a big deal of it. Just saying this is a big part of why good naming is hard.)
In my 18 years of career, the best of the best engineers I have worked with did not have a degree. They learnt engineering as a passion. It just boggles my mind that there is still a requirement for a degree despite that.
[+] [-] zzzeek|6 years ago|reply
Now, you should definitely get a CS degree or similar if you want to be a programmer. I would have done a lot better having one even though I got by without it. Also, my career path was ridiculous and is entirely non-replicable.
[+] [-] jedberg|6 years ago|reply
By the senior levels you can't really tell the difference between someone with or without a CS degree. Experience definitely beats textbook knowledge after a couple of years.
[+] [-] jkwok15|6 years ago|reply
In actuality the things you learn in a 4 year CS program that you wouldn't get elsewhere (algorithm performance, theory, etc.) don't apply to all professional engineering jobs (especially at the junior level). Triplebyte has some great data on how bootcamp grads fair against CS grads (https://triplebyte.com/blog/bootcamps-vs-college) and my takeaway from this (and from personal experience) is that at the junior level it almost makes no practical difference.
[+] [-] benbristow|6 years ago|reply
After college/university you begin to forget a lot of the specific textbook stuff and begin to replace it with the put-food-on-your-table practical stuff.
[+] [-] 19870213|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helpPeople|6 years ago|reply
I did Chem engineering in college, but have been programming since I was 17.
Now I've moved to electrical design Engineering since it seems to be a hybrid of engineering and programming.
So far my job is understanding everything that goes into my complex system. I'm not sure if this or embedded programming is my future. What is more valuable?
[+] [-] woutr_be|6 years ago|reply
While the guys without a degree are able to have a quick discussion, and come up with an approach they think is best.
[+] [-] rifung|6 years ago|reply
I don't have a degree but made it far enough in school to take algorithms and we didn't learn A*.. I think there will always be holes in someone's knowledge since schools have different requirements.
[+] [-] bdcravens|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 19ylram49|6 years ago|reply
Agreed. Absolutely correct!
[+] [-] wendyshu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pete-Codes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mav3rick|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LorenPechtel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WhitneyLand|6 years ago|reply
Ironically, it probably hurts companies more than candidates.
If you really look into it there are some good ideas out there on how to do better.
One big problem seems to be that alternate approaches break down when scaling up. For example they can't be easily automated, or cant be easily handed to human recruiters with little tech understanding than are culling tons of candidates each day.
Screening based on college reminds me of screening based on an "IQ test", it may have some correlation to good candidates so people think it's good. However the correlation is weak and highly inefficient. Hard to imagine the productivity and opportunities lost compared to a high-correlation more fair process.
[+] [-] dboreham|6 years ago|reply
For me, hiring, the criterion is more like "could get a degree". Whether or not you actually have the degree doesn't matter to me. Someone who isn't smart enough/motivated enough to get a degree, if they wanted to and had the time/money, well I'd probably not hire that person. Perhaps this is what folks are really getting at when they say you need a degree?
[+] [-] Pete-Codes|6 years ago|reply
I've made a job board for people without CS degrees. Since I am going to be applying for jobs soon and I am career-changer I figured I would make a solution for myself. It's really annoying to get to the end of a great looking job ad only to find they insist on a CS degree.
All of the job positions are fine with applicants being either self-taught with a good portfolio or having done a coding bootcamp. Let me know what you think!
[+] [-] honkycat|6 years ago|reply
You're right: Nobody cares you don't have a degree. It's not impressive, it is just normal. What I have a problem with is the huge chip on people's shoulders about "not having a degree" and insisting on dissing anyone who chose to go a different route.
I have a CS degree, I went to school on a scholarship, did not have these massive loans and "wasted years" everyone keeps harping on about. I volunteered my time, I was on the programming team, I did internships, I got amazing insights and advice from my professors. I went to school at night and worked during the day.
I consider my CS degree the best decision I ever made. I found the training and education I received extremely valuable. However, not all degrees are created equal. I went to a really great school. Probably would have had a different experience if I went to whatever crappy state school was nearby.
I also don't think it is necessary to have a degree to be a great programmer. What I DO think is necessary is study and honing your craft. Experience for software development is worth much less than people give it credit for.
Hacking sucks. Just hacking at stuff for years on end leads to you being an expert beginner. Do you have 10 years of experience? Or have you done the same thing for 10 years. This applies to everything: You can get twice as far in half the time if you don't have to figure everything out for yourself, and listen to and learn from experts.
What I look for in a developer: READS BOOKS. ( Audio books count )
That's the only thing. I'm sorry, if you are not reading and studying to keep up, you are getting left behind. There are so many brilliant people writing amazing books on a huge array of subjects. If I could get every one of my developers to read ONE book in on software design[0] a year, I would die happy and the entire industry would be 10 years ahead.
They don't even have to be technical books. I just want to see intellectual curiosity and a commitment to self improvement.
- 0: In the vein of Clean Architecture, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Mythical Man Month, Designing Data-Intensive Applications, The Google SRE book, etc.
[+] [-] archeantus|6 years ago|reply
Recently, a guy in my neighborhood who works at the school I went to tried to talk me into going back and finishing up. He talked to the dean and said they could waive four of the eight classes I had left to do! So now I only have four classes left, all doable online, most of them easy generals like arts and letters...
That sounds pretty tempting and everything, but part of me has also enjoyed achieving success outside of the path that our society more or less mandates as a requirement. I almost want to skip the degree to continue showing that it isn't the paper that matters, but the line of work that you pursue and the effort you put into it.
Am I crazy? Should I just go get the silly degree?
[+] [-] sunir|6 years ago|reply
I used it to get my TN1 work permit. If you ever find yourself emigrating, even temporarily or even on a client project, that degree will get you across most borders to work. If you don't have a degree, it is much harder.
I used it on my IRAP grant application. If you ever want a grant from the government for a startup research project, and it requires a qualified individual, the degree is proof you're qualified.
etc.
[+] [-] tempestn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mosselman|6 years ago|reply
It isn’t as if people are sitting around saying “wow look at archeantus doing all that stuff without a degree, he is sure telling them.”
Do whatever feels right for you, not others.
[+] [-] ticmasta|6 years ago|reply
If the only thing between degree-you and non-degree-you is "4 easy online classes" would you be doing this for the accomplishment or the piece of paper?
>> Should I just go get the silly degree?
I loved school, valued my time there, feel it's had tremendous value in my life and am really proud of my degree. None of that seems true for you, so why not spend the time, effort and money doing something more important?
[+] [-] bartwe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bduerst|6 years ago|reply
But that's just my opinion. Do whatever feels right for you.
[+] [-] lostgame|6 years ago|reply
Side projects, my obvious passion for coding, and eventually, of course, my experience got me where I’m at, making a triple-digit salary as a senior iOS developer at a major bank here in Canada.
I’m so very glad I avoided the horrors of student loans that half the people my age I know are going through.
I was able to see ‘higher education’ as the debt trap it was like I can see the sky is blue on a clear day.
At the age of 18, it was: 1) make $50k a year doing something I’ve been doing for ten years every day, know how to do well and love, or 2) go $50k in debt every year for four years paying to struggle through the school system - I hardly passed high school, the way school works just does not click with me or many others.
If you are a coder without a degree, even if it says a degree is required - just apply. This is how I got to work as an iPhone developer at LEGO, Winners, Universal Music, et cetera, until the list of these names became so notable they’d essentially be dumb to not at least look my resume over.
The other most solid piece of advice I can give - just keep doing side projects. If you’re going for your first job, an impressive side project is actually a way better way to get their attention than the dozens of people who will apply with degrees. It’s different, it will always be different, because you made it your way.
A degree isn’t anything unique, and is not actually any serious indication of actual programming talent. A degree in CS basically gives your potential employer the promise that you at least understand the fundamentals of computer science enough to slog it through school. Whoop-de-do. You meet the basic requirements and can even be considered.
Coded a custom instant messenger client while you were in your teens? Played around with ROM hacking, assembly language? Created a Mario fan game? Show them this.
You, your passion and your side projects are. I know this from the utmost experience - because those examples I just gave, I did all of, from the ages of 9-16, which got me doing web sites for real estate agents at 16, which got me working in software at Chase banks at 18. I’ve never looked back and watched my salary and experience grow year by year. :)
[+] [-] mav3rick|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] papreclip|6 years ago|reply
Many self-taught developers in the industry share this story. They didn't go to college, but they did invest thousands of hours into learning before entering the job market. Very different story than your typical bootcamp/udemy student, or a typical college freshman for that matter.
[+] [-] tenaciousDaniel|6 years ago|reply
However, I have luckily had the same experience as you. It's never held me back.
[+] [-] peterburkimsher|6 years ago|reply
The case officer for my visa application still decided to deny my Work-to-Residence visa, because BEng is on his list, and MEng is not on his list.
The degree didn't matter for the company or the interview, but immigration care a lot about paperwork like this. I guess you started in Canada and didn't try moving overseas.
[+] [-] uwuhn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scoundreller|6 years ago|reply
Is it the one that forced me to upgrade their app to a version that didn’t support scheduled payments anymore?
[+] [-] 19ylram49|6 years ago|reply
Nowadays, I don’t even put education “requirements” in job descriptions, and even if you mention your school during an interview, I don’t really care for it, to be quite honest. At the end of the day, our real technical/programming interview (no whiteboard nonsense) will tell me the things that I need to know about your technical abilities.
I remember interviewing one candidate with a CS degree from RIT, and I honestly spent a good portion of the interview genuinely feeling like this poor individual just flushed the tuition $ down the toilet, because he was just failing the interview miserably! Funny thing is, he knew a lot of theory, but when it came time to produce, it didn’t work out too well for him. (He could use whatever set-up that he preferred, Google usage was obviously allowed, he was given space to work without disruption at various points, and most importantly, the problem was a legitimate problem that we had to solve at the company.)
All of this to say: Just apply! If you have the skills and a company doesn’t give you a chance because of a stupid degree requirement, they aren’t a good fit for you and don’t deserve you! Cross them off of your list, move on, and apply to another company.
[+] [-] kissgyorgy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rootusrootus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pete-Codes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JMTQp8lwXL|6 years ago|reply
If it were a junior role, and they only had bootcamp experience, then I'd consider it.
[+] [-] rezz|6 years ago|reply
I work at a large bank and we don’t screen candidates for degrees.
[+] [-] BWStearns|6 years ago|reply
That said, slick looking site. Best of luck.
[+] [-] Pete-Codes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Phillips126|6 years ago|reply
I hold a 4 year degree in Graphic Design and sort of fell into programming. I was working at a small print company as the only graphic designer and was being "groomed" to take over the management position. I was asked often to provide quotes, make orders, take calls from customers, etc. We didn't have a good system in place for quoting or keeping track of our workflow so I started building a dashboard with PHP. In the end I really loved the work I was doing, it felt good knowing I was providing a ton of value. When they asked me to take the management position I told them that I was going to work for another company as a web developer (they loved the dashboard there as well). I worked in that position for 2 years making similar dashboards/internal applications when the company decided it was time to start a Software Department and hired another developer to work beside me.
I've now been with the company for 5 years but things are starting to get a bit rocky with the lack of meaningful work to do. I'm dreading the interviewing process as I feel inadequate not having a formal CS degree - despite several years of experience in software development. We've made cool things (surgical training simulators, dashboards for manufacturing, custom BLE Mesh network, mobile applications to name a few) but I feel they may just be overlooked by the recruiters.
[+] [-] dyeje|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tylerl|6 years ago|reply
But what you will need is the knowledge that you would have otherwise gotten with a CS degree. If you don't know a priority queue from a linked list, or you can't name an example of an O(nlog(n)) algorithm, then you're going to struggle in way more than just the interview; this crap comes up in real life more often than might be obvious.
Luckily there are more than enough free places to learn this stuff. It's far less structured than a college, and requires an absurd amount of discipline to do on your own time, but nothing is missing. Beyond the ad-hoc content, several top-tier universities put their CS courseware online for free, and you can totally get the same CS education that others pay $200K for. You don't get the paper that says you did it, but you don't really need it.
Getting through the resume barrier is a bit more tricky, but here's a tech recruiting open secret: Stack Overflow. It's gold for recruiters, and extremely heavily used. They find people who consistently post strong answers on topics relevant to the company they're recruiting for and directly recruit them to interview. Skip the job listings. If you have a strong S.O. profile and provide enough information for recruiters to track down who you are, you'll get no end of attention.
That and GitHub. Write some code that demonstrates good design and put it up. When I was doing talent vetting for small firms, a person's Github page was a far more valuable signal than their "qualifications".
[+] [-] algodaily|6 years ago|reply
Some really quick feedback: I think multi-tag search is a must. As an example, I typed "nyc js" and got nothing, despite there very much being plenty of jobs in NYC with JS requirements.
[+] [-] Hermitian909|6 years ago|reply
That's not to say there aren't doors that are closed to you, but by and large the industry just doesn't care.
The better you are, the truer this becomes. I know a highschool dropout I'd consider at least a 95th percentile developer, he turns down offers for work on a regular basis.
[+] [-] Pete-Codes|6 years ago|reply
Yeah, that's a good point about the filter! Will change that :)
[+] [-] redleggedfrog|6 years ago|reply
But I don't have one - I studied for a different BA degree, found computers, neglected classes, and then proceeded on to 27 years of programming. I'm nearly 100% self taught.
And here's the weird part. At the handful of companies I've worked at there has most certainly been mild disdain for those with degrees. Nothing overt, but it was understood that if you didn't have the passion to teach yourself, and went to school to learn your programming, you were somehow inferior. We did have lots of people with degrees who turned out great, but they were always considered the exceptions, not the rule. I found this fascinating. Nearly all the senior developers, even lead developers, had no degree.
[+] [-] firefoxd|6 years ago|reply
But I made a comment on another job board show hn that's relevant here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973309
> What's the relationship with the employers? I find the main issue with job website that are posted here is that there is usually zero relationship. Meaning it's mostly information copied from the career page of companies. That's why most these job boards disappear after a couple years.
> I suggest if you gather enough interest here today, use it to get actual connections with employers, even if it's a handful.
[+] [-] natch|6 years ago|reply
(Off topic: This is a case of “naming is hard but not for the reasons you think.” Naming is hard in part because being picky about names has a social cost. My being picky about the name here, perfect example. How do you (other HN readers) feel about me being picky? I suspect many of you would think I’m kind of annoying for making a big deal of it. Just saying this is a big part of why good naming is hard.)
[+] [-] fillskills|6 years ago|reply