[nospice]

As far as I know, Google never had a requirement to have a degree for any software engineering job. What they did pretty aggressively, though, is sourcing candidates from universities with top-notch engineering programs (CMU, Stanford, etc). So they ended up with a significant proportion of such hires not because they rejected everyone else, but because their intake process produced more leads of this sort and treated them preferentially. Basically, for applicants going through that funnel, they guaranteed an onsite interview.

But they always had a good number of people with no degrees or degrees wholly unrelated to computers.

[koakuma-chan]

I just (formally, technically) started my career in 2025, and I don't have a degree. How would I get into Google? What qualifications should I have?

[nospice]

Big Tech can afford to be selective, so if you don't have a degree, the basic answer is that you need to stand out in some other way. This can be several years of interesting industry experience or other publicly-visible work (open source code, winning some competition, or even having a good blog). It also helps to know someone who works there and can help you get the first interview.

[spike021]

I attended San Jose State University and not once did I see Google at a CompSci/eng career fair or trying to hold any events.

Can't comment on if that's still the case as it's been several years now since I graduated, but it was notable.

same could be said for Adobe and their HQ was even closer to SJSU than Google's was.