Ask HN: Would You Hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduated? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Would You Hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduated?

#11

Post by usgroup » Sat, May 06, 2017, 7:50 AM UTC

sealord wrote: post #2

I'm heading engineering at a startup that works on making the likes of Apache Cloudstack and Openstack work for telecom behemoths. I studied Russian at university. I've been writing code for the last 7.32 years. Personally, I don't care about the nanodegree, so long as the person demonstrates a natural affinity for writing code. That's all that matters to me. I don't know where you're based right now, but I'd say mos…

You'll find those who studied computing for example or those who hold higher degrees will be less sympathetic to unusual routes into the profession.

Re: Ask HN: Would You Hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduated?

#12

Post by usgroup » Sat, May 06, 2017, 8:00 AM UTC

I'm myself from a background irrelevant to computing. My honest opinion is that for commercial coding, it doesn't matter. It's become fashion to call everything "engineering" but really programmers in the main are more akin to plumbers.

Within the population of programming jobs, some are actually pretty serious, actually require solid CS basis and a scientific approach. If I was hiring for that sort of job, Id look for higher degrees and experience. Similarly with data science type stuff. When it gets hard, you need the right background.

Re: Ask HN: Would You Hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduated?

#13

Post by asarazan » Sun, May 07, 2017, 1:56 AM UTC

Android Lead from Capital One SF here. I did and it was one of the best hires I ever made. He's the most enthusiastic and motivated person on my entire team, and is also amazing at UI and performance optimization. I've been begging them to send me more candidates ever since.

Re: Ask HN: Would You Hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduated?

#14

Post by sealord » Tue, May 09, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

marktangotango wrote: post #9

sealord wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this is subjective. For me, it's a combination of both. The other day, I interviewed a lady who'd just started off with her career, working on creating Oracle forms. She hated it. In the meantime, she'd started dabbling with Python. She didn't know what pip was, or how to install Python packages, but it was pretty clear she had a knack for writing code. With a bit of a push, she'd do wonders. So I hire…

Interesting please follow up here in a few months with how she worked out. Not being snarky, I'm genuinely interested.

Haha, definitely! She's joining us on the 15th. I'll come back here and tell you what it's like in 2-3 months.

Re: Ask HN: Would You Hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduated?

#15

Post by sealord » Tue, May 09, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

usgroup wrote: post #11

sealord wrote: post #2

I'm heading engineering at a startup that works on making the likes of Apache Cloudstack and Openstack work for telecom behemoths. I studied Russian at university. I've been writing code for the last 7.32 years. Personally, I don't care about the nanodegree, so long as the person demonstrates a natural affinity for writing code. That's all that matters to me. I don't know where you're based right now, but I'd say mos…

You'll find those who studied computing for example or those who hold higher degrees will be less sympathetic to unusual routes into the profession.

As a general rule, yes. Very true.