Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 246 posts

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#201

Post by Suppafly »

bluecheese452 wrote: post #169
Suppafly wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the AP credits go towards the unrelated degree already? I doubt you can use them twice. If anything you should be able to use whatever course credit they gave you the first time as evidence of completing the course using your transcript from the first degree.

Wgu asked for my college transcript which listed the ap courses. After I sent them the transcript they asked for the ap scores. Telling them they are 20+ years old, I have no way of getting them, and I am fine retaking the courses led absolutely no where.

weird, although college board is still around, if they aren't able to validate AP results, I don't know why they even exist.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#202

Post by bruce511 »

scarface_74 wrote: post #162
david_guda wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is so true. Too many people just want the immediately useful information, but this is not what universities is for! In Uni we should learn things that can be relevant decades later. Not just learn the most modern tools that is currently used in industry. It should be coupled with that too, but not only. The short 2 year educations to learn CS basics are kind of like the fast food of learning. It gets you th…

No people want to get a job so they can make money to exchange for goods and services. First they need to be able to support their addictions to food and shelter. Companies are looking for people who can immediately improve their bottom lines. Why hire someone out of college with no practical skills when they can hire someone for slightly more that already has practical skills?

It depends on your time scale.

As an employer we're not just looking for someone to fill a role now, we're considering the person's potential to grow and move onto more challenging roles.

As an employee money is clearly a driving factor, but other things also impact quality of life. Working conditions, work-life-balance, annual leave, scope for advancement, company structures etc all make a difference.

Yes money matters, but if you choose only based on that you end up in places where people (co workers and managers) only care about money. YMMV.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#203

Post by VirusNewbie »

platevoltage wrote: post #176
VirusNewbie wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Apple don't have degree requirements, there are many of us working there as engineers without any college, much less a CS degree.

Can you confidently say that they don't use degrees to rank candidates in any way?

oh, for L3 or entry level, I'm sure they do. But they didn't even ask me about a degree, in fact my boss didn't ask until a year after i'd been working for him.

So yes, there isn't a degree requirement, and for senior+ people, they don't care at all. For lower then that, I can't say, i'm sure it matters more the lower the level.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#204

Post by tptacek »

riehwvfbk wrote: post #119
hayst4ck wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. I feel like if big tech moved away from IQ test like questions like the MS/FB of old then there was a reason.

And that reason was legal precedent: it's illegal to administer an IQ test as a condition of employment. So they administer a disguised IQ test in the form of Leetcode questions instead.

No it isn't. Plenty of big companies administer IQ tests as a condition of employment.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#205

Post by RamblingCTO »

platevoltage wrote: post #182
RamblingCTO wrote: post #126

I'll say yes. I am the only one in the company that has a degree (MSc compsci). I know stuff the others never heard of. Your exposure to obscure things in uni are really worth the time for deeper topics. I focused on machine learning and had classes like operations research, non-linear optimization or complexity theory & approximation algorithms and I kid you not, I could make use of these things quite a lot to find…

Thank you. Yeah, I would do Comp Sci. I wont say that I know everything about software development. Not even close, but I do think I'm in a position where I have the ability to continue to learn on my own. I mostly want the paper, but I'd be lying if I said I couldn't stand to drastically improve my CS fundamentals. Most of what I do is Typescript/Javascript, but I'm also into embedded development, for which I'm way…

Do note that at least for me, we didn't do much coding or software engineering. I spent more time on proofs, theories and writing on paper than any code. The best I could describe it is that software engineering is kinda adjacent to compsci maybe? I think you can do more applied compsci and do stuff like embedded etc. and it might be different, I started uni 15 years ago

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#206

Post by turtleyacht »

platevoltage wrote: post #186
turtleyacht wrote: post #128

Is a degree necessary for applying to random job postings? Yes. > lifestyle Starting a family at one point may factor into this; you'll be happier having something stable thanks to the degree that helped place you. You can always self-study off .edu syllabi, books, and all that. Not always at the most convenient times, but the knowledge is out there. Make sure the degree is from a reputable school. It's possibly the…

Are any dev jobs really stable at this point though?

They're only as stable as the situation warrants. Everyone has their own reasons to stay or search.

If we add a layer of indirection, computer science is a training and mindset, a practice. This is a job that never goes; then employed or unemployed is just a curious financial state.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#207

Post by porridgeraisin »

superconduct123 wrote: post #157
hayst4ck wrote: post #24

As someone who has interviewed candidates for a FANG company in the distant past I can't say that degrees matter, but I can say that people I interviewed with degrees generally did better. There's a hidden bias in that this is only people who got through recruiters and recruiters are their own filter. Strong referrals usually guaranteed a phone screens. I think previous experience at a major competitor in the same ti…

That's funny, one of the best programmers I've ever know had a physics degree I think those type of people just have really good analytical thinking

I'm a grad student and I help grade exam papers of mostly entry level ML related subjects. And boy, the aerospace and physics department folks are ahead of the curve by a significant amount. I guess four years of strong mathematics does that to you.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#208

Post by scarface_74 »

bruce511 wrote: post #202
scarface_74 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No people want to get a job so they can make money to exchange for goods and services. First they need to be able to support their addictions to food and shelter. Companies are looking for people who can immediately improve their bottom lines. Why hire someone out of college with no practical skills when they can hire someone for slightly more that already has practical skills?

It depends on your time scale. As an employer we're not just looking for someone to fill a role now, we're considering the person's potential to grow and move onto more challenging roles. As an employee money is clearly a driving factor, but other things also impact quality of life. Working conditions, work-life-balance, annual leave, scope for advancement, company structures etc all make a difference. Yes money matt…

The average tenure of a software developer is 3 years. This is mostly because of salary compression where internal raises never keep up with the market and new hires come in making more than “loyal” employees. Companies don’t invest in their employees.

I’ve seen this personally in companies that had 20 people all the way to the US’s second largest employer. Not to mention, it’s much easier to get a promotion by changing employers than going through the internal promo process.

Unless you are working for a non profit, everyone mostly cares about money. Any halfway competent interviewee knows how to fake “passion about the mission”

I’m 50 now and I do value things more than money about my company. An equivalent position to what I have now pays 30%-40% more at AwS (been there done that) or GCP (I’ve turned down recruiters and managers). But I value autonomy, my real usable unlimited PTO, having influence on the company direction, work life balance etc.

I can make those choices. When you are young and just starting out you can’t and honestly you shouldn’t.

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#209

Post by john-h-k »

epolanski wrote: post #175
john-h-k wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this referring to homebrew? On the one hand i get it, but on the other hand reversing a binary tree isn’t some crazy leetcode grind. Most people can figure it out in a few mins and i think its fair to reject someone who can’t

No there's nothing fair into rejecting the author of homebrew (but he wasn't alone) to work on homebrew. It's beyond silly.

He wasn't rejected for a role working on homebrew. He was rejected from google for an unrelated role

> answer by himself: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...

Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?

#210

Post by john-h-k »

dogleash wrote: post #181
john-h-k wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this referring to homebrew? On the one hand i get it, but on the other hand reversing a binary tree isn’t some crazy leetcode grind. Most people can figure it out in a few mins and i think its fair to reject someone who can’t

It's not one instance. Most people who have this happen to them don't tweet about it. Every instance could have a "well, you should have ______ better" stapled to it. Here's another one that I already know exists off the top of my head -- the only thing I have to look up is the tweet url: https://twitter.com/tiangolo/status/1281946592459853830

I don't think is apple/google. This sounds like the kind of thing small companies do. I would be very surprised if that was FAANG

I am not a fan of leetcode interviews myself, but I don't think the FAANG process is that bad. I am interested in any specific examples of authors of projects being rejected from big-tech companies for a role where they would work on their own thing

Post reply on HN