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Ask HN: Is it possible to get a tech job without a degree?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to get a tech job without a degree?

#41

Post by munin »

I didn't have the option to get a degree, no one told me about loans or how to get them, lots of people told me I wasn't "college material", and I kind of stopped talking to my parents at 18. It's possible I could have figured out logistically how to pay for school at 18 with no parental support, but, I didn't. If you have any kind of support structure that will help you pay for or borrow (cheaply! and not too much!) for your college education, as someone who started working with no degree and then got their degree, I strongly recommend that you get your degree.

I found good jobs without a degree, though it was largely through luck and networking. If you don't have a degree the "normal people" channels are closed to you and you have to use connections and people you know. of course, the "normal people" channels are for suckers so this is probably for the best...

After a few years of working professionally without a degree, I went back and worked on my degree part time. I'm finishing now. I went to a pretty good school (in the top 15 for CS) and I took pretty hard classes with a minor in math. I think that the experience helped make me a better software person. There were definitely concepts in algorithm design and data structures that I might not have experienced professionally, professors were really smart and I could go to their office hours and talk about real-world problems, and I think that learning more about math helped me think better.

I was (mostly) intelligent about what gen-eds to take and where (at a community college) so that the time and money value was maximized. I think it was a good investment. There are many jobs that you will be locked out of without a degree. Some people might say, all the better, but those environments can also be one of the few places doing something you really want to work on, like a university or national lab. Good luck finding a startup that is doing pure R&D in CS...

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to get a tech job without a degree?

#42

Post by cpucycling »

freehunter wrote: post #23
asdasf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Watch out for IT. IT for people without a degree is a trap. What do you mean? You just talked about being in IT without a degree.

Sounds to me like the difference between IT and IS. You're either "the IT guy" or you work in IS doing real things. Not just rebooting a managers PC and installing printer drivers.

Are you posting from the 90s?

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to get a tech job without a degree?

#44

Post by VLM »

freehunter wrote: post #21
tptacek wrote: post #7

I have one semester of college, in which I took psychology and political science. I've worked as the lead network architect for a large ISP, as a developer and then lead developer of a network security tool, as a security researcher (I have a pretty decent cite record and a fun list of universities with courses that have taught papers I wrote), as a 2-time startup founder, the first of which was VC-funded, as a lead…

If I were asked for a GPA or an SAT score at any job interview, I would walk as well. It's completely irrelevant, and highly dependent on the school you went to (is a 4.0 at DeVry better or worse than a 3.0 from CMU?) It sounds like you're a little older than a person who would be debating going to college, though. I had a coworker that trained me at my current job who only had a few classes at a community college. B…

"If I were asked for a GPA or an SAT score at any job interview, I would walk as well. It's completely irrelevant,"

Its highly relevant if they're going for the stealth ageism thing. GPA is an age proxy. Due to grade inflation, the "respectable" GPA I earned in the 80s would in the 10s mean I was at least highly unmotivated if not outright mentally impaired. There was a time, a long time ago, when mid three something was a respectable accomplishment.

Superficially, if you ask an accountant job applicant how much their first car cost, after getting their first real job, that sounds wise. After all, the more expensive, the better they must have been at budgeting and money management, or at least they were ambitious when filling out loan paperwork, and that sounds like a great skills for an accountant. However obviously due to inflation all it will do is prioritize cheap young meat ahead of older more expensive. My great grandfather's first postwar 1946-ish caddy was only about $3K, therefore by numerical metric definition he'd be only 1/10th the accountant compared to a 2013 grad buying a modern commuter car.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to get a tech job without a degree?

#45

Post by MaartenG »

I did one year of college, where I was studying Business Information Technology. Was distracted by my part-time job, and dropped out after the first year - continued to work full-time. Sold that business eventually, and now here I am, years later, without a degree but on a H1B visa in the US working as a senior web developer at a videogame company.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to get a tech job without a degree?

#46

Post by elliottlan »

Yes it is - providing you are willing to learn the trade yourself.

I've been freelancing as a php developer since I was 20 years old. Now that I am 26 I have landed a decently paid full time php/sysadmin job that I really enjoy.

Between the ages of around 14 and 20 I spent a lot of time messing around with html and playing with linux installations which gave me the foundation to learn more advanced skills later on.

My main advice would be to take any job that you feel will increase your knowledge. If you don't like it, change jobs after a year or two.

Get some friends who work in the area of tech that you want to move into and talk with them about their solutions to problems.

If you can't find any friends in real life then find some on irc/reddit/hackernews/github...

Other people (and other people's code) can often provide you with a far better education than a degree.

One last thing - if you know anyone who is currently doing a computer science degree ask them what books they are learning from (for example books about object oriented programming eg java, books about database normalization, books about project planning).

There is a goldmine of knowledge out there providing you are interested to use it!

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to get a tech job without a degree?

#47

Post by eddie_31003 »

I believe you can get a tech job without a degree. However, that is just a short term goal. What about your long term goals? I believe having a degree further separates you from other non-degree holding candidates. I believe that when there is another bubble bust or economy collapse, those without degrees will be trying to complete their studies in order to compete against those with degrees.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to get a tech job without a degree?

#48

Post by Mchl »

CiaranR wrote: post #22

Serious answer: Yes, experience matters more than credentials.

I support this. If you got past projects to show you can get a job even with largest companies out there. They might be pushing you towards eventually getting a degree once you work for them though.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to get a tech job without a degree?

#49

Post by VLM »

petercooper wrote: post #14

I suspect ~50% of HN could confirm that but.. just one cautionary point, not having a degree could make it significantly harder to work overseas, if you were to want to do that. For example, if you were outside the US and wanted to go to the US on an H-1B, it's possible without a degree but somewhat harder.

It goes the other direction too. Canada, like many countries, has a point system. Its been a long time since I considered an offer in Canada but its a simple game theory optimization puzzle, to get the same number of points I could either get a degree, or become fluent in French, or work X years in some field or another. Programmer types tend to be pretty good at numerical optimization, think of it like a RPG game with various tradeoffs to level up.

One interesting thing to research for either immigration or jobs in general is do you get a CS degree or any STEM degree or any degree at all in any topic?

You're probably more employable if you're better rounded, so even if you are going IT instead of bench work, a Chemistry degree might help you get a job in IT at a pharm company more than an actual CS degree. Ditto finance if you want to work at a bank, etc. Employers love already trained subject matter experts.

WRT immigration this is a gross generalization but you get more points for "any" STEM degree... so if you're not going to learn anything in an IT type degree, why not get the physics degree you always wanted, immigration isn't going to care.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to get a tech job without a degree?

#50

Post by tessierashpool »

Very easy to do. No degree here, building web apps on and off for twenty years almost. I've met tons of other developers who had no degree also, some of them very successful open source "stars."

However, it's not possible to get a tech job without learning a lot, so if you go in without a degree, you probably have to be the type of person who reads a lot and does a lot of research as a matter of habit. (Quite possibly has to be true even if you do go in with a degree.)

Also an enormous caveat, I had an incredible pre-college education, at least compared to most Americans. Programming classes when I was 11 years old, two years each of Latin and Ancient Greek while I was still in high school. I think I might technically have been doing college-level math in high school, too, but I'm not 100% sure.

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