As someone without a STEM degree and who is largely self-taught, I'm interested in hearing about similar experiences. What is your story? What are you doing now? How long have you been doing it? etc, etc.
Ask HN: How many of you are working in tech without a STEM degree?
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Re: Ask HN: How many of you are working in tech without a STEM degree?
#2I was always into programming, and am a self taught dev. I used to write Runescape macros in Pascal and then Java, had an internship at a CD & DVD driver company (used by iTunes and many others) and got to work on automation of burner testing.
But 2008 hit, job market was terrible and I ended up working at a computer repair store chain while trying to pay my way through college until 2011, where I got a LAMP dev job for a large travel website. I dropped out of college at that point and haven't looked back.
I got to program for a bit over 10 years before moving into leadership, selling two startups along the way.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are working in tech without a STEM degree?
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Re: Ask HN: How many of you are working in tech without a STEM degree?
#4No STEM here - but I'm not an engineer, I'm a tech interested product guy who has worked for online companies all my career (2002 onwards)
I did a Media Studies (theory) degree, but all the way through university I was making websites for fun and for profit (badly), and managed to get into web 'producer' roles before moving to 'Product Owner' type roles. Though I am non-technical, I took the time to learn about the technologies we use, likely more than my peers.
These days I work in IT strategy and support the CIO - though most of the leadership team I work with do have engineering backgrounds, many of people my level do not.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are working in tech without a STEM degree?
#5@codevark - just an FYI that you've been shadow banned since 2017 - you might want to ping Dang if you want get your account back in full.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are working in tech without a STEM degree?
#6Highschool dropout w/ GED here.
I started learning how to code from trying to make game mods around age 10. This was mostly UnrealScript + Lua for SecondLife.
Got an internship at a web dev shop when I was 18. They primarily did SaaS startup launches. There was a lot of trial-by-fire. Picked up frontend + backend + DevOps skills there.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are working in tech without a STEM degree?
#7I have worked in software dev for over 40 years with no degree at all. Mostly self-taught, but I got quite a bit of employer-provided training and mentoring especially early in my career. I got recruited by a big company while in school, put university on hold and never got around to finishing. I'd have a history degree if I had gone back to school -- programming started as an interest and hobby for me, one that took over all of my spare time in high school and college.
My kids (two with degrees, one went to a vocational program) all have jobs, but none of them work in tech or software. I can't imagine trying to get a job today as a junior, especially without a STEM degree. Plenty of employers (or freelance customers) will overlook credentials if the candidate has experience and a reputation, but young people fresh out of school don't have any of that.
Employers seem completely unwilling to take a chance on young people eager to work and learn. I get the impression that very few employers put any resources into training or mentoring their programmers, instead they want to hire people who exactly match some checklist or "skill set" and fob the screening and interviewing off to HR, recruiters, and now AI.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are working in tech without a STEM degree?
#8Dropped out of college in 1988 after one semester. Never touched a computer there; they were still VAX systems reserved for certain programs at that point. Got my first computer (Commodore 128) soon after that, and started learning BASIC and 6502/Z80 assembly language. Got my first Internet account about 1993, and it came with a shell account, so I started learning Unix tools and a little C. In 1994-ish, a friend asked if I wanted to get in on a new ISP he was starting in my hometown, so I moved back and got a crash course in more Unix/Linux, networking, Perl, and more. Just been doing what comes along and learning enough to keep up ever since.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are working in tech without a STEM degree?
#9I've been doing tech for 20 years. No degree. I was pretty lost in my late teens and early twenties and college did not work out for me. I got into the web on my own and built from there.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are working in tech without a STEM degree?
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