Ask HN: Do employers care how long it took you to finish a degree?

Personally I've always been more interested in why you decided to study what you studied vs what you actually went to school for or how long it took you.

Honestly, unless you're putting the years you've attended school on your resume, I have no way of knowing how long it took you to get your degree.

I'm WAY more interested in what you can DO and what you have demonstrably DONE, so it's way more important for you to focus on side jobs, internships, and open source contributions than it is to worry about how long it will take you to get a degree.

Nope, it's never occurred to me to ask that as someone who has interviewed hundreds of people in my his career. If you don't put the dates on your resume, it's highly doubtful anyone would ask unless they could infer it from other things on your resume. One would be if you had a career, stopped it to go to school, and then started your career again. And even then, you can or should be able to easily explain it away. But what really matters is what you know.

Generally, no, employers don't care. When you list your degree just list the graduation date.

Regardless of your work history, you should list internships and projects you accomplished while in school on your resume when you are starting out anyway (unless you were already employed in the field). And if anyone asks specifically, tell them, yea I took a little extra time to finish my degree. Never lie and don't deny it just be straight about it but don't go into personal details.

When you are in college all the pressure and focus is around your GPA, graduating whether you were in the engineering school or A&S school etc. When hiring, those factors are never as important as your ability to sell yourself. For companies that focus on your GPA or how long it took you to get through school, I'd be very critical of whether they are looking for the right candidates and whether I'd want to be there. That said, there are some tech companies that have extremely competitive new grad hiring and so they use school, GPA and degree as a filter, but I've never seen length of time to attain the degree a factor.

Good luck!

Breaks for any variety of reasons are very common in University. Barring a few specific majors where competition is so heavy that a break will lower your standing, most employers won't care, and probably for legal safety, won't ask about breaks. (For example, you might get into stuff you're forbidden to ask about if you bring that up.)