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

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

#41

Post by impostervt »

My father took around 12 years to get his CS degree. He was full time military and raising a family at the time, and took night classes through the University of Maryland which has annexes around the world, wherever we happened to be stationed.

Maybe it's just because of that, but I've always had MORE respect for people who take a long time to finish. I say this as a guy who went the normal 4 years in college.

You go through crap, you still get what needs to be done, done? Ya, I'd hire you.

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

#42

Post by herge »

roel_v wrote: post #20

As most everyone says, no most interviewers won't care. In the small chance anyone ever asks why you took longer, just don't spin a whole sob story to explain. Just say 'personal circumstances' or so, very short and neutral, and quickly divert attention away to your GPA (if it stays good) to make it clear that it's not because you couldn't do the work. I had an interviewee once who would try to explain everything tha…

You have not really overcome the adversity yet if it's still a chip on your shoulders years later.

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

#43

Post by ajford »

Honestly, don't worry about it. I have a weird background myself. I studied Physics, but didn't finish my degree (about a semester short :( ). My University (a branch campus) started shutting down and stuff got complicated. I also got married and had a kid.

So I didn't finish my degree, got a good job offer doing Electrical Engineering (based off a good internship I did) for 3 years. Then switched to software, and with 7 years programming background (3 embedded at my last job and 4yrs of side projects and research code) I landed a Senior Programmer position at my new job. I'm not in the top bracket yet, but for essentially 4 years out of college (without a degree) I feel I'm doing pretty good.

Right now, CS seems to be a "Buyer's Market" where the job seekers have a bit more sway since everyone wants a new app or site or what not.

Like plenty of others have said, work on side projects and demo code. Doesn't have to be polished or whatever, but every little bit helps. Anything you do to learn a new platform or technique, stick in your portfolio. Get a Github or Gitlab. If you're shy about your code, Gitlab has free private repos, which you can share with an interviewer when it comes up (though I highly recommend you just go public with most of your code).

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

#44

Post by fecak »

This is solved with a resume.

The short answer is "no, they won't care generally", but employers may care a little bit very early in your career and that level of caring will eventually fade to zero. In order for them to care, they first have to actually know. We can prevent that rather easily.

The secret to counteracting this is done on your resume typically (I'm a resume writer and recruiter, who coincidentally also graduated college after 6 years due to self-financing).

Listing college dates on a resume doesn't have any real rules. Early in your career you will likely list your graduation date, and perhaps even some coursework, projects, and a GPA. There is no need to list the date you started college.

At some point in your career your resume will change. You might not even list graduation date at all down the road, in order to prevent ageism. You'll just have your degree, major, and university - no other details. You also won't list your GPA at some point, and you don't even need to list it now. If they want to know, they'll ask.

If you're asked about college attendance, you should be honest and tell them how long it took and why. But usually they won't ask, unless there is something else on your resume that tips them off.

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

#45

Post by smoyer »

As a long-time employer the answer is "no" ... I don't necessarily care how long it took to earn a degree.

But ...

From my observations, earning a BS (or BA?) requires a far less rigorous schedule than working at a full-time job. If you couldn't manage a normal class load because there was "stuff going on", I'd expect that "stuff will continue to go on" and that would distract you from what I need in an employee.

What assurances can you offer an employer that you will be a functional employee? Many positions (in the U.S. at least) have a probation period during which you've got to prove you're carrying your weight (providing a positive ROI in some sense).

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

#46

Post by Practicality »

ebbv wrote: post #16

Some will, some won't. In all honesty I think you should be glad for the ones that will reject you based on that. It shows a toxic culture focused on things that aren't really important. Much more important is where your degree is from as to whether it means anything. You should have an answer prepared for why it took longer that is reasonable and doesn't reflect badly. I.e. "I failed classes and had to take them ove…

I dropped out of school in 2001 because my parents got divorced and I no longer had a stable home to live in and I also broke my leg and had huge medical bills, so I needed to make money and get an apartment instead.

I would call that "going through a lot of stuff." It's not good enough though? Why not?

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

#47

Post by zerkten »

ryporter wrote: post #17

They will if it's clear from your resume that you took 6+ years to graduate. It's a reasonable concern for an employer, since the cause is often different from yours (namely, lack of effort). So, as other have suggested, don't make it obvious. It's ridiculous to see the year of high school graduation on a resume anyway. Also, you don't have to list internships from your first two years. If it does come up, or if they…

Is "lack of effort" really the cause in the US? College completion rates seem to be heavily impacted by finances based on what I've heard on NPR.

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

#49

Post by aianus »

chillaxtian wrote: post #38
stuff4ben wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no reasonable engineer that is asked to interview you will look at your github, or care if you have one. yeah gonna have to disagree on this. I'm an engineer and work for a BigCo Enterprisey company and while it's not necessary, if you have a GH account, it makes my job easier when I interview you. Of course if you write terrible code, then the GH account probably is not the best thing to have. But other than that,…

> But other than that, I can't see a reason why not to have one. you are assuming that * they want to write code outside of working hours * they will put the same level of attention into the code they write outside of work as they do the code they write at work * they want the code they write outside of work to be open source failing to do any or all of these things, or doing any or all of these things, should not af…

Of course it should.

Do you really not see the difference between being able to look at someone's code and trying to guess what it might look like via lame whiteboard implementations of basic algorithms?

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

#50

Post by ebbv »

Practicality wrote: post #46
ebbv wrote: post #16

Some will, some won't. In all honesty I think you should be glad for the ones that will reject you based on that. It shows a toxic culture focused on things that aren't really important. Much more important is where your degree is from as to whether it means anything. You should have an answer prepared for why it took longer that is reasonable and doesn't reflect badly. I.e. "I failed classes and had to take them ove…

I dropped out of school in 2001 because my parents got divorced and I no longer had a stable home to live in and I also broke my leg and had huge medical bills, so I needed to make money and get an apartment instead. I would call that "going through a lot of stuff." It's not good enough though? Why not?

So the way you would want to explain that to a potential employer is "I had to take a break from school due to financial problems."

The actual phrase "I was going through some stuff." is not good enough. It's an unprofessional answer. You need to be able to explain what "stuff" is in a professional way that makes sense and isn't overly dramatic. Otherwise the concern is you're going to "go through some stuff" as an employee and have excessive sick days, etc.

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