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No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

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Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#161

Post by cmrdporcupine »

khendron wrote: post #145
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #42

I have no CS degree, and I've been in the industry in various forms since the mid-90s, software developer full time since about 2001 or so. I have no CS degree because I just did not have the math grades to get entrance to university. I've been working at Google as software engineer for 7.5 years now. I guess you could say this is success, but I would not recommend this path; even after 20 years, there's hiring manag…

> there's hiring managers or recruiters that won't look at me, and coworkers whose behavior changes when they find out. I am very surprised to hear you say this. My background appears to be similar to yours (no CS degree, programming full-time since the mid-90s), and although I did see some resistance in job interviews for about the first 5 years of my career, once I had enough experience under my belt nobody cared w…

It might be a Canadian thing, too.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#162

Post by jhall1468 »

pmiller2 wrote: post #95
bungie4 wrote: post #25

If I had a gray beard... 30+ years as working dev. I've never taken a 'computer class' while in school, although I've taken some instruction while working. Entirely self-taught. I do this because I like it. Back in the day, I never played video games, I taught myself, and wrote, code. To this day, I don't play video games. It's been my experience that hiring degreed CS graduates may not be the best course. Theirs a b…

If that works for you, then great, but you’re locking yourself out of an entire world of software professionals who only code for work. I suspect those who don’t code outside work outnumber those who do.

I agree 100%. I used to code all the time, prior to my CS degree, in High School, etc. But now I'm a professional programmer. I don't code outside of work, because coding is what I already do 4-6 hours a day. Now that it's my job, I've taken to other hobbies (and raising a family). I love what I do, but I don't live for it.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#163

Post by commandlinefan »

rezeroed wrote: post #20

Firstly, depends on the university - not all degrees are equal. I did most of a degree after working in the industry for seven years, and having programmed on and off since the zx81 - the degree was pointless. Only one course was interesting, AI, and the only time I've ever used that knowledge is tinkering at home.

> not all degrees are equal

Hm - maybe not, but why is that, exactly? I don’t think that anybody believes that if you admit an otherwise stupid person to Harvard, they would become intelligent through the instruction they’d receive there. Instead, the degree and the institution are a signal - this person had to have been smart in the first place to get in, so you can assume that they’re going to do smart things for your business.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#164

Post by tudelo »

blymphony wrote: post #120
C4stor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would heavily depend on the (unspecified) country.

That is true, since the commenter never specified. I work for the U.S. government.

I think it's possible but when bidding for contracts I think it matters. When I worked at a smaller company that worked government contracts my lead was always telling me I should work on getting a masters as it looks more attractive.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#165

Post by foobarandgrill »

blymphony wrote: post #13
hirundo wrote: post #9

I'm 39 years into a coding career with no CS degree. But as a compulsive auto-didact (probably a common syndrome among HN readers) it hasn't been a barrier. Self-learning is a continual, daily requirement for coders. If you can continue your education as needed for this job you probably also have the skills and interest to learn from scratch. I studied the same books and did the same exercises as my brother the CS ma…

Not even government jobs are out of reach for you. I work as a federal employee without any college degree doing web development with React/Node/AWS.

How does one find govt jobs using modern tech stacks?

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#166

Post by jhall1468 »

neilv wrote: post #141
jhall1468 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CS is more than abstract theory. It gives you a foundation that you otherwise are unlikely to get. Self-taught means learning things useful for your existing job or things you find interesting. I'm work almost exclusively on the frontend, but my CS degree gave me enough foundation that I'm fairly familiar with compilers (I wrote one in college for a required course). I don't necessarily enjoy writing compilers. But t…

> But the fact remains that I can write a compiler. I can program in C or C++. I do understand pointers. None of this may hold any real value, but I wouldn't be able to do any of them if not for the degree. I liked your initial point, but the argument weakens... People absolutely have learned all the above things (and very well), on their own, outside of a CS degree, and I bet you could've.

I wasn't advocating that people don't. There are absolutely vastly better compiler programmers than I am that have never taken a formal class.

My point was that I wouldn't have learned it because I don't enjoy it. And sometimes, professionally, we get to do stuff that isn't fun. The nature of being self-taught is heavily biasing the things that interest you. College forces you outside of the box. Outside of the box happens to be those things for me, but they'll be other things for other people.

Sorry if that point wasn't clear.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#167

Post by reallydude »

jhall1468 wrote: post #162
pmiller2 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that works for you, then great, but you’re locking yourself out of an entire world of software professionals who only code for work. I suspect those who don’t code outside work outnumber those who do.

I agree 100%. I used to code all the time, prior to my CS degree, in High School, etc. But now I'm a professional programmer. I don't code outside of work, because coding is what I already do 4-6 hours a day. Now that it's my job, I've taken to other hobbies (and raising a family). I love what I do, but I don't live for it.

I've written code for fun since I first taught myself how to do it. After decades of work, I still do it for fun.

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#169

Post by bigred100 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #132
ej12n wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it gives employers confidence that you have the skillset to handle whatever they throw at you. Blindly having confidence in someone with a degree vs. someone with no degree is a bad mistake in this industry, IMO, sadly it happens. It really comes down to the person, self taught or not, if you don’t pursue continuing education (which is a must in this industry) whatever CS knowledge you learnt with your degree w…

I think you’re missing the point your parent was making... In a good CS program you will be presented a series of challenges below your “depth”.... “wait, you want me to WRITE a data structure? I usually just use a good one from a library” “wait, you want me to fix a compiler? I have only ever run a compiler” “wait, you want me to write code that CREATES processes out of nothing? I am used to letting the OS create pr…

I did a CS degree from a good school while doing none of those except the top cause I stuck to theoretical and math electives

Re: No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

#170

Post by pmarreck »

cj wrote: post #29

I'm an engineer. No CS degree. I coded for fun on various side projects from 2006-2012. I didn't consider myself very good. I worked at a couple startups from 2012-2013. During that time, I became very proficient in Coffeescript and a couple popular frontend frameworks. I was very productive in terms of pumping out lines of code (that somehow resulted in a working product). However, I didn't know how to write a for l…

Enumeration is way better than for-loops. No off-by-one errors possible. Just sayin'. ;)
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