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Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

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Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#31

Post by jedberg »

I've worked with a bunch of people who don't have degrees. At the more junior level, you can tell the difference, because while they tend to be really smart and can pick things up quickly, they have funny holes in their knowledge -- CS theory that you'd only pick up from a CS textbook, stuff like Big O notation or A* search (ok maybe that one is a bit more common now, but in the early 00s you didn't really learn that without a textbook).

By the senior levels you can't really tell the difference between someone with or without a CS degree. Experience definitely beats textbook knowledge after a couple of years.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#32

Post by MisterBastahrd »

fiatjaf wrote: post #11

If you're going to hire a developer for their first job, don't think twice. Developers without degrees are better than developers with degress in 100% of the cases. If they don't have a degree that means they've learned something without being forced to, they love the subject and are genuinely interested.

Right. Because no degreed devs ever learned something without being forced to. They just put guns to our heads once we willingly decided to go to school for CS and tortured us all those hours we spend developing side projects for fun.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#33

Post by mixmastamyk »

mnm1 wrote: post #5

This only matters for one's first job, if that. Afterwards it's irrelevant. Regardless of what the job description says, it's never mattered in my experience working at well over a dozen companies in the last twelve years or so.

At a lot of places, yes. However, try getting even a "no thank you" form letter in response to a job post at a desirable company without a degree. First step in the hiring funnel: no 4-year degree --> /dev/nul.

I live nearby Netflix, Space X, Hulu, JPL, etc with twenty years experience in what they do and have never even spoken to a single person at any of them despite applying for years. I'm good at what I do, now I ignore their job postings.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#34

Post by sodafountan »

rezz wrote: post #21

Is this actually a problem still? I haven’t hopped around as much as most SWEs I suppose, but I’ve never faced an issue not having a degree in any of my previous hiring processes. I work at a large bank and we don’t screen candidates for degrees.

I don't have a degree and I've never had a problem, I've worked in Healthcare, for startups and for a publicly traded company. The biggest issue I've had was on a personal level, whenever I interview I'm anxious that others won't view me the same without a degree.

I signed up for the newsletter to this site, I like the idea of companies flat out saying a degree isn't required - otherwise I feel like I'm being judged negatively for not having one.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#35

Post by machbio »

Pete-Codes wrote: post #2

Hey, author here. You might remember me from posts such as "No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers". I've made a job board for people without CS degrees. Since I am going to be applying for jobs soon and I am career-changer I figured I would make a solution for myself. It's really annoying to get to the end of a great looking job ad only to find they insist on a CS degree. All of the job positions are…

little feedback - there is lot of whitespace between the email subscriber form and the actual listing of the jobs.. you might want to move the listing to the top over the email subscriber form.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#36

Post by zzzeek »

I don't have a degree (though I do have a few years of college in the CS /engineering fields) and I'm pretty sure every programming job I've ever had required a "degree", if you were to look at their posted job requirements. If it's known that you can do the work (which is the kicker of course), I've never seen an employer hiring people to write code actually care about the degree. Even in academic environments I've been offered programming jobs (obviously not teaching jobs).

Now, you should definitely get a CS degree or similar if you want to be a programmer. I would have done a lot better having one even though I got by without it. Also, my career path was ridiculous and is entirely non-replicable.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#37

Post by SonOfKyuss »

fiatjaf wrote: post #11

If you're going to hire a developer for their first job, don't think twice. Developers without degrees are better than developers with degress in 100% of the cases. If they don't have a degree that means they've learned something without being forced to, they love the subject and are genuinely interested.

In my first-hand experience doing hiring, for every coding savant who doesn't need a CS degree, there are 10 others who just want a shortcut to SWE $$$ but don't have what it takes (motivation, skills, whatever) to get a degree. For better or for worse, when you're working your way through a stack of 100 resumes, having a degree is an easy filter.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#38

Post by danielvinson »

rezz wrote: post #21

Is this actually a problem still? I haven’t hopped around as much as most SWEs I suppose, but I’ve never faced an issue not having a degree in any of my previous hiring processes. I work at a large bank and we don’t screen candidates for degrees.

I’m a college dropout and have about 8 years of experience as a developer. I’ve been interviewing a lot lately at mostly startups (7 onsites in the last month). Every single place except for one asked me about college or why I dropped out. One place asked me incredibly difficult whiteboard problems which appeared to be to filter out people without CS degrees (very specific algorithms to implement which I’ve never heard of before). One place had me reverse a linked list on a whiteboard, and was rude and standoffish when I commented that I’d never thought about doing that before so I didn’t have the algorithm memorized.

The job I accepted is the one job that didn’t even mention my lack of a degree and gave me practical coding problems.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#39

Post by helpPeople »

jedberg wrote: post #31

I've worked with a bunch of people who don't have degrees. At the more junior level, you can tell the difference, because while they tend to be really smart and can pick things up quickly, they have funny holes in their knowledge -- CS theory that you'd only pick up from a CS textbook, stuff like Big O notation or A* search (ok maybe that one is a bit more common now, but in the early 00s you didn't really learn that…

I'm wondering where I'll be.

I did Chem engineering in college, but have been programming since I was 17.

Now I've moved to electrical design Engineering since it seems to be a hybrid of engineering and programming.

So far my job is understanding everything that goes into my complex system. I'm not sure if this or embedded programming is my future. What is more valuable?

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#40

Post by Pete-Codes »

jedberg wrote: post #31

I've worked with a bunch of people who don't have degrees. At the more junior level, you can tell the difference, because while they tend to be really smart and can pick things up quickly, they have funny holes in their knowledge -- CS theory that you'd only pick up from a CS textbook, stuff like Big O notation or A* search (ok maybe that one is a bit more common now, but in the early 00s you didn't really learn that…

Yeah, that's interesting. I know a few senior people without degrees (or high school diplomas) and that chimes with what they say.
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