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

Post by Pete-Codes » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #52

zzzeek wrote: post #36

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…

As a hiring manager, I fully agree. All our job postings say "CS degree required". But if you have experience and a good resume it absolutely doesn't matter. It matter a lot more for juniors who lack any sort of experience. I think it make good sense for young people to get a degree but it makes less sense for seasoned professionals to go back and get one. If you don't have a degree but have experience, don't let the…

Post by rifung » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

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…

Post by Pete-Codes » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

BWStearns wrote: post #24

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.

Currently finishing up a job search and I've gotten some disappointed looks and noticed some cooling of tone when its revealed that I have a humanities degree. It's not super common (maybe 1/5 interviews?) but it is deeply frustrating given that it's on my CV.

Post by Pete-Codes » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

sodafountan wrote: post #34

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…

Post by SonOfKyuss » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

danielvinson wrote: post #69

SonOfKyuss wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. A good interviewer prefers it if the candidate does not have the algorithm memorized. The whole point is to gauge their problem solving skills. Reciting something from a textbook doesn't tell the interviewer much. The reason yo…

In this case, it played out as a wrote it - I offered some solutions to the problem and thought about different ways to solve it, then implemented the one I thought was best on the whiteboard. About halfway through he asked me why I wasn't implementing the best version, so I thought some more about it and couldn't come up with an in-place solution (which is very hard to find in an interview setting), so I continued d…