This shouldn't be a thing. It really doesn't matter nowadays. You can send your resume and nobody will care.
Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
71–80 of 336 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#72If 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 $$$ but don't have what it takes (motivation, skills, whatever) to get a degree. For better or for worse, when you're working your way through a stack of 100 resumes, having a degree is an easy filter.
I've probably looked at hundreds of resumes and I can't recall ever seeing someone list their education credentials at the top, it's always their work experience first unless they don't have much professional experience and I've rarely been a position to hire junior developers. Unless you're going through some Nazi-era HR department then I probably won't even make it to the last page of your resume before deciding whether you're worth interviewing or passing on.
And by the way, if you're part of the 9 in 10 developers who don't have a degree and aren't cut out for development then your resume won't even make it to my desk, that's what the recruiters filter out.
All of that being said I'm not sure who you worked for but sorting through 100 resumes seems like a colossal waste of time. Lifehack: Just tell the recruitment firm "Give Me Your Top 5" and that's that.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#73Who needs a CS degree? I don't have one and I've been a software engineer for decades.
Nobody has ever asked or cared.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my first-hand experience doing hiring, for every coding savant who doesn't need a CS degree, there are 10 others who just want a shortcut to SWE $$$ 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.
I've probably looked at hundreds of resumes and I can't recall ever seeing someone list their education credentials at the top, it's always their work experience first unless they don't have much professional experience and I've rarely been a position to hire junior developers. Unless you're going through some Nazi-era HR department then I probably won't even make it to the last page of your resume before deciding wh…
> All of that being said I'm not sure who you worked for but sorting through 100 resumes seems like a colossal waste of time. Lifehack: Just tell the recruitment firm "Give Me Your Top 5" and that's that.
You're right. The filtering is/was done by recruiting, but I had some insight into their general content. And yes, education is almost never at the top for senior positions. At that point it is mostly irrelevant.
My comment was a response to OPs statement that 100% of non-degreed candidates are better than those with degrees because they are more motivated. This is certainly not the case for entry level positions which is what I was referring to.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#75I 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…
You say "I would have done a lot better having one". Explain?
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#76I'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…
> 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 I don't have a degree but made it far enough in school to take algorithms and we didn't learn A*.. I think there will always be holes in someone's knowledge since schools have different requirements.
You probably wouldn't learn A* unless you took an AI related course. Or specifically studied graph traversal.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I hope the website provides you with some value then. (A fellow Humanities grad)
Already at the negotiation stage (finally! lol. I hate the interview circuit) this time around but next time I'm looking I'll check back in.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I think there's also a large gap for people who only have a CS education and those with a traditional engineering background. Traditional engineering skills are very undervalued in this industry and I've met very few "engineers" in this field who understand engineering basics like control systems. IMO that's very valuable for building the systems we build -- I can't tell you how many half-baked implementations of som…
I think you have a good point. With today's complex distributed systems, control theory should really be emphasized more. I didn't learn it in school, but I definitely studied it when I started being responsible for the uptime of complex systems!
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>If you don't have a degree but have experience, don't let the degree requirement stop you from applying. Then don't list it as a requirement..?
Maybe it's some company level HR policy? Certainly drives me up the wall.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#80I'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 did Big O Notation in college and I still can't remember which notation is faster/slower.
After college/university you begin to forget a lot of the specific textbook stuff and begin to replace it with the put-food-on-your-table practical stuff.