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

nocsok.com

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

#91

Post by samstokes »

wvenable wrote: post #87
samstokes wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you're not aware, there is evidence [1] that this sort of "required but not really" job posting deters a lot of people, and especially women, from applying even if they would actually meet the (unstated) actual requirements. Making it explicit that you will accept "experience and a good resume" in place of a CS degree might increase the diversity of your applicant pool. [1] https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-d…

The whole point of my comment is to encourage people to who don't exactly meet the requirements to apply. I might attempt to make that more explicit next time but it's a slow process.

And kudos for doing that - but what about candidates who don't read Hacker News (or happened not to see this exact thread)? HN isn't exactly the most welcoming environment for women either.

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

#92

Post by Pete-Codes »

kissgyorgy wrote: post #71

This shouldn't be a thing. It really doesn't matter nowadays. You can send your resume and nobody will care.

It shouldn't be but while adding jobs to the site there were tons that require a CS degree. And I know people with 13 years of experience that have been turned down for jobs due to no degree.

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

#93

Post by Pete-Codes »

danielvinson wrote: post #38
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 hea…

Wow, that screams gatekeepers. If you are interested in doing an interview for my blog, https://www.nocsdegree.com let me know :)

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

#94

Post by nostrebored »

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…

You had a hint that there was an in place solution and a set of pointers. I mean the only real question here is how many spots you need to look ahead...

I understand that whiteboard can be frustrating and hard, but it sounds like your interview was the exact kind of interview people try to make

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

#95

Post by WhitneyLand »

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…

Then why the heck would you say that on your job postings, or not pitch that it be changed to whomever runs HR?

As a hiring manager you probably dream of finding more people like your best performers, yet this makes it harder.

I agree there is value in a theoretical foundation and would also encourage people to pursue it.

However it seems like a separate point from the reality of the market today. Even historically, could you have lost out on a chance to hire Faraday or Ramanujan because they were scared off from applying by boilerplate text?

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

samstokes wrote: post #91
wvenable wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of my comment is to encourage people to who don't exactly meet the requirements to apply. I might attempt to make that more explicit next time but it's a slow process.

And kudos for doing that - but what about candidates who don't read Hacker News (or happened not to see this exact thread)? HN isn't exactly the most welcoming environment for women either.

[deleted]

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

#97

Post by scarejunba »

dragonwriter wrote: post #60
wvenable wrote: post #52

Earlier 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…

> All our job postings say "CS degree required". But if you have experience and a good resume it absolutely doesn't matter. So, you lie about your actual requirements (how hard is it to add the classic “or equivalent experience” qualification?) and expect potential applicants to intuit your hidden meaning?

If you don't do that stuff it becomes harder when you want to apply for permanent residence for the guys you want.

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

#98

Post by [deleted] »

wvenable wrote: post #87
samstokes wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you're not aware, there is evidence [1] that this sort of "required but not really" job posting deters a lot of people, and especially women, from applying even if they would actually meet the (unstated) actual requirements. Making it explicit that you will accept "experience and a good resume" in place of a CS degree might increase the diversity of your applicant pool. [1] https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-d…

The whole point of my comment is to encourage people to who don't exactly meet the requirements to apply. I might attempt to make that more explicit next time but it's a slow process.

[deleted]

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

#99

Post by rohansingh »

Pete-Codes wrote: post #65
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.

Yes, take this woman with 13 years experience who got turned down for jobs over the summer for not having a degree. She has since landed a job at Webflow though. https://twitter.com/codehitchhiker/status/114577619387617690... Obviously every company is different and I'm glad you're company doesn't screen for this. I was surprised to see JP Morgan don't, for instance.

Wow, that's wild. As someone without a CS degree and about 15 years of experience, I didn't think that was something that I'd have to worry about anymore. Guess it can still happen.

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

#100

Post by berdon »

samstokes wrote: post #85
wvenable wrote: post #52

Earlier 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…

In case you're not aware, there is evidence [1] that this sort of "required but not really" job posting deters a lot of people, and especially women, from applying even if they would actually meet the (unstated) actual requirements. Making it explicit that you will accept "experience and a good resume" in place of a CS degree might increase the diversity of your applicant pool. [1] https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-d…

There's a balance point. When I did interviewing at FANG.Co I would occasionally just get people that were severely under qualified for the role. It might be a large swatch filter but the degree requirement does reduce the number of those applicants and time lost by devs doing technical interviews.
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