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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

#241

Post by sadahtay »

honkycat wrote: post #189
mywittyname wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably would have had a different experience if I went to whatever crappy state school was nearby. I went to a bottom-ranked state school and loved it.

Yeah, that's fair. I shouldn't diss on state schools. I had a specific one in mind when I wrote this, but it can definitely come off as elitist. My apologies.

I had the opposite experience. I don't think I went to a terrible school but I learned way more practical skills through my internship and work experience after graduation than I did in school. The only language I used both during and after college is PHP. I never learned any C#, .NET or Javascript. I have not used C, C++, Java, Haskell, Scala, Big O notation, graph theory, NP&NPC, linear algebra since then. While a lot of these languages and theories are interesting I feel like it was a lot of wasted time and money.

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

#242

Post by swiley »

tombert wrote: post #141
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…

> 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. I agree completely. As a dropout, I've had people bother me asking how they should go about a career in tech, and I will tell them unambigously "for the love of god, please go to school". S…

After going and getting (most of) a degree this describes exactly what I saw. I taught myself to program in my preeteens and avoided university for a long time because it seemed like a scam to me ("why should I pay someone a significant fraction of a million dollars to read a few poorly organized books to me?"), after going through all the classes I've realised just how easy it is to underestimate how important certian abstract ideas are.

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

#243

Post by ericmcer »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #148
ericmcer wrote: post #142

I have done some interviews for front-end positions and it is interesting watching non-degree candidates crumble on certain really easy questions. Even something simple, like a while loop can trip up some of the newer devs who try to figure out which of the canned JS array library functions I am asking for. Not that you often need a while loop, it's just interesting that modern web development has shifted to be so fu…

I am not sure how this is correlated with not having a degree. In my degree they didn't teach me while loops specifically. I taught myself them before the degree because I programmed as a hobby. I'm sure bootcamps would teach `while`. I also don't see what this has to do with FP. I bet there are few people who understand map/reduce functions and don't get for/while loops, unless they are literally just memorizing tut…

map/reduce deals specifically with an array whereas a while doesn’t? Most people get traversing an array with a for/while loop vs traversing with map, but using a while loop in a more algorithmic question trips people up.

Let’s say my terminating case is that a number no longer has a remainder when divided by X, that confuses people, different from terminating at the end of the array.

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

#244

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

lostgame wrote: post #135
mav3rick wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of self taught programmers have gaps in knowledge especially when it comes to synchronization, how threading works, basic data structure and operation complexity on them. Whenever it's required they say "it's not required for web development". Of course I don't say this for all but many of them have this problem. Bootcamps don't help.

To counter - I have met all too many folks some with a CS degree that don’t understand these concepts, either. I hear about them every day because I sit next to the HR manager, and hear the horror stories of the blank faces when basic concepts were asked. The phrase ‘how did they even make it through a CS program?’ is common. Fortunately, I have a ton of experience with threading and data structures, I wouldn’t perso…

> I hear about them every day because I sit next to the HR manager, and hear the horror stories of the blank faces when basic concepts were asked. The phrase ‘how did they even make it through a CS program?’ is common.

That's true but entirely beside the point. Being given the opportunity to learn CS concepts and failing to do so is separate from never having been exposed to the concepts in the first place. They don't even know what they don't know.

> No, our lack of degree doesn’t imply we lack fundamental concepts

It doesn't guarantee that they lack fundamental concepts but I would say better than 95% of the time, they do.

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

#245

Post by ticmasta »

archeantus wrote: post #181

I dropped out of college about seven years ago, about 24 credit hours shy of getting my IS degree. The classes left were a mix of business classes I don't care for (Accounting) and generals I don't care for (Biology 100? PASS). I haven't had any problems finding great jobs as a software engineer throughout my career, including working at Apple in Cupertino straight out of college. Recently, a guy in my neighborhood w…

Does the idea of having a degree mean anything to you?

If the only thing between degree-you and non-degree-you is "4 easy online classes" would you be doing this for the accomplishment or the piece of paper?

>> Should I just go get the silly degree?

I loved school, valued my time there, feel it's had tremendous value in my life and am really proud of my degree. None of that seems true for you, so why not spend the time, effort and money doing something more important?

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

#246

Post by saadalem »

joshmanders wrote: post #174
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.

Why would I waste my time applying if it specifically states a CS degree is required? If you don't REQUIRE it, state that. It's not encouraging at all. Last time I was applying for work, I sent out 150 applications/resumes, every single one I look at the list of requirements, if I don't meet one of them, I don't apply because it's a waste of my time.

Man, my friend had all requirements and he applied 175 times in every manner, he landed interviews at amazon netflix google and facebook .

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

#247

Post by ticmasta »

kissgyorgy wrote: post #224
Pete-Codes wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I personally don't want to work for a company who turns down somebody because of not having a degree. If they are not smart enough with their hiring process, it's a good sign that will be other, bigger problems too.

This is the attitude of someone with a good job or lots of opportunities and seems pretty common on HN. Many (most?) people do not have the luxury of high-minded ideals like this.

Plus, you do realize you're categorically ruling out a company by projecting one trait onto their entire culture, for the crime of using an arbitrary signaling factor?

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

#248

Post by dmoy »

TrackerFF wrote: post #210
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…

Straight out of college, I applied to this engineering job which looked pretty sweet. Big reputable company, seemingly interesting work, rumored to pay well - but one problem, I was woefully underqualified. Ad stated "3-5 years of professional experience", I had _zero_ experience. Ad stated "Masters degree, or Bachelors for very experienced candidates" Ad had a laundry list of software and tools, I had experience wit…

Eli the computer guy has a video on youtube describing how these job ads get created. It's a riot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3kQyqMFpQ

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

#249

Post by ticmasta »

mywittyname wrote: post #161
honkycat wrote: post #136

How do you know someone doesn't have a CS degree? They'll tell you. You're right: Nobody cares you don't have a degree. It's not impressive, it is just normal. What I have a problem with is the huge chip on people's shoulders about "not having a degree" and insisting on dissing anyone who chose to go a different route. I have a CS degree, I went to school on a scholarship, did not have these massive loans and "wasted…

> Probably would have had a different experience if I went to whatever crappy state school was nearby. I went to a bottom-ranked state school and loved it.

I've have degrees from 3 different universities; the one I enjoyed the most was at a school that evolved from a community college over the past 30 years: small classes, profs who care about teaching, administrators trying to build something new & exciting and diverse students with no preconceived notion of their own self-importance. It wasn't all gravy but overall I loved it.

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

#250

Post by ticmasta »

sadahtay wrote: post #241
honkycat wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's fair. I shouldn't diss on state schools. I had a specific one in mind when I wrote this, but it can definitely come off as elitist. My apologies.

I had the opposite experience. I don't think I went to a terrible school but I learned way more practical skills through my internship and work experience after graduation than I did in school. The only language I used both during and after college is PHP. I never learned any C#, .NET or Javascript. I have not used C, C++, Java, Haskell, Scala, Big O notation, graph theory, NP&NPC, linear algebra since then. While a…

well, learning Java serves you well for C#; skills with C and C++ have huge transfer value; maybe you haven't been tasked with "figure out the cost of this algo" but I hope intuitively you've used some Big-O, linear programming, recursion and maybe graph theory; IMO those math courses have really helped you understand how a database works and costing execution plans; The practice in picking up new languages in less than a semester should give you an edge in identifying common aspects today; the list goes on...

I'd go as far as to say it's a bad sign if you can draw direct linkages between what you learned in university and what you do day-to-day in your job. That's not really the intent of a degree in comp sci.

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