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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

#261

Post by GoodGOYIM »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #260

This is a tough one for me. I wish I had a CS degree, because, well, I just want one. But I don't have one - I studied for a different BA degree, found computers, neglected classes, and then proceeded on to 27 years of programming. I'm nearly 100% self taught. And here's the weird part. At the handful of companies I've worked at there has most certainly been mild disdain for those with degrees. Nothing overt, but it…

> Nearly all the senior developers, even lead developers, had no degree.

Not true in France. How can one learn TDD and Agile Methodology without having at least an MS in CS?

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

#263

Post by kissgyorgy »

ticmasta wrote: post #247
kissgyorgy wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> you do realize you're categorically ruling out a company by projecting one trait onto their entire culture

I usually don't do that, but I can't tolerate this kind of rigidness with old habits.

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

#264

Post by fiatjaf »

Pete-Codes wrote: post #27
fiatjaf wrote: post #16

$99 to post a job? I want a developer, but I won't pay that price ever unless I need dozens of developers and I'm posting on a big site with big audience.

How much do you spend on recruiting? Genuine question. I was told to price it at that by someone who is a self-taught developer at a fairly small company in America and he said even that was cheap.

"Recruiting"? I'm not Google, I'm a small software shop and I only want 1 random developer which I can pay directly. I think you're missing my point here.

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

#266

Post by woutr_be »

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…

What stands out to me (at my current workplace), is that the guys with a CS degree, tend to spend much longer on building features than the guys without a degree. Mostly because they have really intense arguments about best practices, and have very strong opinions on almost everything.

While the guys without a degree are able to have a quick discussion, and come up with an approach they think is best.

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

#267

Post by mav3rick »

ben509 wrote: post #238
potta_coffee wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see the statistics that demonstrate the probability you claim.

What do you need the statistics for? The people doing a degree studied the material under the guidance of an expert and had to demonstrate their mastery of the subject. Self-learners aren't doing that.

Great rebuttal.

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

#268

Post by wildrhythms »

ticmasta wrote: post #249
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.

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.

I also did the community college route (before transferring credits to a four-year school) and I learned so, SO much in those two years. The community college had some cutting edge classes (at the time) like a web development course that taught PHP, MySQL, and Javascript, but also language-focused courses like Java and C# that focused on teaching OOP. The community college did not teach traditional CS concepts like Big-O, sort algorithms, etc. it wasn't until the four-year school that I learned those. It cost all of $2,500 to attend the community college those two years (with the added bonus of skipping two years worth of general education requirements at the more expensive four-year school school).

Money well spent.

I actually considered taking my newfound web development knowledge (this was in the mid-late 2000s coming out of the Web 2.0 craze) and starting my own website business, but the advisor at the community college recommended I go ahead and get the four-year degree, which I absolutely realize was a good decision.

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

#269

Post by souprock »

Phillips126 wrote: post #175

I may have to try this job board out sometime. I hold a 4 year degree in Graphic Design and sort of fell into programming. I was working at a small print company as the only graphic designer and was being "groomed" to take over the management position. I was asked often to provide quotes, make orders, take calls from customers, etc. We didn't have a good system in place for quoting or keeping track of our workflow so…

I didn't know that degree existed until I found a coworker with it. He switched careers because being a color-blind graphics designer was difficult. He had to constantly use a color picker to read out the RGB values.

We got him doing assembly code. He was lots better at that.

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

#270

Post by nitrogen »

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…

companies won't ridicule or blackball you for applying.

I have had an experience to the contrary. Of course, it's a good sign you don't want to work for such a company anyway.

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