Immigration is the biggest reason for citizens of non-wealthy/previously-colonised countries to get a degree.
Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
291–300 of 336 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Being self-taught is fun, but without credentials you end up having to work at companies that are willing to take chances, and as a result of that these companies have a propensity towards going bankrupt This is one of the notable difference between my pre- and post-degree careers: a degree opened the door to jobs with stable Megacorps. I still get the opportunity to work on cool, cutting-edge stuff, while also hav…
I mean, I work for one of the biggest tech megacorps now (not going to say which one but I can guarantee you've heard of it), so it's definitely possible to get the stable job eventually as a dropout. That said, it was a rocky and scary road to get to this point; if you get your degree you can often start out immediately with some stability. I never took CS, as I was a math major before dropping out. Honestly, math i…
> I don't think I've heard of a single success story of people trying to work full time (which I would need to do to pay my mortgage and support my wife) and doing a PhD
I worked full time during the second half of my PhD, paid a mortgage, supported a wife, and had a daughter.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#293Many a time, I’ve hired software engineers without degrees over software engineers with Ivy League or top-10 school CS degrees, and I haven’t regretted it even once.
Nowadays, I don’t even put education “requirements” in job descriptions, and even if you mention your school during an interview, I don’t really care for it, to be quite honest. At the end of the day, our real technical/programming interview (no whiteboard nonsense) will tell me the things that I need to know about your technical abilities.
I remember interviewing one candidate with a CS degree from RIT, and I honestly spent a good portion of the interview genuinely feeling like this poor individual just flushed the tuition $ down the toilet, because he was just failing the interview miserably! Funny thing is, he knew a lot of theory, but when it came time to produce, it didn’t work out too well for him. (He could use whatever set-up that he preferred, Google usage was obviously allowed, he was given space to work without disruption at various points, and most importantly, the problem was a legitimate problem that we had to solve at the company.)
All of this to say: Just apply! If you have the skills and a company doesn’t give you a chance because of a stupid degree requirement, they aren’t a good fit for you and don’t deserve you! Cross them off of your list, move on, and apply to another company.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#294I 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…
I'm on the opposite side.
If anyone asks me if they should go to school, do a bootcamp or learn by yourself I always tell them that "don't take my word for it but I'd personally never go to school to learn and get job as a programmer if that's what you want". Seeing as I've "made it" so to speak coming from a another field, without any kind of degree whatsoever, with no prior work experience in IT, I personally don't really see the value of going to school unless you really want that experience or if you're the type of person who needs a structured way of learning.
My career path is also strange to most people since I started out in sales and marketing, then went into finance as a glorified salesman and eventually got fed up with sales hussle and learned web development on the side. So from that I decided to learn how to code and web development to actually landing a job as a web developer took roughly two years.
I believe that with my soft skills from sales and finance and a decent portfolio made the decision to hire my over let's say someone straight out of college with no other credentials a no brainer.
Sure, I run into those "blind spots" from time to time but so far everyone I've ever talked to who has been in tech and specifically in development positions says the same thing, they all have the imposter syndrome and it won't go away.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#295Very few "real" tech companies require degrees now, certainly none of the sensible ones do. Looking at the front page of job listings on this board, you see Dropbox, Google, Uber, Oracle, Amazon, Visa, Atlassian, and Bank of America all with serious tech jobs (some of them quite senior) with no education requirement.
But what you will need is the knowledge that you would have otherwise gotten with a CS degree. If you don't know a priority queue from a linked list, or you can't name an example of an O(nlog(n)) algorithm, then you're going to struggle in way more than just the interview; this crap comes up in real life more often than might be obvious.
Luckily there are more than enough free places to learn this stuff. It's far less structured than a college, and requires an absurd amount of discipline to do on your own time, but nothing is missing. Beyond the ad-hoc content, several top-tier universities put their CS courseware online for free, and you can totally get the same CS education that others pay $200K for. You don't get the paper that says you did it, but you don't really need it.
Getting through the resume barrier is a bit more tricky, but here's a tech recruiting open secret: Stack Overflow. It's gold for recruiters, and extremely heavily used. They find people who consistently post strong answers on topics relevant to the company they're recruiting for and directly recruit them to interview. Skip the job listings. If you have a strong S.O. profile and provide enough information for recruiters to track down who you are, you'll get no end of attention.
That and GitHub. Write some code that demonstrates good design and put it up. When I was doing talent vetting for small firms, a person's Github page was a far more valuable signal than their "qualifications".
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#296Not entirely on-topic, but the cover image on your homepage is scary — it looks like the exact type of workplace I wouldn't want anyone to end up, degree or not. Noisy open office where people are like cattle, essentially the same as cubicle era, except no cubicles.
It looks like a sweatshop.
Bingo. Environments like that seem to be the new “wave” now. I can’t stand them! Maybe it’s just me but I don’t understand how anyone can get any work done in those settings.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone without a CS this is reassuring.
I really recommend trying to learn just the basics about big-O, because it is really the single most important thing that a CS degree teaches you.
Yeah, I agree.
You can learn it in like 30 minutes, and understanding the concept behind it (not just the notation) is the core of understanding why some algorithms work better than others.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#298Earlier 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.
You can pick that up pretty easily and most do when they start interviewing for BigCorp jobs. Feel like I had to comment since I'm self taught and I just read "Java Concurrency in Practice". :D
Java Concurrency in practice doesn't tell you that at the kernel level what is the difference between a process and a thread.
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, I work for one of the biggest tech megacorps now (not going to say which one but I can guarantee you've heard of it), so it's definitely possible to get the stable job eventually as a dropout. That said, it was a rocky and scary road to get to this point; if you get your degree you can often start out immediately with some stability. I never took CS, as I was a math major before dropping out. Honestly, math i…
> I don't think I've heard of a single success story of people trying to work full time (which I would need to do to pay my mortgage and support my wife) and doing a PhD I worked full time during the second half of my PhD, paid a mortgage, supported a wife, and had a daughter.
I'm confused about what kind of wife support are we talking about? Is it not the default and expected behaviour, even in the US, for wives to be self-sufficient and perfectly capable of supporting themselves? Is it very different from European Common practice where for most educated employees and freelancers disability is covered by disability insurance and pregnancy + aftermath is covered by paid maternity leave until children are in child care?
Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think I've heard of a single success story of people trying to work full time (which I would need to do to pay my mortgage and support my wife) and doing a PhD I worked full time during the second half of my PhD, paid a mortgage, supported a wife, and had a daughter.
I'm confused about what kind of wife support are we talking about? Is it not the default and expected behaviour, even in the US, for wives to be self-sufficient and perfectly capable of supporting themselves? Is it very different from European Common practice where for most educated employees and freelancers disability is covered by disability insurance and pregnancy + aftermath is covered by paid maternity leave unt…
> Is it not the default and expected behaviour, even in the US, for wives to be self-sufficient and perfectly capable of supporting themselves?
If your wife doesn’t have a paid job and so doesn’t have any income, in order to look after the children, then no.