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US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

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Re: US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

#101

Post by maldev »

aliasxneo wrote: post #26
dc-programmer wrote: post #2

“Software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers typically need a bachelor’s degree in computer and information technology or a related field. Some employers prefer to hire developers who have a master’s degree.“ Interesting that the government continues to peddle credentialism for software developers. I personally think a CS degree is still a strong positive signal but it’s hardly a requirement anymore

I would say it's a soft requirement in most cases. One must be prepared for an extra uphill battle trying to secure a job without one. As someone who just broke into the industry this month (with no degree), my biggest assets were an existing portfolio of work and leveraging my ten years of professional experience working on complex/critical problems in various fields. I don't think this is strictly related to softwa…

I feel like it also depends on the position. I have a buddy with a philosophy degree from a Ivy League, who wants to "Learn to code". Even with experience I see him getting into a high technical systems programming job very low without a degree. And I see his only future after his code bootcamp as a javascript code monkey, which is becoming more and more saturated, with lower pay and more work.

I tell him alot since I want to be honest, I don't know how much longer extremely basic, low end website/api development will stick around. With Github Copilot currently I can see it almost replaced, but with what we get into in the future, I don't think we'll need people who at best call an api and display the data on a website with no other thought or architecture.

Re: US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

#102

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #11
rr888 wrote: post #4

25% growth in the next ten years? Isn't that a slowdown in growth? I seem to remember the Uncle Bob video where # of devs is doubling every 5 years or so. OTOH I feel we're at peak now, the investment money is drying up and management will force efficiencies going forward.

> I feel we're at peak now, the investment money is drying up… This is a naive and pessimistic view. The software industry is much bigger than the VC bubble. See patio11s law for more details.

I'm always surprised by how few developers ever seem to look outside their own domain. Software is everywhere. When I got bored, I used to google "software for X," trying to come up with the weirdest application for software and it never failed to generate a few hits of some company, somewhere selling software for that particular use case.

Re: US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

#103

Post by Apofis »

dc-programmer wrote: post #2

“Software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers typically need a bachelor’s degree in computer and information technology or a related field. Some employers prefer to hire developers who have a master’s degree.“ Interesting that the government continues to peddle credentialism for software developers. I personally think a CS degree is still a strong positive signal but it’s hardly a requirement anymore

Capital One is the only company I've ran across so far that wouldn't take on a developer with equivalent experience, or maybe the recruiter was badly misinformed.

Re: US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

#104

Post by lowercased »

lofatdairy wrote: post #21
dc-programmer wrote: post #2

“Software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers typically need a bachelor’s degree in computer and information technology or a related field. Some employers prefer to hire developers who have a master’s degree.“ Interesting that the government continues to peddle credentialism for software developers. I personally think a CS degree is still a strong positive signal but it’s hardly a requirement anymore

I think there was a comment on HN once to the effect of "Imagine you had 2 candidates, same work experience, both at a fairly prestigious company, one with a degree, one without, which do you hire? Personally, I think the fact that the non-degree holding one is more likely to be the better hire, just because of how much harder they had to work to get into that position". Not saying that not having a degree is somehow…

It seemed reversed to me - I was noticing more bootcamps and courses and tutorials for that node/express/react before seeing the degree of uptake we see today. Not saying it wasn't used before, but it might not be as much cause-effect as you're inclining.

Re: US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

#105

Post by kube-system »

randomdata wrote: post #93
kube-system wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That statement is 100% accurate. One does typically need a related bachelors to be considered for a typical software job. There are absolutely places with more progressive hiring practices, but this is not the norm. If you apply to XYZ Corp in any random city or town, they will have “bachelors in computer science or related degree” in the requirements section of the job posting.

> If you apply to XYZ Corp in any random city or town, they will have “bachelors in computer science or related degree” in the requirements section of the job posting. Of course, the purpose of a job advertisement is to compel workers to apply. Companies don't write "bachelors degree" because they expect you to have a bachelors degree, they make note it because if you have a bachelors degree it will pique your intere…

Parts of job posting are marketing, especially the unquantifiable parts.

Other parts are real indicators of what they’ll filter incoming applications by. Education and experience are absolutely quantifiable indicators that recruiters or HR will often filter by before that resume lands on the desk of a hiring manager.

Re: US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

#106

Post by lowercased »

maldev wrote: post #101
aliasxneo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it's a soft requirement in most cases. One must be prepared for an extra uphill battle trying to secure a job without one. As someone who just broke into the industry this month (with no degree), my biggest assets were an existing portfolio of work and leveraging my ten years of professional experience working on complex/critical problems in various fields. I don't think this is strictly related to softwa…

I feel like it also depends on the position. I have a buddy with a philosophy degree from a Ivy League, who wants to "Learn to code". Even with experience I see him getting into a high technical systems programming job very low without a degree. And I see his only future after his code bootcamp as a javascript code monkey, which is becoming more and more saturated, with lower pay and more work. I tell him alot since…

Philosophy degree-holder here. Was programming on home computers for ~8 years before university. Got a philosophy degree, then got a job in tech. Was doing 'web' stuff in early 96, and got 'full time web dev' job in early 98. Few had degrees in anything (IIRC a couple of older compsci folks) but ... there were no bootcamps or degrees or classes for Perl, ASP, or Java. Everyone just dug in. It was a simpler time though. blink tags, image maps, no CSS, no JS at first, then very primitive JS for years...

I guess I've never seen a position which only did API calls from JS and formatted data. That's always been wrapped up with develop/implement parts of the API as well. Maybe I've not worked in enough "enterprise" shops?

Re: US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

#107

Post by porknubbins »

maldev wrote: post #101
aliasxneo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it's a soft requirement in most cases. One must be prepared for an extra uphill battle trying to secure a job without one. As someone who just broke into the industry this month (with no degree), my biggest assets were an existing portfolio of work and leveraging my ten years of professional experience working on complex/critical problems in various fields. I don't think this is strictly related to softwa…

I feel like it also depends on the position. I have a buddy with a philosophy degree from a Ivy League, who wants to "Learn to code". Even with experience I see him getting into a high technical systems programming job very low without a degree. And I see his only future after his code bootcamp as a javascript code monkey, which is becoming more and more saturated, with lower pay and more work. I tell him alot since…

I don’t know, I work for a lot of companies where I see a huge need for good webdev skills combined with a high enough general intelligence (ie an ivy league philosophy major) to understand the domain well enough to know what needs to be coded.

Re: US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

#108

Post by trinovantes »

lofatdairy wrote: post #21
dc-programmer wrote: post #2

“Software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers typically need a bachelor’s degree in computer and information technology or a related field. Some employers prefer to hire developers who have a master’s degree.“ Interesting that the government continues to peddle credentialism for software developers. I personally think a CS degree is still a strong positive signal but it’s hardly a requirement anymore

I think there was a comment on HN once to the effect of "Imagine you had 2 candidates, same work experience, both at a fairly prestigious company, one with a degree, one without, which do you hire? Personally, I think the fact that the non-degree holding one is more likely to be the better hire, just because of how much harder they had to work to get into that position". Not saying that not having a degree is somehow…

However people are still people and I'd bet most people would still hire the degree holder to protect themselves. If the degree-holder was a dud, they can at least say they did "due diligence". It's like the old saying "nobody gets fired for buying IBM".

Re: US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

#109

Post by anongraddebt »

maldev wrote: post #101
aliasxneo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it's a soft requirement in most cases. One must be prepared for an extra uphill battle trying to secure a job without one. As someone who just broke into the industry this month (with no degree), my biggest assets were an existing portfolio of work and leveraging my ten years of professional experience working on complex/critical problems in various fields. I don't think this is strictly related to softwa…

I feel like it also depends on the position. I have a buddy with a philosophy degree from a Ivy League, who wants to "Learn to code". Even with experience I see him getting into a high technical systems programming job very low without a degree. And I see his only future after his code bootcamp as a javascript code monkey, which is becoming more and more saturated, with lower pay and more work. I tell him alot since…

I’m self-taught, with bachelors and grad degrees in non-STEM. Broke into the industry a little over two years ago. I currently have interviews with FAANG and FAANG-tier for SDE roles. In fact, I have a final round this week.

You can teach yourself pretty much all of a CS curriculum by buying a stack of textbooks listed on CS syllabi, and then going to town. Naturally, you’ll build projects while doing this.

Do some LC and prep for interviews.

You don’t need to get a CS degree to get SDE interviews. It helps, but isn’t necessary. And to pass technical rounds, you don’t even need to have read most of that stack of CS textbooks. You need some bits and pieces from that stack of books, and be quick on your feet with LC medium.

If your friend is good at standardized tests, then LC is right up their alley.

Re: US Job Outlook for Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers

#110

Post by KronisLV »

dc-programmer wrote: post #2

“Software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers typically need a bachelor’s degree in computer and information technology or a related field. Some employers prefer to hire developers who have a master’s degree.“ Interesting that the government continues to peddle credentialism for software developers. I personally think a CS degree is still a strong positive signal but it’s hardly a requirement anymore

> I personally think a CS degree is still a strong positive signal but it’s hardly a requirement anymore.

I have a Master's degree and would say that it was overall a useful experience, given that many of the aspects of software engineering/development that I explored in certain courses I'd have glanced over entirely in a more self taught approach - something like risk analysis and business continuity plans (and how those might affect system design and development), deeper exploration of testing and in-database processing (though also the limitations of testing/debugging DB-side logic became more apparent), model driven development and codegen, as well as a dive into the system analysis aspects and something like 4EM and BPMN (the latter of which actually feels more useful). Note: some of this was probably in my Bachelor's as well.

For most positions, however, I'd suggest that such a degree probably isn't necessary, even though some bootcamps might also be lacking (they'll teach you how to get things up and running, but not necessarily the implications of the implementation, e.g. ORM vs no ORM, aspects of distributed systems and fallible networks, backpressure etc.). Nothing that working as a part of a team on an existing project couldn't fix, though.

> Interesting that the government continues to peddle credentialism for software developers.

At the time, however, I'm studying up for Java certification, which I haven't needed up until now, but there are some governmental projects where they are mandated and you don't get a choice. If you're working for a SaaS company or purely work in private sector projects (outside of consulting), credentialism probably won't be as common, but in other circumstances you'll have to deal with a bit more red tape.

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