Genuine question: why are you focused on just those five companies?
Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
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Re: Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
#32I worked at a FAANG company. My co-worker hadn't graduated High School. I recommend applying and grinding leetcode if you aim for a SWE role. Two years SWE experience is enough for them to give you an interview with a cold application through their job board in my experience.
I remember watching that Freakonomics documentary on Netflix a decade ago. One of the authors mentions "not getting a HS degree is an economic death sentence". I guess times have changed.
It's still generally true though, isn't it?
Football (soccer) players sometimes don't have their high school degrees, but they have training in a high paying profession.
Same goes with people who can code.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
#33As someone who decided to get BSc degree in Math & Stats after 5 years in industry this thread makes me questioning my decision.
Everyone says you don't need degree, but in my experience if you want to do advanced stuff (machine learning, cryptography, algorithms) you probably need one, unless you are extremely talented and can pick up everything on your own.
You probably don't need degree if you want to work as SWE in mid-tier companies, once you have experience there are no problems with finding jobs.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
#34I can't say I know much about it, but it seems to me the good thing about the FAANG companies is that anyone can give it a go with the Leetcode gauntlet.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
#35There a lot of talk about just doing leetcode and getting into a FAANG. I have done many interviews (as interviewer) at FAANGs and leetcode is good for an intern or straight out of college gig. For more senior roles, yes, we expect you to demonstrate that you can program by writing code, but the yes/no decision will be based on your experience and your ability to describe it in detail and have insights about it.
On the other side of the leetcode discussion, I’ve worked at a company that managed to hire someone with zero ability to program based on their ability to bullshit. I personally loathe doing leetcode myself, but I won’t hire someone who can’t take a stab at it, and I don’t want to work somewhere where my colleagues might be bullshit artists.
Now this doesn’t apply so much at startups, because founders generally don’t tolerate hiring decisions that would kill their company. So for example our first engineer at one place had a six hour interview where they broke down this game engine that they themselves had written. So, “it depends”.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
#36I don’t have a CS degree either and I’m at a FAANG. If you’ve got a resume with “senior developer” on it, no good employer will care.
Not a dig at OP but putting "senior developer" on your resume after only 2 years of experience really sets expectations.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
#37As someone who decided to get BSc degree in Math & Stats after 5 years in industry this thread makes me questioning my decision. Everyone says you don't need degree, but in my experience if you want to do advanced stuff (machine learning, cryptography, algorithms) you probably need one, unless you are extremely talented and can pick up everything on your own. You probably don't need degree if you want to work as SWE…
> unless you are extremely talented and can pick up everything on your own
The question is more whether anyone will look at your CV if you didn't do these advanced topics at uni. Most things people can and do learn on their own. If you look at how uni works, what did you do? You went there and found out what you needed to learn, and then spent a bunch of time studying it on your own. There was never enough time in a class to learn things just by watching.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
#38For certification, I don't think it's important for FAANG - a referral or other way of getting a recruiter to get you to an interview, and passing the interview, is all that really matters.
The only part of a degree course that really matters in an interview context is algorithm analysis. You need to understand how the cost, in space and time, of code you write scales with the size of inputs.
Degrees and certificates from reputable organizations may be important for getting a H-1B visa though, should you want to emigrate in the future.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
#39I remember a time when online certificates was an anti signal. I think it still is in many startups. (Most people just hire on skill.)
I don't remember the time that online certificates from MIT, Berkeley, etc would have been anti signals. https://www.edx.org/learn/computer-programming/massachusetts...
Nobody will fault you for learning programming through an online course. They will, however, mark you down for listing that on your resume as your sole programming experience.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a SWE without a CS degree. Will online certs help me get into FAANG?
#40If you have 2 years of SWE experience, your lack of degree is not likely to be a significant barrier, assuming you can pass the interview. If you had none it might have been since it can be difficult to get past the resume screen without one. In my experience online certifications are basically useless. Feel free to take classes you like to learn things you want to learn, but listing them will probably not help.