Maybe not so much in a perfect world, but in reality it is often the case that some kind of filtering is needed. I work at a place that's fairly competitive to get into -- some positions get upwards of 20-30K applications for one position. Most of the engineering team spends enough time interviewing as is, so often it is, unfortunately, the case that stuff like your degree and what school you went to does materially (negatively) impact your chances. At some point, one must find a way to cut down these numbers. Cannot speak for the average case, though.
Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
91–100 of 246 posts
Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I definitely don't have 20 years of experience. I did learn some HTML when I was 14 and made a geocities page though. It had animated GIFs and everything. I even made some stuff with Macromedia Flash ;).
I see. I assumed. It's hard to give generic advice since everyone's situation is unique. One thing is you can try just taking a few courses. You could consider studying something completely different. Or you can use the vast resources online to learn something new (e.g. Coursera?) and see what you think. AI could be changing a lot of what we do as well. I wouldn't spend time and money on something that's iffy. A real…
I feel like I should clarify. I am currently working part time on a contract basis for 3 different companies. I'm also running a small SaaS.
I'm at the point where if there is a tool or technology I need to learn to solve a specific problem, I can do that in a reasonable time amount of time.
My post was to see if getting a degree is worth it in an age where they are becoming more important to get past the recruiter than they were 5+ years ago.
Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
#93I think getting a degree ensures your answers are similar to what your interviewer is trained on. Being untraditional in your education means you have to figure out how to package and sell your ideas.
Getting a degree ensures its harder to reject you. Instead of finding an offer after 500 interviews, now you may have to do 400. For me, getting a master's degree was more useful than getting a bachelor's.
since you are in bay area, I can grab coffee if that'd be useful for you.
Is contributing to open source an option for you instead?
Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
#94There's a story that goes: A man was tasked with hiring an employee. He got hundreds of resumes. His friend looks at the stack and asks him "how are you going to decide among all those?" The man grabs half the stack, throws it in the garbage and says "Simple, I don't hire unlucky people". Degrees matter when employers don't have the time and/or ability to make a reasonable decision for every candidate. They need ways…
WGU course content is a complete joke- I would look negatively on that if I saw it
Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear you. Even with the degree, you have to know your stuff. I just feel like my resume always ends up at the bottom of the pile.
Try to find someone who can give you a warm intro. Don't reach out to HR first.
totally. I avoid HR types whenever possible.
Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
#96There's a story that goes: A man was tasked with hiring an employee. He got hundreds of resumes. His friend looks at the stack and asks him "how are you going to decide among all those?" The man grabs half the stack, throws it in the garbage and says "Simple, I don't hire unlucky people". Degrees matter when employers don't have the time and/or ability to make a reasonable decision for every candidate. They need ways…
WGU course content is a complete joke- I would look negatively on that if I saw it
Well I hope you're not in charge of hiring people.
Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
#97I think getting a degree ensures your answers are similar to what your interviewer is trained on. Being untraditional in your education means you have to figure out how to package and sell your ideas. Getting a degree ensures its harder to reject you. Instead of finding an offer after 500 interviews, now you may have to do 400. For me, getting a master's degree was more useful than getting a bachelor's. since you are…
> Instead of finding an offer after 500 interviews, now you may have to do 400.
Holy cow, is that really how many interviews it takes to get hired these days?
It’s been about 10 years since I changed jobs, and then it took less than maybe 10 interviews.
> For me, getting a master's degree was more useful than getting a bachelor's.
I’m not sure this is the norm. I know very few people that I’ve worked with or have interviewed that have masters degrees. I’ve worked with + interviewed maybe close to 300 SWEs, and probably fewer than 5%, if that, have/had masters degrees.
Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
#98I think getting a degree ensures your answers are similar to what your interviewer is trained on. Being untraditional in your education means you have to figure out how to package and sell your ideas. Getting a degree ensures its harder to reject you. Instead of finding an offer after 500 interviews, now you may have to do 400. For me, getting a master's degree was more useful than getting a bachelor's. since you are…
I'd love an opportunity to contribute to open source. There have been some small contributions I've made to open source libraries that needed a fix, but nothing major. Come to think of it, I submitted a pull request to Tauri and should probably check if it's approved or not.
I'm always down for networking in person. I don't know how DMing works on here, but my Github username is the same as my handle on here.
Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
#99I think getting a degree ensures your answers are similar to what your interviewer is trained on. Being untraditional in your education means you have to figure out how to package and sell your ideas. Getting a degree ensures its harder to reject you. Instead of finding an offer after 500 interviews, now you may have to do 400. For me, getting a master's degree was more useful than getting a bachelor's. since you are…
> Instead of finding an offer after 500 interviews, now you may have to do 400. Holy cow, is that really how many interviews it takes to get hired these days? It’s been about 10 years since I changed jobs, and then it took less than maybe 10 interviews. > For me, getting a master's degree was more useful than getting a bachelor's. I’m not sure this is the norm. I know very few people that I’ve worked with or have int…
I got an interview with the worst resume ever when covid hiring was ramping up. It ended up not working out. When the layoffs started shortly after, I submitted hundreds and got nothing.
Re: Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
#100As someone who has interviewed candidates for a FANG company in the distant past I can't say that degrees matter, but I can say that people I interviewed with degrees generally did better. There's a hidden bias in that this is only people who got through recruiters and recruiters are their own filter. Strong referrals usually guaranteed a phone screens. I think previous experience at a major competitor in the same ti…
> Many of the best co-workers that I remember had physics degrees. In fact, it was so pronounced I personally consider a physics degree to be a top tier signal of programming ability, but that's my own personal prejudice. Hah, I also noticed that. For some reason, ex-army programmers really excel in their junior years (or sometimes even just months), too. Do you think it's the attitude towards problem-solving?
I really don't know. This is spitballing, but I think maybe physicists are clever analysts while CS people are prone to "clever" implementations.
I remember thinking "oh, you understand, like actually understand" to them in particular, so maybe it's that they spend more time understanding before doing.