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Do Developers Need College Degrees?

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Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#171

Post by throwaway360181 »

smcl wrote: post #16

We are such a weird profession. What other industry is like "Hey, you can do my job. It's easy, here are lots of extremely detailed courses, documentation and guides on how"

It's due to our poor social skills. Flight attendants successfully lobbied the media and public to refer to them that way and not as stewardesses/stewards to improve the esteem of the profession, but we're so clueless that we don't object at all when journalists refer to us as coders, a term also used for medical clerical workers. Many here will even argue with you that it's not derogatory.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#172

Post by blablabla123 »

maus42 wrote: post #112
blablabla123 wrote: post #6

It's quite ironic, I have a degree in (Theoretical) Physics but it's is waaaay easier to find work on pure programming/Web projects and not something with numbers involved. And the latter is basically what I've been drilled for in my studies.

Yes. I also have major in a math-y subject, with extensive minor in CS, but all the jobs seem to be in building shiny webapps with the latest JS framework to sell people stuff or services. Data Science that is much talked about seems to mostly about glorified statistics for advertising. Chances of getting into the R&D department of BigCo's moonshot project (think about self-driving cars or something) are 1-in-million…

Exactly... Well at least working there are startups (at least in Berlin) which offers good working conditions, 40h or less and it's even possible to work then apart from the job...

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#173

Post by throwaway360181 »

choxi wrote: post #25
smcl wrote: post #16

We are such a weird profession. What other industry is like "Hey, you can do my job. It's easy, here are lots of extremely detailed courses, documentation and guides on how"

The idea of "open source" is also unique, I can't think of any other professions that have something analogous.

It's free labor, and companies love free labor. They claim to value candidates that produce open source, but somehow those who toil night after night on their passion projects never seem to see any job offers materializing as a result. At best they get recruiter spam (for which many here argue they should be grateful) inviting them to submit themselves to a whiteboarding carried out by an arrogant 20-something often fresh out of college and eager to assert their dominance.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#174

Post by Clubber »

greenhatman wrote: post #102
Clubber wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's because companies can't afford to be as picky right now . Once everyone "learns to code." and there is a glut, you'd better believe degrees become more valuable.

It still won't necessarily be degrees that separate the high performers from the low performers.

In reality, no, but most hiring managers won't know how to tell the difference, so they'll just default to whether or not the person has a degree. Hell, I can't tell the difference between a good an exceptional developer until I've worked with them for a month or two.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#175

Post by dozzie »

xiaoma wrote: post #135
n0w wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know what you don't know. This is what struck me about my formal education. While I also believe you can learn anything with enough material and dedication on your own, having the structure to ensure that you cover a set of subjects that constitute "foundational knowledge" can be invaluable.

What is it about formalized schooling specifically, that you believe makes it uniquely capable in teaching people what they don't know? When I was 18 I spent dozens of hours pouring through a university course catalogue, looking at the required courses for each degree, the prerequisite trees and the requirements for graduate degrees. It felt like a bird's-eye of the entire fractal structure of human inquiry. Later, I…

> What is it about formalized schooling specifically, that you believe makes it uniquely capable in teaching people what they don't know?

The teacher. Teaching/learning was always about the teacher, who knows what and in what order to teach.

You can have the same effects with the same effort as with formalized schooling if you have a private teacher, but how many self-taught developers had them? And then there's this small thing that in formalized schooling you're taught by several people, each for their own discipline. It's hard to come by a tutor that knows seven different fields and it's hard to come by seven tutors for each of the fields.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#176

Post by aries1980 »

Degree is a certification, not the knowledge.

For me it is useful to understand how a computer architecture, operating system, complexity theory, discrete math and calculus works. It doesn't give tangible knowledge for the everyday work, but transformed my view so I make different decisions that I would make without these skills.

But there are wast amount of quality materials that are accessible for free on these topics, so no, you don't need college degree (whatever it means; Bachelor?) but you need the skill to be a good software engineer / developer.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#177

Post by aries1980 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #109
markdown wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of this curriculum? https://github.com/open-source-society/computer-science I'd say that these days it's easier to gain all that "foundational knowledge" without attending a university.

You sure can gain all that knowledge, but my experience is that without a formal setting with defined expectations and specific goals, few people will actually have enough motivation to spend few hours every day for a few years doing this.

Yes, but if you are a dropout because of e.g. financial reasons, you don't have the degree but can have the knowledge.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#178

Post by brudgers »

pedalpete wrote: post #165
brudgers wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, there's a bit of pyramid to real-estate commissions and a lot of the recruitment is done by brokers. And even at the sales person level, the commission structure of most company's pays better when an agent sells the listing of another agent in the company so the more agents the better the odds of a better commission. But coming from the architecture profession, I don't discount encouraging others as a form…

I was strangely missing that piece. I was going to write in my comment that they are similar to pyramid scheme members, but thought that was a stretch. My step-father and brother are both brokers, so I know how they operate, but I somehow missed how agents get a piece of the action.

The agent to agent incentives are more akin to profit sharing derived from the increased broker revenue and reduced cost when one broker handles both sides of the transaction.

There are also potential informational advantages to having other agents more tightly coupled to an agents social graph, e.g. it is easier to obtain information about seller or buyer motivation and finances through a back channel.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#179

Post by greenhatman »

Clubber wrote: post #174
greenhatman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still won't necessarily be degrees that separate the high performers from the low performers.

In reality, no, but most hiring managers won't know how to tell the difference, so they'll just default to whether or not the person has a degree. Hell, I can't tell the difference between a good an exceptional developer until I've worked with them for a month or two.

Yea, I think people who think they can tell how effective a developer is before working with them for a month or two are mostly deluding themselves.

Re: Do Developers Need College Degrees?

#180

Post by Nadya »

dozzie wrote: post #175
xiaoma wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it about formalized schooling specifically, that you believe makes it uniquely capable in teaching people what they don't know? When I was 18 I spent dozens of hours pouring through a university course catalogue, looking at the required courses for each degree, the prerequisite trees and the requirements for graduate degrees. It felt like a bird's-eye of the entire fractal structure of human inquiry. Later, I…

> What is it about formalized schooling specifically, that you believe makes it uniquely capable in teaching people what they don't know? The teacher. Teaching/learning was always about the teacher, who knows what and in what order to teach. You can have the same effects with the same effort as with formalized schooling if you have a private teacher, but how many self-taught developers had them? And then there's this…

>who knows what and in what order to teach.

Plenty of courses have their general outline publicly available. Some colleges even share older lectures [0]. There are more-than-enough resources available for self-directed learning. Have questions? StackOverflow exists.

The #1 criticism against self-directed learning is how self-motivated the autodidact is. Most people suck at staying motivated to teach themselves. If they aren't 100% passionate about learning the subject and can keep their interest going, they will fail.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/MIT/playlists

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