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Comment by brogrammernot | Hacker News Reader

I think you hit the nail on the head. There isn't really a need for a lot of companies to hire a CS degree.

Wordpress management? You can hire a Jr PHP developer and be fine. They don't teach PHP in school.

Need someone to manage your non e-commerce website? Web Developer. Again, not something they seem to teach CS majors but the title could say Web Developer or Front End Engineer

When I took a glance at the job market, most jobs didn't really need anyone who studied Boolean algebra, discrete math, how digital and analog interfaces work, big O notation etc etc

With the advent of companies like Weebly, Shopify and others you don't need to have an engineer with backend experience(which most CS teach) so you end up hiring a "developer" but the same title exists at Google and they want people who understand computer science.

So we're left with this fractured market where it's not clear from job posting to job posting what is actually wanted.

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What I found even worse in the job market is that the job requirements say CS Degree but the job description doesn't match.

I've ended up going to University to get a degree because I was being screened out of job applications before my experience counted for anything.

Mind if I ask where you went and whether you found it valuable (in terms of both knowledge gained and screens passed)?

I'm doing a degree in Supply Chain Management focusing on Computational Logistics.

I really didn't want to sit through a CS degree either learning stuff I know already or stuff I know won't be much use in industry.

So I chose a tangential discipline and am enjoying it thoroughly, being a bridge between Operations and IT provides real value to an organisation.

Blended professionals FTW, (almost) every time.

(not speaking to parent poster, but instead generally) Were you a foolish humanities student when you got your bachelors? Worse, did you take it seriously and actually learn something? Great! Now study a technical discipline and blend away. IT is increasing the depth breadth and profitability of these blends daily.

> Were you a foolish humanities student when you got your bachelors?

Yes :\

> Worse, did you take it seriously and actually learn something?

Yes :(

> Great! Now study a technical discipline and blend away.

This is a much better perspective than my usual one. Thanks!

Make sure you pile on the private software projects: without the CS degree, they're gonna want either experience or some proof you can code.

Ironically, plenty of tech departments hire guys who are skilled first rather than having some intrinsic interest in the area they program for. Believe me, some old school companies will hire a CS grad who couldn't spell supply chain over you in a heart beat.

Maybe it's different outside the bay area, but it almost never comes up in interviews much about my passion/prior work experience for _____ they build. Reminds me of a guy who went to work for Tesla expecting a bunch of people pumped to expand green energy only to find guys who couldn't care less: they were hired on technical acumen first, enthusiasm for environmentalism last.

It's more about model building than out & out coding. Papers are algebra and describe clever heuristics. The main issue seems to be marrying the theory and practice.

I am building direct industry experience rather than filling GitHub.

The backend of sites like weebly or Shopify are kinda limited....and peeps who earn a ton of money on those sites have all sorts of ideas on how they could make more(usually need some extended back end work or at least buying a pricey add-on).

Let's seperate tech companies with an e-commerce side and straight up traditional vendors leveraging the internet to increase sales. Backend engineers are critical in the former and very useful mainly to those who have specific needs in ecommerce(many vendors don't even have a clue where to even start). Usually they just outsource the whole project to a third party web dev/design firm or some I.T. guy in-house.

It's worth noting, many older business folks are truly clueless about ecommerce....I tell every client to start with ebay or amazon or etsy but they insist a pot of gold awaits when their website goes live. THey'll need some type of web related worker(design, developer, etc.).

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