Ask HN: Would You Hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduated? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would You Hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduated?

14 pointsItzcoatl14 comments

Seems like the recruiters aren't buying the idea at all, or maybe it is just my country. In my opinion the set of skills you gain though the projects are good enough to help you land a job. But... If you have previous industry experience maybe you don't want to move with an entry-level salary. Would you hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduate?

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Android Lead from Capital One SF here. I did and it was one of the best hires I ever made. He's the most enthusiastic and motivated person on my entire team, and is also amazing at UI and performance optimization. I've been begging them to send me more candidates ever since.

Here's the thing - there is NO one single credential which, in and of itself, would "make me hire you". In my mind, a hiring decision involves analyzing many "features" each of which is weighted differently, and contributes to the overall holistic view.

So, if I were hiring a candidate, would a Udacity Nanodegree weigh in their favor? Absolutely. Would I hire them if they had no other formal credentials at all? Absolutely, depending on all of the other factors. But as for that matter, you can ask me "would you hire somebody with no formal credentials at all" and the answer is still "absolutely, depending on all of the other factors".

I'm heading engineering at a startup that works on making the likes of Apache Cloudstack and Openstack work for telecom behemoths. I studied Russian at university. I've been writing code for the last 7.32 years. Personally, I don't care about the nanodegree, so long as the person demonstrates a natural affinity for writing code. That's all that matters to me.

I don't know where you're based right now, but I'd say most recruiters across the world wouldn't understand the concept of a Udacity nanodegree. Most of them don't understand that you really don't need a piece of paper stating that you can write code; recruiters simply don't understand that it doesn't matter whether the person is even a graduate or not, if s/he can write code.

I'd just tell the person to keep trying. I kept trying, and I got lucky with a media house that was okay with hiring me to write code without a relevant degree or experience. I'm sure I can't be the only one to get lucky.

So have a portfolio of work to prove competency?

That's one way to go about it. But sometimes, even a portfolio may not be possible. Maybe someone never really thought about putting their code up on Github. So there are some slightly tricky situations where you need to ascertain how someone writes code without a portfolio or a Github profile.

By "natural affinity", did you actually mean some level of "skill" or "competence", or did you literally mean "natural affinity"? (If so, how do you measure "natural affinity"-ness?)

Unfortunately, this is subjective. For me, it's a combination of both. The other day, I interviewed a lady who'd just started off with her career, working on creating Oracle forms. She hated it. In the meantime, she'd started dabbling with Python. She didn't know what pip was, or how to install Python packages, but it was pretty clear she had a knack for writing code. With a bit of a push, she'd do wonders. So I hired her.

TL;DR - "Natural affinity" should include some level of skill/competence, plus that glint in the other person's eye when you talk about writing efficient, beautiful code.

Interesting please follow up here in a few months with how she worked out. Not being snarky, I'm genuinely interested.

Haha, definitely! She's joining us on the 15th. I'll come back here and tell you what it's like in 2-3 months.

You'll find those who studied computing for example or those who hold higher degrees will be less sympathetic to unusual routes into the profession.

As a general rule, yes. Very true.

I'm myself from a background irrelevant to computing. My honest opinion is that for commercial coding, it doesn't matter. It's become fashion to call everything "engineering" but really programmers in the main are more akin to plumbers.

Within the population of programming jobs, some are actually pretty serious, actually require solid CS basis and a scientific approach. If I was hiring for that sort of job, Id look for higher degrees and experience. Similarly with data science type stuff. When it gets hard, you need the right background.

Where the lack of a degree hurts you is down the road, many companies will use you lacking the relevant degree as ammo to pay you less.

As someone involved in hiring, I'm trying to get an idea of what you know and what you can do, not where you got the knowledge.

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