Given that this self-taught dev was given an interview, would I be better off applying without listing my CS degree and just highlight professional experience, GitHib, etc and say I am "self-taught"?
Maybe they have a quota of new undergrad from a specific school per year (If they assume that every school they go to has at least X% of candidates) or an overall quota.
"no longer hiring fresh undergraduates for the Software Engineer position" might only be for your school for this year.
Also most companies would consider "fresh undergraduates" people graduating soon or who graduated less than 12 months ago so you still have time.
In general you don't want to spam a company for the same position, it's good to wait for 8-12 months before re-applying, so if your desired position usually accept fresh new-grad, you might want to retry before [your graduation date + 12 months] but after at least ~8 months.
> Given that this self-taught dev was given an interview
He isn't a fresh undegraduate, check out his linkedin, he seem to have around 2 years of Dev experience, and 3 of freelance. So he probably didn't fall in the "new grad" track.
Good eye. Makes a lot more sense.
> What position was this for? Maybe they have a quota ...
The generalist full-time Software Engineer position. That seems likely, though the wording in the rejection email made it seem like they were permanently winding down recruitment of undergrads for that position.
Everything worked out, as I landed a solid SWE gig at a great company. It just threw me for a loop to think that having a recent graduation date would hurt my application when compared to a non-CS "self-taught" candidate. Thanks for the reply, the info you cited clarifies the situation completely.
Maybe you just didn't make the cut?
Also possible that I was referred to a particular position which doesn't consider new grads. Do you happen to know if your acquaintances get hired on as fulltime SWE or something different(SRE, residency, etc)?