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Comment by user5994461 | Hacker News Reader

>>> I have been working productively as a systems software developer for 32 years. I do not have a degree; I'm a high-school dropout.

It's easy to say coming from a generation where higher education was not the norm.

A 20 year old saying he dropped out of high school will not be received well in any job interview. 98% of the population can do better than that.

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I barely graduated high school in 2002 and there was definitely an emphasis on higher education at that time. My family didn't have the money to pay for college and I knew I wouldn't do well in college, I had a hard time learning from teachers, and didn't even take my SATs. I'd messed around with HTML and copying/pasting JS snippets but was not an early coder by any means.

I got a job doing tech support for a web hosting company at 19 (requirements for getting hired included listing 3 FTP clients, listing 3 e-mail clients, what is whois, and things you could teach to anyone). I worked with many high school dropouts as well.

After getting that tech support job, learning about open source (LAMP stack) changed my life. I didn't have much money but I was able to self study on linux, apache, mysql, php/perl/python with minimal equipment. Over the years open source has provided and avenue that allowed me to better myself to the point I've worked as an SRE for Google/YouTube, a Staff SRE for Dropbox, and starting soon as a Staff SWE at Discord. Open source has given me so many opportunities, made me a better person, and allowed me to provide for my family.

There are a lot of people like me in the industry who care about socioeconomic diversity. I will absolutely interview and hire dropouts if they are driven and capable.

It's great and I wish everyone to achieve the same career progression during their lifetime.

Now, let's keep in mind that we are approaching 2020. The high school dropouts are facing support guys, online MOOC students and boot camp graduates who are all searching for the same developer job with no experience. The competition is more intense than ever.

Also, your text implies that you work in the bay area. It's an order of magnitude easier to find a tech job there than in the rest of the world.

The first 8 years of my career was in South Florida progressing from tech support -> web hosting sales -> NOC -> Jr. Sys Admin -> Sys Admin -> Sr. Sys Admin. Only then did I make the move to the Bay Area to work for Google in 2010.

I don't think everyone should take the path I did. If you can afford it, college is a really good option and I would never discourage someone from going that path. But there are other paths, if you work hard, and have some luck.

I'm now in a position that interviews and helps make hiring decisions. I still know a lot of people from South Florida that have spread out all over the country. There are many of us who don't come from traditional backgrounds that have progressed into leadership roles where we impact hiring who do not require college.

Yes it is very competitive, yet so many companies are constantly turning people away, people with and without college degrees. I'm so happy that there are so many more resources today compared to what I had when I started. MOOCs are awesome and I use the to this day for continuing education. I've been part of apprenticeship programs to train bootcamp graduates as SREs. And I've helped mentor people internally transferring from support into SRE.

College is definitely the most typical paths but there are still paths for humble people willing to start that the bottom and work hard. College just isn't an option for everyone unfortunately.

>>> College is definitely the most typical paths but there are still paths for humble people willing to start that the bottom and work hard. College just isn't an option for everyone unfortunately.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. I will just make a cultural parenthesis on that last sentence.

In the USA, degrees are expensive, the only reason they are not for everyone. It limits the supply of degrees and make them more valuable.

In other parts of the world, mostly thinking of western Europe here, higher education is free or affordable. Degrees are much more common and of higher level, while the job market is pretty bad. It's really shooting oneself in the foot not to get one.

What measure are you using for "much more common"? According to the OECD data, the US is 7th for percent of population 16-64 with a post-secondary degree, and Luxembourg is the only western European country ahead of the US (the others are Canada, Russia, Israel, Japan, and South Korea).

If you limit it to 25-34 year olds with at least a 4 year degree, the US falls to be in the middle of the pack compared to western Europe- behind Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and the UK, but ahead of Norway, France, Spain, and Germany.

The bachelor is usually 3 years in Europe and not every country is following the bachelor/master/phd system.

So you are saying that the amount of bachelor+ in USA is on par with the amount of master+ in Europe. That's my point, Europeans have higher education because it's free.

I'm a dropout, myself. When I was growing up, higher education for software engineering _was_ expected in my area, and the norm. It was not as widespread a domain as it is today.

So, know what I did in my interviews? I focused on what I _had_ done. Projects I'd driven to completion on my own merit. I put my heart into my interviews and worked to let my passion and depth show through.

The first place I got a foothold, I was nearly passed over, my resume was so bad. I know, because my boss told me, years later how they almost threw it out. But my interview got me in. Barely. Doesn't matter, it was enough. I pushed my way up from there.

It's not easy to say I'm a dropout. Nor has it been easy to work my way up to where I am. But, who cares? I'm not _owed_ a software development job. I _earn_ a job, by being willing to put in the work, and by not making excuses for myself, and showing I can do it.

I've never been asked about any education in developer interviews, only experience.

Obviously YMMV, but after a couple years of experience, employers simply stop caring about education level.

There's a big element of selection bias: many companies that care deeply about hiring Stanford grads will pass on those who don't mention the school in their resumes. The companies that were willing to give you an interview obviously didn't immediately filter you out. In case there's any doubt, if you don't mention your educational background in your resume people will assume you don't have any college-level degree.

And there are also many of us put in situations of reviewing resumes and interviewing that don't have college experience who don't care what school you went to, or if you even did.

Going to college definitely makes things easier, and I don't advise people to take the path I did but there are paths other than college that still work well for this industry.

You're talking past the point. The original comment was:

> I've never been asked about any education in developer interviews, only experience.

> ... employers simply stop caring about education level.

The reason he was not asked about education is not necessarily because 'employers by and large don't care', but rather that 'employers that do care about education would've already filtered him out after seeing the resume'. The interviews from employers that do care about education would never materialize in the first place.

This is not a judgment about the role of education and pedigree, but rather pointing out that any effect would have likely played out in the resume stage.

Thanks for clarifying your point, I think that makes a lot of sense.

Thankfully for me I consider it a positive selection bias as I wouldn't want to work for a company/manager with such insular hiring criteria. Unfortunately it does make it harder for people just getting started in their career.

Since you mention it, people who have degrees and people who don't have degrees usually work in different companies. Any programmer is unlikely to experience both sides of the coin.

I find people with college experience are much more likely to be biased against people without than vice versa. But that is just my anecdotal experience. Google and Dropbox definitely had more people with degrees but a decent amount of people without. The hiring pipelines were more biased towards recruiting new grads out of good schools but we never turned down solid people with good experience.

I generally like to work with people, and at places, that value your contributions and experience rather than your credentials. I've been lucky enough to find that in every place I've worked. I can't say my experience has been one of only working with people without degrees. I've worked with amazing engineers with and without degrees and don't put much stock in the degree itself.

Well, it takes a degree or 5 years of relevant experience to enter the front door. Better have both.

I wouldn't call it a bias, companies have different expectations and needs. At big name, there are a hundred people applying every day, the bar is higher than no degree and/or little experience.

There is also the fact that the lack of education puts one at a disadvantage. For instance, I know of co workers who ask questions about complexity, compilers and graphs. It's common for candidates with no formal education to be completely oblivious to these.

I think it's a bias to assume the candidate won't understand those things or be suitable for the job based on lack of college alone. If you require people to understand complexity, compilers, and graphs to do the job effectively then test for those. I've encountered plenty of people with degrees who similarly didn't understand those concepts.

I definitely agree that lack of education is a disadvantage, it just means you have to start a different way. that could mean your first few years is coming in through a side door before you start getting relevant experience.

I think we both agree. The lack of degree will mean years of bad jobs and learning the hard way though practice, before it can be compensated. It's years of struggling on the job, instead of in the college.

.. making money rather than going into debt.

Plus there's the uncomfortable fact for academics that the state of the art is often pushed forward in industry, and written about in academy. So, sometimes, the job is really, really good. You're doing stuff now that kids will be learning about in 5 years...

Anecdotally the most dysfunctional place I've worked at was the most obsessed about educational credentials. I had highly relevant experience (including some that was open sourced on GitHub) and a degree in a related field but it wasn't the exact degree they were looking for. This struck me as really strange at the time, I found out later that the managing director was pressuring the people doing to hiring to only take people that were eligible for some particular government funding that had rather narrow conditions about credentials. The only reason I got hired was because the position had been open for a long time and they were starting to get a bit desperate. I shudder to think how many other skilled applicants didn't get that job in the months before I did.

The one time I was flown in to interview at a Silicon Valley shop was the only time that I was asked about education directly. I never attended high school.

Added: It was something like "education means a lot in this town, as much as people don't say it.".

We have plenty of data that shows that more degrees = more salary though.

https://www1.salary.com/Salaries-for-Web-Software-Developer-...

I'm 100% sure I am passed-over and filtered out because I don't have a CS degree. Nevermind my experience, I don't hit the checkbox. HR and IT managers have it in their mind they NEED it. However, I relate well to managers without a CS degree.

it be interesting to know how these phone interviews went. if you’re not even getting that far then you don’t want to work for a company that requires a degree. all a degree gets you is a base level of knowledge, you’re not gaining any useful experience. all that usually counts is if you can prove the knowledge without a degree. if you’re making it to the phone interviews then someone else must be more a more viable candidate than you

While that's true, it's also very inexpensive and very easy to get a GED or diploma equivalent. Intellectually if you're in the top ~75%, you can pass the GED with two weeks of casual studying at 20 years old. Even if one isn't particularly smart (or, say, has a weak education background), that can be easily compensated with several weeks of further studying to pass the GED. Every state has free programs for that.

If the person in question can't be bothered with something so inexpensive and easy to obtain, that meaningfully improves their job opportunities, there's a very fair argument to be made about that being a negative statement on their character and work ethic.

I'm on a hiring email list. There is no shortage of candidates that have jumped through all the hoops.

But preciously because basically all other candidates have graduated from high school and university, it would certainly help the dropout candidate stand out. If the candidate seemed bright and impressed me in other ways, I would say it was an edge as it is evidence of self-motivation and independent thinking. Of course the candidate would have to impress in other ways, for example, by having a substantial side project.

Just me perhaps, but I think it would be fun to work at a place where coworkers had a variety of educational backgrounds.

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