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Comment by stingrae | Hacker News Reader

I totally disagree. I don't think a credential will help at all. I think you need projects that you can point to and explain. I also feel like it will be easier for you to get a role at a company that also would utilize your past experience. This way it is easier for them to justify someone more technically junior at on the software engineering side.

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I switched into software with a non-STEM background, been an engineer for about a year now and have heard / seen a lot of hiring conversations both during my process and since then at my company. Projects that you can point to and explain are valuable if and only if you can even get on someone's radar. The amount of "projects" that people are doing in their own time is becoming dizzying, and for employers to actually spend time to parse through what is a good project vs. what is a boilerplate tutorial project is not realistic.

In my case, my employer happened to hire people from my particular bootcamp, and had good experiences with those hires. Coming from that bootcamp is what got me in the door, no amount of "projects" would have done the trick. It's very hard to say "I'm legitimate, see all these projects I've done", because unless you can have a very clear timeline of "I did this project two years ago, and I've been diligently learning ever since as noted by this, this, and this project", it's just another person with another github with another project. Absolutely zero reason to bring that person in when you have other applicants with actual backgrounds + a project or two.

All this is to say, I don't think this advice applies nearly as much as people believe it does anymore.

At many employers you need to pass several screens before you can get into a position where someone is able to review your project that actually knows anything about how to evaluate it. Some places have systems that scrape text out of resumes and do keyword searches as filters. Your resume is often read for a first step by someone who doesn't understand the job at all. A clear credential of _any_ sort can often get you past these hurdles to a point where you can get to dealing with someone who can look at your project and determine if it has merit. But the best project in the world cannot help you if you don't even get to that point.

I think it depends largely on the market you're in. In a rural area (or something far enough away from a large city) and may not have a lot of supply of software developers: credentials likely don't come into play as much. Raw experience may suffice.

But more populated areas will mean larger talent pools. Unless you're in a tech hub or a fast growing mid-size city, the amount of software jobs might not serve the pool. Credentials will matter more. Practically speaking :)

I actually think there are whole cliques of companies and people where credentials do act as lock and key. It's as if there are two totally separate programming worlds, one of which actually believes in credentials and which the HN world rarely communicates to. It's wild, and I'm not sure what to make of it.

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