Ask HN: Do Udacity nanodegrees get anyone a job without academic background?
For example someone with limited programming knowledge ? https://www.udacity.com/course/c-plus-plus-nanodegree--nd213
A) your overall resume is impressive
B) you either have a portfolio of things you've built, or else you agree to do a take home assignment and successfully complete it
C) you can pass both technical and non-technical interviews
To get hired you need A && B && C. Doing Udacity will probably help with each of those things, but no one is ever going to hire you because of an academic credential alone.
As much as I would like it to be otherwise, signaling (namedropping of famous universities, companies, and people) works a lot. I guess mostly because people prefer to delegate decision making. The backside of that is that unless you finished (or dropped out) from a well-respected univ., you have an uphill battle of proving one's worth.
Though the ones who set "oh, you were at MIT" didn't know about this program.
* I think less than 1% of the high school students in this country (the US) are aware of summer programs such as RSI. Knowing about RSI, let alone being selected into it, is a strong signal that in your pre-college years you were very invested in math and STEM.
* even if you don't have a very prestigious college degree is not a negative signal anymore from my point of view. At 17-18 we are all very fragile beings (and we keep being fragile until at least 25), so lots of things could explain why you didn't get into a top university. I would inquire about that, but I would expect to hear some reasonable explanation (and I wouldn't mind if you simply told me it's personal and you don't feel comfortable going into those details).
* I would ask you if you participated in any math or CS competitions in high school/ college.
From here, lots of ways to have a pleasant chat for about 30 minutes.
When it comes to signals, I like your approach for looking at them as hints, rather than judgments.
You definitely don't need all A && B && C.
Sometimes being like-able and knowing someone is enough.
I'd say to get hired, you just need to convince the employer of your personality, current skill, and potential.
If that's the case, and someone's trying to hire you because someone they trust thinks you can get the job done, the question is whether or not a nanodegree can allow your interviewer to check a box for "has training in X" that will make the difference in sliding your resume past HR's desk.
Somebody with just a nano-degree maybe doesn't impress so much. Somebody with a couple of interesting open source projects, a nano-degree, and some other miscellaneous education may well impress me depending on the details.
But really, it (should) all come down to the ability to demonstrate competence in your claimed skills, regardless of where/how you acquired the skills you claim.
The nanodegree is step zero in teaching yourself to program and definitely isn't necessary. Demonstrating what you can do is several orders of magnitude more important, and is the real end goal. Most competent self-taught programmers understand this, and understand how trivial a nanodegree actually is as a signal of being able to build good software as part of a team. I typically invite about half of self-taught people with a coding portfolio for an interview, mainly because about half have one that demonstrates the kind of back-end work we do. I invite literally everyone who has launched a product, no matter how small or in what domain, for an interview. I have never invited someone to interview on the basis of a nano-degree. Granted, every application I see is filtered through the sausage grinder of HR, so that's maybe a consideration.
I like your attitude toward interviewing anyone with who has launched a product as it gives you a lot to talk about.
Unfortunately, I think that to some extent, it signals that “I’m interested, but not committed enough to get a full degree.”
Your nanodegree realistically will never come close to competing with a formal CS degree. So don’t bother with listing it. List your github projects and apps you’ve released. Get the interview. “Oh and by the way, in my spare time, I’ve self-studied XYZ.”
That’ll impress me.
This seems quite short-sighted, because the underlying assumption is that not getting a full degree is a signal for unwillingness to commit, as opposed to _inability_ to commit.
Not many people can up and quit their "real life" to pursue a degree. With your mindset, you are definitely discriminating against, for instance, people who have medical bills to pay and are stuck at their current jobs, but are also ambitious and dedicated and want to switch to better careers and are willing to do whatever it takes to do it.
The problem is that it’s a competitive field out there and to give people false hope that a nanodegree will get them a job is disingenuous.
I’ve also listed the alternatives for self-taught developers to help them stand out. I think ultimately, if you weren’t going to get the interview, a nanodegree won’t help you. If you were maybe going to get the interview (by showing impressive original work in the form of projects and apps), a nanodegree might help you the slightest bit.
Commitment is rarely the barrier to a full degree. More likely barriers:
- Person wants grad degree but does not want to risk getting off career track and losing momentum (e.g., consulting, banking, etc)
- Person wants grad degree but cannot afford it
- Person wants grad degree but cannot afford child care
- Person wants grad degree but needs salary to support family
- Person wants grad degree and can afford it, but has competing time commitments such as children
- Person wants grad degree but has visa issues locking them into an inflexible job
- Person wants grad degree but work hours do not allow it
- Person wants grad degree but cannot afford to downgrade healthcare plan (in the US)
Speaking from personal experience, i did my graduate degree 15yrs after my undergrad. I finally semi-retired from Wall Street and was doing a personally co-founded startup which allowed me the flexibility to do a graduate degree in the evenings. My wife had to focus intensely on taking care of the kids in evenings and late evenings while I studied.
I've met some 3-4 year students in "Cybersecurity" programs that couldn't cogently explain the difference between private/public keys.
Think about that.
If the mention of the nanodegree fits into a broader narrative corroborated by other parts of the resume that this person is a self-learner, then I consider it favorably. I think the way I would describe it is that the nanodegree says this person "tried," but I need to see separate evidence that this person internalized the material.
I do believe you can learn more from nanodegrees than a generic full degree. But nanodegrees are also quite easy to get through. Nobody checks your stuff, and there's much less protection against plagiarism. As a learning tool, it's great. As a certification, it's very poor.
I'm a hiring manager and have also been in senior manager roles (directing overall department build-outs) and I dont see it as a negative. It is a slight positive for me:
- Barrier 1: Interest (positive)
- Barrier 2: Sufficient motivation to complete, however easy (positive)
This said, I've encountered some managers who see it as a negative because they think individuals who sharpen their saw are 1. more likely to progress and move on and 2. distracted from working 24/7 on the job. I think this is positive -- you probably want to filter out such managers anyway!
Could you expand on that? Is there some common feature of people who have completed nanodegree courses?
They're likely viewing them as similar to certifications. Different industries treat certifications differently.
Enterprise technologies like Java and .NET and IBM products are helpful if you are aiming for that sort of job.
But, if you are looking at more open-source oriented shop, they give the impression that you are focusing on trying to look accomplished. It can look like you are trying to appeal to the wrong crowd, which means your priorities don't align with what they are looking for.
Make stuff. Get patches submitted to relevant open source projects. Make a small project that's actually finished (bonus if it's demo-able).
Several hiring managers have told me this.
The last time I was asked to screen and interview candidates I took the time to check out all portfolios, including github/gitlab/sourceforge profiles and projects.
In a few cases the candidate's portfolio work was decisive to greenlight and reject job apllicants.
Getting interviews isn't the hard part. Getting through them is.
I'm software engineer without a degree, i've done ML nanodegree recently. I don't plan to shift my career to ML and did it only to gain high level understanding. I didn't have to put a lot of effort to complete. I wouldn't consider myself hireable for ML role but i've seen that other people treating nd courses much more seriously than myself putting a lot of effort and producing great projects.
In the end is about the skills you have and a way to present them. I think udacity courses do teach relevant stuff but it's up to you to put the effort in
It was impossible for me to get a job with those (basic) skills. A lot more is needed.
I have been on the other side also as a hiring manager. I would never screen (let alone hire) anyone just on the basis of the nanodegree
That means that if you can get in front of the hiring manager, your resume is going to be less important than the impression you make on that person, and how compelling a case you can make about the value you’ll generate.
There are gate keepers out there who will discard perfectly good candidates because their resume doesn’t exactly match the job description; focus your energy on discovering ways to skip over those people and get in front of the decision makers — and then be prepared to articulate and demonstrate the value you’ll bring.
In my experience a Master's/Bachelor's/PhD might get you into the interview room because of your resume or recruiters coming to campus, but in my experience I've been disappointed about the knowledge gaps in recent graduates from well-known schools. I've also interviewed Masters/PhDs who studied my field, but were interviewing for user-facing support roles when they're clearly better suited for something more focused on r&d. Or they've focused so much on a specific subset, they're lacking the general knowledge needed for that job. IMHO, degrees don't guarantee anything for me. At most, they're a jumping off point for how your interests and background apply to that job.
More important than the degree are the projects you've worked on, your role in them, and challenges you've overcome. You could take the nanodegree and omit it from your resume, but put the projects on there as personal projects. Just don't misrepresent your work. It can be a surprisingly small industry. Someone might recognize a project as something they saw online, or know someone who worked on it.
Disclosure: Maybe bias as I quit college to be a FT software engineer. And traditional schooling never really worked for me I learned more at home.
Save your money if thats your motivation.
“how would I work out whether the current market applicable to me would be willing to hire based on a nano degree?”
It’ll invoke fewer platitudes and generalisations from HN.