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Comment by lucasgonze | Hacker News Reader

As a hiring manager, I can tell you that degree standards are going up and up. When I was starting as a dev a quantitative degree was totally optional - fortunately for me. Now it's common to have an MA/CS, somewhat likely a BS/CS, and the absolute least a BS in any quantitative field.

In fact I recently hired a dev with an associate's degree after interviewing many people with much better educations, but his chances on getting the job were very small. My inbox was flooded with resumes and filtering out weak educations was an efficient use of time.

Seriously, you will have a much much harder time making a living with a DIY degree.

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Huh. I'm surprised to hear this. I have a liberal arts degree, and I had zero issue getting a job after going through a bootcamp 6 years ago. My brother-in-law did the same 3 years ago. My husband last year. He literally doesn't even have a degree...

There are oceans of people with those same bootcamp credentials. For hiring managers willing to hire bootcampers, but you are just one drop in that ocean.

Over time you will have a harder time finding work, you'll get lower salary offers, and you'll be passed over promotion.

If that's the credential you have, it'll have to do. But if you're choosing whether to pursue a full-blown degree, the answer is clear. Yes, absolutely, yes.

Is a "weak education" == no quantitative degree?

Does this hold even after you get a few years of work under your belt?

In my experience, there are some good people with CS degrees, but there are a _ton_ of duds. If I had to choose between someone who's parents paid for them to get a CS degree and someone motivated and interested enough to teach themselves CS and math in their free time, I'd 100% be more interested in the latter.

Credential rankings, from best to worst:

MS CS

BS CS

BS not CS

Bootcamp, associate's degree, liberal arts <-- weak

It's true that motivated, passionate and smart are the most important things, but there are plenty of people who are those and have a degree.

Yea, that makes sense. Ironically, in my anecdotal experience, working at more of a mid tier company, I find people with better credentials to often be less motivated than those with weaker credentials.

One theory is that the more motivated and to some extent talented individuals seek out more prestigious companies. In which case, the credentials become a much weaker signal if you aren't one of those places.

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