Hacker News Reader

Comment by lacker | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand, if software engineers were interviewed like doctors, anyone who didn’t have a U.S. graduate degree would be immediately rejected. Anyone with great experience in another country would be immediately rejected. That is most of the good doctors in the world! The doctor interviewing process is simplified by rejecting the vast majority of qualified candidates before even interviewing them.

I think the field of software engineering is doing quite well with its interviewing compared to other fields. Having all of these rigorous interviews sometimes ends up evaluating people based on things that shouldn’t be so important, but the upside is that you can be far less reliant on credentials.

View on HN

Software developers would also need malpractice insurance to protect them from bugs. This is the difference. What real engineering and medical disciplines enforce is personal responsibility for their actions. If you screw up then you're going to be sued big time. Software always claims zero liability. It's why software development is not real engineering.

Maybe in some industries there is no liability, but I’m in biotech and there is certainly a large amount of software issues that would qualify for litigation

But is that for you personally as a developer, or your company?

Being less reliant on creds helps newer folks, while more senior folks have to maintain that ability for the sole purpose of interviewing.

To me, if you can't substitute a verified credential or experience in place of a technical interview, it just shows they implicitly prefer newer folks.

I've never been asked these questions for senior+ interviews

Many people have.

How do you verify experience?

On my country (Portugal) Software Engineering is a professional title, universities are only allowed engineering degrees, including in anything computer related if validated by the order and anyone signing projects where they are liable must have the title validated.

To be fair, many skip the title validation because they don't sign such kind of projects, but they still get the title at one of those validated universities if they want most HR departments to actually care to read their CVs.

Architects and Engineers are protected titles in most countries there is an exemption for IT, the EU protected titles also exempts that but local countries may impose their own rules.

There are also often different types of protections, in the U.K. for example there is “registered” and “chartered” titles.

The registered usually deal with newer titles that didn’t have historic charters and recognition of non-UK accreditation.

So for architects for example you can be a registered Architect by registering with the ARB which usually means you need to be registered with a non-UK charter and have a recognized diploma, to be a charter Architect you have to go through the process that RIBA dictates which means getting your education in the UK or in RIBA accredited schools abroad which only gets you to RIBA part 2 and then complete the required experience and exams for Part 3 in the U.K.

This is a good point. Software engineering is one of the most open fields in that it cares relatively little about formal credentials, tests or historical background (what else you’ve worked on). Anyone who has picked up “coding” (etc.) can join in the fray and start adding value, while learning more while doing.

Picking up coding isn't Software Engineering.

Interesting. I have been picking up coding for 25 years now.

Doesn't invalidate the point that it isn't Software Engineering, unless you own the accreditation that validates your knowledge across Software Engineering domains and practice, with a degree taken in a certified university.

Why is that the only way to validate my knowledge?

It isn't, but then one isn't entitled to call themselves Engineer, just like a village "doctor" isn't one.

There is no proof that the person in question would fair well in all domains that get taught during 5 years of engineering school, and follow up experience on the field, without a proper assessment from the engineer board.

And what makes "assessment from the engineer board" more relevant proof than any other?

I guess you are happy to go to anyone that calls themselves doctor as well, or buy a house from someone that has learned to put bricks together during weekends.

The assessment proves that one actually has the skills that are expected from any Software Engineer to fulfill the society expectations, technical, moral and ethical responsibilities, from the profession.

This does not answer my question, just repeats the claim.

I'd love if software required a degree. I have a degree and pretty much everybody I ever worked with has a degree. Looking around the entire floor there's only one person without a degree I am aware of.

It's a myth that you can work without a degree, you'd never get a job interview in the first place. Seems to be mostly a US myth by the way, makes sense because degrees are crazy expensive there.

This just sounds like a heavy dose of confirmation and/or affinity bias. The best developers I've worked with had no degree at all or a degree in something completely separate from development. I think a healthy mix of both academic and purely practical experience is the best.

I will reply to this comment since this is probably the most relevant.

You're on point that there is a personal bias. Developers without degrees congregate together where they can, while developers with degrees congregate together to other places. There is a major self selection.

Saw a lot of the first when I was doing contracting in the UK, saw a lot of the later as permanent in tech companies. If you're interviewing for google you're way more likely to have 2 stanford majors in the interview panel than 2 developers without format education.

Something I never understood when I was younger is the professional networking side of getting a degree is just as or more important than the educational side. Yeah, it's good to have knowledge, but you can learn most of it after the fact, especially with the resources available online these days.

However, you can't learn or get a do over on getting in with the right social group. That's why so many "successful" people come from ivy league schools even though some of them seem to be pretty dumb. It's more about getting into a rich and powerful social group than getting an education. Once you're in with that group you have a very high chance of success as long as you're not a total fuck up.

It is not a myth. About a quarter of developers do not have a degree. Source: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#education

I don't have a degree. I'm still quite good.

I don't think a degree helps. I have seen plenty of very avg software developres, i wouldn't wanna have on my team, with degrees

I do not have a degree, and I am helping my friend with her CS assignments. The curriculum sucks at her university, to be honest.

It's hardly a myth. It's not exceptionally common these days with everyone assuming Google's requirements for hiring, but it's not impossible.

How do I know it's not a myth? I have a software architect title, having moved my way up to here from QA.

One of the staff developers I work with has a degree in Physics. So does a senior operations engineer.

How many of the incredibly successful people we know of in the industry were drop outs? I can think of quite a few, and I know of other engineers who thought their CS program was vastly inferior to devoting 100% attention to their company, which they could give maybe 33% to due to classes and undergrad life.

To be fair, you should do the exercice, write down the names and check if they had a formal education. You will probably find out that they all do.

The common figures (google/facebook for examples) are typical college graduates from a very top school, who happened to drop in the last year of bachelor or master to found a company, sponsored by their university network and connections.

By the way I was talking having having a formal education versus no formal education and you're trying to move the conversation to dropouts. Dropping in the last year of a top US school (because you were given half a million dollar to form a company) qualifies as having a formal education.

So 3.5 years meets your standard. Good to know.

What about three years?

Two?

One?

We know zero higher education doesn't meet your standard, and 3.5 years does, so I'm trying to figure out where you draw the line.

> "How many of the incredibly successful people we know of in the industry were drop outs

Knuth, Dijkstra, Kernighan, Ritchie, etc. all had degrees, although some are non-CS because CS degrees weren't a thing back then. Linus Torvalds, Dave Cutler, and Theo de Raadt all have degrees. The only hardcore coder (i.e. not a business person) without a degree I can think of is John Carmack.

jwz and Carmack are the canonical examples but I also can't think of anyone else who is as widely known as those two.

Vitalik Buterin is another well-known example.

You're describing founders of companies not software engineer employees.

There's not really a good reason I can think of to require a degree to write software. Sure it shows a basic level of competency, but there are still often graduates who can barely code.

There's also some absolutely incredible developers who come from non-traditional backgrounds that would not even be considered by this requirement.

While it's most likely currently the case where finding a job without a degree is hard, I don't think a hard requirement for a degree should be a valid means of evaluating job applicants.

Why would you love if software required a degree? Would it make you feel more special?

I recently got a job as a software engineer without a degree. And I can get plenty of interviews.

It would make it much easier to find a job and the salaries would be a higher (assuming one has a degree).

Developers really don't realize how bad they have it. If you have friends who passed to be doctors, nurses, lawyers, they can all have a much easier and longer career.

You will see what are your prospects after 15 years of development, if you were not driven out of the industry, it's grim.

I'm sorry your observation leads you to have such a negative view of things. Clearly your lived experience must be radically different from mine.

I've been a software developer for 30 years now, and never got a degree. I do have friends that are doctors and lawyers, and I prefer my career path to theirs. I started working and earning at 18, rather than going through 8 years of expensive schooling. All these years later (your 15 years doubled), I'm still in-demand, still earning reasonably well, and don't experience the levels of stress or work the long hours my doctor and lawyer friends do.

But hey, when I was young, it was just doctors and lawyers who earned big money. Now it's doctors, lawyers, and software developers, so that's a huge gain for software! And still, only about 75% or so of software developers have degrees at all, let alone eight years of school and two degrees like are required to be a doctor or lawyer.

I've spent the last month interviewing for new "Senior Java Developer" positions, and I can assure you, having a degree does not mean one's prospects are automatically good. Or that one know what one is doing, even.

I'd take my financial experience as a college dropout software engineer over that of a doctor or lawyer any day. I get to spend my 20's debt free and mega rich (by young adult standards), and I've been able to save most of my considerable income. I think the average doctor's net worth might surpass mine in their late 30's, and would certainly accelerate beyond what I could ever keep up with. But so what? I get to spend an entire life never stressing about money once, while they have to stress over student debt for 15-20 years.

My "prospects after 10 years of development" are going to be "figuring out what to do now that my house is paid off and I don't need to make half as much as I do anymore". Compare those to a doctor's prospects after 10 years of college: "Time to start making money for the first time!"

I've been working in IT for 25+ years, no CS degree. I got an MBA after 15 years because it was more relevant.

Conversely, some of the best engineers I've worked with either didn't have degrees or had degrees in things like economics. It's pretty common in silicon valley, which should be no surprise given how many titans of the industry themselves didn't graduate college.

As someone from the US but worked for many remote/global companies:

I've never noticed if anyone on my teams had a degree or not.

Those that talked about having a degree often lowered the team's velocity and were the weakest members on the team.

Anecdotal but seems to be common among my friends/advisors.

During my time as a manager at Facebook there at least 4 different engineers on my team who did not have a college degree. It’s certainly harder to break in without one, but it’s possible.

4 years going strong without a degree here. Not in the US either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com