Ask HN: Can you get a developer job in New York City without a degree? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can you get a developer job in New York City without a degree?

4 pointsecmucele9 comments

Is this easy to do or difficult? Are there lots of companies that hire self-taught developers?

What are some things you can do to try to get an interview? Can you get a job if you do well in the coding interview without a degree?

View on HN

If you got an interview you can get the job. If they're going to reject you for not having a degree they are going to reject you at the resume stage.

I’m not sure about NYC in particular, but most companies hire developers without a relevant degree, or any degree at all.

To get an interview you should, in no particular order, network, try to find job openings before they are posted, request informational interviews at companies that interest you, improve your resume, improve your skills/experience via study and/or contributing to open source, improve your cover letter.

Do you need a portfolio of web applications you've built and code you've written? I wanna get a job for a developer or software engineer that works with websites.

If you happen to know, can you tell me if the Oracle Java Certification helps? You take an exam and get a certification.

Oracle Java Certification is mentioned here: https://education.oracle.com/oracle-certification-path/pFami...

Do you have any professional software experience? Having a portfolio is nice but professional experience is better and makes the portfolio less necessary.

A Java certification will be helpful but only for jobs that use Java. Java is a popular language and if you enjoy it then I would say study for the certification, make a portfolio, and get certified. But certifications aren’t usually necessary or even very helpful for most web development jobs. Most web development jobs involve JavaScript, and to my knowledge there aren’t any JavaScript certifications that any company cares about.

I'm just learning to code now. I was asking for when I need to apply. I believe a lot of companies use Java for websites, that's why I was asking about certification.

You should check out https://cscareerhub.com/. You can get a lot of career help there, more than you’ll get from us here.

Yes, I did that (got degree later). Also more recently, did some consulting for a NY firm. They never asked about a degree.

Did you have a portfolio of applications you've built and code you've written? Did you put a link to it on your resume? How did you share it with the employer, if you don't mind me asking?

The consulting thing? Someone asked a question on a forum, I answered it (telling him how to do whatever), he asked a followup question that I answered, then he asked if I was willing to write the code for him on a consulting basis and I did. I guess my answers convinced him I was sufficiently clueful about the specialized thing he wanted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com