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Comment by nperez | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me a lot of the boat I'm in - based on his CV it looks like he's self-taught and started around the same time I did. This market right now is killing us, and I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. In the worst case scenario, I have family I can move in with, but I don't know how to function in any other role after dedicating myself to this since childhood. Just going to keep refining skills and hope things turn around soon.

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> I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to.

I hope not. I have a CS degree, but some of the best and most prolific developers I've had the pleasure to work with have all be self-taught. One of the most talented .Net developers I've ever worked with had a masters degree in philosophy and was a trained furniture maker, when those things failed to pay the bills he taught himself C# and was easily the most talented and creative developer on our team.

Selecting developers based on education is moronic, the self-taught people are often really talented and I can easily find CS majors who can't program at all. Education has almost zero reflection on your ability as a developer.

Agree with the general idea if your post but...

> Education has almost zero reflection on your ability as a developer.

Can we stop using the word "education" as a propaganda word like this?

When people use the word like this, what they really mean is "institutionalized education and/or indoctrination."

Isn't that the colloquial meaning of the word "education" already?

In what cases do people use the word "education" to mean something else than "institutionalized education"?

I feel like it's pretty clear what they mean by that, without having to make it into a political statement of "institutionalized indoctrination".

This is not true. There is a fairly strong correlation between formal education and ability as a developer, and I say this as someone with close to 2 decades of experience in the problem space. A CS/STEM degree, as degree quality (where the degree was obtained), makes an enormous difference in the average case.

People who say the opposite are thinking of developers, often themselves, who were able to become skilled without a CS degree. That is indeed quite possible, and I've met many individuals in this category. I'm not going to say the best developers I've met had no degree, but I've met great developers without a degree. But I wouldn't say it is common; most developers without a CS/STEM degree whom I've met were, indeed, mediocre engineers that often had no business being there.

I've also met many poor developers from great schools and great developers from schools with poor reputation. But, as a thought experiment, if I was to pick a developer based solely on whether they have a degree and where they got this degree, lacking any other piece of information, I'd always pick the ones with a degree from a reputable school.

They said "some of the best and most prolific developers". The average case is meaningless. Self-taught developers who thrive are almost certainly above average.

If you discriminate based on having a CS degree, you are lopping off a big portion of the right tail which is where all the people you actually want to hire are.

In my experience the best developers are self-taught programmers who then went on to get a CS degree. Probably followed by people who got a STEM degree and then went on to become self-taught programmers (with a jump-start from the little programming they learned in their STEM degree). Getting good with only a CS degree or only self-learning is much tougher, though of course there are examples of both.

I've come across so many devs with "good" CVs who were full of themselves and couldn't do a single pragmatic thing. CVs, degrees, titles seem completely inflated and mostly meaningless in North America and in tech in particular. Sometimes I'm wondering whether people like you – assuming you are good at your job – shouldn't simply lie on their CV to get their foot in the door.

Regardless, you should have better chances of not being filtered out with small, profitable, companies.

A billion of these stories never prepared me for the utter shitshow that laid itself bare to me when I first became a hiring manager. I’m self-taught, am strongly philosophically opposed to educational or past employer ‘prestige’ like working for FAANG or whatever. Still, I learned pretty quickly to not trust a bunch of naive ‘intuitive’ signals.

The hard truth is that Ivy / FAANG talent is usually higher quality. People just don't want to believe it.

Sounds like you are inflating your own ego...

I never graduated college and have never worked at a FAANG.

I began my career in a startup where pretty much everyone else but myself was an Ivy grad, with many coming from FAANG internships, and I have very high opinions of them. We all were very driven and all had things to teach each other. I don't want to downplay the notion that it's an indicator of high quality talent. I just think that it shouldn't be downplayed that growing up developing software out of an interest in the work is a strong indicator too.

It carries signal for being above average relative to the rest of the population, which is a low bar to begin with.

It doesn't carry much signal for being great.

This is true, but any signal for future greatness is really weak I think.

I have found that I can take a single look and identify the best engineer and all around smartest guy in a room, often also the funniest, with the caveat that I need a mirror to do it.

I really thought you were a proper wanker until I reached the end of your sentence, well done

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