Comment by modoc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by modoc | Hacker News Reader

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Google cares. A lot. They reached out to me to offer me a position, and then retracted the offer once they learned the lack of degrees on my resume wasn't just a space saving mechanism.

I've never had another company turn me down, even if they specifically "required" bachelors in CS, etc... in the job posting. And I'm not talking about "fly-by-night operations". Large companies, Fortune 500s, traditional non-tech focused companies, etc...

Assuming that you aren't on a 100% scholarship, someone (your parents or you by working part time) is paying for your rent and food. I think most places (Google aside) would hire someone with 1 year of contributing to a relevant open source project, or a couple small web applications launched, over someone with 4 years of learning the technology from 2-5 years ago. Experience DOING relevant work always trumps a college degree, especially in the tech field.

If you want to get a degree, that's great. I won't look down on you or even think for a second that you're wasting your time. But it's certainly not the only or even the best path.

I finally registered an account so I comment on your post. I think you have it spot on. I never attended any university and in my 13 year career it's only ever been an issue three times (Incidentally all 3 here in the US, I've only been here for 5 years).

Once was Google when they noticed the lack of an education section on my resume. The second was a startup in NY that was run by a couple of recent phd grads who had an issue with whether or not I would have fit into the culture (I passed several technical interviews). The third is my current employer AT&T Labs, but my manager pushed hard to get me in.

I've also been employed at Time Warner, Conde Nast & Viacom/MTV Networks (at a Director Level), so the bigger companies (Except for Google) will look past your qualifications if you can show you have the skillset required and the experience in using it.

As an employer when given the choice between a recent graduate with zero experience and someone who spent the past 4 years gaining experience in the industry I've usually gone with the non-graduate. (I always think what I was like at day zero of my first dev job verses the senior dev I was 4 years later).

It seems odd to me, and very dangerous business wise, that Google would reject someone because of their lack of a degree.

I'm a writer, and my experience in journalism is that editors actively screen out people with degrees in journalism because it teaches them bad practices (In all actuality it teaches them good [read: old] practices, but kills personal voice which is now everything, praise Hunter S. Thompson!). 1+ years experience writing always beats 4+ years in a degree program with 0+ years experience actually writing.

I've always thought programming was akin to writing, it's all about putting pieces together to make the whole work better. My brother went the programming way and I went the writing way (I tried programming, but I quickly realized I couldn't do it as a day-to-day 9-5 job). So I don't really get why Google would require a degree, because surely the most important thing is if someones code is elegant.

I would mostly blame this on a weird thing we call "math"

Having gone from working in higher ed to my own startup, I've always been a proponent of people waiting to go to college or doing other things. I just realize that for a lot of folks, it's just not very good advice and they can increase the likelihood of success, if they go to school for one reason or another.

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