Ask HN: How important is a degree? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How important is a degree?

14 pointsrfnslyr27 comments

I've fallen on tough times and can't continue my education for quite some time, so what I am doing is taking time off from school for a few years to better myself as a developer to ultimately get a good job, make money, save it, and go back.

However, I'm finding it really tough to find jobs that don't list a degree in CS or related as a requirement.

Hirers/developers/people that actually work - Degrees. How are they viewed? What role do they play? Am I automatically casted out because my application doesn't have a degree?

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In my experience, there are some employers who flat out refuse to consider you if you don't have the degree they want. It has absolutely nothing to do with your qualifications, skills, or ability.

I contacted one employer about a job which I believe I was qualified to do; on the phone, they asked me, "do you have such-and-such degree?" I said no. "We can't hire you then." And that was it.

Another employer I worked for asked me to physically bring my degree in so they could photocopy it for their records.

Another employer officially had a policy that all "engineering" jobs be filled by people with at least a bachelor's degree, but management had promoted some qualified folks without degrees into those roles. Eventually HR changed those people's positions to a different title, because they "couldn't be an engineer without a degree"... though they continued to do the same work they were before.

But neither a degree nor lack of a degree actually means anything in terms of ability to do the work. I've seen people who held a degree (or two, or three) and were pretty clueless about their work.

I for one think the whole idea of demanding a certain degree is ridiculous. Demanding certain experience makes much more sense. But it's easy to check for a degree, and hard to verify experience. With all of the non-traditional means of learning available today, I don't see how demanding a degree will be a sustainable employment practice, but then again, I don't understand why it's been going on for as long as it has.

Interesting question.

I think the first obstacle would be HR. I'm not an HR person, but my guess is that a lot of them would pre-screen resumes without a degree. So that may limit you to really small companies and/or places where you have contacts that can root for you.

The next hurdle would be a dev interview. Here, it's not whether you have a CS degree, but whether you understand concepts you would learn in CS courses, like runtime complexity. You need to be able to make it through a typical whiteboard interview (see Cracking the Coding Interview.)

I think that with hard work -- networking, something to demo, some study of algorithms/data structures to get you through the interview -- one can overcome all of that, but it will take work.

Your other option is to found your own company. The founder of the last place I worked only had a HS diploma.

I've completed 3 years of a useless degree that just has big fancy course names that make it look like we actually did things.

Reality: Course material from the early 90's, professors just email us wikipedia links and test us on diagrams and random crap from the internet. It's really really bad. 2 semesters at this school I can fit easily into one month of self study :|

Should I just put relevant coursework + how much of the education I completed? (3 years). I have an absolutely abysmal GPA so I'm wondering if its even worth throwing on the resume at this point.

I don't understand; what was your intended purpose in attending this school if you're not learning anything and not accomplishing something you can show to an employer? If you can easily learn 2 semesters worth of material in a month, why is your GPA abysmal?

There was a lot of pressure to attended college immediately after I finished high school. I was not in the right frame of mind and it was never my goal to attend school. I knew since before high school what I wanted to do.

I thought I could stomach it for the first year, it got worse the second year, and finally in the third I was mentally suffering so bad I couldn't do it anymore. The combination of guilt and stress was not good.

It sounds to me like school has been somewhat traumatic for you. Digging yourself into a hole in college is very mentally distressing, but it happens to a lot of people. I think giving serious consideration into taking a break from college is very reasonable under those circumstances.

With that said, with no degree/experience, you absolutely have to build up a solid portfolio, fast. A semi competent front-end dev can get his/her foot in the door slicing sites, aim lower to build up experience. Do it for a year, but spend nights/weekends working on projects for your next job (a year or two down the line). Then try to ease school back in with evening classes.

I'd recommend that you don't tell potential employers you're taking a break from college. Try to highlight that money is becoming an issue, and you need full-time work, but are taking classes part-time (register for a class or two per semester).

There is a crowd of devs that don't have a degree, or don't have a CS degree, and are doing ok, but I generally find this breed to have a good deal of grit. It'll definitely be stressful in your first few years.

On the other hand, if your application is being screened by HR at all, you're doing it wrong; you want a hiring manager sponsoring your process before you ever talk to HR.

If you have the skills, and the passion for the work, on you resume:

Undergraduate Studies: Univ of whatever

This will get you through the door if you have a good portfolio and if you can wow them in the interview, when the time comes for a background check, if they even ask about it, you can just explain your situation that you have N years of study, but couldn't afford to finish, and you don't think assuming debt is a valid path. As someone who hires, I'd go to bat for them if there was any concern irt the diploma and I thought they were a great fit.

I would also look for work, at smaller companies, and sign up to some mailing lists for your area that have to do with your area of expertise, ie ruby meetups etc. Lots of job opps come from the lists.

Thank you. The mailing list is a good idea, haven't thought of that.

It's really important if it is a degree that is practical and vouches for your credibility like CS or Engineering. Not only will you learn at least something getting a degree, it will separate you from the masses for your entire life. Take something along the lines of a limit case: the Physician. At 60 or even 70, he/she can probably find employment most anywhere. I doubt our field offers that kind of guarantee, but still, at middle age an engineering degree is nice to have.

That said, way back when I was a founder, I mostly hired smart people without a degree or without a relevant degree and paid them the same as long as they were equally valuable. At small companies you have a better chance of getting that kind of opportunity, but making a career of it might be difficult.

Hopefully you can fund yourself through eventually completing a relevant degree. Definitely one of the best investments in yourself you can make. If you feel you lack people skills as some technical people do, that's another, much cheaper but equally important area to address on your own.

It seems like your second graf is at odds with your first; you say the degree "separates one from the masses", but go on to talk about how you hire without regard to degrees. I do too, and so does every hiring manager in this field that I know.

Statistically, having a degree sets you up for ~6-7 figures of extra lifetime income, but you have to bear in mind that such figures account for lots of people who would be marginally employable without a degree. People who can reliably write code, test software, or configure complicated systems aren't marginally employable; they are some of the most employable people in the economy.

Well, I guess that can be explained by the difference between how I hired, and my perception of how a lot of other organizations hire. Looks like my non-degreed smart person approach was not particularly unique.

I have to believe that an appropriate degree may often be the door-opener that let's you prove all the rest in person. It should also place a floor of sorts on what pay someone can reasonably offer you at various points during your career.

> I do too, and so does every hiring manager in this field that I know.

How broad do you mean by "in this field" (security specifically, or tech in general)? My very small sample of hiring managers at Google claims that, there, degrees are a pretty significant factor in their decision-making, and a candidate without a degree has to meet a much higher bar before a hiring manager will want to make an exception and consider them despite lacking a degree. So if your previous startup was acquired or you have a significant role in a major open-source project, then yeah, but if you are "just" a good programmer, then maybe not.

My dad once told me "A degree is a ticket to an interview" way back when I was in high school, and my professional life for the last 8 years continues to bear that out.

A degree does several things for you:

1) Shows that you are trainable 2) Shows that you can follow direction and instructions, complete tasks on time. 3) Implies that you have knowledge of a wide variety of topics 4) Implies that you have expertise in at least one topic.

In my professional opinion, your major doesn't matter -- I personally have a theatre degree, but I'm a senior software engineer for a large corporation.

If you don't have a degree, you need a portfolio. It's not a dealbreaker to not have a degree, but you'll have to prove the above things in some other way. You'll need to prove that you can learn enough in a few weeks to get up to speed with my team. You need to prove that you can follow my directions and complete tasks on time. You need to prove that when I ask you to do something you've never done before, you can figure out how to do it (like research in school). You need to prove to me that you know what you're talking about. You don't have to know everything, but you should know enough that I know that you won't fuck things up.

Also, keep in mind that job listing "requirements" are for ideal candidates -- their IDEAL candidate will have a CS degree, 3-5 years of experience, expertise in X language, and so on. If they need to hire someone soon, they'll often settle for a little less than the ideal. For instance, if you're super good at X language and have been using it for 4+ years, then they may overlook the fact that you don't have a degree. Or if you have a Masters in CS focusing on cloud architecture (I just made that up), and the position is a DevOps position, then they might overlook the fact that you're only 6 months out of school.

The analogy I use is degree is to career what weight is to fitness. It's an indicator, and moving towards it helps your goals, but it's at best an imperfect marker and shouldn't be mistaken for the goal.

People who have degrees find it easier to get jobs than people who don't. But... The #1 person I've ever met in technology (by a large margin) doesn't have a degree. Neither did his CEO, or the CEOs of two of his largest competitors. But his firm and most others do most of their recruiting from top schools.

The degree is like a marker of "200 pounds" for fitness. There are many fit people over 200 pounds, and being 200 pounds isn't the goal. But on average, folks less than 200 pounds are healthier than people over it, so it's a worthy goal.

Getting back to the specifics of your situation... You can learn what you need to get a job, but you'll have to find the job through networking and "showing your work." It will be hard to get in via HR or through any kind of automated resume screen. If you can stomach school, find a way to finish it.

The "Great Ones" who don't need the degree drop out because they're already being too productive and school is just slowing them down.

"I've fallen on tough times and can't continue my education"

If this has anything to do with the monetary cost of education I say this:

If you are in the States, take out as much Federal Loans as you can and get the degree from the best possible school you can get into or transfer to.

You can defer payment indefinitely if you do not get a job that pays above a certain level. There has never been a better time in the history of mankind to take on debt. Look at what the fed is doing. There are stories about professors in the 70s that said their college debt basically 'melted away' as inflation went nuts. There's literally no social stigma to having crushingly high levels of student debt.

College has absolutely nothing to do with teaching you skills for a job. It's a social signal that tells other people how they should treat you. Not having a degree will force you to do something extraordinary--like starting and succeeding with a company or doing very cool projects. Those paths may work but ultimately you are taking a very real risk of whether you can impress people with sheer ability. This is unfortunate, but we are incredibly ape-like when it comes to signaling. College is a straightforward way to signal that you are of a certain status and that you can do what needs to be done even if the reasons for doing it are not perfectly understood.

Unless you are some Maverick, fearless entrepreneur with what you know is incredible drive and raw intellectual ability to solve problems better than the 100 million college-educated kids living in the emerging world who can work remotely for 1/3 of your cost, then, sure, don't do college. But if you have any inkling that you may be somewhat normal, save yourself the possibility of feeling hopelessly low in the social hierarchy for the better part of your life.

And, again, to anyone who has examples of people doing very well without college, I am saying that these people are unbelievably bold and we really should look at them as trailblazers. I mean, sure, shoot for the stars and don't go, but realize what you're doing.

Don't worry about posts that contain degree requirements, many will interview you anyway, also see https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/8f381aa6bd5e

As a developer from Australia, I wouldn't be allowed an American (E3) visa without having a relavent degree in my field... so despite feeling that studies didn't teach me a whole lot, I'm rather glad I have the piece of paper in the end.

Likewise if you are American you get more immigration points with a degree, should you ever want to move to Australia.

In my case when the Interviewer asked if I forgot to put my education history on my resume, I said no, the conversation became bland. We sat there and waited for the time to expire and I was dismissed. But I still managed to get another job without a degree.

I have written a little more about my experience on my blog a month ago: http://idiallo.com/blog/2013/04/do-you-really-need-a-college...

[Note: This is more startup/content provider/network world focused and will be a bit less applicable for the enterprise world.]

Find some areas that interest you and pursue them. When your spidey sense tingles and you think the tools suck or just need work, work on them. Be active on discussion groups of the things you find interesting. Demonstrate that you have interests and can work on projects and enabling tools and you should be able to have an almost unlimited career in the tech industry.

A degree is like a signalling device. It is a brief way to signal to others some minimum level of sophistication. There are many more ways to signal your abilities nowadays. Having built an independent project makes up for a lack of a CS degree. Some of my friends got lucrative propositions because they were identified as productive contributors to open source projects.

You need some way of documenting your skills. A degree in CS is the most common, and probably easiest way, of doing that.

Pretend that you're the one hiring. You have two applicants that are very capable technically and both have the right attitude. The only difference is that one has a degree and the other does not. Now, who would you choose?

The one without a degree has more to prove, and thus will work harder.

The one with a degree will feel some amount of entitlement - "I have a degree! Companies will want to hire me!" and thus will not work as hard.

That's just BS. Working hard is about attitude, with or without a degree.

Eh, I know a lot of CS/tech grads who don't really do anything, aren't passionate about their field, and don't glance at their work for a second time. They just want to be done with it.

I'd hire the person who is better, with or without degree.

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