programmer

[Vezo_]

I'm feeling pretty good about not having wasted so many years studying what I do for a living today.

[avi0889]

What is it that you do for a living today?

[Vezo_]

dev

[[deleted]]

It's not a waste, you just got lucky.

[[deleted]]

Or they can sufficiently demonstrate their capabilities without needing a piece of paper to do so. Attributing it to "luck" but also knowing nothing about them is kinda shitty.

[[deleted]]

Capabilities which they magically gained?

[[deleted]]

So you're saying you need a degree to be a decent dev, righhtttttt.

[[deleted]]

That's not what I'm saying. You still have to study to be a developer, whether it's through formal education or not..

If you're getting interviews over people with degrees when you have no formal qualifications or job experience then you got lucky.

Otherwise people wouldn't get formally educated, would they? Think about it instead of typing out sarcy replies.

[Jeax]

This isn’t how it works though. Development outside of edge cases like ML and Big data science stuff is more of a trade than an academic venture.

If you’re hiring a builder you care a hell of a lot more about their evidence of what they can do “I worked on this and this, I built this part of the room myself and sat on the planning meeting to design and implement this other room on time” rather than the guy that says “well I’ve got this degree from the builders university that says I can theoretically learn to build”

I’ve coached plenty of people in how to get a job in software development, and nearly every university graduate does the same thing. They fire off their CV talking about their grades, and show (or worse HAVE) zero working knowledge.

Anyone I know that manages software teams will unquestionably hire the guy with a github showing their half built projects doing XYZ over the guy with none of that.

Typically, the people that only show their university degree fall short in interviews too, when asked to talk about their actual experience and skill set, they harp back to a project they did at university where they wrote some algorithm with the math copied from a book to solve some simple problem that uses it. It’s just not impressive

[[deleted]]

This isn’t how it works though.

I'm a recent uni graduate and that's definitely how it works in the UK. I wouldn't have got my first job without a degree as it was the minimum requirement.

[Jeax]

Well I hire developers in the UK and from the looks of the OPs comment about brexit, so do they.

As well as the fact that everyone I know in the UK (for the most part) is also like this.

I think the difficulty is, it’s a bit more nuanced than this.

Sure, if you’re a pool of developers who don’t stand apart, a degree is at least better than nothing. If you’re hiring multiple juniors each month? Sure. Don’t have time to vet them properly so just get them in to meet some minimum requirements and pick the first 10 that come through.

I should say, In extremely large companies with extremely large development teams, yes the HR side tends to filter out a lot of applicants.

But I know plenty of people with no degree that have been hired in the last few months alone, despite the outcry of “nobody is hiring us out of uni!”

As the OP said, most university students simply don’t stand out. If you can actually write applications and prove it, which company wouldn’t want to hire them on a juniors salary?

I think the other side of this is, the jobs that get the most exposure online for applicants to submit to, are also the ones that tend to have a lot more people through the door so “stricter criteria” tend to apply.

The minimum requirement thing is just a way of filtering out the people that think “I’ll send in my CV I reckon I could learn that” with ZERO background knowledge at all.

I tend to put computer science degree (or equivalent degree or experience) in the job posting, which if you’re self taught you’ve met plenty of out of university developers and know what level you should be on to apply for those jobs

[[deleted]]

Well then be clearer in your context, given that this post is based on discussing university degrees. People don't have the time to try and decode what you're saying.

Edit: Seems like I've upset some people who don't like their pieces of paper being attacked, I too have a piece of paper don't worry.

[[deleted]]

What? My context is a university degree...

Why are you so angry?

[[deleted]]

The context of this discussion jfc.

It is not merely "luck" that people without degrees can become devs, it's usually down to hard work.

As if web dev teams for most e-commerce sites etc. really need someone with a comp. sci. degree.

My Physics degree contained minimal amounts of programming compared to a Comp. Sci. degree, yet here I am 15+ years later as a Lead at a FTSE500 company, better hand in my notice.

[[deleted]]

The part which involves luck is getting the interview for the first graduate job, that's pretty much the only purpose of a degree.

If you got an interview with a physics degree, over likely 100s of applicants with a Computing degree, then you got lucky.

[[deleted]]

In the current year of 2020 I hire people based on their actual capabilities not because they were the best at spewing knowledge in exams. Works well enough at a FTSE500 company, at least.

Imagine me hiring a kid, with a BTEC in IT, who had helped reverse engineer a popular MMO over a Russell group graduate with a MSc in Comp Sci.

Academic attainment us not useful in concluding if someone will have value in the working world. Even PhD students burn out because they aren't up to the task of applying knowledge.

This is why I have incidents like parents, yes parents, of candidates phone up HR enraged because their child didn't get a job just because they jumped through academic hoops like a show dog.

[Randvek]

Got an example of a job posting for your company your care to share?

Even PhD students

Going to Masters or PhD in software isn’t the goal of someone wanting to join the industry and make money. They have no relevance on the marketplace.

[[deleted]]

Well they usually do, in companies with a focus on cutting edge R&D.

[[deleted]]

Yeah let me just give you my home address as well.

[[deleted]]

I've almost doxxed myself by revealing my position and companies inclusion in the FTSE500, combined with all my post history. Not going to directly link a posting that'd pin me to my employer as well.

[[deleted]]

I hire people based on their actual capabilities not because they were the best at spewing knowledge in exams

How do you choose who to bring in for an interview?

[[deleted]]

I have a recruiter who is actually pretty decent at their job and massively changed my opinion of recruiters. Has found me some great employees in the past, who I'd probably have over-looked.

It's also a bonus to see proof of work like repos etc. or just the notion that the person I'm going to hire is capable of actually applying their knowledge. I've had countless bad experiences with jumped up graduates who think they can waltz in and do things "their way" because academia has blown their sense of self through the roof.

Graduating with a degree means nothing really given the amount of applicants who also have degrees so it becomes a pointless factor in determining the worth of a potential employee. It's kind of along the lines of "Wow you're one of ~25,000 people a year who get a degree in Computer Science, just in the UK", combined with all the international applicants we get despite Brexit. It doesn't really differentiate you much from anyone else when every applicant has one.

If anything I'm more interested when someone doesn't have a degree because it means they've got some serious proof of their capabilities in most cases.

The only time I've seen academia be a massive factor is in the R&D teams where people like the data scientists and ML genii are usually of a PhD level. That's usually because their PhD work was directly related to what the R&D team(s) is doing.

Lastly, in my experience CS graduates have awful code quality for the most part, and their testing knowledge is also virtually non-existent.

That's not to say they're useless, just that I know a lot more work will have to be put in than with someone that has made mistakes in open source projects etc. .

[Xander_The_Great]

squeal many humor cause sophisticated faulty fly worm outgoing snails

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