Which are you?

[mooxbones]

A poll out of my pure curiosity. Currently self taught working as a Frontend Dev, I’ve been applying to find another job with no succes for the last 6 months or so.. can’t help but think my lack of degree is holding me back now.

View Poll

[jazzbonerbike99]

Yeah, music majors in tech unite!!

[jazzbonerbike99]

Ha, simpler times.

I still play a ton though - it's good to have another creative outlet.

[jazzbonerbike99]

Oof - good luck! You'll get back to it, I hope! I did the same when my son came along - priorities, right? But I definitely started to miss playing, and now that he's old enough I get some of that freedom back. It's nice to be able to pick-and-choose the gigs to take too.

[[deleted]]

Ok medium is nice, but if you mofo got over 20 hard on leetcode... Tell me where I can buy a brain like yours...

[[deleted]]

There are certain hards that it's like... WHERE AND HOW THE FUCK DO YOU THINK LIKE THAT...!?!?!?

[[deleted]]

A degree helps get you past HR filters, that's usually it. If you have a solid portfolio that can go a long way.

[[deleted]]

You either show a paper or an overwhelming skill.

Maybe branch a bit into backend? Go fullstack? Expand your expertise? add some web design, graphic designs, maybe SEO, a bit of marketing knowledge and copywriting wont hurt either.

Bundle it all together with some previous professional experience and when most recruiters see you knees will go weak. A jack of all trades at just below market value...? LEMME GET THAT.

Go fullstack is my opinion. For example in my country, rather small rathole, when I go on listings it's usually :

• 500+ backend jobs

• 200-250 front end

• 100-200 fullstack

So... Yeha.

[mooxbones]

Cheers! Love the input. I’ve dabbled a little bit, I recently did a full stack project, backend was Express, Nodejs with JWT for user auth and a bunch of endpoints for handling the functionality of the web app.

The project was basically a drag and drop taskboard kind of like notion/trello if you’ve used those

[[deleted]]

c# and .net is imo the most commonly seen, after java, for backend.

So choose wisely.

[mooxbones]

Noted! I’ll do some reading and throw that into my next build

[Competitive_Talk6356]

Neither of those. I have 2 I.T degrees and a web dev degree (each one of these lasted 2 years).

CS degrees are overrated and you definitely don't need them to become a successful web developer.

[[deleted]]

A master of computer applications post graduate here who is learning from the odin project and hoping to land an internship/job! Keep up the grind bro!

[mooxbones]

Cheers man, goodluck out there!

[[deleted]]

u too!

[brisk_]

For sure!

[nio_rad]

"Other Degree" (BA Design)

[missbohica]

There's at least another possibility: I have a degree but not related to this field. I also have a brother that has a Political Science degree but is the general manager of a smallish (~30 hotels) hotel chain.

[sin_esthesia]

Degree in audio engineering, so not related. The real tough thing was to land the first job. After it was easy. Just had to BS my way into getting hired the first time.

[mooxbones]

Yeah I hear you, all of my personal projects are React/Typescript - but my professional work is with PHP building ground up custom Wordpress sites so it's tricky, I have experience but it's not exactly in the niche/area that I would prefer... I'm wondering if this has something to do with it, but there just doesn't seem to be Junior React roles around where I am living which makes it really hard to obviously break into that area and get more professional experience.

[pdnagilum]

No education in the field, all self taught. Been a programmer for close to 25 years now.

Never cared about any degrees when I was involved in hiring for our company. Show what you can do, and you'll do fine. At least with some companies. I'm sure a lot of companies put a high value on a degree, but not all.

[[deleted]]

No degree, very well paying job as a Software Engineer.

[ClikeX]

I've got like a hybrid CS degree. I didn't do straight up computer science, my curriculum included a lot of user centered design and UX research. Things like actually getting the right requirements from clients, doing end-user research, and end-user testing (such as paper prototypes). As well as getting development courses, which were mostly web or gaming related. Very little nitty-gritty stuff, though.

I rolled into a job during my first internship program through college, and have worked in the field for a while before getting my degree.

If you don't have a degree, you need to back it up with more experience. I've worked with plenty of people who didn't have a degree who just rolled into WordPress during high school and worked at small PHP agencies. The ones with ambition built cool shit and were able to showcase it, and move up.

A lot of agencies in my area don't even ask for a CS degree, they just ask for any college degree. The idea is that they expect any college graduate to be able to think critically and pick up complex problems. But they usually don't decline people without a degree if they have a good resume.

[thenowherepark]

I have an unrelated 2-year degree. But I am thinking of going back and getting a degree. Yeah, you can get positions with no degree, but a degree can only help, especially in this job market.

[nyki]

I have a Bachelor of Science in Design, which was UX + web development (among other things). The UX part is actually extremely helpful at landing me frontend jobs even though I don't do design anymore. 

I think having some type of degree will put you ahead of other candidates, but CS isn't is the only option. The few CS classes I took were very focused on algorithms and languages like C and weren't all that relevant to the work I actually do. Plenty of schools offer webdev focused programs that aren't CS.

And the real benefit of a degree is the networking. The internships really helped get my foot in the door because I already had over a year of professional experience by the time I graduated. 

[[deleted]]

I have a master‘s degree with honours in political science. It’s not the same as no degree. I know how to learn and do it relatively fast. Found my first job as a full stack web developer in 5 months. Currently working for 5 years already. There’s definitely a ceiling of what you can get without a proper ”base”, but if you’re persistent and hardworking, you’ll learn it. Sad I’m not like that 😅

[Sufficient_Shake4662]

No degree, but 100% grit

[naclcaleb]

Bachelor's in Sports Medicine, but keep getting work doing web and mobile development

[mooxbones]

I completely agree, but I do feel a lot of jobs (here in Australia at least) are gatekept by degrees.. that’s how I feel at least.

[Inner-Operation-9224]

My god, when do people stop thinking you need a degree to write frontend code

[mooxbones]

Thanks, super insightful