Ask HN: Do employers care how long it took you to finish a degree?
I'm not going to finish my C.S. degree in 4 years, it's going to take me a couple of years more. I'm not able to assist to all lectures and attend all exams because I've been going through a lot of stuff lately, so I haven't been (& am not) able to pass an academic year in a year. My gpa is still good.
I'm worried about being rejected for most applications in the future due to how long it took me to finish and I don't want to come off as whiny or anything in interviews, etc when interviewers ask me (if they do) why it took me so long.
So: Do employers care how long it took you to finish a degree? How important is to employers and interviewers? Is there anything I can do to counteract it?
Thanks.
92 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadI'm WAY more interested in what you can DO and what you have demonstrably DONE, so it's way more important for you to focus on side jobs, internships, and open source contributions than it is to worry about how long it will take you to get a degree.
No one ever cared. No one ever asked.
Only my university counselor noticed that I was taking a long time to graduate, and chastised me for taking all these exciting high level computer science classes and independent studies that I was interested in, instead of the boring low level pre-requisites required to graduate.
I finally took the required prerequisites and graduated, but unfortunately it was before "Rate My Professors", so I ended up failing and re-taking Statistics from Sergy Brin's dad, who's "awful" [1]. But those extra semesters gave me time to take some other great courses from diverse departments like Art and Hearing and Speech, which were really useful.
[1] http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=761872
Regardless of your work history, you should list internships and projects you accomplished while in school on your resume when you are starting out anyway (unless you were already employed in the field). And if anyone asks specifically, tell them, yea I took a little extra time to finish my degree. Never lie and don't deny it just be straight about it but don't go into personal details.
When you are in college all the pressure and focus is around your GPA, graduating whether you were in the engineering school or A&S school etc. When hiring, those factors are never as important as your ability to sell yourself. For companies that focus on your GPA or how long it took you to get through school, I'd be very critical of whether they are looking for the right candidates and whether I'd want to be there. That said, there are some tech companies that have extremely competitive new grad hiring and so they use school, GPA and degree as a filter, but I've never seen length of time to attain the degree a factor.
Good luck!
Beyond that, when I'm interviewing someone, I know I can't or shouldn't ask certain things, and I don't want to make people uncomfortable or break any laws. So I will often casually mention that I'm married or have a kid if the opportunity arises while we make small talk. I never tie it to a follow up question either, because that's too close to the line for me. But I'm not trying to figure out your situation there either. I'm just putting it out there that I have a life outside of here, that I'm probably going to sneak out (very) early every so often, work from home sometimes to get some other non-work stuff done too, etc. and that I won't hold it against you for being a normal person either.
This is a strange thought process. It's illegal to ask about kids/relationship status and you apparently know that. You just attempt to fish for that information because you want them to know that _you_ personally WFH and have non-work stuff in your life? Why not just describe that work culture? Seems like you are trying to find out if they have kids or a wife, otherwise I don't understand the reasoning.
Every company and every manager out there tries to sell people on their great company culture and work-life balance. I actually have one. I actively cultivate that internally and set team boundaries that promote having a life outside of here. It's important (to me) that candidates know that we actually do what we say we do in terms of work life balance.
This. I reviewed a ton of resumes, and even when I even noticed that total education time was "non-standard" (rarely), it didn't matter. It's easy as an employer to look at transcript and see if someone is slacking off or has other stuff going on. And the latter is probably a good think in terms of your commitment and drive.
I graduated in 2006, having started my Bachelor in 2000, beca8use it turns out that I have a pretty severe neurological disability. I've had much trouble finding a full-time job (one interview started screaming at me after I explained that I have a disability, but was most impressed with me up until that point) and one of my acquaintances explained that it was because I got a degree.
First, he told me that running mail/web/file servers at home show I can do it and haven't just followed an online tutorial but by doing my degree, anybody could have done my work. Then he explained that the length of time that I took to complete the degree was going to stop anybody hiring me. Later, I was told that it was fair to expect that no employer would hire me, there's no legal restriction preventing them from telling me to get lost because of my disability.
Obviously the first and last were wrong, but this is the first time I've heard an employer actually saying they don't really care how long it took to get the degree.
What the hell? Do you mind going into detail?
PS. I have a *friend who took 6 years to graduate with a BA in CS and now works for an awesome startup, that also employees some great programmers who never went to college.
PPS. If you're in CS create a GitHub account to act as your portfolio. Work on some projects in college; that way you have something to show the employer when they ask "So what have you done?".
this is totally unnecessary.
no reasonable engineer that is asked to interview you will look at your github, or care if you have one.
yeah gonna have to disagree on this. I'm an engineer and work for a BigCo Enterprisey company and while it's not necessary, if you have a GH account, it makes my job easier when I interview you. Of course if you write terrible code, then the GH account probably is not the best thing to have. But other than that, I can't see a reason why not to have one. If you have one, I definitely look at it and I consider engineers who have one higher than those that don't. Doesn't mean that I won't rate you favorably if you really know what you're talking about, but it doesn't hurt.
you are assuming that
* they want to write code outside of working hours
* they will put the same level of attention into the code they write outside of work as they do the code they write at work
* they want the code they write outside of work to be open source
failing to do any or all of these things, or doing any or all of these things, should not affect a candidates impression on you.
Do you really not see the difference between being able to look at someone's code and trying to guess what it might look like via lame whiteboard implementations of basic algorithms?
When I'm doing deeper interviews, I check the portfolio as well: what is the specialty and interest of the person? What are they up to? Do I want to work with this person?
At the end of the day, we're both human beings, and we have to get along at work. I don't want to be in a bad relationship. So I look at, and prefer resumes that give me the most information to this end.
Other people do it differently.
In fact, I wouldn't really care of you had a degree or not. (Its a positive if you have one, but not a negative if you don't).
in my own experience (interviewed for internship, current full time position, and a few competing positions, and have interviewed many candidates):
i did not feel like my educational experience was taken into account when interviewing.
and when my coworkers and i interview candidates, education is almost never discussed.
the only reason i suggest omitting the start date is to get past HR filters.
As with any Resume/CV issue like this just practice answering the question - a couple of sentences is sufficient, and you'll be fine.
Much more important is where your degree is from as to whether it means anything.
You should have an answer prepared for why it took longer that is reasonable and doesn't reflect badly. I.e. "I failed classes and had to take them over." doesn't sound good. "I took a lighter class load so that I could work while going to school to lower my debt." sounds reasonable.
"Going through a lot of stuff" isn't good enough.
I would call that "going through a lot of stuff." It's not good enough though? Why not?
The actual phrase "I was going through some stuff." is not good enough. It's an unprofessional answer. You need to be able to explain what "stuff" is in a professional way that makes sense and isn't overly dramatic. Otherwise the concern is you're going to "go through some stuff" as an employee and have excessive sick days, etc.
I mean, I would probably naturally start with "There was a lot going on," and then explain. You know, being that I am human and all, so I have emotions.
Hopefully in an interview you would actually be able to have a conversation, rather than it just being a series of questions where they write down the answer and move on. I suppose you would need to gauge the style of the interview. If it really is going to be that formal, yes, you would need to have precise response like that.
It's hard to imagine an interviewer who wouldn't automatically ask the follow up question when someone gives a vague answer.
Sometimes responding to comments it seems like I am arguing a counter-point, but really I am just continuing the same line of thought from a different view.
So, as other have suggested, don't make it obvious. It's ridiculous to see the year of high school graduation on a resume anyway. Also, you don't have to list internships from your first two years.
If it does come up, or if they ask about it, do not lie. The appearance of hiding anything is a red flag. Just tell them that you were dealing with personal issues, and that they are resolved now. So, it won't affect your ability to perform the job.
Your typical scholastic college student in my peer group did just fine in graduating between 4 and 5 years.
N.b., a lot of the wailing over school costs is from the Ivy League and SLAC set; those prices drive up the average considerably. State universities are much, much cheaper. (Still spendy... but often an order of magnitude cheaper).
Not really; there's not enough schools or slots in that set to drive up the average much.
> State universities are much, much cheaper. (Still spendy... but often an order of magnitude cheaper).
Both State universities and non-elite private universities have gotten expensive much, much faster than elite private universities (and both, especially State schools, have much less school-provided need-based grants available, resulting in much more dependence on loans, and much more impact on actual affordability from the sticker price increases.)
tl;dr: do employers care at what age you finish your degree?
Long story: I'm a 35 year old software engineer with 6 years of experience (mostly java/scala), currently an EU citizen residing in UK (London). I've studied CS when I was 18 at the universtiy, but dropped out (various reasons). Now since Brexit news I no longer feel I want to continue living here and I am strongly thinking of moving to USA. My plan is to get a Computer Science BsC from Open University in 3 years, apply for H1B visa/job and then later green card. I'm only doing my degree now because of H1B requirements, no other reasons. I would be 38 by the time I finish it.
Generally, a degree that comes after years of professional experience indicates a career switch, and those employees often need to work harder to find a good fit – usually, an organization that can make use of the skills they learned in the previous phase of their career. The reasons for this mostly come down to being very junior in skill level but having difficulty working under the same circumstances (low pay, trained by a 25 year old, potentially long hours...) of the typical junior hire.
There are exceptions to this, and there are many career switchers that navigate this well, but it's definitely worth keeping in mind.
(My name relates to the part I know)
Legally, no they don't care. There will be hiring policies that dictate complete independence of non-relevant factors
Truthfully speaking, as long as you're under 45 and you've done something with your life during your non-working time, you're okay. It really helps if you can have a steady employment history, or at least proof you've been given money for doing something related to your degree, but my experience is that 45 is the first age where questions start to arise.
For traditional businesses in the US, longevity and dedication to the company are big. 5 years at a traditional company is considered a short time - the closer you get to retirement, the less you can give the company, and the closer you are to having age related ailments, etc. Age discrimination is very real, especially in tech (and doubly so in programming specifically), but you're well under the limit for most employers. A few start-ups might go cock-eyed at the graduation dates, but start-ups are a different beast entirely.
It is my impression that employers don't care. They care much more about what you've learned, the projects you've worked on, and how passionate you are about the field.
I had an interviewee once who would try to explain everything that was remotely sub-optimal on his CV with long stories of how horrible his upbringing was and how hard he had it in life. I guess he was trying to get sympathy but all I heard was 'drama all around'. Now, being able to overcome adversity is a good thing in general, but there is a fine line between that and being desperate to blame everything on everyone else or emotionally blackmailing people.
So my advice, for what it's worth, is to not be seduced into giving long emotional explanations. Just say 'I had to work a full time job' or 'I had to finance myself' and leave it at that.
So yes, an employer might take into consideration how long it took your to finish your CS degree but ultimately it likely won't matter much when all the other factors are taken into consideration. It's one tiny factor that may be very important for you right now but doesn't actually provide much useful information to the employer.
EDIT: Just to make my point even clearer: taking slightly longer than expected most likely won't stand out at all. Taking significantly longer may be a negative factor, or it may be a positive factor, but either way it will most likely not be even close to one of the most important factors an employer might consider unless you literally submit a slip of paper with only that piece of info on it.
While I sometimes envy you (and others) for having CS degrees, I have never had a difficult time landing work as a developer. Imposter syndrome is still pretty high though.
As many others have suggested, just list the graduation date. That's all prospective employers care about. The fact that you have a CS degree matters more than how long you took to earn it.
But even that pales in comparison to your ability to clearly communicate what you're competent at. So focus on your communication skills and self esteem. And you'll do just fine!
I'm reading Hacker News pretty regularly but didn't bother to register since now that I saw this question from JxGZV.
I come from really small EU country that was formerly communist and I'm also an CS student in my final year:) With that being said, I want to share my experience that I had recently with a pretty well known big company which is in the business of software engineering and was merged with another company in 2012. Because of various reasons I'm studying longer that it is expected, but nevertheless my CV is outstanding, since I have many achievements as an undergrad (participating at conferences with posters, winning hackathons etc....). To make long story short, I was asked what was I doing all these years and if I was "doing drugs or what?!".My answer was "No I did not". I didn't get an offer after this interview and was really happy because of that.
For anyone reading this, if you are in a similar situation, do not stress yourself with such questions. Just send the application and CV. If they ask questions like these, you can find a better employer and you probably don't want to work for them anyway. Believe me. I experienced it.
It won't hurt a smart CS major with a good GPA. When asked, say, "I self funded my education" or "I had to work" and that can even become a plus. (Just don't outright lie)
Don't sweat it too much - most people understand you can be perfectly capable of doing the job without having adegree in CS. More to the point, a lot of programmers don't even get a CS degree and they still hold down very productive programming jobs.
inb4 people start posting they don't. HN isn't a solid representative sample of the US let alone world job market.