Ask HN: CS degrees, do they matter again?
Last time I "Asked HN", I was in a very different place. Fresh out of a bootcamp, right at the peak, and subsequent collapse of the Covid hiring. It didn't go well. However, another HN reader turned me on to Upwork, and over the last 2 years, I've been building modest freelancing career.
I came from an automotive background where I made awful money, moved to the Bay Area, became a bike messenger in San Francisco because I didn't know what to do with myself, and once again made awful money.
I had been a hobbyist programmer for years by this point, so I got sucked into the bootcamp racket. The program was great. I got what I needed out of it, although the certificate wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.
I landed an ongoing contract on Upwork, which I still work on which really changed everything for me. I also landed an internship at Akamai as a Cloud Support Engineer, which never resulted in employment, but I'm not sure it's the type of work that I really want to be doing. It was more of a foot in the door type thing for me.
Either way, I am now making a living off of software development. A lucrative living? no, but it works for my lifestyle.
Several years ago, we were all told "You don't need a degree bro, degrees are obsolete bro, companies only care about what you know".
I found out that this wasn't true the hard way, however now I at least have some professional experience to my name. The job market is bad for everyone right now. I'm not necessarily looking for a job ATM, but at some point, the grind and hustle of freelancing might either fizzle out, or I might just get tired of it.
Now that that's out of the way, here is my question...
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I've thought about doing an online CS degree. It seems like this can be done for less than 15 grand, and also doable while still making money.
Is this a bad idea? Is this a good idea? Is this necessary if I want to be employable in the future?
245 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 296 ms ] threadThen again, I've seen $15/hr jobs that require a Master's in CS. That management is crazy.
It's like saying the first floor isn't very important once you build the second floor
What I can say is that the more you fill out your resume with work experience, the less the degree will matter to non-FANG employers.
I suppose it depends on the kind of programming that you do, but not having a CS degree hasn't held me back at all. By this point I've got over 16 years of experience I think, and I don't even bother listing much about my education other than having a BA and the university I got it from.
If you're thinking about doing something else to have some variety on the resume, authoring and maintaining an open source library, or becoming a contributor or maintainer of one is always a nice addition to the resume. Unlike getting a degree, it's free to do (time aside) and can show a different kind of experience than you might be getting now through freelancing.
If you haven't yet, one thing that would be worth doing is working with a recruiter. There's plenty of bad ones out there, of course, but a good one will have direct access to the people hiring. If you're willing to work on-site, even better, as that will significantly reduce the number of people you're competing against for attention.
I hope you find some of this useful, and either way, I wish you luck!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900
Not only are you competing with lower cost people from around the world, you will increasingly begin competing versus vibe coding (at the entry level) and the never-sick-but often-wrong AI (replacing the entry and lower mid-level).
There's also, apparently, a glut in the market from all the people stockpiled during Covid and subsequently made redundant.
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In the flip side, if you have a really strong network of people wanting to hire you if not for the B.S. checkmark, it'll probably be a good move
In other words, the value of the degree, in tech, is largely the brand name of the school that issued the degree, and I wouldn't expect an online CS degree to open any doors that a bootcamp couldn't also open.
At this point, my partner with a gender studies degree has a better chance of getting past the resume filters than I do.
I joined at a different time with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. My online resume originally had a spoiler tag expander to explain it, but other than an internship, I never worked a day of MechE in my life; all software and management.
I completely agree with the sibling posters that it doesn’t matter much (or at all) once you’ve got a little full-time software dev under your belt. I think most employers just want you to be able to create value for them. Other than consulting/body shop companies, your degree (the paper) doesn’t mean much.
Degrees matter when employers don't have the time and/or ability to make a reasonable decision for every candidate. They need ways to eliminate chunks of the applications. Illogical ways of eliminating candidates are acceptable because they are better than having no way. One method that's not completely illogical is to only look at candidates who have degrees.
You can get degrees for <15K. For a BSCS you can do WGU for 5/10K. For a MSCS you can do GaTech OMSCS for 7K. Those numbers are small enough that they're almost definitely worth it. But those also cost time, which you will have to decide for yourself if you want to spend.
Unless you are a business owner or a union member, you're probably not doing particularly well.
Not perfect, but far better than the current resume filtering.
This is exactly the category that I'm in. A couple of years ago I applied to a large company, with a referral. 0-2 years experience and a non-specific bachelor's required. I got my rejection in 15 minutes, after business hours. My resume didn't even see human eyes. Did I mention I had a referral?
I know maybe a couple of guys who've had successful careers in cs despite having no degree. Those guys are especially talented and industrious. Real rock stars. I'm an average slob in comparison and I feel lucky to have my papers, as I have a decent track record of getting interviews. Small local companies seem to respond the best to my resume. Big places and remote jobs seem to have a much higher bar to clear.
Amazon and AWS is built mostly on java
Very inflexible and formulaic coding that doesn’t tend to build up the person. If you stay a long time at a Java shop, make it clear you weren’t in that type of role.
Having said that - I believe many companies view OMSCS as a strong signal. It’s a difficult degree with high drop out rate.
I'm pretty sure it's required for the degree's accreditation. Unfortunately, there is always a small percentage of people who will cheat if they can get away with it.
And this is coming from someone who graduated from a no name state college.
Also I rather get an anal probe with a cactus than ever work for any large company again.
From the thousand-foot view, I actually saw a dynamic environment where operating within a matrixed organization and aligning cross-functional stakeholders were essential levers for driving scalable outcomes. While enterprise-level ecosystems inevitably present change management challenges, I found that viewing the experience through a lens of strategic growth and operational optimization made it incredibly rewarding.
that's MBAspeak for those who don't recognise it.
been more than once in such bigcos that used it, heard the talk, e.g."we gotta get our messaging right", "don't rock the boat", "our culture / mission / vision / values", brainwashing-type promotional videos created by the corporate communications department being played, while everyone nods and beams fixed plastic smiles, as though it's a national anthem being played.
so i can recognise it.
MBAspeak is a descendant of Newspeak.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
And this is how Apple/Google end up rejecting candidates to work on open source libraries...despite the candidates being the very authors they are wed out as they haven't spent months preparing for the interview.
So yes, there isn't a degree requirement, and for senior+ people, they don't care at all. For lower then that, I can't say, i'm sure it matters more the lower the level.
No degree. I left any mention of college off my resume, and only included the last 12+ years of relevant experience and was able to get an interview. I have also done extensive open source work though, as well.
> answer by himself: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...
Here's another one that I already know exists off the top of my head -- the only thing I have to look up is the tweet url: https://twitter.com/tiangolo/status/1281946592459853830
I am not a fan of leetcode interviews myself, but I don't think the FAANG process is that bad. I am interested in any specific examples of authors of projects being rejected from big-tech companies for a role where they would work on their own thing
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...
He admitted later that Google was probably right for not hiring him.
> But ultimately, should Google have hired me? Yes, absolutely yes. I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things, maybe they aren't perfect, but people really like them. Surely, surely Google could have used that.
But he did add some nuance to the situation
Telling them they are 20+ years old, I have no way of getting them, and I am fine retaking the courses led absolutely no where.
(I control how I learn and absent a professor being a dick and purposely setting up an exam that 3/4 of the class bombs, learning is a joy compared to the politics, power games and sometimes even incompetence encountered at "work").
He had learned his lesson: next time he would discard the other half of the applicant pile.
1. Will the CS degree increase your knowledge and problem-solving ability faster than you could without it?
2. Will the credential add substantially to your credibility for hiring managers?
The answer to 1 is mostly about your level of self-discipline and ability to learn independently. If you need the stimulus of a structured environment and a peer group to learn at your best, then any accredited program will be helpful, and your ability to pass coding interviews will increase (with a lot of hard work beyond the curriculum).
The answer to 2 is pretty straightforward: unless your degree is from a tier 2+ school, the raw credential is of little value, and even tier 2 is not certain. To count, an online degree must be presented by the school as competitive with an on-site degree. Georgia Tech offers such a degree program as a tier 1 school, for example.
An unaccredited program is of no value whatsoever in answer to 1 or 2. So, avoid them at any price. You are looking at a 3-5 year project, no matter what, and this is probably a good time to do that. The market will take that long to sort itself out and to realize that vibe coding is NOT the miracle it seems.
2. yes. this could just be my cynicism talking though.
I'm not looking at any unaccredited program. I already have one of those under my belt.
(Caveat: If you'll be emigrating in the future a degree can make a difference for visas if recognized )
If you do it and actually apply yourself (as opposed to optimizing for points/effort) I guess you'll be on the up regardless of which (:
For 2, fair enough. What school will give you a BS degree for <15K?
College is pretty good about the last category, but really if you went through syllabi, scanned through lecture notes, and paged through the reading materials listed, you're probably ahead of most students in that category.
That exercise alone will probably give you a good idea of the technical value of the education.
I would add that words don't have objective complete meanings. Words are indirect references to ideas and ideas are like raw marble in your head, carved into meaningful shapes by working with and manipulating those ideas.
If you bring out a word like "consistency", college is very much about shaping the idea behind that word into increasingly more crisp and formal meanings, especially meanings that can then interact with ideas behind other words like "atomicity" or "scale".
This just fails a basic real world sensibility test. Are you saying a CS grade from Montana State University that is a hiring manager at FAANG (maybe even the most famous one) is going to consider someone with a degree from Stevens or Florida Institute of Technology to be equivalent to someone without a degree? I don't know if you are aware but there many people employed CS grads that did not attend the top 3. Also, I don't know about tiers, but these rankings are largely based on research and not quality of undergraduate program or outcomes.
The idea of telling someone that doesn't have a degree that wants to know of if attaining a degree could likely help their career that they should not go if it is not "tier 2+," whatever that is, is just kind of malpractice. Georgia Tech is not the only school that offers such a degree that is equivalent to their in-person program. I would agree that you should choose a school that has a traditional program for which this online program is just a different modality, rather than one of these online-only predatory type of schools.
It would be “malpractice” to suggest anyone waste time on a CS degree from anything less than tier 2+ school. My degree is from a no name state college so I’m definitely not looking down on anyone.
This, most state schools in most states offer such degrees now and have years now.
Once I had real experience getting a job was not a problem. That said, getting some specific job at a specific company might be hindered by not having a degree (or even not having a CS degree).
I would say:
- A degree in Comp.Sci. is useful for what you learn not just for the paper.
- Sometimes the paper matters. Some companies will only hire people with a degree. Others you'd need to be a superstar to work around that requirement.
- Sometimes the degree can impact your pay. E.g. if you work for the government or a university.
- A degree can impact things like immigration. E.g. it's much easier for me as a Canadian to work in the US because my degree means I can get a TN. Some countries will give preference to immigrants with degress.
- You can meet interesting people and make connections during your studies.
I'm not really interested in specific companies. I'm really NOT interested in FAANG type companies. I have however seen many listings where I was like "this fits my knowledge and interests perfectly other than the degree requirement"
- While I'm interested in the paper, I absolutely love learning everything I can about computers. I'm super neurodivergent, and have trouble learning things I'm not interested in. Gen Ed is why college didn't work out for me 20 years ago.
- There's always going to be jobs that require specialized degrees. I understand that. I just don't want to have my resume thrown in the trash when I apply for an entry level front end web dev job.
- Totally, I'm not terribly interested in university jobs, and this seems like the worst time ever to work for the government
- Doesn't apply to me, but I appreciate you sharing your experience.
- Thats true, but I'm in no place to actually go sit in a classroom right now.
If you have 20 years of experience I wonder if there are options for you to have that recognized towards a degree or even to get accepted into a Masters program (where presumably you'd have to make up some required courses but still).
AI could be changing a lot of what we do as well.
I wouldn't spend time and money on something that's iffy. A real science bachelors degree is at least 3 years of fairly hard work. You could do that part-time over a longer period. That's not going to necessarily make you a great programmer - a lot of that is just doing it and learning. Which you don't need a degree or a bootcamp for. But it's going to be somewhat limiting not to understand the "science" part, how much depends on the specific role.
I work with someone who got a diploma, got hired, is doing great, and also going back to school to finish his degree part-time. I also studied part remote part on site to finish the courses I needed while having a full time job and other responsibilities. It's tough but doable.
I'm at the point where if there is a tool or technology I need to learn to solve a specific problem, I can do that in a reasonable time amount of time.
My post was to see if getting a degree is worth it in an age where they are becoming more important to get past the recruiter than they were 5+ years ago.
Also i noticed your tube related username (i assume). I used to manage a guitar shop and done a little work on tube gear but mostly stuck to pedals and stuff (much safer)
Isn't what those scam "universities" do? Sell you a diploma based on your "life experience"?
Point being, a degree awarded like that may not have any value.
If it gets your resume past the process that filters out applicants without degrees then I’d say it has value.
There is a non trivial relationship between colleges and businesses, so you are likely to do many problems in college that are not terribly different from the interview questions. Additionally all of your peers have been interviewed/do interviews/do referrals and that does matter.
College students generally did not do incredibly well on practical problems, so I would expect a non college candidate to do really well on them.
Many of the best co-workers that I remember had physics degrees. In fact, it was so pronounced I personally consider a physics degree to be a top tier signal of programming ability, but that's my own personal prejudice.
If your degree isn't from a top 10-20 CS school it's probably not worth it if you have experience. If you can't make friends while doing the courses, then I don't think it's worth it. Going to a good college is much much much much more than a few lectures, some book reading, and some assignments. It is face to face time with world class experts, it's a culture, it's social, it's exploratory. You can potentially work on bleeding edge research or be introduced to things you never knew existed.
It sounds like your idea of what college is, is that it's a technical education rather than a liberal education. If that's true I think your perception of college is wrong.
There are some situations where a college degree really matters. If you want to apply for a work visa in a foreign country, a degree from a good college can potentially get your application a rubber stamp or lack of one could completely restrict you from it.
You're basically just using it as a proxy for general intelligence, the _average_ physics major's IQ is around 130.
You want a lower level administrative job? You better have a degree so we know that you're not stupid. Now you get to pay off your loans with 20 bucks an hour.
The degree was just a fancy filter if could read and write. If they worked out, they would be eventually hired direct into less mindless tasks.
Not all of the contractors were worth retaining.
The whole point is to have a test that is correlated with IQ, and does not look like an IQ test in a legal way.
It appears that an IQ test can be administered if it can be argued that a certain score is required to do the job, and the test is not simply a way to discriminate. It sounds like a court case waiting to happen though: how does one prove what score is required? Easier if your defense is "we never administered an IQ test, tour honor".
The reason everyone doesn't test IQ is that it's not very useful, not that it's legally risky.
People think it is because there's an subtext that everybody would hire straight off IQ scores if they could, which supports a (frankly gross) biological essentialist argument a lot of edgy nerds are fond of. But the whole argument is fractally mythological.
Some CS programs have moved away from heavy maths requirements over the last 2 decades, outside a few maths-heavy specific CS courses.
Physics degrees still mean you have very decent maths, but CS degrees are not necessarily as strong a signifier of it.
I suspect that is the difference, particularly if you are actually working on tricky programming tasks.
That and they necessarily have to learn a lot of CS just to do their own degree work. It's like wondering why cross country runners perform well at other sports too, their sport incorporates the 'hard' part of most sports, the running and endurance aspects.
Hah, I also noticed that. For some reason, ex-army programmers really excel in their junior years (or sometimes even just months), too. Do you think it's the attitude towards problem-solving?
I remember thinking "oh, you understand, like actually understand" to them in particular, so maybe it's that they spend more time understanding before doing.
My feeling is that they're just built different, military, especially in US will either teach you or make you disciplined (not something I'd say about my country, you'll learn how to get hazed and drink). If you have a task, well, you better solve it quick, no distractions.
I’ve also found this to be true. And math degrees.
In my experience those with math degrees too. Maybe the structured methods of analysis and problem solving.
I agree with a sibling comment that physicists often seem to make the best coders, for some reason.
My hypothesis: it's because physicists are rigorously trained to model real-world systems directly. What would be considered an "advanced" modeling problem to most would be an intro problem to a physics student.
Math is absolutely related, but I think the secret ingredient is "mathematical maturity" — the ability to fluidly jump between layers of abstraction. Mathematicians are good at this too, but physicists go a step further: they are trained to ground their abstractions in concrete physical phenomena.
Mathematicians ground systems in axioms, sure. But physicists have to tether models back to reality — to processes and measurements — which turns out to be exactly the skill set that makes for good programmers and system designers.
Huge generalization, obviously.
But personally, I've noticed my own programming ability increases the more physics I learn. Physics gives you a systematic framework to reason about complexity — and physicists get the luxury of a "relatively simple" universe compared to fields like chemistry or biology. They're working with rich systems described by just a few tightly-coupled parameters. And the kicker: a lot of those systems are 100% repeatable, every time.
That kind of structure — and the habit of respecting it — is priceless for engineering.
I can also confirm that.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that people with a formal degree are on average better prepared to interviews.
But sadly, it has absolutely no correlation with work performance. Zero, none.
In fact, I can say that the overwhelming majority of non graduates did far better on the job: more motivated, stays longer, hungrier to learn and prove themselves.
As above I would say that the physics students I know are often the ones going furthest in their careers either in research, computing (know a few at google), consulting e.g. PWC etc
You can find people with physics degrees working in pretty much any technical field.
I think those type of people just have really good analytical thinking
I failed to get back a degree for the same reason. Also in France, once you're above 25, you can't go back to university, you need to do classes for adults, which are lower quality and delivered by the labor department. Most of those classes are for people who never wrote code.
I tried to sign up some paperwork to get a degree equivalent but it's cumbersome and got refusals.
Needless to say, getting a job is impossible now. Most of the experience I have is because of the post COVID job market, but that's over now.
I say I am a developer without a job and people are surprised. I have excellent senior C++ test scores but without an engineering degrees, it's a no.
I might not be the best candidate, but there is no shortage of developers at all. They don't "hire anybody who can type code", that's just false.
Also ghost job ads, maybe?
https://www.open.ac.uk/courses/computing-it/degrees
It's not a great time for us, but freelancing has been a lifesaver. Have you tried getting on a freelancing platform? It's probably easier to get work as a C++ developer than have to compete with the thousands of Wordpress devs.
Most places require a comp sci degree regardless of how good you are. It's rude to say that but I've found this to be true. I've also now realized that someone with a comp sci degree saying you don't need one, well they don't know what they're talking about. Being 6 months in to my degree program, also a boot camp grad but no degree, and in this US economy just having that I'm in school has made the difference. I added the degree to LinkedIn and my resume one month ago and I started getting interviews. Causation or correlation I don't know, I think a bit of both. I'm getting strong loops and it's come up now in every interview. Keep in mind that I have a very respectable DevOps background already, but I was getting anywhere. For Software Dev roles, I really think having the degree matters that much more and would reward you accordingly.
I assume we're talking about the school everyone asks about? A comp sci degree for 15k (so 18 months?) that's * ABET accredited * and * regionally accredited * which it is, checks all the necessary boxes, and would leave you open to get an in-person Comp Sci master's degree from Georgia Tech (I called) and probably from any good school on the US West Coast.
Before committing I asked 3 recruiters that I know, plus some hiring managers, and they all responded the same: "We'd interview you for a Software Developer role if you had a comp sci degree. We really don't care that it's from that school."
No to DeVry, ITT Tech, or City U, yes to the 'owl' one.
Do it.
A degree in something is a minimum, a STEM degree is better, but since you're here now starting out, the direct route is one I really would recommend.
Edit: this question really fires me up and I've added to it a bit.
I entered the gaming industry a long time ago as a software engineer without a computer science degree. Later, I thought I'd get one online, just as you are considering. It was reasonably cheap compared to my income, and I thought I had the extra hours for an evening online course. But I found it to be very demoralizing. I'd be micro-optimizing containers in AAA game engines, shaving microseconds off operations by reducing CPU cache misses on target consoles in the morning, and earning a 60% grade on my JavaScript game in the afternoon, because I didn't follow the method shown in class. I also did poorly in CS math, especially with formal proofs, which were a lot of fun for math enthusiasts but grating for me, being an expert in game math and graphics math at the time. When my fourth semester rolled around, I found only one or two modules to be somewhat useful, while others, such as HTML web design, had no bearing on my profession. I dropped out about halfway through my degree, leaving me with a lot of money spent but nothing to show for it. I could have forced myself through it, but it would have been on pure discipline (which is easier for some than it is for me!)
My advice is: don't get a CS degree because it's doable. Get it if you need it for something, like if you wish to enter a specific industry that requires a meaningful academic experience, such as research. Your degree will then serve a purpose. Otherwise, you might feel like you're not getting much out of it, and it won't be easy to justify carrying through. Especially if you're already performing at a level significantly higher than what a degree puts you on. Or maybe the purpose a degree could serve for you is fun - perhaps the academics would be rewarding for you in a way that doesn't have to flow into your work, or you get networking opportunities that a good uni/college affords. But my view is: it's a significant commitment, so there has to be a meaningful, clear reason to do it. Otherwise, it will be all cost and no return.
I'm involved in several projects, as well as being the sole developer for a SaaS that I co-own (I make exactly 0 dollars from it right now). I have to solve all kinds of difficult problems, which excites me to no end. I can see how I could have the same demoralizing experience you did.
In my bootcamp, I got a D on my portfolio because I didn't follow directions. I've been praised many times after the fact on this same portfolio.
I'm not an academic person at all, so maybe this would be a slog for me. I did get an A+ in said bootcamp though, not that that matters.
At the moment, I feel like a degree is necessary for any job I would want to get given the job market. Call it future proofing if you will.
And, of course, most tech companies will say that tech should be a meritocracy. Then they'll offer bonuses and incentives for anyone who can get a friend to fill an open role. Consider that.
If you were going to get a degree I'd get it in something where computer science is applied rather than the 'thing' itself - e.g. electrical engineering (or even aerospace depending on your mathiness). Also that's probably far more future proofed than a CS degree anyhow, and will get your feet in the door for degree requirements as well as open the door to lots of options that a CS degree wouldn't.
I do like electrical engineering. I'm a huge Arduino-head, and am currently working on an embedded device for a client. The hardware design was relatively simple, but I have way more to learn in that area.
The biggest surprise when I got into the industry was how incredibly much necessary practical knowledge was not even hinted at in my education. Mainly related to actual tooling and processes required for large professional settings - not toy projects for five students doing something for a few weeks.
In my own experience, it is true that a portfolio really helps you stand out. Recruiters often ask for your GitHub profile or blog.
However, I've found that recruiting really differs based on studio size. Indies tend to take what the can get, often forming a ragtag team of people with various levels of education and experience. AAA studios, on the other hand, are very discerning when it comes to programmers. They often won't give you a chance unless you either have solid experience or a university degree from a university they know is up to par. That's because there are so many talented programmers who really want to work in AAA
I found that AAA studios will pick someone with game shipping experience and some good code examples on GitHub over someone with a university degree 9 times out of 10.
The degree does matter a bit more in AAA, especially R&D roles. These studios actually have some R&D to do. But for other roles and other company sizes… does it truly matter in Sweden? I mean, wouldn’t a decent portfolio (including just a list of titles they worked on) jump anyone to the front of the shortlist, ahead of degrees but weaker experience?
That’s been my experience.
Keep in mind that in Sweden an education is not a financial burden. All universities are free and you get a state scholarship (plus very reasonable student loans if you wish).
What did help me however, is that I got a job at a smaller company working on software and then leveraged that professional experience into a job in the industry. That initial job I got was because of my computer science degree.
The importance of a CS degree was the stuff I learned across the degree, not stuff that was necessarily directly CS-related. Physics and math classes for example I did horrifically in as well, but those concepts I picked up have been useful to have in my toolkit.
Unfortunately, the self-worth, poor compensation and no protections part is key in how a lot of people make it into games, and get their first games shipped. Beyond that, it’s easier.
I’m not saying this is a good or bad way to enter the industry, by the way. I have a strong opinion on it, but it’s outside the scope of what I wanted to share.
If I was you, then I'd keep hustling with upwork and whatever else you need to while building and launching something meaningful on your own in the space you want to work.
- slap a founder title up on your linkedin (set the start date to now)
- ship something not terrible
- continue iterating on it while becoming a better engineer, product manager, designer, etc all on your own
- learn to use AI coding tools really well
- clone and enhance the features of competitors
- talk about it a lot
- go to conferences for the business sector and for the tech stack
- network a ton
Then apply for a job if you still want to in 1-2 years. You'll have met a lot of people doing that and can hit them up or apply to competitors in the space using your startup as the perfect showcase.
When they ask why you are quitting just say you are super passionate about the space but couldn't raise money or going on a solo founder was terrible and you want to join a team.
And just don't apply for jobs at FANG ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ there are so many other companies out there that need people with the type of experience you'd have after 6 months to a year of the above. They are looking for folks with FANG background, tier 1 college/other pedigree, or specific experience building the same thing.
I will not be going to any prestigious school. It's not in the cards for me.
I actually do own a SaaS along with my business partner. I'm not the founder, but we bought the platform from the founders who were looking to bail. It's a logistics company that is used by mainly bike messengers. 20+ companies around the world use it.
I would say I've shipped a few non-terrible things so far. I built an application that runs on a POS kiosk that kids scan their little IDs on when they are tardy to class. It's in a few dozen schools in the LA area.
I do have a pretty interesting resume. It has caught the eyes of people, but it takes someone who had an unconventional history like myself to appreciate it.
I haven't submitted a job application in over a year. I just haven't seen the point of it given the market. I'm also not interested in FAANG at all. This would be more of a future proofing move.
- Degree, a general one is good, a specific one related to the job is better (especially in the German-speaking area, I don't know about the others)
- Experience, especially in well-known big companies
They used a trick there to reduce the leverage of employees in IT and created the myth of a "shortage of skilled workers" by repeatedly publishing this in various media, creating fake statistics and ghost job ads. A lot of foreigners jumped in and also the existing workforce, afraid of losing their jobs or not finding a new one, didn't bother to negotiate well anymore and are doing jobs for really bad money (e.g. 50k/year).
Now you add the "AI will replace you anyway" mantra, which initially increases this fear and the willingness of employees to work for low wages.
The effect is a workforce that is well educated and willing to work for food and shelter, no questions asked.
If you're trying to compete, a degree helps, but in the end you may be undercut by someone with the same degree (with better grades) but who takes less money because they don't know their worth.
My opinion: try to get out of Europe, run your own business or find a different career / business opportunity. These are bad times for CS employees in Europe.
It's kind of upsetting because it's supposed to be the nature of free markets that demand increases price in order to better allocate labor resources, that means wages should be going up. So the message shouldn't be there's a shortage, the message should be that it's in high demand and that should be matched by increased starting salaries.
When anyone said "shortage of skilled workers" they meant "shortage of cheap satisfactory labor"/"software costs too much".
This is a UK perspective not Europe, but there are a lot of parallels (until recently) and I know Europe pretty well.
For many other software jobs, a degree will be required. This is an applicant filter if nothing else. These places (banks, insurance companies, manufacturers, any number of business where software enables what they do but is not the product they sell), can be boring but they can be great places to work if you want boring. Regular hours, low stress, good benefits. They will almost all require degrees. From which institution might be less important as long as it's reasonably legitimate.
I wish anyone could really tell you. I mean, I sure don't know, and I've been a hiring manager in SF for years. I've done countless interviews, read countless resumes, all that. I can tell you what I would do if I were trying to bootstrap my way into the industry, though:
1. Do something difficult and unusual in technology, and do it in public. Basically set a goal that sounds crazy to achieve, something that would require an unreasonable amount of effort and time, and then go do it and publicize it. Note that getting a degree is difficult and time-consuming, but not really very unusual or impressive.
2. Interact with real people in technology as much as possible. Not just "networking", but actually immersing into the tech community, learning all the events and meetups and hackathons and doing as much of that as possible. Note that a degree will probably help you meet a lot of other students, but not necessarily active tech professionals.
As with all challenging goals, my real goal would be to spend a certain amount of time on them every day, taking whatever the next step is.
I am quite confident that if you put as much effort into this path as you would a degree, you will land a better job, sooner than the other way.
Maybe I've done too much doomscrolling on Linked In.
Actually doing a whole degree program is just so much freakin' work and money for a single line on your resume that I can think of a lot of equally time consuming things that would have a better payoff. I've done night classes too and - whew. Never again.
I just wish that "single line" wasn't such a deal breaker.
[1]: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-to-draw-an-owl
I'm going to combine a general direction with a lot of time and horsepower and exploration and I will end up with a great owl drawing at the end. The odds are that I end up drawing the owl after only a few weeks because it's not as hard as I thought, but I discover some other really cool goals with a better payoff by then.
There's a lot of alpha in spending an unreasonable amount of time on interesting goals.
To answer your questions directly:
> How will an otherwise relative newcomer know what would be considered challenging
Just pick something that sounds challenging to you! You will learn a lot about what the scene considers challenging/interesting as you go. You can always update the goal.
> how to go about making it happening
Research. Start with stupid questions about the parts that are initially apparent. Keep a list of things that you don't know how to even begin to tackle, and over time, deep dive into items on the list. You will find that the resources/tricks/approaches you have grows as you go.
> and that they can make it happen?
You just have to really, really believe in yourself and in what you're trying to do. If you keep your health, that is all you really need.
Lack of a degree or lack of a C.S. degree?
Everybody is having a hard time finding a job. If you get a degree, you will do all that work and simply be competing with 100,000 other people who also have degrees and also want work.
I compete with them without institutional education. Although at my stage of career no one ever asks about my education.
since you are in bay area, I can grab coffee if that'd be useful for you.
Is contributing to open source an option for you instead?
Holy cow, is that really how many interviews it takes to get hired these days?
It’s been about 10 years since I changed jobs, and then it took less than maybe 10 interviews.
> For me, getting a master's degree was more useful than getting a bachelor's.
I’m not sure this is the norm. I know very few people that I’ve worked with or have interviewed that have masters degrees. I’ve worked with + interviewed maybe close to 300 SWEs, and probably fewer than 5%, if that, have/had masters degrees.
I’m 50 and have been working as a software developer or closely adjacent for almost 30 years. I’ve never seen a job market like this.
Even back in 2000-2001 as a regular old enterprise dev with 3 years of experience, jobs were plentiful in Atlanta doing corporate dev. I got my third job late 2008 in the midst of the financial crisis relatively quickly and had two offers.
Fast forward to 2023. I was looking for regular old enterprise dev jobs where they wanted C# developers with AWS experience as a Plan B. I had 15+ years of C# experience, 7 leading projects and 6 years of AWS experience including 3.5 working at AWS (Professional Services).
I heard crickets sending out hundreds of resumes looking for remote opportunities. Every single opening had hundreds of applicants (LinkedIn shows you).
The same happened in 2024 when I was looking again.
I was able to get offers quickly both times for my “Plan A” jobs based on my network and in 2023, I found a couple of companies where the “nice to have” was implementing and modifying an open source “AWS Solution” for which I was a major contributor.
My “Plan A” was a full time job at a third party AWS consulting company where I would be leading cloud + app dev projects.
But, most people don’t have my share of “unfair advantages”.
I'm always down for networking in person. I don't know how DMing works on here, but my Github username is the same as my handle on here.