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Ask HN: Is there a ceiling for developers without a degree?

9 points by vargas84 ↗ HN
Do developers without a degree have a ceiling in terms of career advancement? Does a degree matter more in some industries than others? Does the size of a company correlate with how much importance is placed on a degree? Also, have developers without a degree been able to transition into technical, product, or business leadership roles?

A lot of questions, I know :). There is a good deal of talk in tech about how to break into a dev position with either no education or from a different background - my question is about how life looks 10,20,30 years from that point. I'm hopeful the HN community can provide valuable insight!

5 comments

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mindcrime
Do developers without a degree have a ceiling in terms of career advancement?

No, since you can always start your own company and make yourself CEO.

Assuming you legitimately do have the skills, temperament, patience, $WHATEVER, you can literally go as high as you want. That is not, of course, to suggest that it is easy. I know, I went this route myself, and I can definitely attest that it isn't easy.

Also, have developers without a degree been able to transition into technical, product, or business leadership roles?

I think some guy named Bill Gates did OK for himself. And some dude named Zuckerberg...

onion2k
The opposite - a degree becomes less and less relevant as you gain experience, both in technical skills and management.
caw
Yes the degree gets less relevant, but there are companies who will require a degree to get above a certain level. These are probably larger companies where HR sets a lot of requirements. If you want to/end up working at one of these companies, they may offer a degree program.

Smaller companies won't care, or would be able to waive any such requirements they had.

rubiquity
I've experienced this before. I was contracting at a senior level for a decent sized company. They tried to hire me a few times and the offer was actually at a lower level of seniority. I asked them about this and their reasoning was that their HR department only lets non-degreed individuals go so high. I wasn't interested in joining full-time anyway, but it was interesting to see nonetheless.
debacle
Having a degree is only really relevant to a subset of the industry that revolves around things that are really difficult to learn outside of a university. There are some companies that wont hire you without a degree, but I find they are the minority.