Ask YC: Why the degree?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198732

by matthewking • 18 years ago

38 206 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I am a developer without a degree, I left school when I was 16, at which time id been programming for 2 years. I've studied several languages, worked for countless companies doing contract work, and been employed as a developer and lead developer full time.

I'm now 24.

I used to be very frustrated to see companies demanding degrees before they'll even talk to you for new developer positions. I have always put that down to the HR department that don't really know what they're doing when employing developers.

However, I'm sorry to see many startups that are employing developers in the early stage, are requiring that candidates have a degree.

For all the company knows, I (and countless others) could be the best developers they'd ever meet. And yet we're automatically excluded from even applying.

Why?

If/When I am employing developers, a degree won't even separate one candidate from another, as long as I judge both to be good developers, then they're on an equal standing.

I know several people that have degree's in computer science, and none have any magical abilities that you only pickup at university.

So what gives?

sygzzy• 18 years ago

Why the third degree?

matthewking13• 18 years ago

I think my original question clearly states why, I would like to know why this is the case with the overall percentage of people employing developers..

bigtoga2• 18 years ago

I don't have a degree either and I have to admit: when I was in my 20s, it bothered me too as I thought, "I might be missing out on something." Today though, running my own business, I see that it worked out perfectly. In my latest job posting (for a .NET/SQL dev), I wrote "A Computer Science degree is not required but helpful" because I don't equate degree to good code.

Joel Spolsky talks about this in his book and he prefers a degree or, if not a degree, evidence that the person had to go through some sort of highly selective process.

matthewking13• 18 years ago

Thanks. I guess in that case it can be an indicator that the person has some kind of skill.

Although I do have friends that have managed to get a degree in computer science and they still can't code unless they're copying from a book.

Is Joel's book based on employing people straight out of education? because presumably people that hadn't gone the degree route would have 2-3 years commercial experience by the time people the same age finish their degrees.

bigtoga2• 18 years ago

Here's the book: http://tinyurl.com/3kr99k

It deals a lot w/ hiring interns-to-become-full-timers.

ideas1012• 18 years ago

the only degree that should matter is the quality of programming/coding a person can do - a degree certificate, which is basically a paper can not guarantee the quality of a hacker and his/her skills. The society has become way too demanding - also supply and demand is off-balance. situation in india is different than in north-america ... in USA/Canada i have seen that you can still survive without a degree but in india you just cant survive, in fact every other person (applying for a job) is a master degree holder - competition over there is crazy - but there are few entrepreneur who think out of the box - for example people behind the Zoho.com hire poor students from the high-school in a village, they then train them and within few months these high-school students become one of the best developers ... this is a must read interview "The Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur": http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/22/mitra-zoho-india-tech-inter...

matthewking13• 18 years ago

Thanks for the link, that's a good read.

xenoterracide6• 18 years ago

seems like every job (CS or Sys Admin) I see requires a Bachelors, here in the US which means that almost everyone else I'm competing with has one.

nickb• 18 years ago

It all comes down to energy required to make a decision. Degree acts as a quick filter. For example, having a degree in CS does not mean that you are a good programmer but what I, as an employer, know about a person with a degree is that they possess a certain level of knowledge and they have also proven themselves and have shown that they can focus and accomplish something.

If you think about it, those two things I listed are incredibly important. When you're swamped with 100 resumes and you can interview maybe 10 people, these little markers help employer make a decision. Now, that doesn't mean that a person without a degree doesn't have a chance... it just means that they will have to prove themselves in some other way (being famous coder/blogger/speaker helps there)...

matthewking13• 18 years ago

Agreed, people with a degree have shown a commitment to a goal, and achieved it. That's definitely +1 to them, but as for the basic level of understanding, doesn't that become less effective as a gauge when candidates have 2-3 years of commercial experience?

dmv• 18 years ago

You've mentioned "2-3 years of commercial experience", as if that indicated anything. What most of the interviewers are getting to is that, on paper, almost anyone looks good. Look at the discussions regarding 'The Dead Sea effect' (http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...).

To get your degree from a school indicates that you demonstrated some abilities in a selective and competitive environment. The quality of the school tends to imply the level of quality vetting -- to get into MIT is more competitve than ITT. The name on the commercial experience reflects a similar vetting process -- a development job at Apple is more difficult to obtain and maintain than one at a local utility company. Arguably, a job at a notable startup is probably another strong indicator (on the idea that a startup can't waste time on inferior talent); but I wouldn't consider job upgrades at an unknown startup to indicate much (ie, everyone here could be a CTO or lead developer for their own startup... does two years of being a lead developer for a team of one to three, selected by company seniority, tell you anything about technical leadership ability?).

It is all just borrowing collective intelligence -- using the wisdom of previous crowds to give off quality indicators.

kashif3• 18 years ago

Actually, I am inclined to believe that work experience is a better filter. If you are hiring freshers, than ask them to build something in a day or a week and use that instead.

Now, that doesn't mean that a person without a degree doesn't have a chance... it just means that they will have to prove themselves in some other way (being famous coder/blogger/speaker helps there)...

Actually the onus is on the employer. Shouldn't you want to hire the best?

icey2• 18 years ago

The onus is not on the employer. The employer's job is to fill the hole with the best that they can easily ascertain. I can tell you from doing hiring in the past that people have gotten very good at filling their resume's with bullshit.

The last time I hired someone for a Senior Developer position, I had to filter through almost 500 resume submissions. Of those, I did a telephone technical interview with about 200 applicants. We did face to face interviews with the 6 applicants who passed an incredibly simple technical interview - Things that any programmer who has done any real work would almost be insulted by.

Any available filter to help sort the wheat from the chaff is helpful, and a degree is one of those filters.

That being said, I do not have a degree in anything, I got into the industry at 17 and haven't had time to go to school. But, I've been able to get far by working harder than everyone else; in the conversation of degrees making a difference, I'd like to have one, sure. But I've never needed one. I think it's come up in one interview once, and it ended up being a nonpoint.

ideas1012• 18 years ago

what are you doing right now? i hope smart people like you are always busy doing something creative - if possible can u post your email please - i would like to contact you.

matthewking13• 18 years ago

I am currently in the process of launching a new product for my business.

You can contact me at: matthewking [dot] yc [at] gmail.com

yummyfajitas4• 18 years ago

>For all the company knows, I (and countless others) could be the best developers they'd ever meet. And yet we're automatically excluded from even applying.

The game is about probability, not possibility. The assumption is:

P(qualified | degree) > P(qualified | no degree)

That's probably reasonable, since schools do filter out at least some idiots. To find a candidate, one must interview roughly 1/P candidates. If interview costs are high (e.g., face time is precious), you want as many easy filters as you can get.

This is especially true if you don't trust HR to properly find the "diamonds in the rough" (I certainly wouldn't).

matthewking13• 18 years ago

OK I can understand it from that perspective, it's not that there's so much weight being put on a degree, but rather its used for lack of other filters, when there's lots of applicants.

Doesn't sound very accurate, but I can see the reason why.

Maro2• 18 years ago

For example, the P(A | B) notation is something you learn at a University Probability class. A good feeling for elementary probability thoery is something that makes you much better at modeling, understanding and predicting the world, and not just as a programmer. And there's lots of other classes like that in a Uni. curriculum (although the overall percentage of really useful classes is in my estimate only 25-50%). Before you say that you could learn that at home, well, normal people who want to learn such things choose to go to school, and corporate HR is usually not interested in deviants. My personal opinion: I also have friends who are very smart and great programmers and dropped out of school, and I think that that particular choice was not very smart on their part, they could have just finished it, and would be in a much better position. Eg. they wouldn't be reliant on personal recommendations when applying for jobs; also, how do you ask for a raise w/o a degree --- where are you going to go instead?. etc.

radu_floricica• 18 years ago

Not related to the original question (I agree with the above answer) but in my experience HR departments/managers are more likely to read a CV not sent by the usual channels. The easiest way to bypass it is simply sending an email. The most efficient - leave it in person. Don't know why, but from (limited) anecdotal evidence seems to work.

kashif3• 18 years ago

That assumption will only allow you to pick based on a relative standard not an absolute one. Also, a degree being an eligibility criteria makes no sense. If you want to hire well then you should be willing to meet any relevant candidate. So in effect, with a degree being a REQUIREMENT you are actually lowering the pool of people who will apply and hence reducing your probability not increasing it.

diego• 18 years ago

The most desirable companies get so many resumes that they need to filter out most of them. I used to work for a popular search engine before Google came into the picture. As an engineer I had to interview people every week. HR handed me lots of resumes from people with CS degrees from top universities for phone screening. They didn't bother with the rest unless someone was heavily recommended by a trusted source.

eru7• 18 years ago

Sure - a smaller search space will not enhance the value of the maximum your are searching for.

But the cost of searching my lower drastically.

And as another poster pointed out it is the total of (quality of candidate - search cost) that you want to maximize.

LPTS13• 18 years ago

The assumption does not hold with more information.

First, self teaching processes filter out idiots too, since idiots can't self teach.

P(qualified | (no degree + autodidactic)) > P(qualified | (Degree + little self teaching ability))

dhimes2• 18 years ago

True, but it's getting "more information" that is costly. If someone else can do it for you, so much the better. Personal recommendations are the best source (if you know and trust the recommender).

Goladus3• 18 years ago

For those following along at home, the unpretentious word for "autodidact" is "self-taught"

yummyfajitas4• 18 years ago

Agreed completely. But how do you get more information cheaply?

Remember, all you know is P(qualified| resume says autodidactic)= P(qualified | autodidactic) * P(autodidactic | resume says autodidactic) . The second term can easily kill you. Do you trust everything people put on their resume?

On the other hand, P(degree | resume says degree) is probably close to 1, since a degree is so easy for an HR person to check.

Look, I've got nothing against hiring good people who have no degree, and I certainly don't think a degree proves much (my current students prove that conclusively). If you know you have such a good person, hire them, ignore the degree.

I'm just pointing out that the game is to find the good people. And that's a bit tricky to do.

[edit: by this way, in the interest of clarifying, what you want to optimize is not candidate quality, but (candidate quality - search costs). Don't ignore the search costs term.]

elad• 18 years ago

Having interviewed quite a few people, I tend to think that there's a correlation between not just a degree, but also the quality of the school where it was attained, and the quality of the candidate - as measured by his/her professional knowledge and ability. That's not always true. In fact, of the two best coders I know, one didn't bother with a degree, and the other did it as an off hand, graduating after 8 years, having worked full time all along. Nevertheless, when it comes to people I don't know, and given that I don't have the time to interview everyone who sends their resume, a degree serves as an initial filter. If the resume is impressive enough without it, then I'll go ahead and interview, but it has to be really impressive. In short, not having a degree is an impediment. You can succeed without it, but you're putting yourself at a disadvantage.

matthewking13• 18 years ago

If a position stated that a degree is a "nice to have, or advantage" I would certainly still send my CV and hope that it was glowing enough to counter my lack of degree, which I would hope it is through sheer commercial experience gained while everyone else was in education.

But my gripe is that most employers don't even give us that chance.

In a way, that has played its part in my working life that has sent me on a path to be independent and start my own company, so I guess its not all bad :)

aswanson2• 18 years ago

Smaller companies where productivity is measured more closely don't care that much. Big, dumb bureaucracies tend to hire based on buzzword counts on resumes and GPAs. You don't want to work at those places anyway.

tomjen• 18 years ago

Part of me wonders what would happen if you just faked some school on the paper. It worked wonders for the dean at MIT, so if you are smart enough give it a try.

pistoriusp• 18 years ago

I'm in the exact same boat, I don't have a degree - I must admit, I worked at a company that hired people with/ without degrees and the programmers that I could relate best with were the ones who had degrees.

I've been thinking about getting a degree, but between working a full time job and doing a startup I just don't have the time, I have however bought myself two excellent books, which I'm hoping to fill the gaps with:

* The elements of computing systems (From Nand to Tetris...)

* Programming collective intelligence.

Web developers who don't have degrees aren't exposed to the fundamentals and fancy algorithms that are beaten in to you in CS courses.

LPTS13• 18 years ago

"Web developers who don't have degrees aren't exposed to the fundamentals and fancy algorithms that are beaten in to you in CS courses."

That's not true. First of people without degrees can be dropouts, having learned it in school before dropping out. Second, people can self teach that stuff too.

paulgb• 18 years ago

I can believe that someone would have the discipline to sit down with a textbook and teach themselves something. I've done it myself (although I wish I could do it more often). But the problem is that it isn't always obvious what parts are important or why. I found in my first year of university I learned a whole lot more CS than I ever did before, not just because I was being taught at a faster pace but also because I had a better feel for what I should learn on my own.

sc• 18 years ago

If the company is great, but HR acts as a filter, skip HR. Contact the department you're looking at directly and be prepared to wow them.

auston• 18 years ago

In my experience, even companies may ask for a degree, but if you show persistence, call & introduce yourself, walk in or network your way in.. they become more susceptible to giving you an interview.

Basically (in my experience) you have to show a genuine interest and pursue them at first, kind of like a woman/girl/chick/etc.

mrtron2• 18 years ago

"I know several people that have degree's in computer science, and none have any magical abilities that you only pickup at university."

I think you are shortchanging the value of a formal education. You are forced to learn things you don't necessarily enjoy. For example, I was forced to take a few stats courses which I found extremely boring, but recently at work it was incredibly valuable. I know I thought I was a great developer when I was 16, but looking back I was just a good problem solver. A degree also forces you to work extremely hard on some things (projects, exams) with rigid deadlines.

Are you suggesting that people are wasting 4 years of their life? I realize it is 'just a piece of paper', but that piece of paper signifies an accomplishment.

Now I am sure a few people are going to say I have drunk the Kool-Aid. To that I suggest there are some places you can break the rules, and some times you have to play within the rules of the game. I think getting a degree still opens many doors, and because of that I followed through with it. Clearly there were times I considered skipping university or dropping out to pursue an opportunity, but looking back I have no regrets.

matthewking13• 18 years ago

I'm not meaning to take any value what so ever from a degree, and I believe that people that have them have accomplished something worthwhile.

What I am saying is that people shouldn't just dismiss people without a degree, because those of us who have a true interest in what we do, and learn, read books and experiment on our own - without being forced, or having a set syllabus to follow can become very talented developers.

If you've got to a very high level alone, I think that's a damn good accomplishment too, one that is at least comparable to a degree in itself.

daveambrose• 18 years ago

Matthew, I agree, however, there's a general trend I've noticed within this conversation: technical v thoughtful ability.

From my experience, programming requires both understanding and experience. What you learn in college does not necessarily correlate to success in a technical field (especially when you're coming out of a Liberal Arts university as I did).

Simply put, when it comes to a technical field:

(Past experience + understanding + execution) > a Liberal Arts degree.

But you shouldn't disregard a degree when it comes to thinking + innovation. College provides an invaluable means to look/analyze the world around you.

I wrote about this a few days ago that may be of interest:

http://datainsightsideas.com/post/35471878/

LPTS13• 18 years ago

I think you're shortchanging the value of being autodidactic.

The paper signifies an accomplishment that has nothing to do with actual ability. This obsession with degrees is a fetish.

Any decently self teaching person is going to wade through the boring stuff on their own anyway. That's a straw man.

In fact, you needing the pressures of deadlines and professors to get you to work, that's more indicative of you not being a great worker or being ambivalently committed to your work then anything about self teaching people. If you need to enter a codependant relationship with an institution that often calcifies mediocrity to get your work done or to wade through the boring stuff, that doesn't mean the self teaching dropout shares your problem or hasn't done the other work.

mrtron2• 18 years ago

People who can self teach well are the minority, and many of those people still go to university/college. I am not shortchanging the value whatsoever.

I think being autodidactic is incredibly valuable - but I don't believe whether or not you have a degree is a good indicator of that. That skill is also incredibly hard to determine from a resume or interview. When you are hiring commonly you have once piece of paper to look at and then a 30 minute interview to evaluate the person. Whether you like it or not, the majority of people doing this will filter by degree and institution. If you can think of a better process, create a HR startup I am sure it would be amazingly successful! Many companies realize that the hiring process is flawed but there currently are few options.

I also disagree that educational institutions "calcify mediocrity".

bbgm• 18 years ago

I don't have a CS degree, but all else being equal a good education trumps not having one. The same person with a degree and without a degree will be more effective with one, especially if the degree is a meaningful one (i.e. not just to get a piece of paper).

helveticaman3• 18 years ago

>Now I am sure a few people are going to say I have drunk the Kool-Aid.

Even if you point this out ahead of time, those people could still be right.

>I think getting a degree still opens many doors, and because of that I followed through with it.

Signals are wasteful.

>but looking back I have no regrets.

Most people think whatever choices they made were the best. That you have no regrets is not unusual.

teamonkey• 18 years ago

>I realize it is 'just a piece of paper', but that piece of paper signifies an accomplishment.

What's written on that piece of paper is more important than the accomplishment in my experience, at least as long as finding a job is concerned.

If a company deals with hundreds of applicants they need some way of trimming them down, and not having a computer science degree will put you at a disadvantage even if you do have some other degree. I've been rejected for jobs because I have a physics degree and not "Comp. Sci"; I'm sure there are mathematicians on here who can say the same thing.

This might not be so true for startups, but I suspect that when faced with a deluge of applicants even startups will go straight for the "Comp . Sci" degrees if just to make the numbers managable.

Hexstream5• 18 years ago

"You are forced to learn things you don't necessarily enjoy. For example, I was forced to take a few stats courses which I found extremely boring, but recently at work it was incredibly valuable."

I don't think that's the way to go. If learning something is boring, then it's either because you'll never need it or you don't realize you'll ever need it. You can't know if it's boring because of the former or the latter before you really need it.

For example, I found math pretty boring in school (beyond 6th grade, say) because I just didn't see what applications it would have in my life even if I knew I wanted to be a programmer and supposedly good math skills were a hard requirement (it only is if the problem-domain you're working on requires math).

But now I have some big ideas for my projects and I learned that some fields of mathematics and other disciplines would be a great investment to learn because it would ease or even simply make possible their implementation. So now those topics really look fun to me so it will give me the push I need to learn it all as fast as possible and in an enjoyable way.

LPTS13• 18 years ago

Maybe a degree means you are too willing to accept mindless mediocrity (like that found in our education system) and no degree (but the same level of ability) means the person is both autodidactic and unwilling to accept everyday mediocracies like found in our education system.

So the effect of demanding degrees is one of mediocre organizations (which are mediocre on account of, for example, routinely doing very dumb things like using tokens of accomplishment that do not reflect actual accomplishments and abilities to make decisions instead of doing the hard work of thinking and taking intelligent risks) reinforcing their mediocrity by selecting for people who have already demonstrated their ability to be content in a mediocre system. There are lots of studies that show very little to no relationship between grades and intelligence or grades and creativity. But organizations are unwilling to put this scientific knowledge into use.

I would feel more excited about interviewing a self taught developer who was good then someone who was taught through school, since I value self teaching, meritocracy and self motivation a good self taught person would display and despise the kind of cronyism, group think, and gradual relaxation of standards to the lowest common denominator that schools all too often represent.

If finding the right employer is like finding a needle in a haystack, anything that takes away most of the hay is good.

Hexstream5• 18 years ago

"There are lots of studies that show very little to no relationship between grades and intelligence or grades and creativity. But organizations are unwilling to put this scientific knowledge into use."

I think that's the confirmation bias at work. If such an organization learns that a PhD-holder is real good the reaction will be: "Well what do you expect, it's a PhD!" but facing a successful self-taught person they'd say: "How did he manage to do that without a degree? Must be luck..."

pg• 18 years ago

Their goal is not to be perfect judges in individual cases. A crude first pass works fine for them as long as it leaves a lot of good people.

http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html

maxklein8• 18 years ago

Don't self link, that's called spamming.

LPTS13• 18 years ago

No one has humor here.

Goladus3• 18 years ago

I call it efficiency.

eru7• 18 years ago

Self-spamming?

attack3• 18 years ago

That's the supporting theory. The problem is that this eliminates both the majority of the unqualified applicants and a large number of the very top applicants. Suitable for a big company? Sure. For a startup or more ambitious company? Unlikely.

pfedor3• 18 years ago

Old but good: http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/07/why-you-need-degree-to-w...

stcredzero5• 18 years ago

How do we encourage true meritocracy? Open Source is one thing that can do this for programming. It enables a programmer's output to be evaluated in detail by all. Blogs might do this as well.

kurtosis• 18 years ago

I used to do web-apps for a hosting company to earn money to help pay for school. (I think earning a degree was worth every cent BTW) None of the coders there had a degree and they were all very good at making everything work. This was a team of 2-3 people on a codebase of 50,000 lines of PHP / MySQL - The owners of the company also didn't have a degree and they seemed to prefer hiring people without one.

The other posters who have spoke of a degree as a filter which lowers the cost of interviewing are correct. I can think of two occasions over the 1.5 yrs that I worked there where they hired people who didn't have a clue what they were doing. This was obvious immediately and they had to be ruthless about firing them. I don't know if requiring a degree would have made this nastiness less likely, but these mistakes have a significant cost for both the employer and the employee.

maxklein8• 18 years ago

I used to think that a computer science degree was not useful. However, can you answer the following questions:

1. How would you program a compiler for a new DSL? 2. What is stdcall? How does it relate to the stack? 3. How many registers does a 486 have? What is a register? 4. How does ethernet work? 5. What is the most efficient way to break a project down into tasks and milestones when dealing with a large team? 6. If you break a computer which you bought, but has not yet been delivered, who is liable? 7. How would you mathematically model a computer controlled temperature controller system?

I know the answers to those questions because I learnt them along the way as I got my degree. I have a wide spectrum of knowledge which is not directly useful to programming, but is useful to me as general knowledge.

When you learn by yourself, you tend to learn enough to do what you need to get done. In school you learn things that are not immediately obvious that you need them.

LPTS13• 18 years ago

"When you learn by yourself, you tend to learn enough to do what you need to get done. In school you learn things that are not immediately obvious that you need them."

No, no, no. YOU tend to only do the minimum to do what needs to get done without outside pressure. Don't project your flaws onto us self teaching people who don't share them. Any autodidactic person will constantly be learning both generalist and specialist things. Just because you don't have enough fire in your belly to do more then the minimum learning when you're on your own doesn't mean anything about anyone else.

(EDIT: Sorry. Not to be too harsh on you. Your quiz is relevant. Of course, if the OP can't answer questions like yours in his field, he isn't the kind of autodidact I'm defending. But if he can, (and given that many self teaching people can do things like that easy) your point about learning just enough to get stuff done is more a personal thing then anything about autodidactic people)

maxklein8• 18 years ago

The thing is this: There are some things that ones does not know that one does not know. And only in a formal teaching environment is one introduced to these topics. Most schools give a healthy dose of general knowledge together with the domain specific knowledge. And most self learners tend to stick to domain specific topics.

I don't know how self taught you are, but 100% of my income comes from things I learned myself and applied myself. I spent $0 to learn those things, and now I make, well, a fair bit more than $0.

In spite of all I learned by myself, when I went back to school, I discovered things I did not even know where useful to me.

I'm not saying that a person is flawed because he is not aware of some specific area. He just is not aware of it because it's not something he directly requires. What Web programmer needs to know about register transfers? Well, if he went to do a CS degree, this knowledge would be forced on him, making him a better programmer in general!

Civilisation only exists because of the institution of school. Don't bash it, it's a very good thing.

maxklein8• 18 years ago

I think you misunderstand me. I do not learn exactly enough to get things done. That would be impossible. If I am asked to program a web app in PHP, I would study PHP, Databases, Web server configurations, and have enough knowledge to develop a web app. I would not start by studying design patterns, software modelling techniques and abstract functional programming.

That's the difference between self learning and structured learning - most of the time people learn things specific to the topic they are interested in. If you are trying to claim otherwise, then your worldview is deeply flawed.

jeff_college• 18 years ago

A Bachelor's degree (even in CS) isn't just job training. At least half the classes required for a degree are not related to your major. When you graduate with a CS degree you've (hopefully) learned some CS theory and some practical skills but also you're more well-rounded from learning composition, speech, math, history, science, etc. If being a developer meant pounding out code all day long then a college degree shouldn't be a factor in the hiring process. Most developers I know spend more time doing other things - planning, estimating, communicating with other teams, etc. - than coding. This non-coding workload increases as you move up the ranks so most HR departments hire with an eye toward the future as well. So given what you know to be true - that most companies require a degree - you have two options: 1. Get a degree 2. Work for a company that doesn't require a degree

And one more thing - the plural of degree is degrees not degree's. I learned that in school.

matthewking13• 18 years ago

Interesting points. However, you seem to be assuming that people without degrees disappear into some kind of a time warp while everyone else is at university.

Team work, communication, planning and organisation skills can be picked up in real life environments too, if anything in a better fashion.

When you enter employment at a young age, your employer and your colleagues are more willing to show you the ropes and give you time to learn on the job, considering you usually start at a low position. Then you proceed to learn real world experience for a number of years, depending on how quickly you dropped out of education, and how quickly you landed a job.

I had been working as a developer for 5 years by the time my friends of the same age finished their degrees. Put that into perspective and compare to people fresh out of university.

I'm not saying people with a degree have wasted their time, or that it wasn't the right thing to do. Just give those of us who chose a different path some credit too.

As far as my options go, I'm now self employed and loving it.

xirium2• 18 years ago

> I had been working as a developer for 5 years by the time my friends of the same age finished their degrees.

I knew a fellow who didn't go to university and was managing a team of 12 developers within his first five years of work. He was richer than the average graduate too.

bkovitz• 18 years ago

I worked 20 years in software and publishing with no degree. In my experience, no one cared.

I did not see any correlation between skill level and degree. Programming is a craft, like carpentry. You learn it by doing it, by doing it with other people, by thinking about it and talking about it, a little bit by reading books about it, and almost not at all by watching lectures about it.

That said, people who don't have the kind of experience with programming to tell a good programmer from a bad one have to resort to proxy measures like credentials. I usually worked for small companies, where this is less of a problem.

dhimes2• 18 years ago

But a carpenter is not an architect. The barrier to entry for pure programming is rather low.

I see programming today as in a similar state as auto mechanics was in the 1970s & early 80s in the US. If you had good sense and aptitude, you could be one, and the barrier to entry was very low.

Now it's different. You (for the most part) need some sort of certification to be a "grease monkey;" and even then, you are fixing, tuning and rebuilding engines, not designing them.

Tichy2• 18 years ago

Just curious, how did you teach yourself programming?

To me a degree would not so much signal skill in any programming language, as a general skill in learning new stuff, which to me seems to be the most important skill of a programmer. A university degree seems to indicate that ability of learning stuff to some extent. Sure, if you taught yourself programming, you have learned something by yourself, too. But I think it is a lot easier to learn one particular programming language than to have a general understanding of computer science, be able to write down stuff, learn things you are not as interested in, and so on.

matthewking13• 18 years ago

I "caught the bug" when I was 14 and messing around with mirc scripting with some IRC buddies.

I scripted a bunch of stuff for controlling mp3's, and a few socket bots to protect from channel takeovers.

Then I wanted a mp3 player more like itunes is today, and so I set about making one in VB.

From there I progressed to games, in VB and Java, such as space invaders etc, dabbled a bit with 3d programming.

Moved to the web, HTML, JS, followed by PHP, then some JSP/Servlets and ASP through a work requirement, learned SQL Server and databases in general from a MCDBA who was also a MCT.

Messed with C and linux, borrowed some books from the library and read every page, lost my way a bit and learned about creating exploits.

Then got back on track, some c++, some ASP.NET/C#.

And the list goes on. My language and framework of choice is now Ruby on Rails.

Tichy2• 18 years ago

And what is the reason you did not want to study? Just trying to understand... Obviously, it is a money issue (earning 3 years vs paying 3 years). But if you enjoy the stuff, wouldn't it be natural to study it?

For example, personally I am bored by now by web programming, and university really wasn't so much about practical programming. I liked the theory, complexity of algorithms and so on. in your self-taught curriculum, did you ever come across those kinds of things? Do you/did you care? If you are truly interested in that stuff, but don't want to spend the money, why not do it in a remote learning course or something? I mean, you want to learn the stuff anyway, why not get credit for it?

Obviously it is better to create a new distributed hashing algorithm by creating something like bittorrent, rather than doing theoretical work about it at university. But university is not so bad, and some results from academia do spill over into the real world.

Just today a friend told me about a program he got to analyze that did user authentication on the client. It is amazing to me that people can be able to program such Java clients, yet be unable to understand the security issue. They can program, yet they can not program. Maybe it is because it is so easy to learn programming, and bad code actually runs, too, that employers like to see some additional verification like a CS degree (and of course the CS degree is not guarantee stuff like that won't happen).

bluelu2• 18 years ago

A degree is a proof that you were able to complete something where other have failed, and that you are willing to learn and learn fast. It also proves that you are not completely dumb, since few people fail at university.

Even without degree, I think that you still have a chance to get a job if your resume and your projects you have are good enough (or if you run a business in the past). It probably get's more difficult in the consulting business, as the company sells you (and your resume) to their customers, so it get's difficult to sell you for a premium rate if you got no degrees or certification.

That being said, If you haven't done so far, I would read a few algorithm classes, because that's something you normally never learn while programming (also a good tip for the Twitter guys... ;))

icey2• 18 years ago

I've consulted for a lot of years with out a degree. I don't think it would be possible without a massive stack of recommendations and success stories.

schtog2• 18 years ago

"It also proves that you are not completely dumb, since few people fail at university."

doesnt add up, what exactly do you mean?

bluelu2• 18 years ago

Sorry.I thought that many people fail at university, so you prove that you are somehow more capable of learning. Few was not well chosen.

However, I observed in recent years (at least here in Switzerland and also other people told me about it) that it seems to get easier and easier to pass university, as there is more and more pressure from the state (which finances university) to let more and more people pass, due to the lack of engineers.

sah3• 18 years ago

In my experience hiring software engineers, possession of an undergrad CS degree was not a helpful filter for resumes. I did find that candidates with advanced degrees or undergrad EECS degrees tended to be a little bit stronger than the average candidate. So did candidates with unrelated undergrad degrees, and a few years of job experience.

I never figured out how to look at a resume and meaningfully select for extremely good hackers who were within our ability to attract (although it was easy to identify them in interviews). The ones for whom that was obvious from their resume had better opportunities.

One thing that I find interesting about this conversation is how much more often it comes up in software than elsewhere. Why are there so many autodidact hackers out there? I think it might be that computers are such excellent, affordable learning environments. The quick feedback loop you can get actually working with a computer is unlike anything available for most fields.

On the other side, academic CS programs are relatively new, and possibly don't do such a great job yet. Or maybe it's just that they've been attracting large numbers of the wrong people in recent years.

eru7• 18 years ago

Math should also be very self-teachable. Though it takes a lot of discipline or (better) passion.

Almost all ground-breaking mathematics was done at a very young age.

eru7• 18 years ago

P.S. And at 22 I fear I am already too old to ever become a great mathematician.

And you think you have a depressing career outlook?

mark-t2• 18 years ago

Computer programming is something that you have to do for a long time to be good at. Almost all good programmers started well before college, and a lot of them go on to study something other than CS. My BS is in Electrical Engineering, and I have an MS in Math, yet I still consider myself a desirable candidate for programming jobs.

aswanson2• 18 years ago

Back in my day I didn't know CS was it's own major; I thought it was just a subset of EE and programming was just one thing you had to know, in addition to being actually able to build a computer from scratch.

mooneater• 18 years ago

I haven't met self-taught programmers who learned much theory (CS, math, physics, etc). I bet there are some, but I guess they are rare.

Theory gets useful if you want to tackle harder problems. If you aren't aware of the theory, you often don't know what you are missing. As an ex-dropout, I was in that position for a long time.

Going out on a limb now, big company with little respect for theory -> Microsoft, big company with healthy respect for theory -> Google.

You can do fine without theory, but its getting harder (and will continue to).

vaksel2• 18 years ago

I can see requiring a degree if you want someone from a good university...Stanford, MIT...that way you know from the get go that you are getting a smart person.

But in reality neither that, nor job experience really matters. Why? Because a person can write anything they want on their resume and you'll never know that they are BSing

jamesbritt• 18 years ago

" Why? Because a person can write anything they want on their resume and you'll never know that they are BSing"

Unless you pick up the phone and make a few calls. There are many things that are trivial to check, such as whether someone actually attended a given school or worked at a given company.

Certainly people can and do BS on their resume and get away with it, but its not because resumes are inherently unverifiable.

vaksel2• 18 years ago

how do you know the phone # someone gives you is their ex-boss' phone # and not their buddy's

aseever• 18 years ago

When you were 16 did you know that employers use a college degree as a coarse filter when trying to get a manageable applicant pool? It would seem that your answer was most likely one of two. You were either ignorant of reality when making a huge decision, or you were the type to want to fight reality because it felt like injustice and you 'knew better'. Of course at 16 we all 'knew better' and if that's how it went down I'm sorry you didn't get better advice... but it's a personality trait that some folks don't grow out of, and if you've ever managed a team you know they aren't the ones you want to have around.

Anyway, this is not to make any sort of judgment on you personally, you have probably done more awesome things than most 24 year olds and may be nothing like what I described, but you asked: when an employer sees a resume without a degree that's a snap decision thought process they might go through.

The situation actually isn't that bad... most of the best jobs aren't "resume" jobs, they're "hey I know a guy" jobs. Networking is much more important than resume to getting a good job - especially at startups!

joiningdots• 18 years ago

The degree is seen as a benchmark, an easy early filter - you know someone with a degree has had the focus to knuckle down and study a subject in depth for a period of time. Frustrating for those who don't have a degree but have done the same amount of studying, if not more. But that's the way it goes.

You're only 24. If it's bothering you, go get a degree. Otherwise, make sure you produce work that demonstrates your abilities. Check out this article - 'How I got hired by Amazon' http://www.brunozzi.com/en/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-ama... - a great example of not needing to care whether the person has a degree or not.

I don't have a degree and I ended up working at Microsoft. But it would never have happened if I had tried applying through their recruitment channel, due to the degree filter. I was headhunted based on performance.

msg• 18 years ago

Lots of people have probably read these, but Steve Yegge wrote some great posts about interview loops on his old Amazon blog.

http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone-scre...

http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/why-phone-screens-matter

http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/what-you-need-to-know

Here's an excerpt from that last one that is on point:

"My point today is that although I don't feel you need to have a Computer Science degree in order to be a good developer, I do believe that there is a set of learnings, which you normally acquire in the course of a CS degree, that I would consider to be part of the core set of ideas that are 'software common sense'. If you don't know them, then I will feel that you lack common sense.

"In our CS degree, we saw a lot of proofs, and had to work through many of them by hand. I feel that this was to some extent unnecessary, since it obscured the importance of the things we were proving by putting us all to sleep. Being able to prove something does allow you to reason through it to assure yourself of its correctness, and to derive it from first principles if you've forgotten it. But in everyday programming, you don't need to do proofs. You ought to have a feel for the outline of the proof, the sort of intuitive derivation of a rule, so you can reason through it with yourself and with others. But you don't need to be ultra-formal about it unless you happen to love proofs, as some folks do.

"Instead, you need to be aware of the major findings and learnings of Computer Science, and the rough reasons for them. I realize this opinion is going to displease two audiences: CS theory folks, who will think it's too weak, and professional programmers with no CS degree, who will think it's too strong. But it's my opinion and I'll stick with it."

jobeirne• 18 years ago

Dealing with bullshit. That's what it all comes down to.

In the academic world, you invariably run into people who not only have explicit control over your success, but are possibly unreasonable and malicious. The fact that someone has a degree proves that he had enough dedication to stick with it and conquer (or at least fare) the propagators of bullshit.

Anyone intelligent can sit in the library and learn to code; not everyone intelligent can code AND deal with adversity.

chollida1• 18 years ago

Many companies take their character from their founders and hire accordingly.

For instance Microsoft focused on hiring high IQ people that went to good schools because that's where Bill Gates came from.

Google same thing, high IQ individuals with post grad degrees, hence google looks to hire people who fit this mode.

mindcrime• 18 years ago

Most job ads I see say "Bachelors degree or equivalent experience" In those cases, definitely apply even without a degree. And even if they don't, apply anyway. A lot of time stuff gets put in job descriptions by copy & paste, or because it's common, not because it's an actual requirement. Yeah, HR might filter you out for not having a degree in some cases, but you'll get past them to the hiring manager in other cases, then you have a chance to sell yourself.

vlad• 18 years ago

An employee who is 2+ years from a bachelor's degree is a long way from finishing while an employee, and therefore there's a high chance they will leave to attend school full-time in the near future. Companies also justify your hire by not paying as much as somebody with a degree out of principle, and therefore always afraid you might find a higher paying job or start college. Finally, a college educated person will likely have debt to pay off, and is likely to stay with the company for 1-5 years after acclimating to a paycheck in the first 3-6 months.

schtog2• 18 years ago

there is no such as an autodidact really, untraditionally taught perhaps but even if you learn at home and not at a university you still probably read kind of the same books nd you talk to a lot of people on forums.

i guess if two people have the same skills and one is selftaught then that says a lot more about the selftaught person.

i personally have no experience in hiring people but i could imagine a lot of idiots who think they are the shit(but have a horrible lack of understanding for the fundamentals) would apply.

wouldnt most jobs that ask for a degree consider someone who has a really proven trackrecord?

i mean at least for webdevelopment...

erdos28• 18 years ago

There are opportunity costs either way. When I was your age (I am now, on one leg), I didn't have my degree. After my father's premature death, I went to work to help support my mother and two brothers. I was working in videotex--this was before the WWW. (You might be amused to know that one of the prototypes I worked with was written in lisp.)

While I was always able to find work, it certainly was more difficult finding employment before I finished my degree. It raised questions--the rhetorical kind (interviewers would raise them but weren't interested in the answers).

Now that I have my Ph.D., it's more difficult again.

The point is that timing matters. I don't have the same choices now--and that's without having a family to support.

helveticaman3• 18 years ago

I think it has to do with red tape surrounding the hiring process. There's an essentially infinite number of traits a potential employer cannot ask about (like intelligence), but a degree isn't one of them. So degrees matter because they are the only filter HR departments are allowed to use.

bfwebster• 18 years ago

Two of the best software engineers I've ever hired (and worked with) did not have college degrees (one only had a GED for high school). But they were both highly talented and came highly recommended from people I trusted.

No, getting a CS degree doesn't guarantee that you're talented; far from it. However, it does show that you have enough aptitude to make it through a CS program, and it lessens the chance that you'll spend my time re-inventing -- or, worse yet, ignoring -- foundational concepts in computer science and software engineering.

Here are some more of my thoughts on the subject of hiring IT engineers:

http://brucefwebster.com/2008/01/10/the-wetware-crisis-tepes...

http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/14/the-longest-yard-reorgan...

(and thanks to dmv for the link to my 'Dead Sea' post, which is what led me here). ..bruce..

modoc3• 18 years ago

I wouldn't let it stop you. I've applied for and been offered numerous jobs which listed a college degree as a requirement (I don't have one). It helps to have a good resume. And by that I mean one that not only has lots of strong relevant job history, but also one that is well presented/written and really shows off your strengths, while minimizing things that might be liabilities (like the lack of a degree). For instance, my resume doesn't even have an education section.

So don't let it stop you. Also, as other people have mentioned, if you can duck HR, that's great too. If you don't know anyone who works there, find one of their tech folks on a forum somewhere, and work in from that way. Most places give employees hiring bonuses for referrals, so most people will be happy to help you get in the door (assuming they think you're good enough to want to work with you).

Personally, having worked at many places, I generally find folks with CS degrees to be liabilities. Especially if they're relatively fresh out of college. Granted I don't work in areas where you need lots of knowledge about machine learning, or AI, or... I do Java-based web application development.

I've found that most CS programs, by nature of the need to identify topics, and build curriculums and supporting materials, are years behind the real world new technologies. I'd rather hire/work with someone who had spent the last four years building cool things with the latest and greatest technologies. Who knew the real world tips, tricks, and pitfalls of a given approach/language/toolkit/framework. Rather than someone who'd spent the last 4 years in a classroom or a frat house, learning technology that is 1-6 years out of date, and didn't have hands-on-experience with how to handle a Slashdotting, or how to run a secure world facing server/postfix/whatever, or knew that Firefox treats xml response types very strictly and breaks on Google inserted AdSense javascript, unless you force the type to html (while IE and Safari don't care).

Don't get me wrong, there are some smart people in CS programs, or coming out of CS programs, but based on my working/hiring experience, in general, a CS degree is a slight liability on a resume from my point of view.

Real World Experience > College Degree.

And frankly, for the type of work I do, Real World Experience + College Degree usually == Real World Experience.

gunderson• 18 years ago

do you know Ruby? let's talk.

mojonixon• 18 years ago

A degree signifies that someone knows what they don't know. I am quite competent in many technical areas, but my formal education pushed me into areas where I'm not comfortable and would have avoided if it was up to me.

thorax• 18 years ago

Well, to mention, I agree with you that engineers without degrees can be awesome. I've interviewed a couple hundred engineers and reviewed thousands of resumes, and when I see people without degrees I look for really solid experience and/or lots of personal projects that show what they've done/experienced. Often those candidates turn out to be just as good engineers in the long-run, and sometimes better since they've come this far without needing a degree in a college-focused career path.

That being said, I think you're misunderstanding a bit what a degree conveys and why it's attractive to companies.

For one, it gives you a grade against some sort of scale that can be used to measure general aptitude. Even if GPA isn't a score from a truly ideal "test", it's a known quantity and you can roughly gauge what that number means. Yet comparing a GPA of "3.6" against "dropped out of school and studied programming" is really hard to do-- the GPA gives you a rating from an accredited university of scholars about how much that candidate studied, learned and worked. The other is just one person's word with some rough and hard to verify guidance you might be able to get from references (and/or your own research).

If someone were looking across listings to buy a good race horse, it's a gamble for them to take the seller's word (and do their own independent research) that the "horse is wicked fast" no matter how many times you said you personally timed it. The average buyer would be more inclined to go after the documented/well-known winners from public races. Now, we all know that's not necessarily the most profitable strategy, but it is usually a safe one. Those that ignore the other candidates risk missing a "sleeper" that really can shake things up, but that's part of the game.

So your strategy should be to look for those companies that are willing to take those chances rather than worrying so much about the ones that filter everything by institution and GPA. I also advise you to approach them in some way that shakes up their expectations a little anyway (e.g. sending them your resume printed on rolled scrolls, handing it to them in-person at some interesting event, through a respected employee, etc). You want them to think about you differently, so give them a reason to think you're a clever puppy outside the mold that they might have missed otherwise. If you only approach them like the other candidates do, it's not surprising that they'd grade you against the same criteria for the other candidates.

It's also important to keep in mind that bachelor degrees don't just convey "Computer Science". They also convey all of the other non-CompSci courses that you need to graduate. It's a general show of discipline across courses and studies with one of the biggest being written communication. If you don't have a degree, it would be awesome to also provide them examples that you've written (white papers/essays/speeches/etc) to help show that you're a well-rounded candidate that doesn't just know how to sit behind a computer and code. I promise you that's not all they're looking for.

You also have the fun option of showing them all up and just starting your own business. Here are just a few that didn't make it through college and changed the entire world: http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/04/14/Bril...

Best of luck to you.

brianm• 18 years ago

The key here is to see it from the opposite end -- from the potential employer point of view. We (I am a programmer, but I do a lot of interviewing and general recruity stuff) get metric raftloads of resumes, interest emails, and so on. Most of them are pretty unexceptional to begin with, and most candidates also lie^w exaggerate.

In order to find the people you want to hire you have to trim down the ones you talk to by some means. Think of it is a heuristic based search -- it won't be perfect, but it can be very good. You take the traits which correlate highest with success (I will leave success nebulous on purpose, that is a whole other discussion) and start whittling down the search space. A college degree tends to correlate highly with being a good or great programmer, therefore it is frequently used. This is a simplification, of course (though I am sure there are shops which really do this), but there it is.

dawie• 18 years ago

A degree proves that you can learn.

Ask YC: Why the degree?

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