
Ask HN: Would You Hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduated? - Itzcoatl
Seems like the recruiters aren&#x27;t buying the idea at all, or maybe it is just my country. In my opinion the set of skills you gain though the projects are good enough to help you land a job. But... If you have previous industry experience maybe you don&#x27;t want to move with an entry-level salary.
Would you hire an Udacity Nanodegree Graduate?
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asarazan
Android Lead from Capital One SF here. I did and it was one of the best hires
I ever made. He's the most enthusiastic and motivated person on my entire
team, and is also amazing at UI and performance optimization. I've been
begging them to send me more candidates ever since.

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mindcrime
Here's the thing - there is NO one single credential which, in and of itself,
would "make me hire you". In my mind, a hiring decision involves analyzing
many "features" each of which is weighted differently, and contributes to the
overall holistic view.

So, if I were hiring a candidate, would a Udacity Nanodegree weigh in their
favor? Absolutely. Would I hire them if they had no other formal credentials
at all? Absolutely, depending on all of the other factors. But as for that
matter, you can ask me "would you hire somebody with no formal credentials at
all" and the answer is still "absolutely, depending on all of the other
factors".

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sealord
I'm heading engineering at a startup that works on making the likes of Apache
Cloudstack and Openstack work for telecom behemoths. I studied Russian at
university. I've been writing code for the last 7.32 years. Personally, I
don't care about the nanodegree, so long as the person demonstrates a natural
affinity for writing code. That's _all_ that matters to me.

I don't know where you're based right now, but I'd say most recruiters across
the world wouldn't understand the concept of a Udacity nanodegree. Most of
them don't understand that you really don't need a piece of paper stating that
you can write code; recruiters simply don't understand that it doesn't matter
whether the person is even a graduate or not, if s/he can write code.

I'd just tell the person to keep trying. I kept trying, and I got lucky with a
media house that was okay with hiring me to write code without a relevant
degree or experience. I'm sure I can't be the only one to get lucky.

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coralreef
By "natural affinity", did you actually mean some level of "skill" or
"competence", or did you literally mean "natural affinity"? (If so, how do you
measure "natural affinity"-ness?)

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sealord
Unfortunately, this is subjective. For me, it's a combination of both. The
other day, I interviewed a lady who'd just started off with her career,
working on creating Oracle forms. She hated it. In the meantime, she'd started
dabbling with Python. She didn't know what pip was, or how to install Python
packages, but it was pretty clear she had a knack for writing code. With a bit
of a push, she'd do wonders. So I hired her.

TL;DR - "Natural affinity" should include some level of skill/competence, plus
that glint in the other person's eye when you talk about writing efficient,
beautiful code.

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marktangotango
Interesting please follow up here in a few months with how she worked out. Not
being snarky, I'm genuinely interested.

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sealord
Haha, definitely! She's joining us on the 15th. I'll come back here and tell
you what it's like in 2-3 months.

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usgroup
I'm myself from a background irrelevant to computing. My honest opinion is
that for commercial coding, it doesn't matter. It's become fashion to call
everything "engineering" but really programmers in the main are more akin to
plumbers.

Within the population of programming jobs, some are actually pretty serious,
actually require solid CS basis and a scientific approach. If I was hiring for
that sort of job, Id look for higher degrees and experience. Similarly with
data science type stuff. When it gets hard, you need the right background.

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marktangotango
Where the lack of a degree hurts you is down the road, many companies will use
you lacking the relevant degree as ammo to pay you less.

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psyc
As someone involved in hiring, I'm trying to get an idea of what you know and
what you can do, not where you got the knowledge.

