
Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers? - cognitivesys
I&#x27;m really bored in college help me(don&#x27;t know what to do,waiting few hours just for college instructor,learning classic turbo c++, always get distracted by foolish when I&#x27;m thinking about my project&#x2F;an idea) 
I living in indonesia,
is there any website out there to find a job. Thank you very much!
======
Joe8Bit
Yes.

I've hired >50 engineer in the last 12-18 months. They are experienced hires I
will grant you, but education is something I barely look at on a resume. In
fact, I can't even tell you how many are self taught vs not, but I suspect
it's 30%+.

It's a little different for junior engineers, as it can make a difference, but
in my experience the only thing you can ask for from _any_ engineer, which is
especially true for junior engineers, is: attitude and aptitude.

~~~
autotune
Would you mind if I asked how you test for attitude and aptitude?

------
iolothebard
Typically with years of experience substituted for a degree.

For example, if hiring someone with a CS/MIS/CIS degree with 4 years
experience. We'd accept 8 years experience in lieu of a degree.

If you find learning in college boring, what do you think this field holds for
you? You have a world full of knowledge you could be learning if you're bored,
no professor is preventing you from becoming knowledgeable across many
programming disciplines.

It seems you don't even have a rudimentary idea of what goes into building
software yet, you just want to skip ahead to the getting paid part.

If you can't build your project/idea already, why would someone pay you to
work?

Keep learning, you've got a very long way to go. Good luck!

~~~
jpwagner

      "...with 4 years experience. We'd accept 8 years experience in lieu of a degree."
    

I don't necessarily think this is a bad policy, but the idea of counting
someone's freshman year at university as a year of experience makes me chuckle
a little.

------
hal9000xp
I don't have degree and I worked in the second largest internet company in
Russia (where university degree is mandatory for 90% of population due to
soviet mindset).

Currently, I'm in process of interviewing with London Office of Facebook. They
told me that they don't care about my degree. The only important thing is my
skills. Also, I had conversation with Google HR, he told me the same. Ripple
Labs has very advanced position for C++ developer and they don't care about
your degree at all.

But I found that average tech companies care much more about degree than
Google and Facebook.

So answer to your question:

Yes, top-tier employers in tech industry don't care about degree. But in order
to get there you have to gain your first experience in average companies and
it will be harder than with degree (but it's not impossible).

Degree is very important to getting work permit in USA (H1B visa), Canada and
many other western countries.

I got my work permit in Sweden without any degree, but salaries here are low.

If you dream about California, you have to get your degree even if it's super
boring.

~~~
autotune
California is home to a world of startups in San Francisco that don't care
about a degree. If you can prove yourself to be curious enough and have enough
verifiable experience to back up your abilities, the startups will come for
you.

~~~
hal9000xp
I totally agree with you. But in order to get H1B visa, I should have bachelor
degree or 12 years of documentary proved experience. I have 12 years of
experience, but I can prove only 8 years because my first employer doesn't
exist anymore. So it's a visa issue, not employers.

------
jfaucett
Yes and no.

Do startups accept self-taught programmers - definitely yes.

Do companies in general accept self-taught programmers - yes.

Do large fortune 500 companies accept self-taught programmers - generally no.

There are exceptions to this rule. If you're self-taught and have done
something amazing, like created your own programming language used by
thousands of programmers, or you've got years of experience in some area thats
hard to find experts in, like realtime systems programming then they'll make
exceptions and you can get in.

If you want to work in R&D you're going to need a PHD, the only exception here
might be in startups.

But aside from the big players, you can almost always substitute experience
over education. Given two programmers, one with 3-4 years experience and the
other with a bachelors degree and no experience, its actually the case that
exp will trump education just about every time, especially on general
programming positions and in the startup community, where all that matters is
what you can do and have already done.

Overall though, do yourself a favor and finish up your degree, you'll always
have the advantage over candidates that don't have one.

------
bunderbunder
Short answer, focused on the USA's job market: Yes, with some effort you can
definitely find companies that don't require a degree.

Long answer: The long-term trend has been that it's becoming harder and harder
to get by without a degree. It's just supply and demand in action. A long time
ago, people with programming skills were hard to find, and companies had to
settle for hiring whoever they could find.

But people with programming skills are becoming increasingly common nowadays.
Supply is starting to catch up with demand. That's making it harder to find a
job that doesn't require a college degree than it used to be. Now companies
start having an incentive to add a degree requirement just to reduce the
number of applicants they have to consider.

Even if there is not a degree requirement, it's only going to get more common
that you find yourself competing directly with people who are similar to you
in every way except that they have a degree and you don't. When that happens,
they're likely to pick the person with the degree. It's just the safer option
from their end.

~~~
kabdib
About 4 years ago I interviewed a candidate who was great; did whiteboard
exercises well, knew a bunch about data structures, had good design sense and
some exposure to systems programming (this was for a group doing drivers and
so forth for the Xbox). He was young, but we were all happy with his
performance and frankly we wanted him on our team.

We all said "Hire this guy."

Turned out he didn't have a degree, and a director said "Nope."

Okay, so that director is an asshole. Everyone says that he's an asshole for
this decision (and he is an asshole for other reasons, too -- MS still hasn't
fired him and I have no idea why not). I go to him and say, "Guess what
college I graduated from?" and he mentions some place hifalutin' and crazy and
a little embarassing. "Nope, I'm a drop-out from (certain cow college). Also,
those really good engineers Greg and Frank? They don't have degrees, either.
So why don't you give this kid a break, he'll be great."

And he was.

So . . . the results will be mixed. I can say that most of the engineers I
work with do not care about educational background, they care about knowledge
and experience, however you got it. The various and gormless filters you may
have to go through probably _do_ care, especially at larger companies.

Once you have sufficient experience, though, nobody will care.

~~~
bunderbunder
There are all sorts of anecdotes on both sides of the story. The one that I go
back to is programmers I know who don't have a Bachelor's but do have jobs at
companies with hiring managers who have enlightened ides about these things.
And y'know what? They are starting to find themselves indentured to those
companies because prevailing attitudes on the subject are continuing to shift.

A lot of them are now thinking about getting a bachelor's degree from some
online program as a defensive move. Small companies go under or get acquired
without much warning, and big companies can have managerial turnover without
warning. Either way, not having a bachelor's degree leaves them at increased
risk of being in a situation where they're getting overlooked for jobs or
raises.

I think this is a really important trend to bring to the attention of any
young person who is seriously considering dropping out of college to go into
industry. It might be fine right now, but take a look at the long view and
consider that this person is going to need to be maintaining their career for
another 40 years at least.

Personal anecdote: My grandfather only had a high school diploma. He ended up
being an extremely accomplished corrosion engineer, and invented some of the
key tools and technologies that are used to maintain oil and natural gas
pipelines. Does his experience imply that it would have been wise for my
brother (also an engineer) to try and skip college? No, not in the slightest.
The economic circumstances of the job market for engineers changed in the
intervening decades, and the prevailing attitudes within that job market
changed right along with them.

------
h1d
I was in a similar boat. Classes did nothing but made me yawn, spent time
creating web apps for myself and for personal group of people. Soon, people
realize that is your specialty, got a few part time job as a web developer
during college through invitation. It was good to know how a paid job works. I
quit college seeing no hope of willing to complete it, then several years
later, started to work in a company for a year just for the sake of it, now I
go independent getting enough work without asking for one for years all thanks
to the knowledge I acquired back then. If you're imterested in a tech, dive
into it, create something out of it, so you and others realize what you're
capable of. Take your time to learn what you like, it pays off well later as
you have no time to learn deeply after you start working as schedule becomes
more important than quality of your work most of the time.

------
rezand
I was in the same situation and after 3 years of open source projects,
figuring out what language I wanted to stick with and finally nailing a
interview "after many many strange ones" I got a great job. I've quickly grown
in my company and others look to me for guidance "I actually introduced them
to git".

I hated general college classes that weren't related to programming and
sitting in rooms where after a semester people still didn't know how to add a
image to a webpage. Now I've learned so much working 50 hours a week getting
challenged left and right by so many real life issues.

There are plenty of jobs open to self tought programmers around me they simply
want you to master your language and stack whatever that may be and my problem
was trying to be a jack of all trades like trying to learn Ruby 3 days before
a interview.

~~~
fallat
So what did you stick with? Im having the same dilemna...I think PHP, Java,
JavaScript and C# are the way to go. So far focusing on just js and php has
shown noticeable improvements...

------
fleitz
No it doesn't matter for getting hired, it does matter for borders.

Since you're bored get some experience while in college and that will help out
immensely, also the most important language to know is English, from your
writing I'd really recommend brushing up.

Lots of sites like elance / remote programming jobs to find freelance work,
don't burden your studies with the pressure of a full time gig.

------
SQL2219
95,476 jobs posted
[http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22bachelors+degree%22&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22bachelors+degree%22&l=)

5,308 jobs posted
[http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22in+lieu+of+degree%22&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22in+lieu+of+degree%22&l=)

~~~
FanaHOVA
Instead of "in lieu of degree" you should've looked for "or equivalent
technical experience" or something like that. That's what job ads usually say
(Still true that having a degree gives you more job openings, but it's not
that big of a difference).

~~~
eli
Also, just because an ad says "bachelor's degree" doesn't necessarily mean
it's required. Businesses have a problem they need solved and there are very
few problems that _require_ a BS.

------
h_o
Do you have a portfolio? This is likely the most important factor. Proving
your skills is a good start.

I think every programmer is self taught to a certain degree. You learn very
little in tertiary education when compared to working 40+ hours a week as a
programmer - in my opinion of course.

I learn by doing things, whereas others learn better in different ways.

Good luck!

------
jcpst
Having any sort of degree + experience can be an advantage. For example, I'm a
programmer, but have my Bachelor's in Music and a whole previous career worth
of experience. Achieving a college degree shows perseverance.

Spend some time working on your idea outside your studies. If you are already
in college, you've already made a huge investment. Take advantage of the
resources (including professors) and the network you have available to you
during this time.

Do extra work, especially if you don't currently have a job or are raising a
family right now. So many people piddle away this time and skip through
college as if it doesn't cost thousands of dollars a semester (even if you
didn't pay it, someone had to), or if it's some magical job-providing
mechanism.

Get back to your studies and start your projects!

------
dagw
If you're already in college and borde with your CS course, stay there and
study something else. Knowing programming plus anything else will make you
more attractive than someone who just knows programming. Especially, now that
'everybody' is teaching themselves programming.

------
zdkl
That's a hard question and I expect there'll be lots of wildly different
answers. This is applicable to me, as an EU college non-CS dropout.

What matters most is to show competence. If you can make someone interested in
some things that you've built, you can probably make do without a degree, but
you'll have a tougher time getting through the door.

My two cents is try to stick with your formation, while you build yourself
something impressive. Chances are you'll pick up something useful and the
social network of peers will help you at least as much as the formation
itself.

Best of luck whatever you choose!

------
Timucin
Many already said but I also would like to say yes as a college/university
dropout.

Programming was my biggest interest since I was a child. So started with
Basic, then moved to ASP 3.0, then C, then web programming with PHP and now,
at the age of 32, I am still working as a full stack developer and getting
paid well.

The hardest part of self-education is to learn best practices and how to do
things on a large scale. So learning the syntax is easy but getting the
principal and methodologies will take some time and practice.

------
skimmas
I also thought I would be bored with CS (well not with the subjects... with
the nerdiness) so I decided to study design at University. I knew that
whatever happened I would always eventually end up doing a lot of code as it's
something I always enjoyed doing even if just for the sake of learning how
something works.

Now I'm a web developer and after having worked in one of the most interesting
design studios in my country I'm pretty sure my previous choices helped a lot
broaden my horizons.

~~~
skimmas
The Advice I give to a lot of people on the importance of school is that one
should use it to learn the things you wouldn't learn by yourself anyway. So
sometimes boring might be good if it's useful.

------
spacemanmatt
It seems likely introductory courses will keep you bored if you are already
interested in programming and/or CS. There is a lot to be gained from the
higher level material, but you can also be productive with self-taught skills
in many application development environments. To grow with your career,
though, you will need a deeper background than self-taught programming skills,
whether it comes from a parallel study of CS concepts or general scientific or
mathematics training.

------
gizi
Start working. You won't learn programming until you actually do it. You can
always do some kind of degree online in the meanwhile (or afterwards when you
have time). That should keep the credentialists at bay. There are lots of
websites where you can pick up paying gigs: elance, odesk, guru, ... The point
is, however, that you will have to be able to do the job, or else, they'll
expel you from the job and they'll just get someone else to do it instead of
you.

------
anovikov
Never got a CS degree (got one in management, but that's a joke of a degree).
I can say that i really feel lacking in maths, and it's nearly impossible to
compensate by just googling, and it made me troubles with some projects.
Otherwise i made quite a successful career and never had a problem getting
customers/jobs. So forget it, if it's not one of the world's top IT schools
(obviously these are not found in Indonesia), it is as good as nothing.

------
orenbarzilai
tl;dr - YES I have hired personally self taught programmers several times.

But I wouldn't suggest you to quit college and seek for a sw developer job. In
most cases those (usually talented) developers have knowledge gap when it
comes to algorithms, data structure or deep understanding of the HW / OS.
Thus, you might be able to find a job right now, but in time you will need to
catchup or you will have hard time to compete other developers with formal
education.

------
mrborgen
Sure, as long as you're able to provide value to a company, you can get a job.
I recently got a job at a startup as a frontend developer, after going through
a 3 month coding bootcamp. I had been learning coding on my spare time a
couple of years before that, but no formal CS education. As for websites, use
Upwork to get some clients. Won't be well paid, but it's a start and will help
you grow your portfolio.

------
StrLght
Yes they do.

Interviewed a few self-taught programmers. Some kind of test task and an
interview says more about candidate than line with degree in resume.

~~~
colah3
This is true. That said, I'm not sure how true it is in Indonesia.

Many very attractive jobs will be outside Indonesia. Immigration without a
degree can be very tricky...

------
chris_wot
Can we fix the glaring typo in this article title?

------
Neil44
Some will, some won't - concentrate on smaller companies, and have a portfolio
of your achievements. Try to target a niche. Don't be put off by rejections,
you only need one yes and you get infinite lives.

------
arrmn
short answer is yes, just make some things that show your knowledge. But I
wouldn't suggest to drop out.

A little bit longer answer: I'm from Germnay, I've studied architecture but
I've decided last year I want to make my hobby my job, and I've applied for a
few jobs and got some offers. On a sidenote our (sofware) architect did never
finish school.

But I have a huge knowledge gap compared to my coworkes who have studied CS. I
personally feel inferior to them. So I'm going back to university to study CS.
I would suggest you shouldn't drop out.

------
panjaro
Which Company? Company A? Company doesn't hire, people in the company do.

Answer to your Question - "It depends".

A question to your question - Can you make company feel stupid enough to even
think about a college degree?

------
eli
You probably don't need a degree but you might someday regret not having one
and it'll be much harder to go back later. So my advice would be to ride it
out and keep up with the hobbies.

------
pro_
Try this two site

[http://hackerearth.com](http://hackerearth.com)
[http://interviewbit.com](http://interviewbit.com)

------
thr0w4w4y444
work on your own projects whilst doing whatever you need to complete college?
most degrees require miniscule amounts of work. I graduated top 5% of my class
and basically never attended....

------
jpmonette
tl;dr - Yes.

Studying is still very important and valued by a lot of companies. I'd
recommend to study in something else "complimentary" that passionate you and
learn/improve in software engineering outside school to have a more
diversified skillset. That's what I did 4 years ago, landed my first software
engineer job and now had the opportunity to move to London because of that!

------
SQL2219
In order to get a job, you have to get an interview. You are way more likely
to get an interview with a CS degree, then without. It really doesn't matter
how good of a self-taught programmer you are, because no one will take you
seriously. In my experience, side projects and code tinkering are discounted
during the interview and hiring process - I agree, this is dumb.

I don't like or agree with any of the above, but that's how most of the world
works. Put in the time, get it done. 10 years from now you will be very happy
you did.

------
wcummings
I've never been asked about my education (or lack there of) in an interview.
Can't speak to Indonesia, though.

------
punch_card
programming is a blue collar job, no degree required. Try climbing the ladder
in a technical company (not a startup). You won't have the skills and
understanding to assume the responsibilities of higher positions. It's been
this way for a long time. Programming can be taught at a vo-tech.

------
jeremonda
TL;DR --> You can find programming jobs flooding on the internet 24/7/365\. If
you have confidence in your skill, theoretically speaking, you'll get a job in
an hour or less. Just search for "freelance programming jobs online".

Learning C++ course on college may not do much to enhancing your problem
solving capabilities in programming because when the classes are not fun
itself (as you mentioned), I can assure you that you will not learn much but
detest the programming classes itself and I regret to tell you this but you
may end up renouncing programming itself, which you just said you want a job
in. Albert Einstein said that after a year or more of mind-numbing classes in
highschool that did nothing to excite his creative potential, he found that
the same scientific concepts that fascinated him in the past felt utterly
distasteful for almost a year when he entered college.

Finally, after reading half of the Internet's how-to on "how to code" and "how
to be a skilled programmer", one answer was always common in all of them:

\- THINK OF AN IDEA AND WORK ON IT.

They mention that if you don't have a purpose to learn to code, you shouldn't
learn to code at all. So, let me link to eye-opening articles that debunk the
myths of programming I found in this thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9823985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9823985).

\- [http://fourhourworkweek.com/2013/11/03/productivity-
hacks/](http://fourhourworkweek.com/2013/11/03/productivity-hacks/) \-
[http://blog.codinghorror.com/please-dont-learn-to-
code/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/please-dont-learn-to-code/) \-
[http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html) \-
[http://www.invokemedia.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/06/venndi...](http://www.invokemedia.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/06/venndiagram.png)

When you build apps or websites that do something you wanted, only then you
gain the confidence and skill to work for others on their projects, isn't it?
And that time will come when you will be overwhelmed by the number of jobs you
can apply to. So, "no skill, no job". :-)

