
Ask HN: Would you hire a programmer without a degree? - johndoe90
Hello there,<p>I&#x27;m a 22-yo male. Long time I was a freelance Python programmer. Also I have some projects on GitHub.<p>Currently I work at a Russian company as a Java EE developer.<p>The problem is, I have no university degree. Of course, I went through the school and college and got secondary special education (guess it&#x27;s correct). I got a profession which is more into system administration than programming. But I decided to be a programmer.<p>In the future I plan to move out of here to somewhere in the US and work there.<p>So here I am, thinking if I need to go to university, since I&#x27;m absolutely disappointed in Russian education system.<p>The question is, Would you hire a programmer without a degree? What if I study remotely, does it make sense? Is there any chance to get hired for skills, not for education? Is there any advice you can give?<p>Thanks.
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NetStrikeForce
I hire experienced people, which means that I don't care about your degree. I
care about your professional career: have you been successful at other
companies? What are your key accomplishments?

I can't wave your CS degree in front of my customers to get them to pay me
more, so who cares about it? I prefer someone that can show me how his work
will make my product or company better.

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tcard
Yes. Disclaimer: I'm one of those.

I started a degree, but dropped out. It was just a waste of time and money,
"learning" and doing what they put before me, which often was outdated, badly
presented, silly or plain wrong (this might be different in a good college, I
tried three different Spanish ones). I could just go and learn by myself the
right things, from the right sources (seriously, the Internet is full of
_amazing_ stuff), both theoretical and practical.

If something, I wish I could take back all that time and money rather than go
back and finish. I never had a problem so far on getting hired or learning
what I want or need.

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dsacco
Yes, I'd hire someone without a degree. Some of the people who have impressed
me the most thus far in my career have had no formal education. In the
security industry especially (primarily where I work), it is not uncommon to
see incredible work done by those who dropped out of, or simply never attended
university. This is true even in cryptography (though it's rarer).

This doesn't mean it's necessarily a winning bet to drop out of college. It
depends on what you want to do. If you have solid skills and want to drop out
to start a company, great, go ahead. History has shown many people beyond just
Gates or Zuckerberg who succeeded that way.

In general, the more hands on the work, the less a degree matters if you have
other ways to prove your skills. Research is harder to just break into.

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WalterSear
I've worked with many programmers without degrees, including at least two who
didn't graduate high school.

In my experience, people care more about your github repo, and how well you
can code in person on a whiteboard, or on a small takehome projects.

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Sevrene
If a potentional employer cared more about my previous education history than
they do my skills or previous work, than I personally wouldnt really value
them either. Not sure if that's the 'correct' way of going about it.

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huydotnet
I also moved to the US recently, got rejected so many times due to the lack of
US-based degree. I already got a degree in CS from my home country, but it
doesn't help. I'm not saying 100% companies/startups in Silicon Valley
required a degree, but you better to get one.

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skylark
The bad news: If you don't have a degree, your resume has a much higher chance
of being weeded out before even getting to a phone screen.

The good news: This prescreening step is the only one where your degree
matters - by the time you're actually talking to a person, your degree almost
doesn't matter at all.

Getting your first job will be tougher than you might like, but there are
plenty of companies that don't filter candidates based on education. After you
get that first job, your goal should be to expand your network - an internal
referral can oftentimes guarantee a technical screen, at which point you're
right where you want to be.

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EnderMB
Yeah, without a doubt. Some of the best devs I've worked with don't have
degrees.

I have a CS degree, and in my own personal view, I think that a degree is
extremely helpful. With that being said, your average degree doesn't teach you
how to be a great developer, nor should it. Programming is a vocational task,
and while there is a ton of theory that can help you out, there is no
substitute for experience.

With that being said, a lot of people on here say that a GitHub profile will
help you get hired. I'm not so sure, especially when you're dealing with your
typical non-tech company looking to hire a developer. The underlying idea that
experience trumps education is valid in the workplace. I've worked with
Oxbridge graduates that can't write code for shit, and UWE graduates single-
handedly build great tools being used by millions every day.

Where I disagree is with the idea that a few small projects on GitHub can show
that you work well on large projects, or as part of a team. The only thing
that can reliably do that is experience, and naturally you won't get to flaunt
the code you've written for a previous employer. If you want to move to the
US, get some paid work in Russia. It doesn't need to be ground-breaking, or
even a huge project; something you can write on your CV/Resume that says "I've
written code professionally".

My advice is everything in moderation. Get enough education. Write enough
open-source code to show that you can write something non-trivial. Get enough
experience to show that you are capable of working as a professional
developer.

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charlesdm
Yes, you can get hired without a degree. Even at places like Google and
Facebook. Most people don't care about your degree if you can deliver (i.e.
have results to show for it). The older you get and the more you have
accomplished, the less important it gets.

Since it seems like you're living in Russia at the moment, one thing that
could be problematic is the visa issue. You might not be able to get a US
residence visa without a degree (depending on your personal situation).

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samfisher83
It seems like most people on thread say one thing, but the statistics seem to
say something else.

[http://phys.org/news/2014-03-hire-google-companies-bad-
idea....](http://phys.org/news/2014-03-hire-google-companies-bad-idea.html)

86% of people at google have college degrees. I guess 14% is a pretty high
number, but it also says a vast majority have a college degree.

~~~
EnderMB
Hacker News doesn't represent the world of programming as a whole. In many
companies, developers are hired in the same way that many other office workers
are. The required degree is needed, the necessary experience on top. For
larger companies that don't deal primarily in tech, this is their HR policy,
and it exists for all roles.

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clairleitney
Well, as long as you get the job done I wouldn't bother about whether or not
you have a degree. And quite a few of my friends are pretty good programmers
though they don't have a degree. In fact degree is just a piece of paper so
you shouldn't let it stop you from getting job offers. And if does, it means
the employers aren't seeking for an expert. And such employers aren't worth
spending time on. BTW have you thought of taking online courses in some
university abroad. I heard from [http://dissertationwriter.org/contact-
us/](http://dissertationwriter.org/contact-us/) that if you are good you can
join one of these courses
[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/).

~~~
johndoe90
By the way, I have thought about online courses. I think I'm gonna try MIT
course.

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lokarda
Yes i would. Today degrees are overrated in our field. Is a young web engineer
without experience more interesting than a developer without degree but 5
years experience ? In fact the more valuable is your personal knowledge and
personal projects. And I don't speak about school knowledge/projects, but
those you developed by yourself.

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drakonka
I don't think you would have a problem getting people to want to hire you
without a degree. What you should really look into (and I had to do this as
well, though not moving from Russia) is what countries you can easily get a
visa to without a degree (even if an employer is willing to hire you). In my
case I had to first get my Australian citizenship (originally Ukrainian, but
Australian resident at the time) to qualify for a Working Holiday visa to
Europe to make my preferred move (then looked for employment once there).

Another option might be to try to get a job at a Russian branch of an
international company - sometimes working at a local office for a year or so
can legally make transferring overseas within the same company easier.

~~~
johndoe90
> What you should really look into (and I had to do this as well, though not
> moving from Russia) is what countries you can easily get a visa to without a
> degree

I did not think of that option, thank you.

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marssaxman
I certainly would. I don't have a degree either. I've been working in the
industry for over 20 years now; nobody cares what I was doing or not doing in
the '90s. It is probably harder to get in the door now than it was when I
started, but my experience has been that if you know how to code, you want to
keep coding, you know how to learn, and you want to keep learning as you go,
lack of formal certification will not be an obstacle to your career
development. A degree gets you the first job, and experience gets you all the
jobs after that. If you can get in and show that you know what you're doing,
you can build from there and it doesn't matter how you started. It sounds like
you may already have jumped that hurdle.

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jkarneges
It depends on the employer. Some large companies may have policies about
degrees. Smaller co's may not care. The key is having the necessary skills and
experience, which may take _years_ to accumulate. Lacking a degree doesn't
mean lacking education. You mention freelance work, so maybe you do have the
skills.

Your biggest issue might be getting a proper work visa, which, by the way,
even immigrating post-grads struggle with, so good luck to you if this is a
factor...

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d4rkph1b3r
As others have said, the problem is getting the interview, not getting hired.

You'll have to get a recommendation from someone to get an interview, either
by doing Open Source or Stack Overflow or attending conferences or something.
Once you're in an interview, most companies in the Bay aren't going to care
about a degree if you can pass the interview.

The problem is making it through the HR/resume hurdle. (And passing the
interview).

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kasey_junk
I don't know the degree status of any of my team. That said, getting a work
visa in the US without a degree seems like it maybe _very_ difficult.

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codeonfire
No, because if it turns out you don't have the skills you say you do, I will
get fired because I hired someone just based on my own (wrong) preferences. If
you had a degree but couldn't do the job, it is a more 'honest' mistake and I
could blame your school.

~~~
BoysenberryPi
Doesn't this just make you a bad interviewer? The fact that blaming someones
college is even on the table just makes it seem like you aren't doing your job
as an interviewer. I've met tons of CS degrees from UC Irvine and other great
schools who can't program worth a damn.

~~~
qb45
I'm under impression that parent expressed frustration with having to work in
environment with so little respect for human intelligence that this kind of
bureaucratic CYA is needed to stay employed there.

Now, there is the question whether one should _want_ to stay in such a place,
but it seems to be a common folk wisdom that many places are like that and
there is no escape.

~~~
codeonfire
Like it or not, once a company has more than one manager they are competing
for headcount and budget. They can't just leave to another job. cya is the
nature of the job.

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debacle
Yes. I would value 1 year of actual professional experience over having a 4
year degree. A CS degree teaches you CS. Most software engineering jobs are
<5% CS. It's all about being able to deliver. Don't sell yourself short.

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pmiller2
We'd hire three of them, tomorrow, if they had the right skills we were
looking for.

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wccrawford
What you're actually asking is: Would I hire a "programmer" without a degree
and with zero work professional programming experience on their resume.

Yes. But only if that programmer had a good portfolio and showed a lot of
promise. They'd have to interview well and be able to explain what their code
does and why. Oh, and I'd only ever hire them as a junior developer, which of
course means that the company has to be willing to handle that situation.

Once they've had a few jobs, the experience portion completely replaces the
need for a degree and the question is obviously 'yes'. The rest of the
interview is much easier for someone with actual experience, degree or not.

~~~
johndoe90
That's not what I'm asking. I'm currently working at a Russian company as a
Java EE developer. So, "professional programming experience" is the thing I'm
getting right now.

Update: I was hired with no experience. But here's another country, different
people, different companies. I came up with this question to find out if other
countries are better or worse with such thing as hiring an ungraduated
employee.

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plinkplonk
I don't know about Russia specifically, but getting a work visa in the US
might be very hard without a degree in some science/engineering/management
field.

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iqonik
I'm in the UK and we definitely hire without a degree. We do, however, require
a few years exp. to make up for it.

