I'm someone who graduated with a non-cs engineering degree (and worked professionally as an engineer) whose now in a MSCS program after trying my hand in the job market. Not for a lack of trying, but my experiences definitely relate to an uphill struggle just to get even noticed. And before anyone says "you should do x|y|z", I've done my part pretty well. A few decent sized personal projects, constant studying, meetups, networking, github, etc.
I hear a lot of anecdotal evidence (mostly from professional devs who have degrees) that they know a friend or coworker who doesn't have a degree.
The truth is that the system for recruiting and hiring is really based around colleges, students, and degree holders. Starting from the application requirements, you see that most applications require a CS degree (or equivalent). Then the technical interview is aimed at fundamental CS questions, most of which students are accustomed to.
So for someone self taught, face to face interactions are a lot better. But even going to events/meetups, you notice a distinct change in demeanor of the recruiter when you mention you don't have a CS degree. It really is a tiring battle just to prove that you're competent.
Do I believe that you 100% need a degree to get a CS job? Definitely not. But without one, your options are very limited and on top of that you'll need a lot of luck and effort just to get past the first hurdle.
IIRC, the article says that a whopping 56% of developers don't have a degree. Given that the majority of developers don't have a degree, I'm not sure I'd agree with saying " without one, your options are very limited". Maybe "somewhat limited"?
My anecdotal evidence, looking at both my own career and a lot of developers I've worked with over the past 17 years, is that having a degree, or not, isn't a big deal.
What could be true with the last generation may not necessarily hold true for the next generation.
Many are working towards abstracting schooling out of a being a developer, great.
That also means we're moving towards making being a developer a blue collar job rather than a white collar job. We're also making private businesses now the trainers of labor.
The time to be a dropout rockstar developer was in the 2000s but we're moving towards 2020 now.
The real question is meant for the generation of 13 yo now in the next 5 years. They can study software development on their own but in 10 years time, will they be better spending half of that with expensive college education or nah.
Everyone in this thread are giving out answers based on their own experience surviving the past 20 years as if what happened the last 20 years in the tech industry is where we're at right now or will be going forward the next 20.
I wrote this on hardware and software made by and improved by organizations of highly educated and highly specialized people. It's incredulous to think the future is only going to be built by Lucky Palmers and 16 yo hacker geniuses.
I agree with this. Furthermore, the bright youths of the nineties spent a lot of time putting hardware (and software) together. Now a lot of this is on a commodity level, open source packages abound, and the theory is more accessible than ever.
> That also means we're moving towards making being a developer a blue collar job rather than a white collar job
This will never happen, the majority of the population doesn't have the dedication and/or intelligence to be employable as software developers. I've given numerous people resources to learn how to code and none have stuck with it.
What could be true with the last generation may not necessarily hold true for the next generation.
Fair point, but I still haven't seen much - if any - evidence that it's any more necessary for developers to have degrees now, as opposed to in the past. But, as always, it's going to vary by (company|geography|industry vertical|etc ), so my sample data is almost certainly not broadly representative.
I wrote this on hardware and software made by and improved by organizations of highly educated
True, but FWIW, I would argue that "highly educated" and "highly formally credentialed" are not the same thing.
I think for an out of the gate job this is true. But after you've had your first job this stops being as much of an issue. I have an Aerospace Engineering degree. I was able to get a WebForms job without much experience and a minor in CS. I will never knock that job because they took a chance on me, paid me a semi-competitive salary, and let me learn a lot.
I haven't had a hard time finding something since then. I do hate the basic algorithms questions every interviewer asks, but a month or so of Coursera and I'm ready to answer all of the "Implement a QuickSort algorithm in 20 minutes" questions again.
You either need luck or you need to be willing to take a job that isn't as reputable to learn programming as a profession, once you have that many doors will open up to you.
Just the first hurdle though. It took me a year of serious effort to land my first dev job. The second one came to me: I was contacted by a recruiter and asked to interview and ended up accepting that offer about a year after starting in my first position.
I dropped out of high school ten years ago and did nothing of note between then and teaching myself to code.
Just stick with it until you land the first one and you'll be fine.
I graduated with a degree in operations management. I've probably done over 100 personal projects to gain experience, with maybe 15 being worth talking about. I've read quite a few books, actually a lot if you count the PAKT ones. When I lived in Seattle I went to the meetups and found a couple groups there I enjoyed hanging out with. I've had a really hard time getting interviews except from a couple of small teams, and I mostly feel ignored. At this point I'm taking a computer systems class and discrete structures at a CC. The systems class is helping my debugging skills in ways that I wouldn't have put myself through but the price tag for this knowledge is high, and it's beyond just money. I still learn a magnitude more on my own than directly from the coursework.
Do I think a degree is necessary? No. I do think you'll have a hard time getting a job without one so you might as well start your own company.
Like you, I also didn't have a CS degree (I did take foundational CS coursework in undergrad, and also had an MS in something akin to HCI). I was hired for my first software engineering job in SF by a couple not-very-technical founders--both of whom were rather taken with a game I had designed/developed--after completing a week-long contract job for them. No CS fundamentals interview process.
After that first job, it was very easy to get interviews, although I had to prep a bit for those CS questions. I'm now interviewing for my third job, and feel like I've taken on too many interviews, many at big name startups and big corps. Among 18ish cold applications, I've only been turned down without so much as a recruiter call twice, likely because I was missing some keyword on my resume or something.
Where are you located? What kind of positions are you looking for?
I'm sure things are (potentially) quite different now compared to the 17 years ago when I first landed a job building web applications. (My very first job was an internship - sort of - while pursuing a CS degree. My next job was after I had dropped out, left that job and was busy delivering hoagies as my job.) So that was "luck" and being "in the CS education world" when I got started.
Still, I think if I have a point, I started out in silly, minor jobs for little local companies that needed someone that could code more than they needed a highly polished computer scientist or engineer. From there I, more so, "learned on the job" the rest of what I needed to advance (and I continually self-taught by working on my own projects).
I hear a lot of anecdotal evidence (mostly from professional devs who have degrees) that they know a friend or coworker who doesn't have a degree.
The truth is that the system for recruiting and hiring is really based around colleges, students, and degree holders. Starting from the application requirements, you see that most applications require a CS degree (or equivalent). Then the technical interview is aimed at fundamental CS questions, most of which students are accustomed to.
So for someone self taught, face to face interactions are a lot better. But even going to events/meetups, you notice a distinct change in demeanor of the recruiter when you mention you don't have a CS degree. It really is a tiring battle just to prove that you're competent.
Do I believe that you 100% need a degree to get a CS job? Definitely not. But without one, your options are very limited and on top of that you'll need a lot of luck and effort just to get past the first hurdle.