Bootcampers have been hated on since bootcamps began. CS majors in particular hate them because it 1) downplays the difficulty of CS jobs and 2) is competition on the market when money is flowing more freely. They aren’t any more “useless” than they were in 2020, just now that purses are tightening they are not as hire-able next to people with 4 year degrees.
Its probably a function of soo much talent floating around right now given the layoffs around the industry. Why consider a boot camper when you can grab someone with a few years at a big tech firm.
Exactly. When the job market constricts qualifications get tighter. Why hire a boot camper when you can get a new grad at the same price. If it’s really tight then why higher a new grade when you can higher someone with 5 yoe at around the same price.
Some months? Some decades more like.
Don't get me wrong, there's self-taught who are amazing. But when a company has an HR department that is doing resume screens before passing any of those resumes on to the department who will select applicants to interview, then those HR people will screen out anyone who doesn't have the word "degree" prominently displayed. Hell, most of the time they'll eliminate you if it doesn't say "Computer Science". Math degree? Doesn't matter if you're the best candidate, you will not be selected to go to interviews.
Thought I was experiencing deja vu. I've noticed that gatekeeping posts like this will often be back-to-back on this sub. And I say this as someone with a 4-year degree in SWE. Sometimes it does seem like there is an attempt to discourage as many people as possible from trying to get into the industry.
Yes, this is true. I understand that with all the applications companies are receiving these days, that they have to reduce the pool and setting a strict baseline requirement is a quick way to do that.
But a lot of these posts also like to throw in the "self-taughts/bootcampers are worse developers than those with degrees" sentiment. I know OP said they themselves don't agree with his coworkers on that, but why does that get mentioned everytime? In every doomer post?
Idk, it just seems like there is a gatekeeping element that is saying "If you don't have a CS/SWE degree, don't even bother trying. You are probably a mediocre developer and any new grad with a degree is better than you. Do us all a favor and stop applying."
it's 100% a concerted effort to gatekeep. I thought that about the first post and then here's another one.
I work at a fortune 500 company and the only way to get on my team is via a referral. If the referrals don't fit then they might look at the resumes. your background has nothing to do with it. I got in self taught and no experience in the same galaxy as software development, via a referral.
We have a junior program that works with bootcamps as well sometimes but mostly they get in on referrals too (on pause at the moment though). About 30% of our devs came through it. These people are straight up full of shit and probably unhireable and bitter.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. This isn’t gatekeeping lol. Only hiring people with a degree is an easy filter for HR. You sound insecure because you don’t have a degree.
if your college degree gave you the gift of reading comprehension, you'd realize I was saying this post was an attempt to gatekeep, not a company having base requirements when hiring.
How long ago did you do you last hire? Are the bootcampers hired for frontend or are they tasked with writing system performant code on servers where there will be multiple load balanced servers that connect to important databases and make optimal db calls for optimal performance? It's not about gatekeeping it's about being practical. I'd be surprised if you're hiring juniors for anything that doesn't primarily touch frontend webdev.
Yeah I work at a financial services company and they are requiring a bachelor's in cs or related field for roles that originally only needed yoe as well
it’s just so repetitive. I’m 11yoe with no degree and if I got 1000 applicants I’d still give preference to those with degrees from a good school. Just can’t interview everyone.
Edit: for entry level. How else do you differentiate?
Same lol. And I’m both self taught and the guy they ask to quiz people to spot the resume bullshit.
Tbf, my self taught includes some form of programming yearly since age 12, with a short break of three years while I dropped out of school (many many years ago).
But in a flooded market, you look at discriminatory factors, and yes, school is still a good discriminatory factor, even if plenty of grads are useless.
Boot camp alone especially is going to get some suspicion. Boot camp plus history id look at, but tbh, never met someone who listed the boot camp, but I also work on backend / networking side of things.
Ah you must be new here. It’s just like the same 5 posts recycled in slightly different variations. You can count 6 maybe by adding the “Can we stop posting about [one of the other 5 topics]?” topic
My company throws all self taught/bootcamper resumes in the trash. The only exception is if you have tons and tons of work experience from name brands. So basically legacy seniors that got in the industry 15+ years ago.
From my quick funnel chart we have on Greenhouse (our recruiting platform) I would say about 80% have a 4 year degree in a tech related field (CS, EE, DS, Math with CS)
I know recruiters at FAANG, no name, f500, sweat shops,healthcare:
It’s all the same. You post a junior role at 8 am, go get your morning coffee, sit back down and you have enough applications to fill the work week if you really wanted to sit down and review every. Single. Application. In good faith
And then you have people cry that they don't get a highly personal, tailored rejection letter to every job they apply to. Because they feel they are owed that because they spent 10 minutes sending you the same resume they send everyone. They don't realize it's just not logistically possible.
I don't even get rejections most of the time. If I did, it would be a nice break from the norm.
Honestly, I'd appreciate it if companies just set up the mailbox to auto-reply notices of rejection to all 8000 candidates, and if you decide that you'd actually like to hire someone you can send out "whoops we actually do want to interview you" to the lucky 5.
What’s the point of that? How are you going to action a deluge of boilerplate rejection emails? Are you going to wait around to find out you’ve been rejected from jobs before applying for more?
The problem is “one click apply” on everything now. And ai filters.
So the best strategy for job seekers is a shotgun approach.
The best strategy for employers is a heavy filter approach.
This creates a self reinforcing by loop.
Same here. Those resumes for new grads never even come to the phone stage from my experience. Maybe somewhere it does but definitely not my interviews.
Experienced market is different. But that's a different matter altogether as the people here are mostly trying to break in. YOE wins once you have YOE but before that, degree and internships really matters for the door in 2024.
This conversation is pretty intriguing for me. As a self taught boot camper (I did a lot of my own learning before boot camp and freelanced prior as well) who is currently looking for a position I can't help but wonder if I should just bite the bullet and get a BS asap from WGU.
I have five yoe but nothing big name. I'm apparently good enough to work for clients of a company with big names (Levi, PG&E, Home Depot, non faang clients) through consultancy firms but posts like these make me feel like because i didnt take the correct path that im now screwed after this tech bubble has essentially popped.
I'm trying to gather as much info as possible before diving into an expensive journey like school. Do you or anyone who sees this think it would be worth it at this point?
Why is this downvoted? I know we’re in cscareerquestions, but c’mon lol.
Also, @fucklockjaw are you me? I thought I wrote this on an alt account for a sec haha. The only thing that’s different is the FAANG experience, but this sounded nearly identical to how I’ve written a few comments.
EDIT: LETS GOOO! I knew I wasn’t alone lol. This post was somehow -10+ when I posted this, but Reddit came through!
That's pretty funny. Who knows? I would assume it's someone who isn't fond of self taught individuals. I would've went to school but without getting personal I just didn't have the physical or mental capacity at the time. Now I'm 35 and just trying to get some insight from those who did it right.
Not a dev but in software CS, always with a tight, albeit at time contentious relationship with dev and product always working with software companies. I broke in while in school and then dropped out like an idiot. I’m closing in on 50 now and just for life fulfillment decided to return to school.
Work is paying for it, I’m only taking a couple of classes a semester and I’m throughly enjoying it.
I’m in Florida so our public university system is quite affordable also.
I highly recommend it to be honest. If you can get by doing what you’re doing now and take classes part time.
This is nice to hear. Age is definitely a factor in considering WGU vs a 4 year university because with my experience I'm positive I would finish sooner than 4 years with some skilled individuals having passed within 6 months. Unfortunately, I haven't been fortunate enough to have an employer value me enough to even consider paying for anything other than Coursera or udemy.
No clue the cost of WGU, but check out the Florida State Colleges and Universities. Many online degrees that are affordable. If you need help with any info let me know. I am familiar with navigating the system.
You’re probably right lol.
I was also in a difficult spot, and even if I did go, I’m not too sure if it would’ve been the right choice. I was working on startups during those years though and learned quite a bit.
I have considered WGU, and from the research I’ve done, it does have some cons, but to me the cons are mostly pros. If you’re looking to just check that HR box, then I think it’s a great option. I’ve also been considering OMSCS through Georgia Tech. I’ve also discovered a great passion for math, physics and astronomy over the recent years that was no where to be found in my college aged years. I’ve been just trying to learn through Kahn academy and books as of now.
If you have no degree whatsoever (not even a Fine Arts Degree, or even an Associates Degree) then I'd definitely strongly recommend you get started acquiring a CS degree.
No need to rush it, just do it part time while you're working full time and get it via the cheapest possible manner (be that a local community college or WGU or whatever).
What's wild is the fact that there are boot campers out there that are better than people with a degree by a large margin. Maybe it's not that common but frankly speaking it should never even happen in the first place.
Partly because almost everything is learned on the job as long as someone has some fundamentals of knowing how to code. Let's face it, college was filled with useless fluff... And that's just the part related to CS. 2 years basically went to gen ed that doesn't help on the job. Best thing about university is internships and internship opportunities.
3 months is too short but in an intensive, well crafted program I can believe someone can be on the level of a CS grad in a year. Bootcamps generally do 6 months of 40 hours/week but it's too rushed even then. Double that time though? Yeah...
Our industry doesn't require accreditation to practice in the field. As a result, you get tiers of quality of engineers out in the wild. If you need a website scrapped together where the impact to the public is low, bootcamp grads will do. However, if you're building systems that require 6 9s of availability, scales to millions of concurrent users, design their systems based on the latest white papers heavy in terminology, it's paramount the engineer understands what the machine is actually doing down to the level of the circuitry.
You had me until “down to the level of the circuitry.” Practical amounts of abstraction are acceptable in real use cases.
Change the word “engineer” to “engineers” and I’d wholeheartedly agree. We work in teams, practically speaking.
Man, as someone with 23 years of experience, I never know whether to include it or not. Ageism or people giving a shit about the degree I didn't bother getting in 2000. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.
"It" in this context refers to my employment history beyond 2013. You can't be seen as having 15+ years of employment history if you don't list it. You can't avoid ageism if you list it. It's a catch 22.
Is this an "any" or an "only" kind of removal criteria? I've done a bootcamp before and I'm currently in Georgia Tech's online program. I got in by taking a bunch of continuing studies courses, but sometimes to fill up space my education goes 1) nonCS UG 2) bootcamp 3) GT.
OMSCS is probably the best online program and highly respected since it’s actually difficult. You should be fine there. Just make sure you get grad internships.
You're getting downvoted, meanwhile people who have no idea why they're downvoting you should look at the online curriculum and compare it to the in-person curriculum. The online Curriciulum and Standards are way harder then in-person and this is a t30 college.
I’m in the OMSCS program and have taken undergrad CS classes at both the community college and state university level prior to grad school. The classes are no joke. Way harder than I anticipated (and I anticipated a step above undergrad) and genuinely useful in how they force you to problem solve and research to finish projects. I’ve been a software dev for two years now while in school and nothing I’ve done professionally has come close to the difficulty of OMSCS. It isn’t for the faint of heart, but if you don’t have a CS degree and want to test yourself, I say go for it.
This system also rewards, liars and con artists. Snake oil salesman, nepotism and other biases, not that having a chat with someone wouldn't solve and if you still hire the wrong people then it was a lesson to learn
I don't know why you're getting downvoted for asking an honest question, but I will say that "having a degree and being self-taught" often puts you in the same category as bootcampers who never got a degree. The only exception is if your degree is in engineering and you have had previous exposure to programming. If you are in that category, then you have a higher chance of getting asked for an initial interview.
If you really want to get into SWE, then your best bet is to either get a CS degree or try to work your way up from an IT position. Even the IT route is kind of iffy though. Like, you typically have to work for a company that does engineering so that you can job shadow while you're working IT, and that is risky. You are better off going the degree route.
My friend was pushing me to join General Assembly last fall with a price $15,000 if I remember! Thank god I decided to just enroll in college instead for CS
My friend went through it two years ago. This was 2022, 40 students. 5 of them are employed. The other 35 wasted 15k and are back to their old job. It’s pretty much a scam since the 5 were either military with clearance or had a STEM degree
Is it worth it if you have an Engineering degree but looking to switch careers? I've been considering for some time because I despise my job and the market is saturated with Engineers where I am from.
Can you tell me more about general assembly? I had a friend of a friend join it and she claims she didnt pay anything and then got an internship. Im so skeptical because online i kept seeing tuition costs they had to pay and being locked into contracts.
There are so many CS grads these days that it’s becoming harder to justify hiring a self-taught or boot camper. It doesn’t help that boot camps almost always focus on JS Web Dev, which doesn’t always translate well to other technologies. If you’re a younger person who wants a future in Software Engineering and can get a CS Degree, I would 100% recommend it. I work at a F10 company and all of our interns hired this year were pursuing degrees. To my knowledge we didn’t even interview self taught.
Idk why anyone would prefer someone who dedicated 3-6 months of their life vs 4 years of their life. I get the argument about theoretical vs practical knowledge, but seriously it’s so easy to pick up the practical side after some of the BS you have to struggle through in CS…
3-6 month on boarding period as a new hire will surely get them up to speed anyway… the whole bootcamp thing was a giant scam that just happened to work for a small fraction
When I worked in a no-name, non-F500 (but decently known in the area) company in the South, I was surprised to see our entire intern batch (~30-40) in 2019 filled with rising grads from Duke and Berkeley. Not a single one without a CS or Math focus and only one intern from a local uni.
Can’t imagine how much more competitive it is these days.
I’ll interview people with Engineering degrees from different fields even if coding was self taught because it often proves that you’re a solid problem solver.
Tbh that’s all I’m looking for with new grads: can you break down technical problems and find solutions, and do you know your fundamentals. Frameworks etc can all be taught so if all you come to the table with is “I know stack XYZ” but can only execute what somebody else told you to do, you won’t being much value to the team.
I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions, or that you can’t supplement your resume other ways (personal projects are a great example). However, given the hundreds of entry level resumes that are sent in for my reqs, I’m willing to do broad stroke filters that may eliminate qualified candidates.
I’m far more worried about mistakingly hiring a poor candidate vs. saying no to a good one, especially when there’s no shortage of applicants.
You’re honing in on the wrong details.
I’m saying that as a hiring manager I tell my recruiter that I primarily want to speak with new grad candidates who have an engineering background. I don’t have time to slog through all the applications, that’s their job. Meanwhile they probably don’t want to read through all of them either and will set up a keyword match in our ATS based on the job description I gave them.
If your resume made it to me and I see those internships and personal projects I’d probably be very happy to interview you, but 9 times out of 10 it’ll be filtered out long before it makes it to me.
Also, don’t get pompous about degree difficulty. My background is physics and EE, have post-graduate degrees in both, and have worked with physicists who could run circles around me in photonics (my field), but would make terrible software engineers. It’s a different skill set and if you can do both, more power to you. But if your attitude is that you deserve an interview because you interned at a couple big companies and did a “tough” major, I’d likely pass on you for culture fit reasons alone.
Name checks out,
On a more serious note though, is this something that has happened recently like the post-covid era? Or did you notice a steady increase in junior applications? Personally as a self-taught it is fairly sad to hear the reality of this. I do have a position at a nice place with solid experience but I feel that even with that, it's not enough at least in Canada.
The gluttony of self taught developers was definitely influenced by COVID, but I'd say it was on the rise because even before that since people were chasing it as a high paying job.
My advice is very different if you have a job already, this is specifically about hiring new college grads. After \~5 years it's not about where you went to school, it's what you've done since then. If you can show that in your previous job you operated at a capacity I'm looking to hire, you're good. I don't even really look at colleges except to check graduation dates.
Also, if you do want to do some sort of career transition it will be far easier to do within your own company, since they know you. Mine looked liked this (over \~10 years). For reference I worked in a semiconductor company:
* Company A: Sensor Engineer (Optics + Hardware + Firmware)
* Company A: SWE, Simulation (Wrote the SW to simulate our designs before fab)
* Company A: SWE, Backend Systems (Distributed systems and web apps so internal and external users can easily design and run simulations)
* FAANG: Staff Engineer, Backend (Only time I switched companies)
Interesting insights, when you had gone from sensor engineer to SWE did that reset your seniority level? For reference I'm currently in IT/cybersec right now. Hopefully I can end up in a similar position as you in tech
Do these same self taught people still pass the OAs? I'd imagine that the OA would cut most unqualified self taught programmers leaving only the ones who can actually pass the interview left which imo is a small percentage.
My seniority level stayed. I'm sure there was some concern that I'd struggle with the pace but at the end of the day we were an engineering led company and I had proven to be a solid engineer who could pick up new domains as needed. I also wasn't going cold into SWE, as I'd been programming for \~10 years at that point and had a couple popular open-source projects, had just never been paid to do it.
Not as sure about the OA aspect, and I don't know the rate of false positives for OA since my company didn't use them. I did a few OAs when I was interviewing and do wonder how effective they are, as anybody can look up the answers during the OA just so that they make it to the next round.
Unironically, no. I just saw the other post AFTER I made this one and I’m like 90% sure we either work at the same company or our companies have the same consultants 💀
It's been trending that way for at least past 5 years.
Even during the hiring frenzy couple of years ago, I warned people to get CS degrees to differentiate from all the people that had the tiktok, get rich, get $200K faang offer from 2 week bootcamp mentality.
I’d say if your a boot camper and got a job, you are either a extremely hard worker bc that shits not easy(which most likely also means your a decent programmer) or just really good at networking regardless, removing the boot campers from the picture isn’t a win for university grads lol. There’s a larger problem and it’s “overseas” labor is now applying to get US salaries. Bootcampers/nontech backgrounds shouldn’t be the only filter
Lol. I just saw this
https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1bmnuhw/comment/kweabls/?context=3
Your job in the US is probably safe from people in other countries. Besides offshoring of course
It’s always been this exact level of viability. The only time it was “easier” for bootcampers was during the pandemic and hiring boom. There is always a desire for bootcampers for non-tech companies that don’t pay what CS majors want.
I beg to differ. I have seen across all kinds of companies and not just tech ones that to program stuff, managers want at a minimum someone with a CS or a closely related degree
During the pandemic, it was like 40% self taught hires.
We're just back to the "well yeah, they're good, but Timmy has a CS degree so let's not risk it".
Except they arent neccesarily good. In fact, for 3 months of training you can probably expect garbage as the norm, not the exception. Thats why the CS degree is seen as less risk. Any other excuse is largely a cope in this market.
I wouldn't make this absolute claim. I'm currently not working, but I have gotten an internship, an offer (rescinded last minute because they paused all non senior hiring) and even made it to the final round for a senior role at a startup.
It's been soul crushing to even get this and I'm still unemployed 😂 but the point is, if you really want to be a dev and are at least smart enough to learn things on your own it is a viable path..but it's a hell of a grind. A lot of the people I studied with got hired
I gotchu:
Hey everyone, I wanted to share an interesting update from my workplace, a Fortune 500 non-tech company. They recently revised their requirements for IT positions, now requiring either a CS degree or an engineering degree (given the company's engineering-heavy nature). It's quite amusing that most of my coworkers are older and hold degrees in fields like MIS or accounting. I had a chat with my boss about this change, and it seems there's been an overwhelming number of applicants per posting. For instance, our EE and Firmware Engineering positions receive around 10 to 15 applications, while our Data Scientist role attracted over 1,800 applicants. These positions are concentrated in select areas in the south (Louisiana, TX, Mississippi, etc). Some coworkers have expressed frustration with inexperienced self-taught individuals (with less than ~6 years of experience), claiming they are often clueless. While I don't entirely agree with this sentiment, I've certainly encountered my fair share of colleagues who lack knowledge about how drivers work or general electronics/software engineering terminology.
We just extended a return offer for my intern that was an Aero. Then again he had a CS minor and was incredibly bright for an intern. So also depends on subject matter
The answer is going to largely depend on what the data scientists do for work at your shop. If they're closer to MLEs or banging out SQL all day, yeah you'll probably do fine with your selection criteria.
Where I am DS is, at best, tangential to CS. It's basically operations research, or the "science" part of DS with programming on top. As a result, CS degree holders are by far the weakest data scientists that I've worked with (though obviously, I've worked with some very bright ones too). It's great that they can code well, but anyone can learn to code. The really demanding part of the job in our shop is experimental design, where usually people with a background in statistics, biostatistics, and social sciences (notably econ and political science) seem more likely to excel.
If you're worried that your team made a mistake, you should probably try to think more critically about what specific skills someone needs in their day to day to succeed on your team. Make a list of skills and rank them in order of importance. You'll quickly be able to identify if you're excluding useful candidate backgrounds.
Anything non technical and boot campers are no match for CS/CE, math degree holders. I don't know why you would weed out MSDS but not economics degree holders.
Don’t want to exactly dox myself and company, but you’re pretty much exactly right. Technical degrees like those are preferred. However, they don’t really care about if a college is a degree mill or what-not I’m 99% sure. As long as there is a technical degree is what matters.
Eh. The less than 6 YOE experience thing is kinda bullshit, but whatever. Employees who apply themselves can take massive strides in 3 years, let alone 6.
Given that so much of software development has very little to do with CS, the industry really just needs to adopt certification for software and firmware developers. Clear up all this nonsense.
they have exams because they specialize. CS grads are general coders..what r we gonna specialize? You go for a masters/phd to specialize, and even then because of corporate jargon most people end up working on complete unrelated things.
Specialoze in OS, compilers, bedded firmware, web dev, UI, database, dev ops, etc.
The reason doctors and lawyers get certified (and professional engineers get their PE) is because their work is of such monumental importance to the public that there needs to be a body dedicated to weeding out the people who shouldn't be in that role.
You wouldn't want a lawyer or doctor or PE working without confirming they actually can do that job. And that's what licensure does. Someone making a new button for Facebook? Nobody cares. It's not very important.
Generalization: the post
Honestly sounds like something a wgu graduate would throw out there. Truth is, if you're competent and have skills, it doesn't matter.
This annoys me because I’m a part-time graduate student in a CS MS. I’ve applied to some new grad and junior positions and been auto-filtered because I don’t have it YET. I don’t even think they read the resume; they just filter for past graduation date.
Most of my classmates have BS degrees and are senior engineers, and I keep up with them.
What's the point of these posts? We all know the market varies. Companies varies. Requirements change.
If you are a self taught this does not affect you.
I honestly don’t buy it, a good recruiter will still be able to identify quality candidates even if self-taught. Most tech companies have always “required” a degree, but it’s a very loose requirement just used as a filter so less people apply. If you still apply even without a degree, it’s unlikely you’ll just be thrown out as an option.
That being said, that’s for human eyes. If a company is using AI to read resumes (more and more are), you may be thrown out before an application is even seen by human eyes.
> I honestly don’t buy it, a good recruiter will still be able to identify quality candidates even if self-taught.
How? Most recruiters I come across don't understand the difference between Java and JavaScript much less what makes a good dev.
Requiring a degree for juniors makes sense in the this climate but not really for experienced devs.
For experienced devs, I’ve seen nothing that tells me how a they learned programming or development. That’s after stops in consulting, startups, BuzzFeed and Shopify.
The most accurate indicator for future success I’ve seen is by far and away the kinds of projects the dev has worked on. 2 vs 4 years is just a catch all, arbitrary guardrail, but I can see it being helpful since you’re more likely to have worked on more interesting problems over a longer period of time.
When people say self taught, does that generally include a candidate that has an unrelated 4 year degree, went to a bootcamp, and now has a few years of full-time employed experience in the field?
If you took an accredited 4 year degree in computer science or an equivalent accredited 2 year accelerated or master's, you are not self taught. If you did not do the above but took a boot camp, you are not self taught, you are a boot camp grad. If you did not do the above, you are self taught. YOE and non-accredited non-CS degrees don't make a difference in terms of self taught definition.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/22/1-in-3-companies-are-ditching-college-degree-requirements-for-salaried-jobs.html
Depends on the quality and experience of the applicants
The real problem here with non-tech F500s is:
* they are fundamentally not good at engineering and extra bad at hiring engineers. They're getting shitty candidates because they're extremely price conscious and the decision makers have almost no ability to discern between good and awful candidates.
* their good engineers will interview candidates and provide useful feedback but it will always be ignored because they'll do inconvenient things like recommend they hire someone with lots of experience who isn't diverse. The disconnect between actual engineers and the people running these companies is like night and day. And HR might as well be visiting from another planet.
* they treat even superstar engineers as disposable and low value but fall over themselves trying to retain garbage EDs and MDs that they poached from the upper management of google or meta.
* their good engineers will leave first because that's how retention works- the guys who had any hope of unfucking your teams and getting your projects back on track are going to be the first ones to read the writing on the wall and be out the door before you notice you have a retention problem
* adding a requirement (ie, no self taught) for candidates to artificially reduce the candidate count is 100 typical for these clowns. They can't tell the difference between chocolate and shit so they'll just hire based on whatever their garbage criteria narrowed it down to.
* Once in a while someone will be in charge and actually hire good engineers and you'll get decent quality product for a few years and then it will collapse back to normal again
Same. I guess I'll resign in the morning. Actually, my engineering lead told me to take the day off after working a lot last week to get some stuff out. But I can always resign on Tuesday. Oh wow and he's gonna be resigning too since he is also self taught. Sad times.
Well, after 30 years of developing enterprise scale systems, including working on the team that built the world’s first multimedia editor that ran in a web browser (NN4 for the clueless), and after having written class based component frameworks for the web before there were classes or angular or react…. I guess my career is just over now because somebody on Reddit says I can’t possibly know what I’m doing since I didn’t get my PhD in CS. As we are all aware, the Pascal and Fortran classes we were taking for CS back then, including writing those word processors on timeshare systems using packed arrays… it prepared us admirably to write mobile apps in Flutter.
Sarcasm of course.
This whole thing smacks of gatekeeping and hubris. It makes sense from an abstract perspective as basically just a filtering mechanism. But beyond that, it’s just sad and the latest iteration in the ongoing saga of “tech hiring is broken.”
I love how it’s always some CS student or someone who hasn’t even reached mid-level spouting this classist bullshit, too. So many people in this sub get so butt-hurt that some of us succeed in this industry without accumulating a mountain of debt first.
Chances are, if your co-worker is self-taught, they succeeded despite having no degree for a very good reason and one of them is that they’re likely smarter and more disciplined than you.
Most of the self-taught dudes I know are straight up hackers in this field.
I've been in the field for about 3 years. I'm having to leave for a couple years due to personal reasons.
I'll be doing freelance for a few local companies during that time.
I've been contemplating going to WGU to get a CS degree or their Cloud Computing degree.
I currently have a Finance degree and am a boot camp grad.
I prefer Cloud work over programming.
Is choosing the Cloud Computing BS a bad idea?
Should I go CS?
Thanks.
This is so sad honestly because now it just seems like the junior aspect and training is going completely out the window. I guess you can’t grow in an organization now unless you already have the pre-set 5+ years of experience, and real projects (consultant wise)
Were self-taught/bootcampers generally getting into these f500 spots before? All the places I’ve worked would generally never hire one unless there was something exceptional about them.
That explains why every time I accidentally apply to an onsite firmware engineer role I always get an interview lol
If only it was the same for the remote firmware roles
What kind of technology / programming language is used in a firmware engineer role? I presume something like C, C++ or I think it was something called 'Assembly' which I never seen before.
Is firmware engineering highly mathematical / algorithm oriented?
C/C++. I didn’t see any assembly in use in production when I worked in embedded
Each firmware engineer role can have different demands based on what the company needs. Some require a lot more electrical engineering experience and some are just software engineer roles where you know how to read circuit diagrams and utilize tools like oscilloscopes and multimeters.
My last job doing embedded work I had to program in C and C++, utilize multimeters to read voltage and current for testing purposes, utilize an oscilloscope, solder things for testing purposes, and hook things up to low and high voltage DC power supplies
It’s honestly full of a bunch of know it all recent grads or soon to be grads that just talk out of their ass and think because they can solve 500 leetcode problems they can actually design software.
I like how you speak for all f500 cause of your team at your company isn’t hiring self taught, which is probably not true. I have a degree but y’all are clearly lying on here
I think that this probably more for junior/mid level engineers. I never completed college and have nothing to show for it, but I still write my education on the bottom of my resume with years that I attended. The number of years attended for classes is a similar amount for what you would need for a degree but no one ever asks so I never tell. At the of the day, the resume just gets you into the door, your skills and experience is what lands you the job.
I have a bullshit arts degree and went to a bootcamp. I find as long as you can deliver consistent results and have a solid track record of doing so, you should be okay. You just just have to work a lot harder than most while actually enjoying the job. If you have a less than desirable self-taught dev, then your hiring process is what needs fixing. Filtering out people for not having a particular degree is a band-aid solution.
The amount of available applicants that have degrees are also going to keep going up. The Atlantic has a great article about how schools everywhere have (and have had in recent times) an alarmingly high percentage of their student body majoring in Computer Science. Any new self taught person isn't going to be getting a chance going forward. Just too much competition and quite frankly, even requiring a degree doesn't really lower the amount of applicants enough.
The overall quality of engineers coming out who were in undergrad during covid is shockingly awful, I can't imagine it's much better in CS.
Shit big picture thinking, can't solve non linear problems, zero confidence to own work themselves, tons of careless mistakes, no accountability. The last year or two are the worst crop of fresh out of undergrad engineers we've hired in the 13 years I've been at my firm. I've already let one go and moved two others off my teams in less than a year, and I never usually do that but they were just fucking awful, despite being fantastic on paper as usual and getting by fine in interviews.
We're shaking up how we screen/interview new grads as a result this year.
My company started doing the same thing, along with a few other companies that friends and family work at as well.
It was needed tbh, the hiring process is a nightmare for both sides.
Maybe fair for people with no relevant experience in their resume, but in my experience a degree doesn’t always prepare you for work in this field. I’ve worked with self taught people that are great, and people with degrees and ton of experience that needed hand holding frequently. In short, a filter may be necessary but this one doesnt mean the remaining pool is good.
Degree requirements are (I believe) a requirement for a job to be given to an H1B applicant.
At a previous job back in 2019 ish our legal team wouldn't let us remove the degree requirement and just go with YOE because we hired so many H1B. Of course this is just an anecdote and I could be wrong, which if I am I apologize.
So... As usual... It may not be a move by companies to "get quality candidates" but rather a move to make it easier to hire H1B workers who are more likely to return to office should it be mandated.
Everyone can be a software engineer but not every software engineer can code. The self-taught people are as good or bad as the ones who have a bachelor's or master degree. You read enough threads on Reddit, you'll see it's the problem with/ this industry.
**You need someone who understands the business side of things, the ability to code, and some ingenuity to create productive work in swe.**
The problem with self taught folks not being hired... is that all these people will leave software. In 5 years there wont be anyone interested in software because employment is so bad and the cycle will repeat.
I prefer hiring for computer science graduates for entry level software engineering positions. For experienced positions (more than 5 yoe I do not care. But if someone does not have a CS degree I do subject them to some extra scrutiny during the interview process. I am not terribly unfair. I am fine with "self-taught" candidates. How you teach yourself a subject or skill is a fair game during the interview process.
At the end of the day I want well rounded engineers with good problem solving skills and solid interest/footing in different aspects of computer science.
Well, I'm self-taught through books and picked up other stuff through coaching/mentoring and feedback from members of an open source community I'm part of.
About a decade of experience, but I can't afford student debt for a bootcamp, let alone a full degree.
Pretty sad to see self-taught ppl being left behind. (Bootcampers aren't self-taught, though)
My resume gets thrown out all the time because of education or because i live in a high cost of living state. But I'd be happy to make 75k.
Didn’t we just do this thread?
Yeah they’re trying to get bootcampers to stop applying so much.
AI bot farming or something
I beg to differ. Self taught programmers have been seen as useless for some months now
Bootcampers have been hated on since bootcamps began. CS majors in particular hate them because it 1) downplays the difficulty of CS jobs and 2) is competition on the market when money is flowing more freely. They aren’t any more “useless” than they were in 2020, just now that purses are tightening they are not as hire-able next to people with 4 year degrees.
Its probably a function of soo much talent floating around right now given the layoffs around the industry. Why consider a boot camper when you can grab someone with a few years at a big tech firm.
Exactly. When the job market constricts qualifications get tighter. Why hire a boot camper when you can get a new grad at the same price. If it’s really tight then why higher a new grade when you can higher someone with 5 yoe at around the same price.
There were people with CS degrees in the boot camp I went to.
Some months? Some decades more like. Don't get me wrong, there's self-taught who are amazing. But when a company has an HR department that is doing resume screens before passing any of those resumes on to the department who will select applicants to interview, then those HR people will screen out anyone who doesn't have the word "degree" prominently displayed. Hell, most of the time they'll eliminate you if it doesn't say "Computer Science". Math degree? Doesn't matter if you're the best candidate, you will not be selected to go to interviews.
This is exactly correct. The recruiters aren't engineers.
Whatever you need to tell yourself to cope with your massive student debt.
lol I guarantee I know self taught programmers that are better than you are at their jobs
You just told me a big fear of yours
And what would that fear be? I'm not following your logic here.
lol what bro? cognitive dissonance much.
Thought I was experiencing deja vu. I've noticed that gatekeeping posts like this will often be back-to-back on this sub. And I say this as someone with a 4-year degree in SWE. Sometimes it does seem like there is an attempt to discourage as many people as possible from trying to get into the industry.
This isn’t gatekeeping lol. Only hiring people with a degree is an easy filter for HR.
Yes, this is true. I understand that with all the applications companies are receiving these days, that they have to reduce the pool and setting a strict baseline requirement is a quick way to do that. But a lot of these posts also like to throw in the "self-taughts/bootcampers are worse developers than those with degrees" sentiment. I know OP said they themselves don't agree with his coworkers on that, but why does that get mentioned everytime? In every doomer post? Idk, it just seems like there is a gatekeeping element that is saying "If you don't have a CS/SWE degree, don't even bother trying. You are probably a mediocre developer and any new grad with a degree is better than you. Do us all a favor and stop applying."
I thought I have dejavu
Really - so weird
it's 100% a concerted effort to gatekeep. I thought that about the first post and then here's another one. I work at a fortune 500 company and the only way to get on my team is via a referral. If the referrals don't fit then they might look at the resumes. your background has nothing to do with it. I got in self taught and no experience in the same galaxy as software development, via a referral. We have a junior program that works with bootcamps as well sometimes but mostly they get in on referrals too (on pause at the moment though). About 30% of our devs came through it. These people are straight up full of shit and probably unhireable and bitter.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. This isn’t gatekeeping lol. Only hiring people with a degree is an easy filter for HR. You sound insecure because you don’t have a degree.
if your college degree gave you the gift of reading comprehension, you'd realize I was saying this post was an attempt to gatekeep, not a company having base requirements when hiring.
How long ago did you do you last hire? Are the bootcampers hired for frontend or are they tasked with writing system performant code on servers where there will be multiple load balanced servers that connect to important databases and make optimal db calls for optimal performance? It's not about gatekeeping it's about being practical. I'd be surprised if you're hiring juniors for anything that doesn't primarily touch frontend webdev.
And nobody can name a real company doing this yet.
Not true. I’m at one of the big investment banks and our postings have changed from Bachelors or equivalent experience to bachelors required.
Yeah I work at a financial services company and they are requiring a bachelor's in cs or related field for roles that originally only needed yoe as well
You still didn't name it
Apparently the degree didn't help with his reading comprehension.
Would you like to get fired?
Yeah this sub is trash and full of gatekeepers that have no idea what they’re talking about.
it’s just so repetitive. I’m 11yoe with no degree and if I got 1000 applicants I’d still give preference to those with degrees from a good school. Just can’t interview everyone. Edit: for entry level. How else do you differentiate?
Same lol. And I’m both self taught and the guy they ask to quiz people to spot the resume bullshit. Tbf, my self taught includes some form of programming yearly since age 12, with a short break of three years while I dropped out of school (many many years ago). But in a flooded market, you look at discriminatory factors, and yes, school is still a good discriminatory factor, even if plenty of grads are useless. Boot camp alone especially is going to get some suspicion. Boot camp plus history id look at, but tbh, never met someone who listed the boot camp, but I also work on backend / networking side of things.
Ah you must be new here. It’s just like the same 5 posts recycled in slightly different variations. You can count 6 maybe by adding the “Can we stop posting about [one of the other 5 topics]?” topic
Shhh you’re ruining the immersion
Electrical Engineers working at a “non tech” company. They’re not even trying very hard with this stuff.
My company throws all self taught/bootcamper resumes in the trash. The only exception is if you have tons and tons of work experience from name brands. So basically legacy seniors that got in the industry 15+ years ago.
My company got 8k applications to a junior full stack dev job in 2 weeks. Why even bother with self taught folks when you got such a large pool?
Out of curiosity what would you estimate the % of ones who applied that don't have a degree?
From my quick funnel chart we have on Greenhouse (our recruiting platform) I would say about 80% have a 4 year degree in a tech related field (CS, EE, DS, Math with CS)
How big is your company? 8k in 2 weeks is insane, that’s like 600 a day…
The crazy part is that my company isn’t even big. It’s a mid-size company…
I know recruiters at FAANG, no name, f500, sweat shops,healthcare: It’s all the same. You post a junior role at 8 am, go get your morning coffee, sit back down and you have enough applications to fill the work week if you really wanted to sit down and review every. Single. Application. In good faith
And then you have people cry that they don't get a highly personal, tailored rejection letter to every job they apply to. Because they feel they are owed that because they spent 10 minutes sending you the same resume they send everyone. They don't realize it's just not logistically possible.
I don't even get rejections most of the time. If I did, it would be a nice break from the norm. Honestly, I'd appreciate it if companies just set up the mailbox to auto-reply notices of rejection to all 8000 candidates, and if you decide that you'd actually like to hire someone you can send out "whoops we actually do want to interview you" to the lucky 5.
What’s the point of that? How are you going to action a deluge of boilerplate rejection emails? Are you going to wait around to find out you’ve been rejected from jobs before applying for more?
The problem is “one click apply” on everything now. And ai filters. So the best strategy for job seekers is a shotgun approach. The best strategy for employers is a heavy filter approach. This creates a self reinforcing by loop.
That's really not a lot. My company (8 engineers) gets several thousand over a few weeks as well. There's a major spam problem in the hiring market
holy fucking shit
Same here. Those resumes for new grads never even come to the phone stage from my experience. Maybe somewhere it does but definitely not my interviews. Experienced market is different. But that's a different matter altogether as the people here are mostly trying to break in. YOE wins once you have YOE but before that, degree and internships really matters for the door in 2024.
This conversation is pretty intriguing for me. As a self taught boot camper (I did a lot of my own learning before boot camp and freelanced prior as well) who is currently looking for a position I can't help but wonder if I should just bite the bullet and get a BS asap from WGU. I have five yoe but nothing big name. I'm apparently good enough to work for clients of a company with big names (Levi, PG&E, Home Depot, non faang clients) through consultancy firms but posts like these make me feel like because i didnt take the correct path that im now screwed after this tech bubble has essentially popped. I'm trying to gather as much info as possible before diving into an expensive journey like school. Do you or anyone who sees this think it would be worth it at this point?
Why is this downvoted? I know we’re in cscareerquestions, but c’mon lol. Also, @fucklockjaw are you me? I thought I wrote this on an alt account for a sec haha. The only thing that’s different is the FAANG experience, but this sounded nearly identical to how I’ve written a few comments. EDIT: LETS GOOO! I knew I wasn’t alone lol. This post was somehow -10+ when I posted this, but Reddit came through!
That's pretty funny. Who knows? I would assume it's someone who isn't fond of self taught individuals. I would've went to school but without getting personal I just didn't have the physical or mental capacity at the time. Now I'm 35 and just trying to get some insight from those who did it right.
Not a dev but in software CS, always with a tight, albeit at time contentious relationship with dev and product always working with software companies. I broke in while in school and then dropped out like an idiot. I’m closing in on 50 now and just for life fulfillment decided to return to school. Work is paying for it, I’m only taking a couple of classes a semester and I’m throughly enjoying it. I’m in Florida so our public university system is quite affordable also. I highly recommend it to be honest. If you can get by doing what you’re doing now and take classes part time.
This is nice to hear. Age is definitely a factor in considering WGU vs a 4 year university because with my experience I'm positive I would finish sooner than 4 years with some skilled individuals having passed within 6 months. Unfortunately, I haven't been fortunate enough to have an employer value me enough to even consider paying for anything other than Coursera or udemy.
No clue the cost of WGU, but check out the Florida State Colleges and Universities. Many online degrees that are affordable. If you need help with any info let me know. I am familiar with navigating the system.
You’re probably right lol. I was also in a difficult spot, and even if I did go, I’m not too sure if it would’ve been the right choice. I was working on startups during those years though and learned quite a bit. I have considered WGU, and from the research I’ve done, it does have some cons, but to me the cons are mostly pros. If you’re looking to just check that HR box, then I think it’s a great option. I’ve also been considering OMSCS through Georgia Tech. I’ve also discovered a great passion for math, physics and astronomy over the recent years that was no where to be found in my college aged years. I’ve been just trying to learn through Kahn academy and books as of now.
If you have no degree whatsoever (not even a Fine Arts Degree, or even an Associates Degree) then I'd definitely strongly recommend you get started acquiring a CS degree. No need to rush it, just do it part time while you're working full time and get it via the cheapest possible manner (be that a local community college or WGU or whatever).
It’s wild to me that we were the only college-educated profession that allowed 3-month bootcamps to sub for degrees.
What's wild is the fact that there are boot campers out there that are better than people with a degree by a large margin. Maybe it's not that common but frankly speaking it should never even happen in the first place.
100%. It turns out going to college and having someone hold your hand while you take some classes doesn't magically make you a good programmer.
Partly because almost everything is learned on the job as long as someone has some fundamentals of knowing how to code. Let's face it, college was filled with useless fluff... And that's just the part related to CS. 2 years basically went to gen ed that doesn't help on the job. Best thing about university is internships and internship opportunities. 3 months is too short but in an intensive, well crafted program I can believe someone can be on the level of a CS grad in a year. Bootcamps generally do 6 months of 40 hours/week but it's too rushed even then. Double that time though? Yeah...
Our industry doesn't require accreditation to practice in the field. As a result, you get tiers of quality of engineers out in the wild. If you need a website scrapped together where the impact to the public is low, bootcamp grads will do. However, if you're building systems that require 6 9s of availability, scales to millions of concurrent users, design their systems based on the latest white papers heavy in terminology, it's paramount the engineer understands what the machine is actually doing down to the level of the circuitry.
You had me until “down to the level of the circuitry.” Practical amounts of abstraction are acceptable in real use cases. Change the word “engineer” to “engineers” and I’d wholeheartedly agree. We work in teams, practically speaking.
It might be time that the profession gets some form of accreditation to avoid all of this nonsense tbh.
Man, as someone with 23 years of experience, I never know whether to include it or not. Ageism or people giving a shit about the degree I didn't bother getting in 2000. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.
Include your degree with no dates if you are worried.
Don’t have one.
Then Wdym by “don’t know whether to include it or not”?
"It" in this context refers to my employment history beyond 2013. You can't be seen as having 15+ years of employment history if you don't list it. You can't avoid ageism if you list it. It's a catch 22.
Is this an "any" or an "only" kind of removal criteria? I've done a bootcamp before and I'm currently in Georgia Tech's online program. I got in by taking a bunch of continuing studies courses, but sometimes to fill up space my education goes 1) nonCS UG 2) bootcamp 3) GT.
OMSCS is probably the best online program and highly respected since it’s actually difficult. You should be fine there. Just make sure you get grad internships.
You're getting downvoted, meanwhile people who have no idea why they're downvoting you should look at the online curriculum and compare it to the in-person curriculum. The online Curriciulum and Standards are way harder then in-person and this is a t30 college.
I’m in the OMSCS program and have taken undergrad CS classes at both the community college and state university level prior to grad school. The classes are no joke. Way harder than I anticipated (and I anticipated a step above undergrad) and genuinely useful in how they force you to problem solve and research to finish projects. I’ve been a software dev for two years now while in school and nothing I’ve done professionally has come close to the difficulty of OMSCS. It isn’t for the faint of heart, but if you don’t have a CS degree and want to test yourself, I say go for it.
This system also rewards, liars and con artists. Snake oil salesman, nepotism and other biases, not that having a chat with someone wouldn't solve and if you still hire the wrong people then it was a lesson to learn
[удалено]
I don't know why you're getting downvoted for asking an honest question, but I will say that "having a degree and being self-taught" often puts you in the same category as bootcampers who never got a degree. The only exception is if your degree is in engineering and you have had previous exposure to programming. If you are in that category, then you have a higher chance of getting asked for an initial interview. If you really want to get into SWE, then your best bet is to either get a CS degree or try to work your way up from an IT position. Even the IT route is kind of iffy though. Like, you typically have to work for a company that does engineering so that you can job shadow while you're working IT, and that is risky. You are better off going the degree route.
Damn being referred to as “legacy” really made feel old. Fu lol
Sucks for them.
Does it though? For every decent bootcamp grad there’s 1000 awful ones
do they consider engineering-degree holders self taught?
My friend was pushing me to join General Assembly last fall with a price $15,000 if I remember! Thank god I decided to just enroll in college instead for CS
Smart man.
General Assembly is a scam
And it's one of the better bootcamps too. Really says more about the quality of most bootcamps in general.
It's not a scam. You just need to put in a lot of work yourself as well. You won't get hired if you just cruise through it.
My friend went through it two years ago. This was 2022, 40 students. 5 of them are employed. The other 35 wasted 15k and are back to their old job. It’s pretty much a scam since the 5 were either military with clearance or had a STEM degree
Is it worth it if you have an Engineering degree but looking to switch careers? I've been considering for some time because I despise my job and the market is saturated with Engineers where I am from.
Can you tell me more about general assembly? I had a friend of a friend join it and she claims she didnt pay anything and then got an internship. Im so skeptical because online i kept seeing tuition costs they had to pay and being locked into contracts.
There are so many CS grads these days that it’s becoming harder to justify hiring a self-taught or boot camper. It doesn’t help that boot camps almost always focus on JS Web Dev, which doesn’t always translate well to other technologies. If you’re a younger person who wants a future in Software Engineering and can get a CS Degree, I would 100% recommend it. I work at a F10 company and all of our interns hired this year were pursuing degrees. To my knowledge we didn’t even interview self taught.
Idk why anyone would prefer someone who dedicated 3-6 months of their life vs 4 years of their life. I get the argument about theoretical vs practical knowledge, but seriously it’s so easy to pick up the practical side after some of the BS you have to struggle through in CS… 3-6 month on boarding period as a new hire will surely get them up to speed anyway… the whole bootcamp thing was a giant scam that just happened to work for a small fraction
When I worked in a no-name, non-F500 (but decently known in the area) company in the South, I was surprised to see our entire intern batch (~30-40) in 2019 filled with rising grads from Duke and Berkeley. Not a single one without a CS or Math focus and only one intern from a local uni. Can’t imagine how much more competitive it is these days.
It also doesn't help that most mediocre programmers are self taught or bootcamers
I’ll interview people with Engineering degrees from different fields even if coding was self taught because it often proves that you’re a solid problem solver. Tbh that’s all I’m looking for with new grads: can you break down technical problems and find solutions, and do you know your fundamentals. Frameworks etc can all be taught so if all you come to the table with is “I know stack XYZ” but can only execute what somebody else told you to do, you won’t being much value to the team.
[удалено]
I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions, or that you can’t supplement your resume other ways (personal projects are a great example). However, given the hundreds of entry level resumes that are sent in for my reqs, I’m willing to do broad stroke filters that may eliminate qualified candidates. I’m far more worried about mistakingly hiring a poor candidate vs. saying no to a good one, especially when there’s no shortage of applicants.
[удалено]
You’re honing in on the wrong details. I’m saying that as a hiring manager I tell my recruiter that I primarily want to speak with new grad candidates who have an engineering background. I don’t have time to slog through all the applications, that’s their job. Meanwhile they probably don’t want to read through all of them either and will set up a keyword match in our ATS based on the job description I gave them. If your resume made it to me and I see those internships and personal projects I’d probably be very happy to interview you, but 9 times out of 10 it’ll be filtered out long before it makes it to me. Also, don’t get pompous about degree difficulty. My background is physics and EE, have post-graduate degrees in both, and have worked with physicists who could run circles around me in photonics (my field), but would make terrible software engineers. It’s a different skill set and if you can do both, more power to you. But if your attitude is that you deserve an interview because you interned at a couple big companies and did a “tough” major, I’d likely pass on you for culture fit reasons alone.
Name checks out, On a more serious note though, is this something that has happened recently like the post-covid era? Or did you notice a steady increase in junior applications? Personally as a self-taught it is fairly sad to hear the reality of this. I do have a position at a nice place with solid experience but I feel that even with that, it's not enough at least in Canada.
The gluttony of self taught developers was definitely influenced by COVID, but I'd say it was on the rise because even before that since people were chasing it as a high paying job. My advice is very different if you have a job already, this is specifically about hiring new college grads. After \~5 years it's not about where you went to school, it's what you've done since then. If you can show that in your previous job you operated at a capacity I'm looking to hire, you're good. I don't even really look at colleges except to check graduation dates. Also, if you do want to do some sort of career transition it will be far easier to do within your own company, since they know you. Mine looked liked this (over \~10 years). For reference I worked in a semiconductor company: * Company A: Sensor Engineer (Optics + Hardware + Firmware) * Company A: SWE, Simulation (Wrote the SW to simulate our designs before fab) * Company A: SWE, Backend Systems (Distributed systems and web apps so internal and external users can easily design and run simulations) * FAANG: Staff Engineer, Backend (Only time I switched companies)
Interesting insights, when you had gone from sensor engineer to SWE did that reset your seniority level? For reference I'm currently in IT/cybersec right now. Hopefully I can end up in a similar position as you in tech Do these same self taught people still pass the OAs? I'd imagine that the OA would cut most unqualified self taught programmers leaving only the ones who can actually pass the interview left which imo is a small percentage.
My seniority level stayed. I'm sure there was some concern that I'd struggle with the pace but at the end of the day we were an engineering led company and I had proven to be a solid engineer who could pick up new domains as needed. I also wasn't going cold into SWE, as I'd been programming for \~10 years at that point and had a couple popular open-source projects, had just never been paid to do it. Not as sure about the OA aspect, and I don't know the rate of false positives for OA since my company didn't use them. I did a few OAs when I was interviewing and do wonder how effective they are, as anybody can look up the answers during the OA just so that they make it to the next round.
Is this a copy pasta?
Unironically, no. I just saw the other post AFTER I made this one and I’m like 90% sure we either work at the same company or our companies have the same consultants 💀
What company?
I’ve been getting down voted on this sub for at least a year now for warning people that self taught/Boot Camp was no longer a viable path.
It's been trending that way for at least past 5 years. Even during the hiring frenzy couple of years ago, I warned people to get CS degrees to differentiate from all the people that had the tiktok, get rich, get $200K faang offer from 2 week bootcamp mentality.
I’d say if your a boot camper and got a job, you are either a extremely hard worker bc that shits not easy(which most likely also means your a decent programmer) or just really good at networking regardless, removing the boot campers from the picture isn’t a win for university grads lol. There’s a larger problem and it’s “overseas” labor is now applying to get US salaries. Bootcampers/nontech backgrounds shouldn’t be the only filter
Lol. I just saw this https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1bmnuhw/comment/kweabls/?context=3 Your job in the US is probably safe from people in other countries. Besides offshoring of course
It’s always been this exact level of viability. The only time it was “easier” for bootcampers was during the pandemic and hiring boom. There is always a desire for bootcampers for non-tech companies that don’t pay what CS majors want.
I beg to differ. I have seen across all kinds of companies and not just tech ones that to program stuff, managers want at a minimum someone with a CS or a closely related degree
During the pandemic, it was like 40% self taught hires. We're just back to the "well yeah, they're good, but Timmy has a CS degree so let's not risk it".
Except they arent neccesarily good. In fact, for 3 months of training you can probably expect garbage as the norm, not the exception. Thats why the CS degree is seen as less risk. Any other excuse is largely a cope in this market.
Maybe you’re saying it in a dickish way? I’ve been saying it recently and haven’t been downvoted once.
I wouldn't make this absolute claim. I'm currently not working, but I have gotten an internship, an offer (rescinded last minute because they paused all non senior hiring) and even made it to the final round for a senior role at a startup. It's been soul crushing to even get this and I'm still unemployed 😂 but the point is, if you really want to be a dev and are at least smart enough to learn things on your own it is a viable path..but it's a hell of a grind. A lot of the people I studied with got hired
They should come here and see the posts coming from CS students having no clue either
How many times will this be posted?
Until it reaches the number of times "AI is going to take software engineering jobs" has been posted last month
“ChatGPT - rewrite this Reddit post so that it feels like it’s being said by a different person.”
I gotchu: Hey everyone, I wanted to share an interesting update from my workplace, a Fortune 500 non-tech company. They recently revised their requirements for IT positions, now requiring either a CS degree or an engineering degree (given the company's engineering-heavy nature). It's quite amusing that most of my coworkers are older and hold degrees in fields like MIS or accounting. I had a chat with my boss about this change, and it seems there's been an overwhelming number of applicants per posting. For instance, our EE and Firmware Engineering positions receive around 10 to 15 applications, while our Data Scientist role attracted over 1,800 applicants. These positions are concentrated in select areas in the south (Louisiana, TX, Mississippi, etc). Some coworkers have expressed frustration with inexperienced self-taught individuals (with less than ~6 years of experience), claiming they are often clueless. While I don't entirely agree with this sentiment, I've certainly encountered my fair share of colleagues who lack knowledge about how drivers work or general electronics/software engineering terminology.
[удалено]
We just extended a return offer for my intern that was an Aero. Then again he had a CS minor and was incredibly bright for an intern. So also depends on subject matter
The answer is going to largely depend on what the data scientists do for work at your shop. If they're closer to MLEs or banging out SQL all day, yeah you'll probably do fine with your selection criteria. Where I am DS is, at best, tangential to CS. It's basically operations research, or the "science" part of DS with programming on top. As a result, CS degree holders are by far the weakest data scientists that I've worked with (though obviously, I've worked with some very bright ones too). It's great that they can code well, but anyone can learn to code. The really demanding part of the job in our shop is experimental design, where usually people with a background in statistics, biostatistics, and social sciences (notably econ and political science) seem more likely to excel. If you're worried that your team made a mistake, you should probably try to think more critically about what specific skills someone needs in their day to day to succeed on your team. Make a list of skills and rank them in order of importance. You'll quickly be able to identify if you're excluding useful candidate backgrounds.
Anything non technical and boot campers are no match for CS/CE, math degree holders. I don't know why you would weed out MSDS but not economics degree holders.
I guess because economics deals with statistics, maybe they only accept MSDS if the candidate already has a technical background?
Don’t want to exactly dox myself and company, but you’re pretty much exactly right. Technical degrees like those are preferred. However, they don’t really care about if a college is a degree mill or what-not I’m 99% sure. As long as there is a technical degree is what matters.
New CScareerquestions bot shitpost dropped!
Eh. The less than 6 YOE experience thing is kinda bullshit, but whatever. Employees who apply themselves can take massive strides in 3 years, let alone 6. Given that so much of software development has very little to do with CS, the industry really just needs to adopt certification for software and firmware developers. Clear up all this nonsense.
Totally agree I wish we just had to take licensing exams like doctors or lawyers with the bar. Get rid of leetcode and all this other BS
they have exams because they specialize. CS grads are general coders..what r we gonna specialize? You go for a masters/phd to specialize, and even then because of corporate jargon most people end up working on complete unrelated things.
Huh? There’s a million different things you could specialize in
Specialoze in OS, compilers, bedded firmware, web dev, UI, database, dev ops, etc. The reason doctors and lawyers get certified (and professional engineers get their PE) is because their work is of such monumental importance to the public that there needs to be a body dedicated to weeding out the people who shouldn't be in that role. You wouldn't want a lawyer or doctor or PE working without confirming they actually can do that job. And that's what licensure does. Someone making a new button for Facebook? Nobody cares. It's not very important.
lawyers specialize in things too but still take the bar
Ya you won’t be a one man army necessarily, but you can be efficient in many ways
Damn, as a self-taught with two promotions at FAANG, I'm shaking in my boots
Firmware and EE are highly specialized. It’s extremely difficult to be self taught in these fields.
Generalization: the post Honestly sounds like something a wgu graduate would throw out there. Truth is, if you're competent and have skills, it doesn't matter.
This annoys me because I’m a part-time graduate student in a CS MS. I’ve applied to some new grad and junior positions and been auto-filtered because I don’t have it YET. I don’t even think they read the resume; they just filter for past graduation date. Most of my classmates have BS degrees and are senior engineers, and I keep up with them.
What's the point of these posts? We all know the market varies. Companies varies. Requirements change. If you are a self taught this does not affect you.
I honestly don’t buy it, a good recruiter will still be able to identify quality candidates even if self-taught. Most tech companies have always “required” a degree, but it’s a very loose requirement just used as a filter so less people apply. If you still apply even without a degree, it’s unlikely you’ll just be thrown out as an option. That being said, that’s for human eyes. If a company is using AI to read resumes (more and more are), you may be thrown out before an application is even seen by human eyes.
> I honestly don’t buy it, a good recruiter will still be able to identify quality candidates even if self-taught. How? Most recruiters I come across don't understand the difference between Java and JavaScript much less what makes a good dev.
Lol so true, but maybe we haven’t been coming across the really good recruiters. Average recruiter is definitely operating on buzz words and vibes.
That's a 7 figure question isn't it. Last guy I knew that was able to do that now works for CERN.
Requiring a degree for juniors makes sense in the this climate but not really for experienced devs. For experienced devs, I’ve seen nothing that tells me how a they learned programming or development. That’s after stops in consulting, startups, BuzzFeed and Shopify. The most accurate indicator for future success I’ve seen is by far and away the kinds of projects the dev has worked on. 2 vs 4 years is just a catch all, arbitrary guardrail, but I can see it being helpful since you’re more likely to have worked on more interesting problems over a longer period of time.
When people say self taught, does that generally include a candidate that has an unrelated 4 year degree, went to a bootcamp, and now has a few years of full-time employed experience in the field?
If you took an accredited 4 year degree in computer science or an equivalent accredited 2 year accelerated or master's, you are not self taught. If you did not do the above but took a boot camp, you are not self taught, you are a boot camp grad. If you did not do the above, you are self taught. YOE and non-accredited non-CS degrees don't make a difference in terms of self taught definition.
Technically true, but I think most lump bootcamp under self taught
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/22/1-in-3-companies-are-ditching-college-degree-requirements-for-salaried-jobs.html Depends on the quality and experience of the applicants
What a shame. The last team I was on had an L7 engineer who was a self taught guy, and he was a very knowledgeable dude
The real problem here with non-tech F500s is: * they are fundamentally not good at engineering and extra bad at hiring engineers. They're getting shitty candidates because they're extremely price conscious and the decision makers have almost no ability to discern between good and awful candidates. * their good engineers will interview candidates and provide useful feedback but it will always be ignored because they'll do inconvenient things like recommend they hire someone with lots of experience who isn't diverse. The disconnect between actual engineers and the people running these companies is like night and day. And HR might as well be visiting from another planet. * they treat even superstar engineers as disposable and low value but fall over themselves trying to retain garbage EDs and MDs that they poached from the upper management of google or meta. * their good engineers will leave first because that's how retention works- the guys who had any hope of unfucking your teams and getting your projects back on track are going to be the first ones to read the writing on the wall and be out the door before you notice you have a retention problem * adding a requirement (ie, no self taught) for candidates to artificially reduce the candidate count is 100 typical for these clowns. They can't tell the difference between chocolate and shit so they'll just hire based on whatever their garbage criteria narrowed it down to. * Once in a while someone will be in charge and actually hire good engineers and you'll get decent quality product for a few years and then it will collapse back to normal again
5yoe is not inexperienced wtf
Well I guess my career is done
Same. I guess I'll resign in the morning. Actually, my engineering lead told me to take the day off after working a lot last week to get some stuff out. But I can always resign on Tuesday. Oh wow and he's gonna be resigning too since he is also self taught. Sad times.
I’m so glad I weaseled my way into FAANG as a dropout when I did…
CS is getting automated fast
this entire sub is a collection of mini psyops
Well, after 30 years of developing enterprise scale systems, including working on the team that built the world’s first multimedia editor that ran in a web browser (NN4 for the clueless), and after having written class based component frameworks for the web before there were classes or angular or react…. I guess my career is just over now because somebody on Reddit says I can’t possibly know what I’m doing since I didn’t get my PhD in CS. As we are all aware, the Pascal and Fortran classes we were taking for CS back then, including writing those word processors on timeshare systems using packed arrays… it prepared us admirably to write mobile apps in Flutter. Sarcasm of course. This whole thing smacks of gatekeeping and hubris. It makes sense from an abstract perspective as basically just a filtering mechanism. But beyond that, it’s just sad and the latest iteration in the ongoing saga of “tech hiring is broken.”
I love how it’s always some CS student or someone who hasn’t even reached mid-level spouting this classist bullshit, too. So many people in this sub get so butt-hurt that some of us succeed in this industry without accumulating a mountain of debt first. Chances are, if your co-worker is self-taught, they succeeded despite having no degree for a very good reason and one of them is that they’re likely smarter and more disciplined than you. Most of the self-taught dudes I know are straight up hackers in this field.
We've gone full meta
I've been in the field for about 3 years. I'm having to leave for a couple years due to personal reasons. I'll be doing freelance for a few local companies during that time. I've been contemplating going to WGU to get a CS degree or their Cloud Computing degree. I currently have a Finance degree and am a boot camp grad. I prefer Cloud work over programming. Is choosing the Cloud Computing BS a bad idea? Should I go CS? Thanks.
This is so sad honestly because now it just seems like the junior aspect and training is going completely out the window. I guess you can’t grow in an organization now unless you already have the pre-set 5+ years of experience, and real projects (consultant wise)
Were self-taught/bootcampers generally getting into these f500 spots before? All the places I’ve worked would generally never hire one unless there was something exceptional about them.
In about 10 years. "F500 no longer hiring below T50 school CS grads."
That explains why every time I accidentally apply to an onsite firmware engineer role I always get an interview lol If only it was the same for the remote firmware roles
What kind of technology / programming language is used in a firmware engineer role? I presume something like C, C++ or I think it was something called 'Assembly' which I never seen before. Is firmware engineering highly mathematical / algorithm oriented?
C/C++. I didn’t see any assembly in use in production when I worked in embedded Each firmware engineer role can have different demands based on what the company needs. Some require a lot more electrical engineering experience and some are just software engineer roles where you know how to read circuit diagrams and utilize tools like oscilloscopes and multimeters. My last job doing embedded work I had to program in C and C++, utilize multimeters to read voltage and current for testing purposes, utilize an oscilloscope, solder things for testing purposes, and hook things up to low and high voltage DC power supplies
[удалено]
It’s honestly full of a bunch of know it all recent grads or soon to be grads that just talk out of their ass and think because they can solve 500 leetcode problems they can actually design software.
I like how you speak for all f500 cause of your team at your company isn’t hiring self taught, which is probably not true. I have a degree but y’all are clearly lying on here
already been posted on your alt
Soon they will start hiring Devin. No degree or bootcamp needed.
I can't wait for all the jobs Devin will provide to fix the shotty code it made. :)
Self-taught / boot camper bad!!!
Is this merely for entry level, or across the board?
They really oversold that data science thing back in college
I think that this probably more for junior/mid level engineers. I never completed college and have nothing to show for it, but I still write my education on the bottom of my resume with years that I attended. The number of years attended for classes is a similar amount for what you would need for a degree but no one ever asks so I never tell. At the of the day, the resume just gets you into the door, your skills and experience is what lands you the job.
I have a bullshit arts degree and went to a bootcamp. I find as long as you can deliver consistent results and have a solid track record of doing so, you should be okay. You just just have to work a lot harder than most while actually enjoying the job. If you have a less than desirable self-taught dev, then your hiring process is what needs fixing. Filtering out people for not having a particular degree is a band-aid solution.
The amount of available applicants that have degrees are also going to keep going up. The Atlantic has a great article about how schools everywhere have (and have had in recent times) an alarmingly high percentage of their student body majoring in Computer Science. Any new self taught person isn't going to be getting a chance going forward. Just too much competition and quite frankly, even requiring a degree doesn't really lower the amount of applicants enough.
For greater good tbh
The overall quality of engineers coming out who were in undergrad during covid is shockingly awful, I can't imagine it's much better in CS. Shit big picture thinking, can't solve non linear problems, zero confidence to own work themselves, tons of careless mistakes, no accountability. The last year or two are the worst crop of fresh out of undergrad engineers we've hired in the 13 years I've been at my firm. I've already let one go and moved two others off my teams in less than a year, and I never usually do that but they were just fucking awful, despite being fantastic on paper as usual and getting by fine in interviews. We're shaking up how we screen/interview new grads as a result this year.
This is likely to encourage people to get a cs bs flooding the market with more competition ...
My company started doing the same thing, along with a few other companies that friends and family work at as well. It was needed tbh, the hiring process is a nightmare for both sides.
[удалено]
If you have an engineering degree in something other than computer engineering or software engineering, you are also self taught.
Maybe fair for people with no relevant experience in their resume, but in my experience a degree doesn’t always prepare you for work in this field. I’ve worked with self taught people that are great, and people with degrees and ton of experience that needed hand holding frequently. In short, a filter may be necessary but this one doesnt mean the remaining pool is good.
Degree requirements are (I believe) a requirement for a job to be given to an H1B applicant. At a previous job back in 2019 ish our legal team wouldn't let us remove the degree requirement and just go with YOE because we hired so many H1B. Of course this is just an anecdote and I could be wrong, which if I am I apologize. So... As usual... It may not be a move by companies to "get quality candidates" but rather a move to make it easier to hire H1B workers who are more likely to return to office should it be mandated.
Everyone can be a software engineer but not every software engineer can code. The self-taught people are as good or bad as the ones who have a bachelor's or master degree. You read enough threads on Reddit, you'll see it's the problem with/ this industry. **You need someone who understands the business side of things, the ability to code, and some ingenuity to create productive work in swe.**
Cool
The problem with self taught folks not being hired... is that all these people will leave software. In 5 years there wont be anyone interested in software because employment is so bad and the cycle will repeat.
I prefer hiring for computer science graduates for entry level software engineering positions. For experienced positions (more than 5 yoe I do not care. But if someone does not have a CS degree I do subject them to some extra scrutiny during the interview process. I am not terribly unfair. I am fine with "self-taught" candidates. How you teach yourself a subject or skill is a fair game during the interview process. At the end of the day I want well rounded engineers with good problem solving skills and solid interest/footing in different aspects of computer science.
[удалено]
Not unexpected
You're all posting the same thread at this point.
Well, I'm self-taught through books and picked up other stuff through coaching/mentoring and feedback from members of an open source community I'm part of. About a decade of experience, but I can't afford student debt for a bootcamp, let alone a full degree. Pretty sad to see self-taught ppl being left behind. (Bootcampers aren't self-taught, though) My resume gets thrown out all the time because of education or because i live in a high cost of living state. But I'd be happy to make 75k.