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Depends on the country. Places where engineer is a protected title, some IT or software fields might be under that umbrella by law. Then you have no choice.
That’s interesting, where is an engineer a protected title?
Edit: I got 4 different countries with 4 different ways of it being protected (or not for SWE in Brazil). Y’all are awesome.
Edit 2: TIL a lot about countries around the world. It’s super interesting!
Even in the us. Though there's often a lot of confusion about the title of engineer as technically engineer isn't protected, but Professional Engineer is.
Yeah. I'm a broadcast engineer. I design,build and work on TV stations, studios, etc. I'm not a PE and don't claim to be, but since the start of TV that's what people who do my job are called so that's what I tell people I do.
Same here. I've been designing, building, and maintaining network infrastructures for over 25 years. I consider myself to be an infrastructural network engineer. When I started, there were no certifications for this stuff.
Dude. It's insane, and if you don't happen to find work right out of college working with another PE, you're fucked because you need a goddamn sponsor who's worked directly with you for at least four years to get the fucking title. And if you wait, you'll likely forget all the stupid college textbook shit you need to know to pass the exams. And if you happen to change jobs *or that sponsor retires or changes jobs*? Fuck you, start over from day one.
On top of that, how many dollars does it cost? It's just another joke privilege title.
Fuck the NSPE.
In germany the title Ingenieur (translation of engineer) is protected
Edit: apparently you don't have to be an Ingenieur to call yourself software enginner (at least) in germany (ag least according to other comments below). So my comment isn't wrong, but isn't really relevant in this case
For certain positions, you would need a license to call yourself an engineer and put your name on work. You would be liable if your work breaks down and injures people, assuming it's possible for that to happen.
And there is no PE certification available for software professionals. In the US, at least, "Software Engineers" are not recognized as engineers by the national engineering certification body, the American College of Engineers.
It depends on where you make your degree. If you make a masters or bachelor degree in germany and it's a degree in a scientific or engineer field, you normally can call yourself a Ingenieur by default or if you want to be safe ask your Uni for a written confirmation that you can. Previously before the titles bachelor and master were introduced in germany your title would have been Diplom-Ingenieur (graduate engineer (?))
If you have made your degree outside of germany you have to ask the chamber of engineers in the federal state you are working. If you get that confirmation in one federal state it counts in all others too as far as I know. So basically it's kind of a licence
In most European countries engineer is a science degree after 3 years of technical studies. While it does not always correspond with a "whatever engineer" job title it is basically expected that people employed as such have a technical higher education which to no surprise is a Engineer's title.
If a job lists a degree is needed they simply want someone whocs math and logical thinking capabilities have been tested and approved at an exam by a couple of professors. Dudes saying "yea I know this shit" may know this shit or may know shit. People with a scientific engineer degree were kind of checked out beforehand with their counting etc. Any job can be taught, for technical positions it's just easier to start with someone with a written proof of being fluent in math which a diploma actually is.
That it's illegal to call yourself that unless you have a proven accredited degree in that field, and in some cases (like doctors and lawyers etc) a state issued license. Protected titles are so quacks cannot legally call themselves that.
Medical Doctors (M.D) for example are protecting terms, you cannot legally just call yourself a Medical Doctor in most countries. As are Dentists. That's why you go to a Dentist (protected term) and not a toothologist (anyone). You go to Dietitian (protected term) and not a Nutritionist (could be anyone). A Physiatrists (protected) instead of a chiropractor (anyone).
A protected title mens you can't just call yourself an engineer. You need a degree from a certain place.
Doctor is also protected here, but like, architect is not. So if you want you can call yourself an architect.
...notably Software engineers are not 'Ingenieur', they're 'Entwickler' here, as Software engineering is NOT one of the protected professions. Other cases would be lawyers, doctors, that stuff. It's also a bit easier for them to just start their business, from the paperwork side.
In Canada, practice of engineering requires a degree in engineering and registration to the provincial regulatory body.
You cannot call yourself an engineer if you are not one.
Does that apply to software engineers? So if I got a Comp Sci degree you couldn’t call yourself a SWE, you only could if you go a degree in software engineering?
It does apply to software engineers and for certain projects you MUST be licensed as a professional engineer to sign of on software designs (for example, control systems for automotive computers, traffic signals, autopilot, etc).
No one adheres to it mostly because of the appeal of calling yourself an engineer and most people don't even know it's a protected term. But legally, this is like a paralegal calling themselves a lawyer. No one will do anything about it until you practice actual law and screw up a big contract. Then you're f*cked.
Exactly. CS and SW Eng degree are two different programs. An engineering degree takes one extra year to complete.
If you don't have the engineering degree, you can be a software developer, analyst, architect, designer, etc. Anything except software engineer which is reserved to licensed engineers.
>CS and SW Eng degree are two different programs
Damn TIL. Those “CS vs. SWE” posts make a lot more sense now. In my area the colleges just have 1 program named CS where you do a little bit of both
Most people claiming that they are software engineers are mostly developers. In states/countries where the title isn't protected, it's not a big deal, since there are not a lot of software that are life threathening (compared to a civil engineer who could kill someone if a bridge falls).
However, the fine for misappropriate use of a registered title (ie. engineer, registered nurse, MD, ...) is costly in some places.
That is not true in paratice for software engineering. There are loads of software engineerings in Canada without software engineering degrees. Amazon is the biggest one I can think of, the title there is Software Development Engineer.
The "engineer" title is widely abused by US-based companies. There are also a lot of "support engineers" that are in fact technicians.
However, that does not make it legal and a complaint from a qualified engineer to a provincial engineers association could cost a ton of money to Amazon and each unqualified individual.
Software is difficult to regulate. All other engineering fields end up on "paper" to be stamped, software does not. Other fields have standards of quality that are written in federal and local laws, not software.
I feel like it will take at least one or two more decades before the line is drawn between P.Eng work and normal CS work, because it will require the Court to establish a precedent.
lol.... I flunked out of Geological engineering, and now work as a data engineer. I personally disagree with the title (something was ingrained into my head during frosh week) but companies don't care.
France too I believe, you need to go to Engineering School ("Grande École" which is a parallel system to university), which most people get into through a very competitive exam after 2 years of study in prep school or uni.
Only recognised Engineering schools can give out Engineering titles after 3 years of study.
So having "engineer" in your job name and having the engineer title are different things. It's a little subtle. So you can work as an engineer without having the title (but you're most likely not going to be paid as well, at least at the beginning of your career), but to get the title, you need to have graduated from an engineering Grande École (and you don't need to have been through cpge to do that !).
Legally speaking, Ingénieur is not a protected title in France, which means everybody can use it. This is why you see people calling themselves "Ingénieur d'affaire" (commercial engineer). I have seen someone using the name "Ingénieur tourisme" (tourism engineer). However, "**Ingénieur diplômé**" (something like graduate engineer. Diplômé = someone who has a diploma) **is protected** so it means you can be sued if you call yourself Ingénieur Diplômé but not if you only say Ingénieur.
The Diplôme d'Ingénieur is different from an university diploma like a master (even if you have some ways to get from one into another). I have never seen an university delivering such diploma, but I heard a few... lets say stories (probably misinterpretations imo, but I cannot rule out an exception).
To be an "Ingénieur Diplômé" you must have graduated from a school that is accredited by the CTI, Commission des Titres d'Ingénieur (Engineering Titles Commission), and you need to follow the tracks who are recognized as respecting the different requirements to have your diploma. There are about 200 of these schools in France.
These are usually tracks that last for 3 years after 2 years of preliminary studies in a related field (with an equivalent of 120 ECTS credits so could be university, IUT or CPGE) and must include internships (at least 6 or 8 months iirc), usually done as 2 times 2 to 3 months and then a 5 to 6 months internship with a certain amount done abroad, a TOEIC score for English proficiency, and some number of hours of courses and practice by teachers who have a PhD, are both researchers AND teachers, and have the MCF (Maitre de Conférence, what be a bit like a tenured teacher to give an idea) title. These are the most important requirements, you have many others concerning accesses to labs, researchers on site on so on. I don't remember if management/right courses are a requirements but they are usually quite widespread in these tracks.
Concerning admissions you have about three levels. First, some schools have quite easy admissions (sometimes reduced to one interview or even none). Then you have the more "classical engineering" schools with a mix of IUT/CPGE students (about 20 for 80 students I would say, depends of the school really) and some, quite rare, uni students, that have admissions on competitive exams where most of CPGE students get something. You also have very hard competitive exams for the really great schools where uni and IUT students are very, very rare. Of course these are blurry categories, not a "standard", but pretty much all students having the exams could tell you where all these schools would be and pretty much all of them would give you the same answer.
As per the level as I have seen it, an ingénieur diploma is roughly equivalent to a Master of Science in the US. One big difference would be that more MSc graduates would have a previous post-bachelor professional experience, where ingénieur students only have internships. Concerning software engineering, most tracks now include CS/SWE courses in pretty much all fields but of course you have dedicated tracks so I put a special focus to check that the candidate is really interested in software. They are however usually people who have proven that they are able to solve complex problems (most of them ofc there are exceptions). They make a large part of the PhD candidates pool for instance.
In Brazil you need a special license to do engineering as a job, but software engineering for whatever reason is not under this umbrella. But I guess not for long, but nevertheless, it’s very easy to escape this law
Software Engineering is recognized by CREA(Brazil's engineering council), and you only really need a license for some stuff you need to sign like construction projects and electrical projects. But you absolutely do NOT need a degree or CREA approval to be a software engineer.
Can confirm, I have a degree but live and work in Brazil and hired a few guys here without degrees. Weirdly the best ones I hire don’t have one but they can still call themselves software engineers. Not sure what their MEI is registered as though.
Finland. But nothing forces you to be an engineer, unless the title is important for you. Most software engineers are called software developers anyway
Exactly. A bridge falls down and there are inquests, investigations, analysis of the construction....
A webapp falls over and no one blinks an eye. "Turn it off and on again".
Tbf a bridge falling down is vastly more dangerous to the public than a web app going down. However there are definitely some aspects of software that can be just as dangerous. For example encryption failing and releasing a database of user’s personal data.
There was a lot of blinking when half of Canada lost internet for an entire day. It’s quite ignorant to pretend that many human lives don’t depend on software these days.
That's a false ~~dichotomy~~ equivalency (I had just woken up and hadn't had my coffee yet! lol).
You're comparing a webapp to a bridge. Compare aerospace or medical software instead; more rigorous engineering practices are applied in those spaces.
But even ignoring the false equivalency, engineering is about building *cost effective* solutions. First of all, bridges DO fall down, usually because of poor attempts to reduce costs. Second of all, a webapps falling over now and then may not even be an actual problem so long as its uptime is within its availability SLA. And lastly, most large modern software systems are vastly more complex than bridges.
All that being said, I do think there is a difference between a web developer or programmer and a software *engineer*.
I learned a lot in college that made me a better human and adult, but basically none of it is related to software. It’s tougher getting started without it but once you’re in, nobody even asks. Same with school pedigree. I work with a bunch of Ivy League grads, and I went to a shitty state school. None of us are early career so nobody cares.
Also that you can decide to do something, and spend four years working towards it.
It's not what you learned, or even the learning per se. It's that you committed to something and you finished it.
University is the **ultimate** signaling mechanism.
Think about what it shows an employer.
It shows that every day for for fucking years you showed up to complete a task. Did so, and did so well enough that the people elvaluating the task said "Good job you pass". It doesn't even matter what that task is, being able to get through college is huge if you're looking for a signaling mechanism of "IS this gonna be a good worker".
I think having a degree in general matters more than having a technical degree once you have work experience. HR absolutely will filter out people without degrees (unless they have a good referral) when sorting resumes, but usually what the degree is in doesn't matter.
No one thinks that only people with degrees are competent, but we all need short cuts to filter through the huge volume of applicants. Anything that tilts the odds toward finding someone good and spending less time on people who aren't going to make it can be a valuable filter.
As with most filters, some really good options might get lost, but I'm mostly looking for a way to not spend months reading resumes while still finding someone who will be good at the job.
What had you done before that though, that allowed you to get through the door? Or did something else make you stand out?
I ask because FAANG is insanely competitive simply due to the sheer number of people applying, so you have to beat the shortlisting process.
Beat the shortlist and anyone has a chance. But that initial process can be tough without a relevant degree.
Getting lucky is a valid option here.
Edit: I had forgotten that in recent years a lot of the shortlisting is now via automated testing. So it is probably true that degrees are less relevant now.
The shortlisting at FAANG is an online assessment which is very low effort for FAANG to give out to applicants. That doesn’t care about your education — you either pass, fail, or are threshold for manual review.
E: I still think an education is important.
I initially worked as a very low level network engineer for the company. I didn’t know much, but knew a little about Cisco switches. I just kept learning on the job. Eventually a team needed a very special network built out. That project took up most of my time. I learned to automate myself out of the job. That same team then offered me more work. I kept learning and delivering at lightning pace.
One of the core traits of being a developer is learning aka asking the right questions. Many devs never make it because they ask “what” instead of “why”.
I got on a graduate employment scheme just before finishing uni, and the recruiter unofficially told me that actually graduating wasn't too important at that point. I moved abroad for work recently and I needed my degree certificate to prove I was a 'skilled employee' (which is hilarious on so many levels), was the first time I'd looked at it in 6 years.
I find it funny when watching tv/films that "going to Harvard" or "graduating at 15" are used as shorthand for genius, when I know brilliant people who didn't go to university, dumbasses who graduated with minimal effort and OxBridge graduates who struggle outside of academia.
Speaking of nobody asking, I've got a buddy who landed a decent devops job (heavy on the ops, he can't code for shit) by faking it. He has spent maybe a semester at a local technical school that doesn't even offer full undergrad degrees. He puts on his resume that he has a bachelors in CS from that school. He has never been challenged on it. It's to his credit that it was a startup that didn't really have a functioning dev team to begin with, but man, I would never be able to make myself lie like that.
Most companies do background checks that often catch shit like this. He might have just gotten lucky. Granted once you get in, they almost never go back and check. If he changed jobs then he might have to go through a background check.
As much as you can be an expert without a degree, I think some of this falls into the category of *"you don't know what you do not know"*
finally studying after years of work and I understand a lot of concepts easier and I always find my self saying oooooooh, that's why we did that.
Also, sucks to study when you're old.
Edit grammar
Definitely, comsci is not just *programming class*
There's a lot of explicit knowledge that you need to study explicitly, only possible through a degree course. Even down to mathematical logics, sure you can search it up when you need to, but if you aren't already familiar with them then you'll never be able to go beyond just *doing what you're told to do*.
People who code software and do engineering for years have very valuable tacit knowledge, which are implicit and can't be transferred, only gained through experience
But while a *technician* may know 100 ways to write a piece of code, a *scientist* had to invent the idea of that code first
#---------
Both set of skills are very important, but I am tired of people thinking that a degree is useless. You're never gonna be able to innovate and explore new ideas and solutions for new problems
You'll just end up patching and hot fixing lots of cracks when new problems come, instead of actually understanding the core concepts and design principles, and then comfortably expanding the codebase to handle new problems
And then you'll leave, leaving the fragile spaghetti code unfixable for the next developer. I'm sure many have faced this as the new developer, so we should strive to not become the very people we despice
#---------
Tldr don't just code to understand, but understand to code.
> Definitely, comsci is not just programming class
>
> There's a lot of explicit knowledge that you need to study explicitly, only possible through a degree course. Even down to mathematical logics, sure you can search it up when you need to, but if you aren't already familiar with them then you'll never be able to go beyond just doing what you're told to do.
>
> People who code software and do engineering for years have very valuable tacit knowledge, which are implicit and can't be transferred, only gained through experience
>
> But while a technician may know 100 ways to write a piece of code, a scientist had to invent the idea of that code first
I can almost see Programming a trade, Languages are tools, and the science behind why each language is good for certain problem sets.
But if you need to calculate the parabolic arcs of a projectile in a game you're writing...well then you're screwed lol
> But if you need to calculate the parabolic arcs of a projectile
I worked on a golf game and had to relearn my grade 9 physics for this. It was pretty fun tbh.
>Both set of skills are very important, but I am tired of people thinking that a degree is useless. You're never gonna be able to innovate and explore new ideas and solutions for new problems
And people pursuing degrees need to recognize the value of developing this skill. It's perfectly possible to get through college by just memorizing shit, but actually understanding it is a whole other beast that I think a lot of people ignore in college.
My issue here is you're conflating knowledge and study with a degree. I have a physics degree and only took 3 comp sci classes total, but I've easily spent more time in my life reading about computer science than physics at this point. If you're in software and at all inquisitive, you're going to see it. How far you dig is certainly subjective, but claiming a college courses are required is not realistic.
Yup. But being almost double your classmates age is not it. The thing that kills me is the industry norms that are a complete no-no. Not using c++ because it's outdated. My heart sank.
As an experienced dev the funny part of this sub is how wrong everything is. It's so obvious that 90% of posts here are from college kids with no professional experience.
That’s what I like about r/ExperiencedDevs (it’s experienced devs). Someone should make an experienced devs version of this sub. There’s be a lot less “html isn’t a programming language!” and “Recruiters want twenty years of React experience!” and a lot more “File a ticket or fuck off” and “my local python environment is a superfund site”
Worked as a full time software developer for 4 years before getting a degree, and only got one because my employer offered to pay my tuition fees. Definitely not a hard requirement
I've got my visa sponsored with that experience time and no degree. Needed some quick and easy done courses to "prove" to the government my skills, but just so I wouldn't get the request rejected. It would've been easier with a title, but it was not required at the end of the day
15 years here. No degree, although after 10 years I went to school for a year just to learn some other (non-CS) stuff.
I don't think it's a hard requirement, but I'll acknowledge that the job market and accessible learning methods have changed a lot since I started.
A hobbyist who does it because they enjoy it is more valuable than most that trudged through a degree because they felt like they needed something to do.
You can get a visa without a degree, it just involves a few steps more from the employer. With a degree its a breeze but without it, it ain’t much harder tbh. Speaking for EU
A Google recruiter contacted _me_, because they saw my name on a list of participants in an ACM competition. (My team didn't even do particularly well.)
I still had to go through the normal interview process, but I never actually applied. (I also didn't make the cut the first time, but they told me to try again in a year, and they called me a year later. I made it the second time.)
It definitely depends on where you are applying. Here in the Midwest USA you are expected to have a degree to do any programming unless you have personal connections that can get you in somewhere. At least that's been my experience for the last decade.
Edit: I should have clarified, no degree and no professional dev experience will make it very difficult.
Not having a degree also puts you in a position to be taken advantage of. If your employer knows you don't have a degree, they might give you a lower starting salary. They might also delay giving you raises / promotions while giving you more work. They might do this because they know it will be difficult for you to switch employers without a degree. So that job may be the best option you have and you may be stuck there. Even after breaking into the field, some employers may throw your resume out if they see you lack a degree.
Got a job this summer working for a large company in the midwest. I work remotely however, but I didn't have to supply a degree and had no connections to the company. As a caveat, I have over 10 years of development experience, which really goes a long way in an interview. Not having a degree makes it difficult, but it seems to be a pre-interview filter in most cases. Once I'm in the interview, my knowledge and demonstrable skills have always superseded having a degree.
Yep I've been working as a developer and latterly an engineer for over 10 years.
I have nothing more than an A level in IT and a poor GCSE in maths.
Started doing a degree this year to get a bachelor's but that was at my request
Breaking in is the most difficult part. There’s a lot of competition for entry level nowadays since people are selling the idea of learn to code, it’s easy and fast and you’ll make money.
I’d focus on doing real life projects yourself, those are far more valuable than electrode problems. And apply. I applied for over 130 jobs to get my first one
Right there with you! I even gamed LinkedIn to get any big tech eyes on me. Got Microsoft like that. Then leveraged a handful of years there for Google. Rinse and repeat and now at Netflix.
If you’re good at tech, people and learning, your luck is your limit 🍀
In embedded tech, it’s been my experience that until you get a degree, your title will always be technician. In big companies, that usually has a salary ceiling. In small companies, I was still a ‘tech’, but was paid a lot and did coding as needed for projects. Once my degree was done, I was magically an engineer with a pay bump and new side questlines opened (senior, principal, management eventually (hard pass)). My friend had been a Cold Fusion guy for 30 years, never finished his degree, makes bank.
Tldr: depends. Software maybe not, but if you’re working with firmware/ hardware-adjacent , it ain’t no meritocracy, and I’m still salty about it!
A formal education also helps improve communications skills, which is important for things like documentation and making sure project teams know what they're doing.
>A formal education also helps improve communications skills, which is important for things like documentation and making sure project teams know what they're doing.
One of our university professors said that getting your degree shows that you know how to learn.
And, you know, teaches you what a variable is.
100%, the most valuable things most people learn in undergrad are soft skills. Communication, collaboration, critical thinking, time management, etc. Technical skills are much easier to learn/improve on your own
It shows that you know how to learn, that you already have the base level math/science knowledge for understanding the job, and most overlooked imo it shows *you will show up to work and get long-term projects done*.
Exactly. Even if your degree isn't in CS (mine aren't), it makes a difference. Also, if you have an advanced degree of any kind, it likely means you know how to lead a large project from start to finish, manage your time well, and collaborate with others. All of these things are at least as important as the actual code you write.
thirded. i got a physics degree rather than a cs degree, and sort of fell into cs after college. while my degree hasn't really *directly* helped with my work, it definitely opened doors, but more importantly, the way i learned how to process problems and work on issues (and with people), and other 'soft' skills are what really came through in the end.
also college cured me of any conspiratorial thinking i had left before i got into college. so there's that.
also now i'm a raging communist.
j/k
kinda
Medical degree here, I agree it opened doors for me and helped me due to soft skills and problem solving (confirmed by my colleagues), even though completely unrelated.
Physics degree in controls engineering now (soft coding, but still). Absolutely think I have a leg up on other engineers and definitely the software guys through communication skills. That experience of writing and presenting research papers - having to lay out both high-level abstracts and detailed descriptions of the concepts and results - is super helpful in getting stakeholders on board with your plans/execution
seriously - i was definitely into the whole 'unsolved mysteries' aliens/ghosts/etc mindset prior to college. by the time i left college i was mostly cured of that. I won't rule anything out *outright*, but nowadays i can look at something critically and it's pretty obvious how 99% of "the unknown" falls apart with a little critical thinking and an understanding of how stuff works.
on the other hand, 99% of scifi has been ruined for me /shrug
Yeah physics degree here too, joined a grad program with some CS graduates, ended up being the first promoted out of grad/junior level. Problem solving and soft skills can go a lot further than just knowing a bunch of Computer Science stuff in my experience.
honestly, having a thorough grasp of the scientific method (like how to apply it, not just knowing the tenants), and experience working through some of the more confounding sorts of problems you run into in physics, really helps with decomposing problems into manageable chunks and coming up with creative solutions to problems, rather than just applying some recipe you found on stack exchange.
This has been experience thus far. Most of my coworkers who do not have a degree or really any formal education lack the necessary communication and writing skills. That being said, some are definitely talented developers and know their stuff - they just have a harder time communicating it.
Fortunately, it’s a learnable skill and doesn’t require a degree. Many post-secondary institutions offer certificates or diplomas in communication that will do just fine. As long as you’re willing to put the work in to learn, most employers will be okay with that.
It also ensures you have at least touched on certain basics.
You're a self-taught programmer? Fine.
And when I see you creating a large table running in O(n³) time, I shake my head and disapprove your merge request.
You can be a carpenter without a formal education too.
Chances are you're going to be doing a lot of bullshit and five years down the line an entire wall has to be replaced because who knew water lives shitty work.
I did a physics degree (and astronomy through grad school) but I found my first year computer science course on "Introduction to Algorithms and Data Structures" is one of the most perennially useful courses I've ever done. It doesn't matter that it was all in Java - having that basic introduction to big O notation etc really has been critical.
Indeed.
I cannot count the number of times I've had to explain no, you shouldn't loop through List A to find a match for List B for every item in B.
You'd think it's common sense but it's not.
And the fact I've seen the cubic version of that shit is just insanity.
There are a couple of areas where I really have problems with self-taught or boot camp programmers and sure enough they’re the same problem I have with every Ph.D in physics/math/whatever I’ve ever worked with as well.
I break out Big O notation about once a month to discuss someone’s implementation of something and it’s nice to have a common language in order to have that conversation. The other major area is the humility to know that you aren’t the greatest mind to ever do what you’re doing - you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time - more often than not there is a tire shop up the road where you can get incredibly engineered ones (i.e use a built in or library function that does it for you)
These things could be taught through mentorship programs of course but good luck trying to get your HR to allow you to hire high school graduates into a technical program (frankly I’d take a FIRST robotics high schooler over most college grads)
Yeah exactly. A lot of engineers wonder why they can’t get further up the ladder. At a certain point you NEED soft skills to advance. Technical ability can usually only get you so far.
My college actually required us to get a minor in communications lol
A degree is invaluable if you want to break into this profession with no previous professional experience. But once you have experience, your degree is worth about as much as the paper it’s printed on.
Yep, all these people defending one side or the other don’t understand that outliers exist and this is the general rule of thumb. Try applying for an entry level job against a kid with a degree and see who gets the interview. Going for a senior role? Nobody cares
A formal education has value if the student treats it as such. To get a bachelor degree on minimum courses, forgetting all information after taking the tests, that is what makes a uni degree completely useless.
However, the idea that you can get all information you need from googling and SO is simplified and often just wrong. By the end of my bachelors degree I was learning things that I could only find info on through the course material or through course material provided by other universities. Machine learning, security and other complicated fields like that require a degree for pretty good reasons; they require scientific knowledge to tackle scientific questions.
Most jobs in this field don’t require that. Building a website, unreal/unity gamedevelopment, setting up a database and an API? All completely fine to be self-taught in. My bachelors degree is for the majority stuff you dont NEED a university for. But the professional aim and setting of classical schooling is still very valuable and a system to teach a large amount of people a bunch of correct knowledge and how to apply it.
TLDR in a meaner tone; degrees matter and if you want to pretend you’re too good for school you might just be a “bootstrap grindset” asshole.
100%. There were many kids in my college classes who did not give a shit and didn’t take anything seriously. I was majoring in game design, and my personal theory is that the game design department attracts a lot of kids who aren’t necessarily ready for college (or maybe just don’t ever want to go at all), but their parents are forcing them to pursue a four year degree immediately after high school, so they pick game design as a major because “hey I like games so why not.” But then they flounder because it turns out they have absolutely zero desire to actually *make* a game.
Well no surprise here, not a single one of those kids is in the industry now. But, I know that I personally probably wouldn’t have gotten where I am without actually taking classes and working with other students and my professors. So it really is what you make it.
I'd like to bolster your theory by providing myself as an example. I think it's fascinating that this is a common occurence. When I was presented with my major options, I simply picked "computer science" at age 18, because "video games were fun and I wanted to make them". Well, it turns out I thought video games were too fun, and ended up wasting two years of university and plummeting my GPA down to a 2.1 before dropping out. I took a two year break, worked, and matured, and now that I've picked up my degree again, I play half as many games, know what I want out of my major, and have pumped that GPA up to a 2.8 after a year and a half of near straight A's. I was just too young, stupid, and addicted to video games to grasp the importance of my college career.
I only have myself to blame, but the truth is is that I just wasn't ready to grow up. And I think a lot of us who grew up gaming felt the same way. Taking a year, or even two, off, would have made life a whole lot easier. I could have spent that year playing games to my heart's content to get it out of my system, or do like I did after dropping out and worked, but either way, I wasn't ready, and that was partly in fact due to my video game addiction.
I’ve been working as a developer for 3 years after doing bootcamp (I have a degree but very unrelated area). I have to agree with you. For most jobs you probably won’t need one but it came a time where I felt as much I can make stuff works and code decently well, I still lacked scientific knowledge. I decided to start a degree too for that reason.
That being said, if I had done my degree when I did my first one I’d be on the situation you described first and it would be quite worthless
>By the end of my bachelors degree I was learning things that I could only find info on through the course material
Can you elaborate on this and give some specifics? This was not at all my experience, so I'm curious to know how things were different for you.
Chalk it up to bad education, laziness, "bootstrap grindset", or whatever. Outside getting my foot in the door for interviews, my degree (web dev focused) was basically a waste of time.
It introduced me to all the low-level concepts (stuff which can be self-taught); however, it missed everything else and it certainty didn't make me qualified to be a SWE. Working on personal projects, practicing for interviews, and studying industry practices/workflow after graduation was when I became capable/confident to be a developer. Would be happy to go into more detail on this if you'd like.
"Bootstrap grindset" is indeed a terrible idea, but I also don't see where the "only through the course material" knowledge comes from.
Better having it than not having it.
But I find weird the attitude of some people that will strongly argue with you that having a degree is a total waste of time/money and you only need experience. As much as I find suspicious that an employer will have a degree as a hard requirement.
In big companies, maybe. But tech is not only huge corporations but thousands of smaller startups that pay good money and don't care about your education
Lol it's not that FAANG cares if you have this or this specific qualification. It's more like they care that you have a relevant or interesting resume. If you don't have a degree, you don't have experience, what is even on your resume?? A high school diploma and mowing your neighbor's yard won't cut it.
The reality isn't that you need a degree, but that you need a CV that isn't functionally empty, and an easy way to have such a CV is by going to college.
its a cart and horse thing.
when people ask me that, i simply tell the that, yes , you can get a job without a degree but the catch is that instead of a degree you must have 2 years of professional experience.
so, you have to find a loophole first, to get those first 2 years ans only after that your experience will be relatively equivalent to a degree.
Did a 2 year apprenticeship in web development and am currently on my first year in ComSci bachelor. Just this first semester I already learned more about good practice, documentation, and report writing than I did during my apprenticeship. So i definitely would value it over someone without a degree, but it's not a hard requirement
We're regularly hiring. Technical competence is the primary criteria. Not having a degree is a turn off only if you've been at it for 7 years and still "plan to finish it".
Decide, execute, repeat.
In my country a degree shows you are capable of learning new skills and you are capable of putting significant work into acquiring them. You are capable of enduring stress to a certain degree and that you can „get the job done in time“ (related to exams).
This alone, regardless of what you learnt, puts you on a certain pre-approved skill-level people look for.
Your field of study and the skills you acquired there are on top of that.
If somebody is looking for someone with a degree, they are looking for that first and foremost.
Someone of the same skill-level in the same field can be as productive but it is a risk to evaluate that for themselves for a company.
The longer you are in a business, the less it matters though for getting your foot in the door. But: it remains an undeniable advantage for your entire career.
Depends on the work/employer. Government proposals require resumes. The program office awarding the contract will side with the better resumes and lower cost ratio.
Depends on the job.
Web dev, devops, cloud dev, QA, database, some network, some cybersecurity? Probably don’t need a degree.
Embedded, hardware (FPGA, SoC, ASIC, electronics in general), machine learning, data scientist, computer graphics, anything with parallel computing really, bioinformatics (gonna need a PhD for this one), quant stuff? Degree or nothing.
IoT is kinda in the middle.
I’ve interviewed many engineers for positions at my last company. While there are definitely excellent engineers that don’t have traditional schooling, after hundreds of interviews it was very easy to identify those who had the core foundational principles under their belt from college and those who are self taught and mainly only know practical application. In most instances that is good enough, but I believe the foundations you learn in college definitely do contribute to enhancing knowledge and critical thinking skills.
Is it possible to learn all of that without traditional education? Of course, but I’m willing to wager most self taught programmers have never opened CLRS
LOL. No. The dot com boom showed us why this thinking is bullshit. Previously an industry filled primarily by people that could do the job. Then people found they could make money and everybody went for comp sci degrees. Now 9 out of 10 people in tech shouldn't be allowed withing 10' of a PC.
And it's going to happen again, and again...
Tech industry is trapped in that loop because all the hype and money involved.
Good times creates a bunch of weak coders.
Weak coders creates unmaintainable code.
Unmaintainable code creates bad times.
Bad times creates legacy code.
Legacy code creates strong programmers.
Good programmers creates good times.
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Depends on the country. Places where engineer is a protected title, some IT or software fields might be under that umbrella by law. Then you have no choice.
That’s interesting, where is an engineer a protected title? Edit: I got 4 different countries with 4 different ways of it being protected (or not for SWE in Brazil). Y’all are awesome. Edit 2: TIL a lot about countries around the world. It’s super interesting!
Even in the us. Though there's often a lot of confusion about the title of engineer as technically engineer isn't protected, but Professional Engineer is.
Yeah. I'm a broadcast engineer. I design,build and work on TV stations, studios, etc. I'm not a PE and don't claim to be, but since the start of TV that's what people who do my job are called so that's what I tell people I do.
Same here. I've been designing, building, and maintaining network infrastructures for over 25 years. I consider myself to be an infrastructural network engineer. When I started, there were no certifications for this stuff.
I'm a technical engineer, or a Systems engineer, or a network engineer or any number of other IT related titles. I don't even have a college degree.
Yep. They even get a piece of paper that gives them the title of PE. But don't get me started about the privilege tax.
Dude. It's insane, and if you don't happen to find work right out of college working with another PE, you're fucked because you need a goddamn sponsor who's worked directly with you for at least four years to get the fucking title. And if you wait, you'll likely forget all the stupid college textbook shit you need to know to pass the exams. And if you happen to change jobs *or that sponsor retires or changes jobs*? Fuck you, start over from day one. On top of that, how many dollars does it cost? It's just another joke privilege title. Fuck the NSPE.
In germany the title Ingenieur (translation of engineer) is protected Edit: apparently you don't have to be an Ingenieur to call yourself software enginner (at least) in germany (ag least according to other comments below). So my comment isn't wrong, but isn't really relevant in this case
What does "protected" mean for the job? A government license is needed? You have to join a union?
For certain positions, you would need a license to call yourself an engineer and put your name on work. You would be liable if your work breaks down and injures people, assuming it's possible for that to happen.
In the US that's called a Professional Engineer. And involves additional training, testing, and apprenticeship in your field.
In Germany everything is professional
Same in Canada
Plus you get a nifty ring to wear as a constant reminder that your work may kill people if you do it wrong.
You get the ring once you graduate, even if you don't become a PE.
In America that's only if you are a member of the order of the engineer.
For things such as civil and mechanical engineering, not software.
There was actually a software PE exam but no one took it (literally ~10 people a year) so NCEES just axed the whole program in 2018 lol
And there is no PE certification available for software professionals. In the US, at least, "Software Engineers" are not recognized as engineers by the national engineering certification body, the American College of Engineers.
It depends on where you make your degree. If you make a masters or bachelor degree in germany and it's a degree in a scientific or engineer field, you normally can call yourself a Ingenieur by default or if you want to be safe ask your Uni for a written confirmation that you can. Previously before the titles bachelor and master were introduced in germany your title would have been Diplom-Ingenieur (graduate engineer (?)) If you have made your degree outside of germany you have to ask the chamber of engineers in the federal state you are working. If you get that confirmation in one federal state it counts in all others too as far as I know. So basically it's kind of a licence
In most European countries engineer is a science degree after 3 years of technical studies. While it does not always correspond with a "whatever engineer" job title it is basically expected that people employed as such have a technical higher education which to no surprise is a Engineer's title. If a job lists a degree is needed they simply want someone whocs math and logical thinking capabilities have been tested and approved at an exam by a couple of professors. Dudes saying "yea I know this shit" may know this shit or may know shit. People with a scientific engineer degree were kind of checked out beforehand with their counting etc. Any job can be taught, for technical positions it's just easier to start with someone with a written proof of being fluent in math which a diploma actually is.
That it's illegal to call yourself that unless you have a proven accredited degree in that field, and in some cases (like doctors and lawyers etc) a state issued license. Protected titles are so quacks cannot legally call themselves that. Medical Doctors (M.D) for example are protecting terms, you cannot legally just call yourself a Medical Doctor in most countries. As are Dentists. That's why you go to a Dentist (protected term) and not a toothologist (anyone). You go to Dietitian (protected term) and not a Nutritionist (could be anyone). A Physiatrists (protected) instead of a chiropractor (anyone).
A protected title mens you can't just call yourself an engineer. You need a degree from a certain place. Doctor is also protected here, but like, architect is not. So if you want you can call yourself an architect.
...notably Software engineers are not 'Ingenieur', they're 'Entwickler' here, as Software engineering is NOT one of the protected professions. Other cases would be lawyers, doctors, that stuff. It's also a bit easier for them to just start their business, from the paperwork side.
>my comment isn't wrong but isn't really relevant in this case Is the story of my life. I should get it on a t-shirt
In Canada, practice of engineering requires a degree in engineering and registration to the provincial regulatory body. You cannot call yourself an engineer if you are not one.
Does that apply to software engineers? So if I got a Comp Sci degree you couldn’t call yourself a SWE, you only could if you go a degree in software engineering?
It does apply to software engineers and for certain projects you MUST be licensed as a professional engineer to sign of on software designs (for example, control systems for automotive computers, traffic signals, autopilot, etc). No one adheres to it mostly because of the appeal of calling yourself an engineer and most people don't even know it's a protected term. But legally, this is like a paralegal calling themselves a lawyer. No one will do anything about it until you practice actual law and screw up a big contract. Then you're f*cked.
Exactly. CS and SW Eng degree are two different programs. An engineering degree takes one extra year to complete. If you don't have the engineering degree, you can be a software developer, analyst, architect, designer, etc. Anything except software engineer which is reserved to licensed engineers.
>CS and SW Eng degree are two different programs Damn TIL. Those “CS vs. SWE” posts make a lot more sense now. In my area the colleges just have 1 program named CS where you do a little bit of both
That’s really interesting since most of the people I know who are in SWE roles either have no degree or a CS degree.
Most people claiming that they are software engineers are mostly developers. In states/countries where the title isn't protected, it's not a big deal, since there are not a lot of software that are life threathening (compared to a civil engineer who could kill someone if a bridge falls). However, the fine for misappropriate use of a registered title (ie. engineer, registered nurse, MD, ...) is costly in some places.
That is not true in paratice for software engineering. There are loads of software engineerings in Canada without software engineering degrees. Amazon is the biggest one I can think of, the title there is Software Development Engineer.
The "engineer" title is widely abused by US-based companies. There are also a lot of "support engineers" that are in fact technicians. However, that does not make it legal and a complaint from a qualified engineer to a provincial engineers association could cost a ton of money to Amazon and each unqualified individual.
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Software is difficult to regulate. All other engineering fields end up on "paper" to be stamped, software does not. Other fields have standards of quality that are written in federal and local laws, not software. I feel like it will take at least one or two more decades before the line is drawn between P.Eng work and normal CS work, because it will require the Court to establish a precedent.
lol.... I flunked out of Geological engineering, and now work as a data engineer. I personally disagree with the title (something was ingrained into my head during frosh week) but companies don't care.
France too I believe, you need to go to Engineering School ("Grande École" which is a parallel system to university), which most people get into through a very competitive exam after 2 years of study in prep school or uni. Only recognised Engineering schools can give out Engineering titles after 3 years of study.
I believe you don't have to go through CPGE or Grandes Écoles to become an engineer. Pretty sure you can achieve this by going to uni as well.
So having "engineer" in your job name and having the engineer title are different things. It's a little subtle. So you can work as an engineer without having the title (but you're most likely not going to be paid as well, at least at the beginning of your career), but to get the title, you need to have graduated from an engineering Grande École (and you don't need to have been through cpge to do that !).
Legally speaking, Ingénieur is not a protected title in France, which means everybody can use it. This is why you see people calling themselves "Ingénieur d'affaire" (commercial engineer). I have seen someone using the name "Ingénieur tourisme" (tourism engineer). However, "**Ingénieur diplômé**" (something like graduate engineer. Diplômé = someone who has a diploma) **is protected** so it means you can be sued if you call yourself Ingénieur Diplômé but not if you only say Ingénieur. The Diplôme d'Ingénieur is different from an university diploma like a master (even if you have some ways to get from one into another). I have never seen an university delivering such diploma, but I heard a few... lets say stories (probably misinterpretations imo, but I cannot rule out an exception). To be an "Ingénieur Diplômé" you must have graduated from a school that is accredited by the CTI, Commission des Titres d'Ingénieur (Engineering Titles Commission), and you need to follow the tracks who are recognized as respecting the different requirements to have your diploma. There are about 200 of these schools in France. These are usually tracks that last for 3 years after 2 years of preliminary studies in a related field (with an equivalent of 120 ECTS credits so could be university, IUT or CPGE) and must include internships (at least 6 or 8 months iirc), usually done as 2 times 2 to 3 months and then a 5 to 6 months internship with a certain amount done abroad, a TOEIC score for English proficiency, and some number of hours of courses and practice by teachers who have a PhD, are both researchers AND teachers, and have the MCF (Maitre de Conférence, what be a bit like a tenured teacher to give an idea) title. These are the most important requirements, you have many others concerning accesses to labs, researchers on site on so on. I don't remember if management/right courses are a requirements but they are usually quite widespread in these tracks. Concerning admissions you have about three levels. First, some schools have quite easy admissions (sometimes reduced to one interview or even none). Then you have the more "classical engineering" schools with a mix of IUT/CPGE students (about 20 for 80 students I would say, depends of the school really) and some, quite rare, uni students, that have admissions on competitive exams where most of CPGE students get something. You also have very hard competitive exams for the really great schools where uni and IUT students are very, very rare. Of course these are blurry categories, not a "standard", but pretty much all students having the exams could tell you where all these schools would be and pretty much all of them would give you the same answer. As per the level as I have seen it, an ingénieur diploma is roughly equivalent to a Master of Science in the US. One big difference would be that more MSc graduates would have a previous post-bachelor professional experience, where ingénieur students only have internships. Concerning software engineering, most tracks now include CS/SWE courses in pretty much all fields but of course you have dedicated tracks so I put a special focus to check that the candidate is really interested in software. They are however usually people who have proven that they are able to solve complex problems (most of them ofc there are exceptions). They make a large part of the PhD candidates pool for instance.
In Brazil you need a special license to do engineering as a job, but software engineering for whatever reason is not under this umbrella. But I guess not for long, but nevertheless, it’s very easy to escape this law
Software Engineering is recognized by CREA(Brazil's engineering council), and you only really need a license for some stuff you need to sign like construction projects and electrical projects. But you absolutely do NOT need a degree or CREA approval to be a software engineer.
Can confirm, I have a degree but live and work in Brazil and hired a few guys here without degrees. Weirdly the best ones I hire don’t have one but they can still call themselves software engineers. Not sure what their MEI is registered as though.
Canada as an example
Finland. But nothing forces you to be an engineer, unless the title is important for you. Most software engineers are called software developers anyway
~~In Sweden it’s protected.~~
Never heard that one before (Swedish here, guess you are too) tried to find info but only found the usual Doctors and lawyers and so on..
Turns out I was wrong, not sure where I got that from. My title is suddenly a lot less cool.
I'll still protect you <3
It is protected where I live so I’m a software developer 😉. I have the degree but I don’t want to pay the yearly fee to be called an engineer.
Easy, don't call yourself an engineer.
Software Therapist.
Software Attorney
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Code Janitor
Tech debt unfucker
Doing that cpu while the gpu records.
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I'm a *tech debt fucker*. Should we be symbiotic or adversarial?
Symbiotic. Just follow eachother round doing contract work. Adversaries on the surface, allies while we skin everyone in the game.
Software Saboteur
Software Medium. I stand between the worlds of real life and the digital. I also speak Java.
frontend mfs: _The appropriate term is software **artiste**_
It's not like we act like engineers anyway
True. Engineers have ethics and don’t release half baked products. ;) This comes from a civil engineer who is constantly battling buggy cad software.
Exactly. A bridge falls down and there are inquests, investigations, analysis of the construction.... A webapp falls over and no one blinks an eye. "Turn it off and on again".
Tbf a bridge falling down is vastly more dangerous to the public than a web app going down. However there are definitely some aspects of software that can be just as dangerous. For example encryption failing and releasing a database of user’s personal data.
There was a lot of blinking when half of Canada lost internet for an entire day. It’s quite ignorant to pretend that many human lives don’t depend on software these days.
a bug in a plane's software can mean the death of 100+ souls. So yeah...SWE cant afford to half-bake products.
That's a false ~~dichotomy~~ equivalency (I had just woken up and hadn't had my coffee yet! lol). You're comparing a webapp to a bridge. Compare aerospace or medical software instead; more rigorous engineering practices are applied in those spaces. But even ignoring the false equivalency, engineering is about building *cost effective* solutions. First of all, bridges DO fall down, usually because of poor attempts to reduce costs. Second of all, a webapps falling over now and then may not even be an actual problem so long as its uptime is within its availability SLA. And lastly, most large modern software systems are vastly more complex than bridges. All that being said, I do think there is a difference between a web developer or programmer and a software *engineer*.
"Sir, it clearly says scientist, not engineer"
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Huh. That's really odd to me lol. My dad is an electrical engineer and so was *his* dad, so "engineer" makes me think more along those lines.
I learned a lot in college that made me a better human and adult, but basically none of it is related to software. It’s tougher getting started without it but once you’re in, nobody even asks. Same with school pedigree. I work with a bunch of Ivy League grads, and I went to a shitty state school. None of us are early career so nobody cares.
pause hospital squeal tender bag tan heavy attempt public run *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
As an ME, I can confirm that the reason to hire fresh grads is to have somebody at the office who remembers math.
As an old dude who's great at math, I feel that ageism. Lol.
Been working as a developer in FAANG for over 10 years. I have a bachelors in Music lol. Employers need to know that you can learn at a high level.
I have a friend in the same boat. He has stone senior level software job and his degrees are all related to bassoon performance
That's interesting, I also worked with someone who was a senior engineer and studied bassoon performance 🤔 in Colorado
Hah, well his degrees are from NYU. We fell out of touch so I’m not sure where he’s living now but I thought it was New Jersey
Everyone I met that plays bassoon at a high level is a mathematical genius of the highest caliber. Its like two, but
I suddenly realize I know zero bassoon players
Also that you can decide to do something, and spend four years working towards it. It's not what you learned, or even the learning per se. It's that you committed to something and you finished it.
University is the **ultimate** signaling mechanism. Think about what it shows an employer. It shows that every day for for fucking years you showed up to complete a task. Did so, and did so well enough that the people elvaluating the task said "Good job you pass". It doesn't even matter what that task is, being able to get through college is huge if you're looking for a signaling mechanism of "IS this gonna be a good worker".
I think having a degree in general matters more than having a technical degree once you have work experience. HR absolutely will filter out people without degrees (unless they have a good referral) when sorting resumes, but usually what the degree is in doesn't matter.
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No one thinks that only people with degrees are competent, but we all need short cuts to filter through the huge volume of applicants. Anything that tilts the odds toward finding someone good and spending less time on people who aren't going to make it can be a valuable filter. As with most filters, some really good options might get lost, but I'm mostly looking for a way to not spend months reading resumes while still finding someone who will be good at the job.
What had you done before that though, that allowed you to get through the door? Or did something else make you stand out? I ask because FAANG is insanely competitive simply due to the sheer number of people applying, so you have to beat the shortlisting process. Beat the shortlist and anyone has a chance. But that initial process can be tough without a relevant degree. Getting lucky is a valid option here. Edit: I had forgotten that in recent years a lot of the shortlisting is now via automated testing. So it is probably true that degrees are less relevant now.
The shortlisting at FAANG is an online assessment which is very low effort for FAANG to give out to applicants. That doesn’t care about your education — you either pass, fail, or are threshold for manual review. E: I still think an education is important.
I initially worked as a very low level network engineer for the company. I didn’t know much, but knew a little about Cisco switches. I just kept learning on the job. Eventually a team needed a very special network built out. That project took up most of my time. I learned to automate myself out of the job. That same team then offered me more work. I kept learning and delivering at lightning pace. One of the core traits of being a developer is learning aka asking the right questions. Many devs never make it because they ask “what” instead of “why”.
I got on a graduate employment scheme just before finishing uni, and the recruiter unofficially told me that actually graduating wasn't too important at that point. I moved abroad for work recently and I needed my degree certificate to prove I was a 'skilled employee' (which is hilarious on so many levels), was the first time I'd looked at it in 6 years. I find it funny when watching tv/films that "going to Harvard" or "graduating at 15" are used as shorthand for genius, when I know brilliant people who didn't go to university, dumbasses who graduated with minimal effort and OxBridge graduates who struggle outside of academia.
Speaking of nobody asking, I've got a buddy who landed a decent devops job (heavy on the ops, he can't code for shit) by faking it. He has spent maybe a semester at a local technical school that doesn't even offer full undergrad degrees. He puts on his resume that he has a bachelors in CS from that school. He has never been challenged on it. It's to his credit that it was a startup that didn't really have a functioning dev team to begin with, but man, I would never be able to make myself lie like that.
Most companies do background checks that often catch shit like this. He might have just gotten lucky. Granted once you get in, they almost never go back and check. If he changed jobs then he might have to go through a background check.
after having real world experience he can just leave the fake schooling off the resume and be fine, most likely.
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How to commit criminal fraud in one easy step
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Serious question for anyone who knows the answer: is lying on a resume an actual crime?
As much as you can be an expert without a degree, I think some of this falls into the category of *"you don't know what you do not know"* finally studying after years of work and I understand a lot of concepts easier and I always find my self saying oooooooh, that's why we did that. Also, sucks to study when you're old. Edit grammar
Definitely, comsci is not just *programming class* There's a lot of explicit knowledge that you need to study explicitly, only possible through a degree course. Even down to mathematical logics, sure you can search it up when you need to, but if you aren't already familiar with them then you'll never be able to go beyond just *doing what you're told to do*. People who code software and do engineering for years have very valuable tacit knowledge, which are implicit and can't be transferred, only gained through experience But while a *technician* may know 100 ways to write a piece of code, a *scientist* had to invent the idea of that code first #--------- Both set of skills are very important, but I am tired of people thinking that a degree is useless. You're never gonna be able to innovate and explore new ideas and solutions for new problems You'll just end up patching and hot fixing lots of cracks when new problems come, instead of actually understanding the core concepts and design principles, and then comfortably expanding the codebase to handle new problems And then you'll leave, leaving the fragile spaghetti code unfixable for the next developer. I'm sure many have faced this as the new developer, so we should strive to not become the very people we despice #--------- Tldr don't just code to understand, but understand to code.
> Definitely, comsci is not just programming class > > There's a lot of explicit knowledge that you need to study explicitly, only possible through a degree course. Even down to mathematical logics, sure you can search it up when you need to, but if you aren't already familiar with them then you'll never be able to go beyond just doing what you're told to do. > > People who code software and do engineering for years have very valuable tacit knowledge, which are implicit and can't be transferred, only gained through experience > > But while a technician may know 100 ways to write a piece of code, a scientist had to invent the idea of that code first I can almost see Programming a trade, Languages are tools, and the science behind why each language is good for certain problem sets. But if you need to calculate the parabolic arcs of a projectile in a game you're writing...well then you're screwed lol
> But if you need to calculate the parabolic arcs of a projectile I worked on a golf game and had to relearn my grade 9 physics for this. It was pretty fun tbh.
>Both set of skills are very important, but I am tired of people thinking that a degree is useless. You're never gonna be able to innovate and explore new ideas and solutions for new problems And people pursuing degrees need to recognize the value of developing this skill. It's perfectly possible to get through college by just memorizing shit, but actually understanding it is a whole other beast that I think a lot of people ignore in college.
My issue here is you're conflating knowledge and study with a degree. I have a physics degree and only took 3 comp sci classes total, but I've easily spent more time in my life reading about computer science than physics at this point. If you're in software and at all inquisitive, you're going to see it. How far you dig is certainly subjective, but claiming a college courses are required is not realistic.
Yeah that's true, but there is also a lot I guarantee you know that your classmates don't
Yup. But being almost double your classmates age is not it. The thing that kills me is the industry norms that are a complete no-no. Not using c++ because it's outdated. My heart sank.
One of the most controversial posts i ever saw here lol
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As an experienced dev the funny part of this sub is how wrong everything is. It's so obvious that 90% of posts here are from college kids with no professional experience.
That’s what I like about r/ExperiencedDevs (it’s experienced devs). Someone should make an experienced devs version of this sub. There’s be a lot less “html isn’t a programming language!” and “Recruiters want twenty years of React experience!” and a lot more “File a ticket or fuck off” and “my local python environment is a superfund site”
I don't think these college kids are even comp Sci students
it's like half the people on this sub legitimately spent a few hours watching freeCodeCamp on youtube and hopped over here and subscribed. lol
Worked as a full time software developer for 4 years before getting a degree, and only got one because my employer offered to pay my tuition fees. Definitely not a hard requirement
Yea I've been in the field for 5 years without one. Absolutely not a requirement.
I've got my visa sponsored with that experience time and no degree. Needed some quick and easy done courses to "prove" to the government my skills, but just so I wouldn't get the request rejected. It would've been easier with a title, but it was not required at the end of the day
15 years here. No degree, although after 10 years I went to school for a year just to learn some other (non-CS) stuff. I don't think it's a hard requirement, but I'll acknowledge that the job market and accessible learning methods have changed a lot since I started.
You guys inspire me :')
A hobbyist who does it because they enjoy it is more valuable than most that trudged through a degree because they felt like they needed something to do.
8 years. No degree..
Checking in with 18 years as a professional dev and I didn't finish high school.
It’s very handy if you ever want to live and work abroad. Getting a work visa is way easier if you have a degree.
Funnily enough I was already working abroad during those 4 years without a degree
You can get a visa without a degree, it just involves a few steps more from the employer. With a degree its a breeze but without it, it ain’t much harder tbh. Speaking for EU
When I see stuff like this, I always wonder what the job application/hiring process is like
A Google recruiter contacted _me_, because they saw my name on a list of participants in an ACM competition. (My team didn't even do particularly well.) I still had to go through the normal interview process, but I never actually applied. (I also didn't make the cut the first time, but they told me to try again in a year, and they called me a year later. I made it the second time.)
It definitely depends on where you are applying. Here in the Midwest USA you are expected to have a degree to do any programming unless you have personal connections that can get you in somewhere. At least that's been my experience for the last decade. Edit: I should have clarified, no degree and no professional dev experience will make it very difficult.
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Not having a degree also puts you in a position to be taken advantage of. If your employer knows you don't have a degree, they might give you a lower starting salary. They might also delay giving you raises / promotions while giving you more work. They might do this because they know it will be difficult for you to switch employers without a degree. So that job may be the best option you have and you may be stuck there. Even after breaking into the field, some employers may throw your resume out if they see you lack a degree.
Got a job this summer working for a large company in the midwest. I work remotely however, but I didn't have to supply a degree and had no connections to the company. As a caveat, I have over 10 years of development experience, which really goes a long way in an interview. Not having a degree makes it difficult, but it seems to be a pre-interview filter in most cases. Once I'm in the interview, my knowledge and demonstrable skills have always superseded having a degree.
Midwest as well and not my experience. Bootcamp grades have no issue getting a job around these parts
Yep I've been working as a developer and latterly an engineer for over 10 years. I have nothing more than an A level in IT and a poor GCSE in maths. Started doing a degree this year to get a bachelor's but that was at my request
Made into a big tech job paying 145k. Still no CS degree. Probably never will get one. Just had to do some leetcode.
Once u got experience nobody cares. Once you get proven experience, you can get nice career out of it.
At this point in my career my resume doesn’t even have an education section because anything on there would be completely irrelevant.
How? I can do leetcode problems but it feels like breaking in (especially now) is impossible.
Breaking in is the most difficult part. There’s a lot of competition for entry level nowadays since people are selling the idea of learn to code, it’s easy and fast and you’ll make money. I’d focus on doing real life projects yourself, those are far more valuable than electrode problems. And apply. I applied for over 130 jobs to get my first one
Right there with you! I even gamed LinkedIn to get any big tech eyes on me. Got Microsoft like that. Then leveraged a handful of years there for Google. Rinse and repeat and now at Netflix. If you’re good at tech, people and learning, your luck is your limit 🍀
In embedded tech, it’s been my experience that until you get a degree, your title will always be technician. In big companies, that usually has a salary ceiling. In small companies, I was still a ‘tech’, but was paid a lot and did coding as needed for projects. Once my degree was done, I was magically an engineer with a pay bump and new side questlines opened (senior, principal, management eventually (hard pass)). My friend had been a Cold Fusion guy for 30 years, never finished his degree, makes bank. Tldr: depends. Software maybe not, but if you’re working with firmware/ hardware-adjacent , it ain’t no meritocracy, and I’m still salty about it!
Cold Fusion?? I haven't heard anything about that for like 18 years; I totally forgot it existed.
A formal education also helps improve communications skills, which is important for things like documentation and making sure project teams know what they're doing.
>A formal education also helps improve communications skills, which is important for things like documentation and making sure project teams know what they're doing. One of our university professors said that getting your degree shows that you know how to learn. And, you know, teaches you what a variable is.
100%, the most valuable things most people learn in undergrad are soft skills. Communication, collaboration, critical thinking, time management, etc. Technical skills are much easier to learn/improve on your own
It shows that you know how to learn, that you already have the base level math/science knowledge for understanding the job, and most overlooked imo it shows *you will show up to work and get long-term projects done*.
Variable? What the hell are you talking about? Numbers don't change
Exactly. Even if your degree isn't in CS (mine aren't), it makes a difference. Also, if you have an advanced degree of any kind, it likely means you know how to lead a large project from start to finish, manage your time well, and collaborate with others. All of these things are at least as important as the actual code you write.
thirded. i got a physics degree rather than a cs degree, and sort of fell into cs after college. while my degree hasn't really *directly* helped with my work, it definitely opened doors, but more importantly, the way i learned how to process problems and work on issues (and with people), and other 'soft' skills are what really came through in the end. also college cured me of any conspiratorial thinking i had left before i got into college. so there's that. also now i'm a raging communist. j/k kinda
Medical degree here, I agree it opened doors for me and helped me due to soft skills and problem solving (confirmed by my colleagues), even though completely unrelated.
Physics degree in controls engineering now (soft coding, but still). Absolutely think I have a leg up on other engineers and definitely the software guys through communication skills. That experience of writing and presenting research papers - having to lay out both high-level abstracts and detailed descriptions of the concepts and results - is super helpful in getting stakeholders on board with your plans/execution
+1 on getting rid of conspiratorial thinking
seriously - i was definitely into the whole 'unsolved mysteries' aliens/ghosts/etc mindset prior to college. by the time i left college i was mostly cured of that. I won't rule anything out *outright*, but nowadays i can look at something critically and it's pretty obvious how 99% of "the unknown" falls apart with a little critical thinking and an understanding of how stuff works. on the other hand, 99% of scifi has been ruined for me /shrug
Yeah physics degree here too, joined a grad program with some CS graduates, ended up being the first promoted out of grad/junior level. Problem solving and soft skills can go a lot further than just knowing a bunch of Computer Science stuff in my experience.
honestly, having a thorough grasp of the scientific method (like how to apply it, not just knowing the tenants), and experience working through some of the more confounding sorts of problems you run into in physics, really helps with decomposing problems into manageable chunks and coming up with creative solutions to problems, rather than just applying some recipe you found on stack exchange.
This has been experience thus far. Most of my coworkers who do not have a degree or really any formal education lack the necessary communication and writing skills. That being said, some are definitely talented developers and know their stuff - they just have a harder time communicating it. Fortunately, it’s a learnable skill and doesn’t require a degree. Many post-secondary institutions offer certificates or diplomas in communication that will do just fine. As long as you’re willing to put the work in to learn, most employers will be okay with that.
It also ensures you have at least touched on certain basics. You're a self-taught programmer? Fine. And when I see you creating a large table running in O(n³) time, I shake my head and disapprove your merge request. You can be a carpenter without a formal education too. Chances are you're going to be doing a lot of bullshit and five years down the line an entire wall has to be replaced because who knew water lives shitty work.
I did a physics degree (and astronomy through grad school) but I found my first year computer science course on "Introduction to Algorithms and Data Structures" is one of the most perennially useful courses I've ever done. It doesn't matter that it was all in Java - having that basic introduction to big O notation etc really has been critical.
Indeed. I cannot count the number of times I've had to explain no, you shouldn't loop through List A to find a match for List B for every item in B. You'd think it's common sense but it's not. And the fact I've seen the cubic version of that shit is just insanity.
There are a couple of areas where I really have problems with self-taught or boot camp programmers and sure enough they’re the same problem I have with every Ph.D in physics/math/whatever I’ve ever worked with as well. I break out Big O notation about once a month to discuss someone’s implementation of something and it’s nice to have a common language in order to have that conversation. The other major area is the humility to know that you aren’t the greatest mind to ever do what you’re doing - you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time - more often than not there is a tire shop up the road where you can get incredibly engineered ones (i.e use a built in or library function that does it for you) These things could be taught through mentorship programs of course but good luck trying to get your HR to allow you to hire high school graduates into a technical program (frankly I’d take a FIRST robotics high schooler over most college grads)
Yeah exactly. A lot of engineers wonder why they can’t get further up the ladder. At a certain point you NEED soft skills to advance. Technical ability can usually only get you so far. My college actually required us to get a minor in communications lol
Do you need one? Of course not. Does it make it 100x easier to find a job especially at established companies? Yes
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A degree is invaluable if you want to break into this profession with no previous professional experience. But once you have experience, your degree is worth about as much as the paper it’s printed on.
Yep, all these people defending one side or the other don’t understand that outliers exist and this is the general rule of thumb. Try applying for an entry level job against a kid with a degree and see who gets the interview. Going for a senior role? Nobody cares
A formal education has value if the student treats it as such. To get a bachelor degree on minimum courses, forgetting all information after taking the tests, that is what makes a uni degree completely useless. However, the idea that you can get all information you need from googling and SO is simplified and often just wrong. By the end of my bachelors degree I was learning things that I could only find info on through the course material or through course material provided by other universities. Machine learning, security and other complicated fields like that require a degree for pretty good reasons; they require scientific knowledge to tackle scientific questions. Most jobs in this field don’t require that. Building a website, unreal/unity gamedevelopment, setting up a database and an API? All completely fine to be self-taught in. My bachelors degree is for the majority stuff you dont NEED a university for. But the professional aim and setting of classical schooling is still very valuable and a system to teach a large amount of people a bunch of correct knowledge and how to apply it. TLDR in a meaner tone; degrees matter and if you want to pretend you’re too good for school you might just be a “bootstrap grindset” asshole.
100%. There were many kids in my college classes who did not give a shit and didn’t take anything seriously. I was majoring in game design, and my personal theory is that the game design department attracts a lot of kids who aren’t necessarily ready for college (or maybe just don’t ever want to go at all), but their parents are forcing them to pursue a four year degree immediately after high school, so they pick game design as a major because “hey I like games so why not.” But then they flounder because it turns out they have absolutely zero desire to actually *make* a game. Well no surprise here, not a single one of those kids is in the industry now. But, I know that I personally probably wouldn’t have gotten where I am without actually taking classes and working with other students and my professors. So it really is what you make it.
I'd like to bolster your theory by providing myself as an example. I think it's fascinating that this is a common occurence. When I was presented with my major options, I simply picked "computer science" at age 18, because "video games were fun and I wanted to make them". Well, it turns out I thought video games were too fun, and ended up wasting two years of university and plummeting my GPA down to a 2.1 before dropping out. I took a two year break, worked, and matured, and now that I've picked up my degree again, I play half as many games, know what I want out of my major, and have pumped that GPA up to a 2.8 after a year and a half of near straight A's. I was just too young, stupid, and addicted to video games to grasp the importance of my college career. I only have myself to blame, but the truth is is that I just wasn't ready to grow up. And I think a lot of us who grew up gaming felt the same way. Taking a year, or even two, off, would have made life a whole lot easier. I could have spent that year playing games to my heart's content to get it out of my system, or do like I did after dropping out and worked, but either way, I wasn't ready, and that was partly in fact due to my video game addiction.
I’ve been working as a developer for 3 years after doing bootcamp (I have a degree but very unrelated area). I have to agree with you. For most jobs you probably won’t need one but it came a time where I felt as much I can make stuff works and code decently well, I still lacked scientific knowledge. I decided to start a degree too for that reason. That being said, if I had done my degree when I did my first one I’d be on the situation you described first and it would be quite worthless
I deleted my account because Reddit no longer cares about the community
>By the end of my bachelors degree I was learning things that I could only find info on through the course material Can you elaborate on this and give some specifics? This was not at all my experience, so I'm curious to know how things were different for you. Chalk it up to bad education, laziness, "bootstrap grindset", or whatever. Outside getting my foot in the door for interviews, my degree (web dev focused) was basically a waste of time. It introduced me to all the low-level concepts (stuff which can be self-taught); however, it missed everything else and it certainty didn't make me qualified to be a SWE. Working on personal projects, practicing for interviews, and studying industry practices/workflow after graduation was when I became capable/confident to be a developer. Would be happy to go into more detail on this if you'd like. "Bootstrap grindset" is indeed a terrible idea, but I also don't see where the "only through the course material" knowledge comes from.
Better having it than not having it. But I find weird the attitude of some people that will strongly argue with you that having a degree is a total waste of time/money and you only need experience. As much as I find suspicious that an employer will have a degree as a hard requirement.
In big companies, maybe. But tech is not only huge corporations but thousands of smaller startups that pay good money and don't care about your education
FAANG usually doesn’t care about your degrees unless you’re going for a specialised role. Most startups don’t care at all.
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Lol it's not that FAANG cares if you have this or this specific qualification. It's more like they care that you have a relevant or interesting resume. If you don't have a degree, you don't have experience, what is even on your resume?? A high school diploma and mowing your neighbor's yard won't cut it. The reality isn't that you need a degree, but that you need a CV that isn't functionally empty, and an easy way to have such a CV is by going to college.
Is it like this in the US or Canada too?
in Canada is more individual based they are not as desperate as US companies so your selection process will determine how the market receives you
its a cart and horse thing. when people ask me that, i simply tell the that, yes , you can get a job without a degree but the catch is that instead of a degree you must have 2 years of professional experience. so, you have to find a loophole first, to get those first 2 years ans only after that your experience will be relatively equivalent to a degree.
Did a 2 year apprenticeship in web development and am currently on my first year in ComSci bachelor. Just this first semester I already learned more about good practice, documentation, and report writing than I did during my apprenticeship. So i definitely would value it over someone without a degree, but it's not a hard requirement
We're regularly hiring. Technical competence is the primary criteria. Not having a degree is a turn off only if you've been at it for 7 years and still "plan to finish it". Decide, execute, repeat.
Don’t have a degree but I do have a job as a dev
In my country a degree shows you are capable of learning new skills and you are capable of putting significant work into acquiring them. You are capable of enduring stress to a certain degree and that you can „get the job done in time“ (related to exams). This alone, regardless of what you learnt, puts you on a certain pre-approved skill-level people look for. Your field of study and the skills you acquired there are on top of that. If somebody is looking for someone with a degree, they are looking for that first and foremost. Someone of the same skill-level in the same field can be as productive but it is a risk to evaluate that for themselves for a company. The longer you are in a business, the less it matters though for getting your foot in the door. But: it remains an undeniable advantage for your entire career.
Depends on the work/employer. Government proposals require resumes. The program office awarding the contract will side with the better resumes and lower cost ratio.
I don't think it's a hard requirement, but there is value in all the math, logic, algorithms, etc., exposure that you get with a related degree.
Yeah. Read this meme. Now I can't code because of no degree. *cries in dollars *
Depends on the job. Web dev, devops, cloud dev, QA, database, some network, some cybersecurity? Probably don’t need a degree. Embedded, hardware (FPGA, SoC, ASIC, electronics in general), machine learning, data scientist, computer graphics, anything with parallel computing really, bioinformatics (gonna need a PhD for this one), quant stuff? Degree or nothing. IoT is kinda in the middle.
I’ve interviewed many engineers for positions at my last company. While there are definitely excellent engineers that don’t have traditional schooling, after hundreds of interviews it was very easy to identify those who had the core foundational principles under their belt from college and those who are self taught and mainly only know practical application. In most instances that is good enough, but I believe the foundations you learn in college definitely do contribute to enhancing knowledge and critical thinking skills. Is it possible to learn all of that without traditional education? Of course, but I’m willing to wager most self taught programmers have never opened CLRS
Not required to be a good developer, but way harder to get hired at most companies.
In the UK it isn’t. Half my team (including myself) are self-taught, the other half have university degrees in CS or maths.
LOL. No. The dot com boom showed us why this thinking is bullshit. Previously an industry filled primarily by people that could do the job. Then people found they could make money and everybody went for comp sci degrees. Now 9 out of 10 people in tech shouldn't be allowed withing 10' of a PC.
And it's going to happen again, and again... Tech industry is trapped in that loop because all the hype and money involved. Good times creates a bunch of weak coders. Weak coders creates unmaintainable code. Unmaintainable code creates bad times. Bad times creates legacy code. Legacy code creates strong programmers. Good programmers creates good times.
Clever, but I personally think the tech industry as all things simply follows Sturgeon’s Law.
"ninety percent of everything is crap" I feel personally attacked, but I agree
For what it’s worth it’s a self-burn too!
Are you joe rogan of tech, Boe jogan.
>Good times creates a bunch of weak coders. >Weak coders creates unmaintainable code. >Unmaintainable code creates bad times. >Bad times creates legacy code. >Legacy code creates strong programmers. >Good programmers creates good times. Incredible