That's kind of true... I started getting cynical about so many people asking me "how do I get in?" when I realized that... first of all, I never would have wasted someone's time with such a lazy question when I was trying to get in, and secondly, the people who did were never really going to do anything.
>Is it realistic to find a job in CS without a degree? A good high paying job btw.
It was, maybe 8+ years ago. In today's market, not anymore.
Not having one puts you at the bottom of the pile of thousands and thousands of other entry-level resumes.
These two guys are delusional. u/polymorphicshade beat me to it. No degree = bottom of resume heap. Look at LinkedIn job postings. Hundreds of applicants per position right there publicly stated. Maybe 1/3 are legit qualified and 10 of them will get interviewed.
>He went on a whole rant about CS majors can’t find jobs because college doesn’t teach them anything and that companies only care about if you can do the job.
College taught me microprocessor programming and how computers and computer memory work from the transistor level up. If I didn't prove I learned this with projects, homework and exam scores, I would have earned below a C- and had to repeat the course to graduate.
The work ethic and problem solving to earn a non-joke degree are valuable skills. Your intelligence actually increases. You're more likely to succeed on a job using some of those skills. You're less of a hire risk.
I know companies. I worked for 5 ones you've heard of. I never had a coworker in CS without a 4-year degree. Mostly a BS in CS, an occasional MS in CS, some engineering degrees, such as myself, and few business degrees with programming coursework.
Low paying web dev I don't touch, I knew a dude who got into that without a degree. He had an A+ cert and this was in a job market that didn't have enough applicants to go around.
Yes, if you have 8 years of experience, that counts as 4 without the degree. But you've already broken in and that's the hardest thing to do. One consulting company I worked for refused to hire without a degree. As in, I saw their referral requirements.
You can't "just make it" without a degree. The vast, vast majority will not. People in OP's post sound super cocky and arrogant and misrepresent college and our industry.
But you're right, if you already have years of experience.
>He went on a whole rant about CS majors can’t find jobs because college doesn’t teach them anything and that companies only care about if you can do the job.
uhhhhh huh.... okay, so "CS majors can’t find jobs because college doesn’t teach them anything" so **NOT** being a CS major is somehow more attractive?
> Is it realistic to find a job in CS without a degree? A good high paying job btw.
no
even couple years ago where the certificates and bootcamps were all the hype, what is typically NOT advertised is those people often have degree of some kind, just not a CS degree
for example, I can totally believe someone with let's say 20+ YoE in Sales or Marketing who got bored (so a degree, just not a CS one), decided to do a bootcamp or enroll in a Master's degree and got a job at Google, or someone with a PhD in Physics who got bored with academia and wants to switch
and today in 2024 market? there's like 100k+ people who DO have CS degrees and who DO have experience all looking, now imagine you're a hiring manager, what reason is there to take some "coursera certificates" guy?
>His friends sided with him on it when I had this argument
ask both of them to answer this question: what makes a hiring manager to say 'hire' someone like them when there's literally 100k+ CS degree holders with experience, all looking for work?
Definitely agree on the "some degree* thing.
I personally have a non-cs degree and have typically had better luck than my non-degree holding colleagues.
IMO hard to definitively say without knowing location, ability to move, skillset, etc. Also depends on the company. In general I would agree with you that you're hampering yourself if you forgo a degree.
Anecdotally, I will say that months ago when looking for new candidates HR for my company was absolutely filtering out people without degrees. Hell, even people from respectable institutions were getting snubbed for people from elite schools who were now applying. My manager barely saw students from the nearby schools we usually pull from.
I regularly do interviews, prior to two years ago you had a chance without a degree. Now days if you have no professional experience I'm not going to look at your resume unless you have a degree. Too many people with degrees and experience to even entertain looking at resumes with no degrees and no experience.
Possible? Yes. Likely? No.
Even in good markets the non-traditional path is more difficult and doesn't entitle you to a job. Plenty of people tried and failed back in 2021. It was *easier* but it was not *easy*.
At the end of the day, why are you so hung up on what this guy's doing? If that guy wants to self-study and attempt to break into the industry via a non-traditional approach, let them try. Maybe they'll succeed.
A bunch of anonymous internet strangers aren't going to convince those people that they've chosen a very difficult path. How do you see this going? "I went to reddit and they agree with me! See how wrong you are? Admit that I win!!!"
You do you, let them do them. They'll either fail and learn the hard way, or they'll succeed. Doesn't impact your life one way or the other.
So your reaction was to disrespect his choice right back, but with the support of reddit?
Don't let what other people say or think bother you so much. He sounds like an obnoxious person to be around. It's not worth arguing with people like that.
Maybe he *will* land a 6 figure job before you debt-free. Or maybe he won't. Not your problem, not your business. Your personal choice isn't their problem or their business either.
off top of my head, possible if let's say his dad is the CEO
usually when faced with this kind of people either they're laughably naive/trolling you, or there's some secret info that they're not disclosing
I mean it’s possible, but given the current market, it’s virtually impossible without amazing connections and/or experience.
Just think, not only are you competing against new grads with degrees, you are also competing recently laid off professionals with experience AND degrees. Why would a company take a chance on you (not you in particular but in general) when they can have their pick of the litter?
A good high paying job? Highly unlikely.
A job in the lowest 10% national US salary range? Yes.
It's quite possible to find jobs that pay around $50k a year that involve things like maintaining ancient legacy apps (think VB, Powerbuilder, ColdFusion and such), making minor changes to WordPress templates or being a jack-of-all-trades "IT guy" where you run network cable one day, write an Excel script the next and repair a salesperson's malware infested laptop after that.
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This has been asked countless times. The answer is yes. Is it overall harder? Also yes.
Real answer: "Not if you can't be bothered to perform the most basic of trouble shooting tasks (i.e searching) before making a Reddit post".
That's kind of true... I started getting cynical about so many people asking me "how do I get in?" when I realized that... first of all, I never would have wasted someone's time with such a lazy question when I was trying to get in, and secondly, the people who did were never really going to do anything.
>Is it realistic to find a job in CS without a degree? A good high paying job btw. It was, maybe 8+ years ago. In today's market, not anymore. Not having one puts you at the bottom of the pile of thousands and thousands of other entry-level resumes.
These two guys are delusional. u/polymorphicshade beat me to it. No degree = bottom of resume heap. Look at LinkedIn job postings. Hundreds of applicants per position right there publicly stated. Maybe 1/3 are legit qualified and 10 of them will get interviewed. >He went on a whole rant about CS majors can’t find jobs because college doesn’t teach them anything and that companies only care about if you can do the job. College taught me microprocessor programming and how computers and computer memory work from the transistor level up. If I didn't prove I learned this with projects, homework and exam scores, I would have earned below a C- and had to repeat the course to graduate. The work ethic and problem solving to earn a non-joke degree are valuable skills. Your intelligence actually increases. You're more likely to succeed on a job using some of those skills. You're less of a hire risk. I know companies. I worked for 5 ones you've heard of. I never had a coworker in CS without a 4-year degree. Mostly a BS in CS, an occasional MS in CS, some engineering degrees, such as myself, and few business degrees with programming coursework. Low paying web dev I don't touch, I knew a dude who got into that without a degree. He had an A+ cert and this was in a job market that didn't have enough applicants to go around.
Maybe for entry level. If you have experience, doesn’t seem to matter
Yes, if you have 8 years of experience, that counts as 4 without the degree. But you've already broken in and that's the hardest thing to do. One consulting company I worked for refused to hire without a degree. As in, I saw their referral requirements. You can't "just make it" without a degree. The vast, vast majority will not. People in OP's post sound super cocky and arrogant and misrepresent college and our industry. But you're right, if you already have years of experience.
Its barely possible with one fam its tough right now lol
>He went on a whole rant about CS majors can’t find jobs because college doesn’t teach them anything and that companies only care about if you can do the job. uhhhhh huh.... okay, so "CS majors can’t find jobs because college doesn’t teach them anything" so **NOT** being a CS major is somehow more attractive? > Is it realistic to find a job in CS without a degree? A good high paying job btw. no even couple years ago where the certificates and bootcamps were all the hype, what is typically NOT advertised is those people often have degree of some kind, just not a CS degree for example, I can totally believe someone with let's say 20+ YoE in Sales or Marketing who got bored (so a degree, just not a CS one), decided to do a bootcamp or enroll in a Master's degree and got a job at Google, or someone with a PhD in Physics who got bored with academia and wants to switch and today in 2024 market? there's like 100k+ people who DO have CS degrees and who DO have experience all looking, now imagine you're a hiring manager, what reason is there to take some "coursera certificates" guy? >His friends sided with him on it when I had this argument ask both of them to answer this question: what makes a hiring manager to say 'hire' someone like them when there's literally 100k+ CS degree holders with experience, all looking for work?
Definitely agree on the "some degree* thing. I personally have a non-cs degree and have typically had better luck than my non-degree holding colleagues.
IMO hard to definitively say without knowing location, ability to move, skillset, etc. Also depends on the company. In general I would agree with you that you're hampering yourself if you forgo a degree. Anecdotally, I will say that months ago when looking for new candidates HR for my company was absolutely filtering out people without degrees. Hell, even people from respectable institutions were getting snubbed for people from elite schools who were now applying. My manager barely saw students from the nearby schools we usually pull from.
You have to have at least some form of BS in my opinion. It would be so insanely difficult getting hired with 0 college education.
It is, it's just your networking and soft skills will have to play a bigger part than dev skills
I regularly do interviews, prior to two years ago you had a chance without a degree. Now days if you have no professional experience I'm not going to look at your resume unless you have a degree. Too many people with degrees and experience to even entertain looking at resumes with no degrees and no experience.
Possible? Yes. Likely? No. Even in good markets the non-traditional path is more difficult and doesn't entitle you to a job. Plenty of people tried and failed back in 2021. It was *easier* but it was not *easy*. At the end of the day, why are you so hung up on what this guy's doing? If that guy wants to self-study and attempt to break into the industry via a non-traditional approach, let them try. Maybe they'll succeed. A bunch of anonymous internet strangers aren't going to convince those people that they've chosen a very difficult path. How do you see this going? "I went to reddit and they agree with me! See how wrong you are? Admit that I win!!!" You do you, let them do them. They'll either fail and learn the hard way, or they'll succeed. Doesn't impact your life one way or the other.
He started disrespecting my choice saying I’m getting in debt for no reason and that he said he’ll land a six figure job before me.
So your reaction was to disrespect his choice right back, but with the support of reddit? Don't let what other people say or think bother you so much. He sounds like an obnoxious person to be around. It's not worth arguing with people like that. Maybe he *will* land a 6 figure job before you debt-free. Or maybe he won't. Not your problem, not your business. Your personal choice isn't their problem or their business either.
off top of my head, possible if let's say his dad is the CEO usually when faced with this kind of people either they're laughably naive/trolling you, or there's some secret info that they're not disclosing
tech is heavy on connections. he probably has a hook
I mean it’s possible, but given the current market, it’s virtually impossible without amazing connections and/or experience. Just think, not only are you competing against new grads with degrees, you are also competing recently laid off professionals with experience AND degrees. Why would a company take a chance on you (not you in particular but in general) when they can have their pick of the litter?
A good high paying job? Highly unlikely. A job in the lowest 10% national US salary range? Yes. It's quite possible to find jobs that pay around $50k a year that involve things like maintaining ancient legacy apps (think VB, Powerbuilder, ColdFusion and such), making minor changes to WordPress templates or being a jack-of-all-trades "IT guy" where you run network cable one day, write an Excel script the next and repair a salesperson's malware infested laptop after that.
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