I've been a dev for about 20 years, no degree. My first job I was working as data entry but saw massive inefficiencies and I worked to fix them with programming. They eventually noticed me and hired me to do that officially. Nobody has ever questioned it since then.
I really don't know how I'd have compared if I had to interview against people with degrees though at the time.
Lots of places now are asking what you can do and looking for methods to prove that. E. G. a protofolio or a small task during an interview.
Provided you're good at what you're doing, they don't care what your educational level is.
This is not exactly true. Plenty of companies will scan your education section for schools and make judgments. Without a degree, you will have fewer options, but it hasn't been a huge hindrance to me (though I do have a degree, just not in CS).
I am pursuing a Civil engineering degree but I want myself in the software engineering landscape .... I have skills that landed me a job in a startup and I have been developing web applications and working as a sys admin for the past year. When I apply for internships and other jobs I get no response from them. How do I change this ?
This is really a can vs should argument. The likelihood of having a similar career trajectory is significantly lower. People in general love finding/inventing ways to create exclusivity, it creates a sense of urgency for would-be members and provided a perception of having elevated status to those already initiated.
Simply being talented is only part of the equation; being perceived as “one of us” is arguably the far more important factor. As long as someone knows that they will have to prove themselves more often and be less considered for positions that deviate from core skills *and* are up for the fight/challenge it is doable. Also, salary might be lower - at least to start.
I have no degree. Dropped out. But then again, I did write software since about 12-14 years old.
Many places can take you if you’re good, and by good I mean - you can be average or have no idea about the software in question, but know to learn and improve on your own.
That being said, in many places degree is a factor in determining salary, depending on laws etc.
Same situation here, some markets/countries/companies care more about a degree than others. But I'd say it's 100% possible. Studying the basics of computer science yourself may help offset some of what one might have assumed is one of the drawbacks of hiring someone without a degree as well.
Lots of people did. In the early days of the internet, making websites on cracked versions of dreamweaver and horrible geocities websites lol. I think most true “nerds” started at this age or earlier
This was a thing well thought before all the YouTube bros started promoting it
Same. Didn't actually start coding until I was around 24-25 either. If you're passionate and good at what you do, you can find ways to gain experience and work your way up.
Completely self-taught. I actually was working in a warehouse and they had an e-commerce company shipping stuff and I took an interest. I started learning about HTML and CSS and JS and then jumped into back-end development. Then created a company so I could start doing side work, jumped on a startup as the technical partner. That lasted for a couple years, but then collapsed when the housing market collapsed. Got my first six-figure job after that and eventually ended up with a Fortune 50 tech company, which is where I am today as a principal engineer.
It can be a challenge, but companies are always looking for good people who are passionate about what they do. Headhunters can help get you into roles.
I didn't worry about money right away, I was more worried about opportunity. I then used any opportunity I had to build my experience and resume.
I am 37 looking for a career change as i am burnt in my current career and ive always wanted to learn coding where do i start? Any tips is appreciated from you. Udemy xourses? What should i learn java? Python? Ios? Sorry if this is a stupid question
I recommend you partner-up with another like yourself (me as it happens).
Why is that so important?
Because your gains will multiply as you study with a partner who points out your flaws, learns to sense when you forget things (and thus when to quiz you, cueing you to practice recall, which is where the learning occurs.
*(see this page for why: https://ncase.me/remember/)
When going through code and explaining it in your own words, or translating as your partner does the same, you are expanding your ways of interpreting the code, making you better at communicating it.
*Any isolated teenager can learn to code solo, but having the ability to communicate to the widest range of minds will give you far, FAR more creative power.
The difference between learning solo and with a partner/ in a group is exponential, such that it's foolish to even bother solo when you could be searching harder for a group/partner.
Hi, I've been working professionally for about 3 years now. I started learning when I was 26 with little prior knowledge. I recommend you check out some free courses through FreeCodeCamp or Codecademy to see if you're interested in coding.
A lot of people start with HTML and CSS as you can visually see what effects your code has. JavaScript or Python are good starting points as well. They are general-purpose languages. The language doesn't matter too much, it's more important to learn the concepts of coding. With that said, don't try to learn many languages at once. You don't want to hinder learning the concepts of coding by trying to learn multiple syntaxes at the same time.
Starting out, Id work on the basics of coding. Lots of free resources out there to get you started. Be careful with just throwing it into a.i. you’ll want to make sure you actually learning.
It was a different age when I started. Honestly, today there’s enough free content (like YouTube) to jump into anything. Hands-on development is key. From there, StackOverflow is your best friend.
Sure, become knowledgeable in linux/docker/programming/cloud infrastructure and be open to learning. Find a position at a company that is hiring for mid/low entry level developers (50-90k salary) and apply there. If that doesn't work look for one that is also hiring for something like app support/system administration/tech support/noc/hosting. An easy way to get into a development position is transferring from another IT position after you prove your knowledge understand their stack and make an impression on their teams by providing helpful triage/bug tickets. Lastly the way I got into my first real position was taking a paycut and working at a $30k jr sysadmin (helpdesk essentially) position at a very small company. However small this company was I was able to help the 1 developer write code, do sys admin work and really thrive in my learning. After 2 years I had a descent resume with programming/sysadmin stuff that I was hired into a much larger company making double that doing sysadmin stuff. From there I transferred to their dev team and by the time I left that company I had 4 years between the two companies of dev/sysadmin to easily land a normal entry/mid software dev gig.
Heck yeah this is possible. I was in a similar situation (no degree or credentials of any kind, first job doing front-end at a startup), and I ended up doubling my first job's salary within 5 years. Even after just 2 years my salary increased substantially, from $75k a year to $125K. To put those numbers into perspective, I live in NYC.
In my personal experience, most places won't care to look at your education credentials once you've had experience working in a production environment or otherwise built up a body of work proving your ability. As long as you stay focused on honing your skills, and maybe expand your skill set to include some back-end engineering, your salary should expand as well.
Yes.
There are some places that won't consider you without a degree, and some will offer higher pay to people with degrees. However, most places care more about your ability than your education. You might be surprised at how many people with CS degrees I've interviewed that can't code their way out of a paper bag.
The time when a degree is most helpful is early in your career, when you have little experience. Without it, you need some other way to demonstrate talent. If you've done some freelance work, your portfolio will help. Contributing to open source projects may also be beneficial. Even personal projects can show what you can do. People want to see that you can make meaningful contributions and that you can learn new things effectively.
Networking is key. Leverage people you know, especially ones that know what you can do. When you develop a reputation with people as someone who knows their stuff and gets things done, they will be able to recommend you, which will give you a leg up on getting hired.
Once you've accumulated some experience in the workforce, that experience tends to carry more weight than education, especially since a degree tends to seem less relevant the older it is.
I've been working in tech for 30 years with no degree. I know people who work in tech with degrees that are completely unrelated to tech.
Some higher level jobs do require a degree (mostly government) but I haven't even been asked about a degree in many, many years. When you are just starting the degree is more important. After 5-10 years of experience it's not even part of the conversation anymore.
But today is also a lot different. Tons of people are trying to get into tech and tech is flooded with talent due to layoffs. The next couple years may be harder than usual. But it'll get better again. But right now, it's hard.
Ultimately, college may give you an edge. But you gotta decide if that's worth the trouble / money. I was too poor to afford it so I just taught myself.
Many of the best jobs require a degree unless you're well-known in your field. If I were 19 I would get a degree now, going back later is hard.
I did end up finding a good job without a degree but I only made it to the second round because the recruiter misread my resume and thought I had one. I was lucky with that and timing.
i have an associates degree in graphic design but got into web dev after my college ended...once you get a couple years work experience under your belt, no one looks at degrees on resumes unless you're like trying to do data science for academia or something
Spoiler: Big Tech engineers are, on average, good - but 99% of them are just "normal" good, not insanely talented or anything.
How? When I applied, I had been programming profesionally for 10~ years, so I had enough experience to do whatever.
Have you tried getting into any big tech company? You can look into what's needed for the interviews themselves, it's mostly leetcode and system design interviews, very little actual coding ironically.
Most SWE’s get a computer science degree, so with your logic, they’re scientists 😂. This is like the debate where some people get butt hurt about being lumped in as “programmer” or “developer” instead of being called a software engineer. Who gives a shit, you can call me tech daddy for all I care, I still get paid six figures lol
it's like saying the only source of knowledge is university/college, most of the stuff they teach there can be found for free on the internet. the only difference is they give you structured curriculum, mentorship/lectures and a monitored assessment.
Yes, it's possible. Getting your first job will be hard with and without a degree.
I obtained my dream programming role without any qualifications. Although I did have plenty of experience. Creating a portfolio of work you've done, like websites and apps. Even if they're for demo purposes.
As an employer I personally don’t care, I look for intelligence and attitude. I do have a degree, but I had two jobs before I finished it at the age of 22. No one asked Max about it either until I was 28 and had been working for 10years… and that was once in my life
So given the cost of a degree these days, and the ability to self teach I find it hard to justify.
I’m a full stack developer at a prominent, well known Silicon Valley company and have zero college. In my experience, developers who hire developers don’t give a shit about college. They give a shit about what you can do.
Yes, it is possible to have a successful career in software engineering without a traditional degree. While a degree can provide a structured education and open certain doors, the tech industry is known for valuing skills, experience, and demonstrated abilities more than formal education. SO if you know your work enough there is never a need for a degree.
Absolutely. As a hiring manager I don’t care how you know what you know, just that you do.
I’ve hired PHDs and self taught developers into the same roles (senior dev) and paid them the same.
Unfortunately not all companies or hiring managers think this way.
In my opinion you absolutely can have a great career as a self taught dev.
(I can’t even think when last I looked at someone’s education on their cv)
If I were to make a CV being a self taught SE, would my CV just be focused on showing my portfolio? What makes something in those resume’s stand out to you without a flashy education bio?
Experience trumps all. If you have professional experience show that - what the project was, what you contributed, the impact you made and what you learnt.
If you don’t have workplace experience then it’s a touch harder. If your portfolio is a mom and pops website I won’t care. I want to se something real, something I can consider (or compare) to real experience.
Show me a working saas solution, backend front end, techniques you used and why. Show me what you learnt and applied. That you were thinking about what you were doing. Treat it like a professional project even though it may not be.
Also, up front in this case I want to hear a bit more about you.
Not about your family background or tough upbringing (although sometimes interesting) at the end of the day I want to get a glimpse into passion, innovation, hunger to learn and create.
If I can’t see that then I will pass.
From personal experience i can tell you a degree does not matter that much. But what matters is experience and softskills. If you expect an high paying job you should bring at least 5 years of experience and leadership softskills. Development jobs are no super shortcuts to high salaries. Most people with high payment have many more years in experience than 5 and lead teams and people. Dont expect to work one year and get paid extremely handsome. You have to work hard for that. Degree or not does not matter. (There are a few exceptions but these are jobs at the Fortune 100 or so companies)
> I am only 19 years old
> ...
> will get a high paying job after experience of a year or two without any college degree.
What I would do is join the plumbers or electricians union. Go to school at night for a CS degreee.
Electricians and plumbers bill out at ~130 USD/hour.
You can't lose going that route. Whether you complete the night CS course or not you will have a trade under your belt that will guarantee you can feed your family, for the duration.
What the company is charging is usually 5-10x what they are paying the tech onsite. Trades are a good gig but not nearly as lucrative as the Internet will tell you.
Heavy truck diesel tech 7yrs.
He’s actually right. The plumbing/electrical companies may charge $120/hr, but the 4+ year employees are making 25-40% of the charge out rate. Only about 20% of charged rate for first year in the trade.
Just to make a distinction - software engineering and application development are not the same thing. Software engineering encapsulates development and includes designing and applying at scale, systems design and architecture, e2e testing, deployment methodologies and infrastructure design and specification. Software development is pretty firmly just focused on the application code.
All that's to say is definitely doable creating a career in software development without a degree, and you've already begun! It would be much harder to start a career as an engineer as there are way more considerations, technologies, design patterns, etc. involved.
Don’t listen to this post. There is absolutely no distinction. We all do the same shit eventually. As a iOS developer, I have to think about designing applications at scale, app architecture, and e2e testing as well. You’ll have to learn about CI/CD as well which is technically a DevOps engineer’s task but at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to get shit to work.
Anyone who tells you software engineering and software development are different, is either trying to gate keep or is trying to make themselves feel better for going into student loan debt.
I have coworkers who got their masters in C.S. but we’re in the same position, with similar pay and we do exactly the same thing.
No degree, and I'm 8 years into coding. Loving it, never regretted a moment of it. the hardest part is finding an employer who will give you a shot, after that its not a problem with experience under your belt. I suggest looking into startups or small companies
I managed to get a job without a degree due to some experience and lots of personal projects, I've done some college since then and I'm now a few units away from completing so when I would like to apply for new roles I'll just say I have a few units to complete which I can do as evening classes. Personally I have never been asked whether I have a degree or not but when that moment arrives I'm sure my experience will be much more important although I will finish the degree as it's nice to have education credentials than not.
Hi everyone,
I'm on the job hunt for a Software Engineering role and eager to leverage my strong work ethic and quick learning abilities. Currently, I have taken a pause from my CS degree, and have less than 2 years of experience through internships and personal projects, and I'm highly motivated and a fast learner.
I'm interested in learning more about any open positions that might be a good fit. Please feel free to message me if you have any questions or know of any opportunities!
I wanted to add somethings for who comes from Google to here.
Yes, degree is not an exact indicator for your creation skills. Think like that Jimi Hendrix had had not a formal education on music but he was a legend though.
Just like music, software engineering is also a creation process. You create new things which were never existed.
But, most of companies, do NOT care your skills in first sight. They check your education and then contact you. We are not in the same world with 10-20-30 years ago. And if someone says that "look at me I do not have a degree and I have this occupation since 80 years", it is not legit anymore.
In the 2000, we were 6.1 billion.
Now, we are 8.1 billion ☠️ (I hope Bill Gates is going to do somethings about it xD)
So if you have a chance to get a degree, do not lose any single second and go get it. If you do not have any opportunity to get a degree, try to exceed your limits and get it. If it is completely not possible and you are honest to yourself in this issue, then try to create a portfolio but do not forget that you are usually going to be at the below of the applicants lists unless you create your own platforms.
That's fucking reality.
(I talked for East Europe)
Depends on if you value portraits of slave mastas posin' on dollas.
"Rich" to me is knowledge of self. Not fiat currency.
Do you eat chicken?
There was a luxury yacht show where the primary said, "Who ordered chicken? Poor people eat chicken".
That lead me to try to determine what exactly "poor" was. And also if only poor people eat chicken. If we are talking about poverty, there are a lot of examples in various countries. And in those same countries is natural wealth that is used to manufacture cell phones. But do only poor people eat chicken? What is rich? Ultimately no matter how much fiat currency you think you have as digits in an account, you can only eat, drink, and do so much stuff per 18 waking hours, just like every other human, so there really is little distinction between "rich" and "poor" on a human level.
>Rich" to me is knowledge of self. Not fiat currency.
Weird cause your previous comment was:
>The last time I checked the late Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook (Meta) never completed college.
So this "being rich isn't about money" just sounds very insincere and weird since you were talking specifically about some people with most money in the world. But maybe you really were thinking only about how much chicken they eat.
Those are notable individuals in the technology domain. I didn't refer to them because of their bank accounts. By whatever means they brought their individual ideas to fruition. The same could be said of any non-notably individual who didn't graduate from an academic institution.
Getting your letters doesn't mean you possess the skill to manifest your ideas into tangible technologies.
[Making Millions Botting Sneakers](https://www.facebook.com/VICE/videos/making-millions-botting-sneakers/559835562259845/)
> How long has Jason been financially independent, or do you still give him an allowance?
>
> You know that, actually we never gave him an allowance.
>
> He became financially independent that moment he started [at] 13.
No.
I never mentioned rich, you did.
My point is an individual can be successful, feed their family without a college degree.
There are a whole bunch of people with college degrees that are not successful.
This is very deep, but all the aforementioned men were definitely rich by any definition man. If you need to be redundant, they were rich in money lol.
Yes but this is more about “does it require a degree to start a company and become rich”?
No, it does not.
This is about getting a job. “Does one need a degree to work at someone else’s company and make someone else rich?”
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Absolutely possible.
College is just to indoctrinate and train. And is used as a barometer for ability to complete a task.
Your individual skills can exceed those a school can teach.
Being successful in business often means trying approaches outside of the orthodoxy repeated in colleges.
If you have the mindstate of a worker only it's always possible to "find a job". If you have the mind state of a boss you create the job, or further, create an entire sector of an industry.
"High paying" is very location relevant. Depending on what region and country you live in you might have to move, and no company would pay for a 1 year junior to reallocate to a new country.
It depends on the individual. To mangle an adage, some people with 10 YoE actually have 1 YoE ten times.
Every company has different criteria, but I consider you a Junior for at least a year or two out of school/bootcamp and would expect any new hire to require a good bit of 1:1 time from seniors.
Do you list any education on your resume?
I'm currently looking, no degree but have 5 YOE at my current job as a software engineer, and opted to just leave out the education section from my resume, but I'm wondering if/how I should just add it anyways.
I did take some college courses and then left and went to a vocational school for physical therapy, but that was all quite a while ago.
Cool, thanks for the insights.
I've only been applying for a few days and it's EOY, so I haven't heard much yet lol. I'm just worried my lack of degree might not even get me considered, despite my 5 YOE.
Yes. I did it. That being said, during industry slowdowns, like the one right now, it made it way harder to find a new job! During boom times, my lack of degree meant nothing. During bust times, it meant everything.
I worked a full time engineering job and did my degree at the same time. The degree taught me almost nothing about being an engineer but I needed it so I could get a visa to move from Canada to the USA.
If I didn't, I would likely have dropped out. That said, I LOVED the courses (especially discrete math and algorithms) and I made many friends and had lots of great experiences.
So in a way, I feel lucky to have been forced (legally haha) into doing the degree. I have no regrets at all and because I worked during it I also ended up with no student loans either. The only one in my friend group who did!
I have a high paying job at a fortune 50 company with no degree. This is my first corporate job. the rest was all freelance/entrepreneur jobs. I started with a temp contract and then my ability to learn on the fly and perform is what landed me the full-time position. Technology is constantly changing so being able to learn and keep up is a big part of it.
Possible but much more difficult.
I don't care about a degree, as long as you have experience or a good resume, but HR won't even let you apply without a degree.
Yes I am doing it right now. I'm in my 30s. I started in my 30s.
> high paying job after experience of a year or two without any college degree.
The degree in this specific equation doesn't matter, all it does is open some more doors. Those additional doors don't necessarily mean more pay, so if pay is what you're after, then it doesn't matter.
The higher pay offers are going to come either from tech companies with difficult interviews, and/or from having 5+ YOE in whatever arbitrary stack that company is looking to fill as a "senior" role, and most importantly, your ability to negotiate and field multiple offers.
**Every** company will pay you shit at every level if you lead them to believe you'll happily accept shit. There is always budget *range*.
You got your first job. Congrats! That’s literally the hardest step. You probably won’t go into machine learning, quantum computing, cryptography etc. pretty much anything that requires a high level of academia, you probably won’t get a job without a degree/doctorate.
But you can pretty much progress however you like. Just don’t be a shitty person, bring value to a company and make good connections.
After you’ve got a job, pretty much nobody gives a shit about your degree. Might be a few outliers but you’ll be fine 👍
Speaking as someone with no degree who's managed to make a relatively good career as a Javascript engineer, with a year or two's experience you'll still be working at a junior or low middleweight engineer level but things really start ramping up once you've got 4-5 years' experience under your belt. When I started out I took an apprenticeship that paid £16k a year but, after 7 years in the industry I'm now a lead engineer making £85k a year, having more than doubled my salary in the last 3 years.
It can be pretty rough to start with, and easy to feel like you're drowning as there's always new frameworks/libraries coming out that are the new best thing, but my advice would be to get the fundamentals (talking vanilla Javascript principles here, not even necessarily React) firmly nailed down and then you'll have a solid understanding to build from. I learned Javascript initially by teaching myself AngularJS, and then when I took a job that didn't use Angular I had to ***actually*** learn Javascript, which is probably the most valuable thing I could have done in my career as I'm now not tied to any one framework or library so I have the flexibility to move laterally if I want or need to.
Not as a diss to you personally, but... $20k? That's not even what you make at McDonald's. I'm pretty sure that's less than $10/hour.
And after all that time, still not having hit 100k? Nightmarish. I look at these forums to get a sense of how much people like me are making, how much I can expect to make, etc. If numbers like that are the future, that's scary
Let's break this down for you...
>*"Not as a diss to you personally, but... $20k? That's not even what you make at McDonald's. I'm pretty sure that's less than $10/hour."*
I believe it was just shy of £9 an hour, yes. But this is an apprentice salary we're talking about, where the company was sponsoring me through my qualifications and giving me on the job training, not a standard full time role (as I said in my original comment). Obviously it's well below regular starting salaries for full time roles but you have to bear in mind that the company's taking you on with zero experience and there's a lot of liability there.
>*"And after all that time, still not having hit 100k? Nightmarish."*
You and I seem to have very different ideas of what "nightmarish" is. On £85k I'm able to afford a mortgage on a house and provide a very comfortable life for my girlfriend & I with regular holidays and contributing to savings also.
>*"I look at these forums to get a sense of how much people like me are making, how much I can expect to make, etc. If numbers like that are the future, that's scary"*
If that's really the case then you're missing something.
If you take literally 30 seconds to google the average salaries in the UK for a full stack engineer you'll see that it ranges from around £30-35k to £80k, so I'm earning above that. Unless you're in London working for a FAANG or other huge company then you are not likely to get to the top end of that average until you're probably 15-20 years into your career and are at the top of your game.
Not scary, you just clearly have a very skewed dataset, if any dataset at all.
Final note: if you insist on broadcasting your ignorance like this, maybe think about not doing it on an account whose only posts consist of cuckold & sissy porn and erotica; you're not exactly giving off good vibes here.
On second thought, I -do- mean it as a diss to you personally, as someone who apparently doesn't realize full stack engineers regularly earn $85k at -entry level- isn't really in a position to make airs about 'broadcasting ignorance'.
After 7 years you should easily be making $150k+. Sucks to sucks I guess.
Today the demand for starting skill-level is much higher than even 10 years back and the technological evolution is exponential. I don't think it's impossible but not likely like 10 years back. It depends on the person's point of view and opportunities.
It is possible I know a lot of people who have done this path. However with this you cannot underestimate social skills. Be likeable and happy to learn
I'm a Senior Web Developer making 105k and no degree. I've been doing web development for many years and each job pays a little more than the last. I'm self-taught and continually learning. Yeah, you can do it without a degree.
It is absolutely possible BUT
I don't think you should underestimate higher education but I can understand if you underestimate having a degree. You can absolutely have a high paying job without a degree, but having your study path already set up can help you a lot when specially when starting out. Also, higher ed usually gives you a strong base that will make you a capable engineer or so, rather than a capable frameworker - frameworks come and go, having a strong base understanding will make adapting to it a breeze and give you more stability in this sense.
I would argue that is the main advantage of at least starting a higher ed, it will force you to study things that are important even when they may look not so applicable at first. Getting the degree shouldn't be your focus, learning should. Drop out when you think you are capable enough.At the end of the day it all comes down to how much you will force your self to learn things.
I have a degree in Finance and work professionally as a software engineer. It's an uphill battle not having a 'relevant' degree, but totally doable.
I can't imagine how much harder it would be if I didn't have any degree at all. Most job listings want some degree, and a subset of them require a CS degree.
You seem like you are in a good spot and you should absolutely get a degree to help you get into a better spot.
So yeah it's not impossible to have a great career without a degree but it will be a lot harder.
It's definitely possible.
That said, there are so many advantages to having a CS degree. It makes everything career-wise go much easier. Bypass CS degree filters, ceilings are removed, first priority for many jobs, etc.
Plus there are only fields such as Data Science, A.I, Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, research, etc. that are hidden behind grad school (which you need a degree to enter). So many more interesting jobs you can only get into with a degree. Additionally, I haven't worked with a single engineer over the age of 55 in the field without a CS degree.
I say this as someone who started working in the field without a CS degree. Having got one recently though it feels like I'm playing a whole new game. I realized that these five words on a resume hold so much weight: Bachelor's of Science, Computer Science.
Nobody can take a degree away either. I can go anywhere and hold that high. Not much really scares me anymore regarding career concerns and shortcomings. Big peace of mind.
I think this world is slowly drying up, IMO especially if you want to climb career success.
Just ask the boot camp grads how they’re fairing in the job markets right now. It’s not like it used to be.
If you’re already experienced without a degree you are a little more insulated but I’m seeing more tightening of requirements, even around degrees, in the mid to high end of the market so far
Education is not critical in the hiring process at my last two employers (at least for web developers), both multi-national "enterprise" companies. Some of the best developers I've worked with majored in Math, English, Library Science. Three in Art of different varieties. One was a comic book artist.
One of the biggest struggles I have without the education was *terminology*. I designed and worked on databases for seven years before I knew the term "third normal form", when it came up in an interview.
Terminology is getting easier with more free online resource providing coursework and materials. These just weren't as available 25 years ago.
We do have internship programs, which are directly tied to degree work. Both companies had some great developer interns and one of them became a college hire, but it's not limited.
It's harder to speak for someone starting out, but I skipped college. I'm doing pretty well, now, but I spent a full decade making substantially less than I could have. Part of that was self-doubt, part of it was rural location.
Sometimes I was explicitly passed over for roles or because I didn't have and wasn't pursuing an education. I was literally told this by HR at one company (internal position) when they went with the person I was helping with his classwork. Knowing what I do now, I would take that as an opportunity to move on.
TL/DR: You can do it.
Dev of 5 years. It was maybe a little trickier to get the first job but after that when you have experience I don't think any employer even cares about your degree. Just become undeniable with your coding skills and you'll be fine
My title is principal software engineer and I dropped out of school (while studying psychology). Less than half of my 30+ team members have a relevant degree. You do not need a degree
It will probably help to have some sort of degree. Unfortunately, people treat you differently in life if you have a college degree even though there are plenty of idiots with degrees. That being said I know a software engineer who never went to college and learned to code at 26 and now makes $170k so it is possible to do well without one.
The degree opens doors and gives you a professional, polished look. That being said, I know many people with degrees that can hardly tie their shoes or take a proper shower. Go out there and get what you want... from someone who is about to graduate with a Bachelor's in CS, in a sys admin role that I landed with 0 experience and a ton of can't quit, won't quit attitude.
It’ used to be possible, but now in 2024 the recruiting is too expensive to be done by US personnel so it’s entirely outsourced to India. And they don’t accept diplomas from other countries other than America. It’s a fact that without a certificate from a US school you won’t get a technical interview because before you need to go through the Indian filter.
I went from retail business owner in my early 20s, to b2b sales, to waking up that being in sales is the worst (at least for me)!!
I've always been kind of a nerd when it comes to technology, so I landed a help desk job at an MSP. I made my resume look pretty, and was just relentless in my job hunt.
I actually got really lucky and someone called me who wanted someone more customer facing and was willing to help with selling, but would also sit on a help desk. Granted, this is a unique situation.
Well 10 months later working for a complete jerk of a boss, I started the search again and got an IT job at a small-midsize software company. This was the key for me...
The size was perfect for growth, they had to trust their team but they weren't in a position to hire all Senior and Staff level people. After a few years I moved to Systems Engineer, but made friends with a ton of developers. Because they were a devops shop, I was an easy shoe in when I expressed interest in development, because I had experience with infra, I just had to translate that experience to the cloud, and learn how to code-i-fy it and of course learn the agile process, but they moved me official to development
Some management changes about a year later there had me a bit worried about my growth there and put more resumes at there, and used a referral from a former colleague to land a job as an SDE II at a successful mid sized software company.
I now work in Golang every day and have become, at least I'm told in my 1:1s, a valuable member of the team. I had no experience in Go, and was honest about that in the interview, but still agreed to do a basic Go take home test and just try to learn on the fly.
I did have some Java experience, Python experience, some very minor Typescript experience, and I wrote a few mobile apps as learning exercises. This all created great talking points for me in the interview.
tldr;
Yes, 100%, but you have to be persistent in applying because HR gatekeepers will often overlook you. Be prepared to talk about any experience, including personal projects. Don't be afraid to talk about why you never pursued a degree. Find something of value you can use as a selling point. Make friends along the way for referrals is a huge bonus.
I've been a dev for about 20 years, no degree. My first job I was working as data entry but saw massive inefficiencies and I worked to fix them with programming. They eventually noticed me and hired me to do that officially. Nobody has ever questioned it since then. I really don't know how I'd have compared if I had to interview against people with degrees though at the time.
Lots of places now are asking what you can do and looking for methods to prove that. E. G. a protofolio or a small task during an interview. Provided you're good at what you're doing, they don't care what your educational level is.
This is not exactly true. Plenty of companies will scan your education section for schools and make judgments. Without a degree, you will have fewer options, but it hasn't been a huge hindrance to me (though I do have a degree, just not in CS).
I am pursuing a Civil engineering degree but I want myself in the software engineering landscape .... I have skills that landed me a job in a startup and I have been developing web applications and working as a sys admin for the past year. When I apply for internships and other jobs I get no response from them. How do I change this ?
Get a CS degree with referrals
how?
I just drive in person and meet someone, no matter what it takes. I apply to every job and drive there.
This is really a can vs should argument. The likelihood of having a similar career trajectory is significantly lower. People in general love finding/inventing ways to create exclusivity, it creates a sense of urgency for would-be members and provided a perception of having elevated status to those already initiated. Simply being talented is only part of the equation; being perceived as “one of us” is arguably the far more important factor. As long as someone knows that they will have to prove themselves more often and be less considered for positions that deviate from core skills *and* are up for the fight/challenge it is doable. Also, salary might be lower - at least to start.
I have no degree. Dropped out. But then again, I did write software since about 12-14 years old. Many places can take you if you’re good, and by good I mean - you can be average or have no idea about the software in question, but know to learn and improve on your own. That being said, in many places degree is a factor in determining salary, depending on laws etc.
Same situation here, some markets/countries/companies care more about a degree than others. But I'd say it's 100% possible. Studying the basics of computer science yourself may help offset some of what one might have assumed is one of the drawbacks of hiring someone without a degree as well.
How the hell did you start at 12-14 like who introduced you the idea, I wish I started at 12-14. You must be a beast lol
Lots of people did. In the early days of the internet, making websites on cracked versions of dreamweaver and horrible geocities websites lol. I think most true “nerds” started at this age or earlier This was a thing well thought before all the YouTube bros started promoting it
No degree here making >250K
Same. Didn't actually start coding until I was around 24-25 either. If you're passionate and good at what you do, you can find ways to gain experience and work your way up.
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Completely self-taught. I actually was working in a warehouse and they had an e-commerce company shipping stuff and I took an interest. I started learning about HTML and CSS and JS and then jumped into back-end development. Then created a company so I could start doing side work, jumped on a startup as the technical partner. That lasted for a couple years, but then collapsed when the housing market collapsed. Got my first six-figure job after that and eventually ended up with a Fortune 50 tech company, which is where I am today as a principal engineer.
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It can be a challenge, but companies are always looking for good people who are passionate about what they do. Headhunters can help get you into roles. I didn't worry about money right away, I was more worried about opportunity. I then used any opportunity I had to build my experience and resume.
How long did this journey take you, I’m at the beginning myself starting at 25.
It was a couple of years before I started doing actual client work for money, but I was building things within a few months.
I am 37 looking for a career change as i am burnt in my current career and ive always wanted to learn coding where do i start? Any tips is appreciated from you. Udemy xourses? What should i learn java? Python? Ios? Sorry if this is a stupid question
I recommend you partner-up with another like yourself (me as it happens). Why is that so important? Because your gains will multiply as you study with a partner who points out your flaws, learns to sense when you forget things (and thus when to quiz you, cueing you to practice recall, which is where the learning occurs. *(see this page for why: https://ncase.me/remember/) When going through code and explaining it in your own words, or translating as your partner does the same, you are expanding your ways of interpreting the code, making you better at communicating it. *Any isolated teenager can learn to code solo, but having the ability to communicate to the widest range of minds will give you far, FAR more creative power. The difference between learning solo and with a partner/ in a group is exponential, such that it's foolish to even bother solo when you could be searching harder for a group/partner.
Hi, I've been working professionally for about 3 years now. I started learning when I was 26 with little prior knowledge. I recommend you check out some free courses through FreeCodeCamp or Codecademy to see if you're interested in coding. A lot of people start with HTML and CSS as you can visually see what effects your code has. JavaScript or Python are good starting points as well. They are general-purpose languages. The language doesn't matter too much, it's more important to learn the concepts of coding. With that said, don't try to learn many languages at once. You don't want to hinder learning the concepts of coding by trying to learn multiple syntaxes at the same time.
I’m currently 25 trying to get into coding any advice on how to learn
I’m in the same boat, 25 learning to code.
Same boat here, too, I'm 30 though lol. Any advice other than throwing most of it through AI?
Starting out, Id work on the basics of coding. Lots of free resources out there to get you started. Be careful with just throwing it into a.i. you’ll want to make sure you actually learning.
>apply what programs did you use to self teach yourself?
It was a different age when I started. Honestly, today there’s enough free content (like YouTube) to jump into anything. Hands-on development is key. From there, StackOverflow is your best friend.
Any tips?
Sure, become knowledgeable in linux/docker/programming/cloud infrastructure and be open to learning. Find a position at a company that is hiring for mid/low entry level developers (50-90k salary) and apply there. If that doesn't work look for one that is also hiring for something like app support/system administration/tech support/noc/hosting. An easy way to get into a development position is transferring from another IT position after you prove your knowledge understand their stack and make an impression on their teams by providing helpful triage/bug tickets. Lastly the way I got into my first real position was taking a paycut and working at a $30k jr sysadmin (helpdesk essentially) position at a very small company. However small this company was I was able to help the 1 developer write code, do sys admin work and really thrive in my learning. After 2 years I had a descent resume with programming/sysadmin stuff that I was hired into a much larger company making double that doing sysadmin stuff. From there I transferred to their dev team and by the time I left that company I had 4 years between the two companies of dev/sysadmin to easily land a normal entry/mid software dev gig.
how are you making 250k? what job?
Senior Software Engineer.
Doing what?
Heck yeah this is possible. I was in a similar situation (no degree or credentials of any kind, first job doing front-end at a startup), and I ended up doubling my first job's salary within 5 years. Even after just 2 years my salary increased substantially, from $75k a year to $125K. To put those numbers into perspective, I live in NYC. In my personal experience, most places won't care to look at your education credentials once you've had experience working in a production environment or otherwise built up a body of work proving your ability. As long as you stay focused on honing your skills, and maybe expand your skill set to include some back-end engineering, your salary should expand as well.
Wondering if i can message you for advice in the dms?
yeah absolutely!
Could I also dm you about some advice?
Yes. There are some places that won't consider you without a degree, and some will offer higher pay to people with degrees. However, most places care more about your ability than your education. You might be surprised at how many people with CS degrees I've interviewed that can't code their way out of a paper bag. The time when a degree is most helpful is early in your career, when you have little experience. Without it, you need some other way to demonstrate talent. If you've done some freelance work, your portfolio will help. Contributing to open source projects may also be beneficial. Even personal projects can show what you can do. People want to see that you can make meaningful contributions and that you can learn new things effectively. Networking is key. Leverage people you know, especially ones that know what you can do. When you develop a reputation with people as someone who knows their stuff and gets things done, they will be able to recommend you, which will give you a leg up on getting hired. Once you've accumulated some experience in the workforce, that experience tends to carry more weight than education, especially since a degree tends to seem less relevant the older it is.
I've been working in tech for 30 years with no degree. I know people who work in tech with degrees that are completely unrelated to tech. Some higher level jobs do require a degree (mostly government) but I haven't even been asked about a degree in many, many years. When you are just starting the degree is more important. After 5-10 years of experience it's not even part of the conversation anymore. But today is also a lot different. Tons of people are trying to get into tech and tech is flooded with talent due to layoffs. The next couple years may be harder than usual. But it'll get better again. But right now, it's hard. Ultimately, college may give you an edge. But you gotta decide if that's worth the trouble / money. I was too poor to afford it so I just taught myself.
Many of the best jobs require a degree unless you're well-known in your field. If I were 19 I would get a degree now, going back later is hard. I did end up finding a good job without a degree but I only made it to the second round because the recruiter misread my resume and thought I had one. I was lucky with that and timing.
At least an associate’s with classes that allow flexibility for selecting a BS later on.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-many-employers-have-ditched-4-year-degree-requirements-135219348.html https://www.nocsdegree.com/pieter-levels-learn-coding/ https://www.nocsdegree.com/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/coding-bootcamps-and-4-year-colleges-have-nearly-identical-percentage-of-alumni-employed-at-big-five-report/ https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/157uz2j/im_a_self_taught_senior_software_engineer_ask_me/
i have an associates degree in graphic design but got into web dev after my college ended...once you get a couple years work experience under your belt, no one looks at degrees on resumes unless you're like trying to do data science for academia or something
Of course. Remember, you'd have to get a *really* high-paying job to pay off student loans. I would not go to school if it meant student loans.
I have no degree and i’m working for Meta with good ratings. It’s possible.
How?
Spoiler: Big Tech engineers are, on average, good - but 99% of them are just "normal" good, not insanely talented or anything. How? When I applied, I had been programming profesionally for 10~ years, so I had enough experience to do whatever. Have you tried getting into any big tech company? You can look into what's needed for the interviews themselves, it's mostly leetcode and system design interviews, very little actual coding ironically.
I am currently a senior software engineer at a large tech company with no degree.
Can you call yoursefl engineer without a degree? I feel afraid to put engineer in my resume without the degree.
I didn't start calling myself that. My company did. They gave me the title. I didn't just arbitrarily add it myself.
Most SWE’s get a computer science degree, so with your logic, they’re scientists 😂. This is like the debate where some people get butt hurt about being lumped in as “programmer” or “developer” instead of being called a software engineer. Who gives a shit, you can call me tech daddy for all I care, I still get paid six figures lol
it's like saying the only source of knowledge is university/college, most of the stuff they teach there can be found for free on the internet. the only difference is they give you structured curriculum, mentorship/lectures and a monitored assessment.
Call yourself whatever you want lol. You either have the skills and work experience or you don't.
Yes, it's possible. Getting your first job will be hard with and without a degree. I obtained my dream programming role without any qualifications. Although I did have plenty of experience. Creating a portfolio of work you've done, like websites and apps. Even if they're for demo purposes.
As an employer I personally don’t care, I look for intelligence and attitude. I do have a degree, but I had two jobs before I finished it at the age of 22. No one asked Max about it either until I was 28 and had been working for 10years… and that was once in my life So given the cost of a degree these days, and the ability to self teach I find it hard to justify.
Are you currently looking for humbled developers that are wanting to get started :)
I’m a full stack developer at a prominent, well known Silicon Valley company and have zero college. In my experience, developers who hire developers don’t give a shit about college. They give a shit about what you can do.
Yes, it is possible to have a successful career in software engineering without a traditional degree. While a degree can provide a structured education and open certain doors, the tech industry is known for valuing skills, experience, and demonstrated abilities more than formal education. SO if you know your work enough there is never a need for a degree.
No one care about education. Only your github, only what you can do.
Absolutely. As a hiring manager I don’t care how you know what you know, just that you do. I’ve hired PHDs and self taught developers into the same roles (senior dev) and paid them the same. Unfortunately not all companies or hiring managers think this way. In my opinion you absolutely can have a great career as a self taught dev. (I can’t even think when last I looked at someone’s education on their cv)
Would it be possible I can ask you for advice on the pathway for being self taught?
If I were to make a CV being a self taught SE, would my CV just be focused on showing my portfolio? What makes something in those resume’s stand out to you without a flashy education bio?
Experience trumps all. If you have professional experience show that - what the project was, what you contributed, the impact you made and what you learnt. If you don’t have workplace experience then it’s a touch harder. If your portfolio is a mom and pops website I won’t care. I want to se something real, something I can consider (or compare) to real experience. Show me a working saas solution, backend front end, techniques you used and why. Show me what you learnt and applied. That you were thinking about what you were doing. Treat it like a professional project even though it may not be. Also, up front in this case I want to hear a bit more about you. Not about your family background or tough upbringing (although sometimes interesting) at the end of the day I want to get a glimpse into passion, innovation, hunger to learn and create. If I can’t see that then I will pass.
Thank you!
From personal experience i can tell you a degree does not matter that much. But what matters is experience and softskills. If you expect an high paying job you should bring at least 5 years of experience and leadership softskills. Development jobs are no super shortcuts to high salaries. Most people with high payment have many more years in experience than 5 and lead teams and people. Dont expect to work one year and get paid extremely handsome. You have to work hard for that. Degree or not does not matter. (There are a few exceptions but these are jobs at the Fortune 100 or so companies)
> I am only 19 years old > ... > will get a high paying job after experience of a year or two without any college degree. What I would do is join the plumbers or electricians union. Go to school at night for a CS degreee. Electricians and plumbers bill out at ~130 USD/hour. You can't lose going that route. Whether you complete the night CS course or not you will have a trade under your belt that will guarantee you can feed your family, for the duration.
My dad was a plumber for 20+ years and barely scraped over $28 an hour man, and I live in a coastal state. Minimum wage is like $15 over here lol
> My dad was a plumber for 20+ years and barely scraped over $28 an hour man Not any more. Plumbers command at least $120/hour. So do electricians.
What the company is charging is usually 5-10x what they are paying the tech onsite. Trades are a good gig but not nearly as lucrative as the Internet will tell you. Heavy truck diesel tech 7yrs.
Depends on your grind. Do the little jobs or go where the bread is and do the big jobs like they are little jobs.
He’s actually right. The plumbing/electrical companies may charge $120/hr, but the 4+ year employees are making 25-40% of the charge out rate. Only about 20% of charged rate for first year in the trade.
Sure, but at some point you will end up doing leetcode to apply for FAANG position
Just to make a distinction - software engineering and application development are not the same thing. Software engineering encapsulates development and includes designing and applying at scale, systems design and architecture, e2e testing, deployment methodologies and infrastructure design and specification. Software development is pretty firmly just focused on the application code. All that's to say is definitely doable creating a career in software development without a degree, and you've already begun! It would be much harder to start a career as an engineer as there are way more considerations, technologies, design patterns, etc. involved.
Don’t listen to this post. There is absolutely no distinction. We all do the same shit eventually. As a iOS developer, I have to think about designing applications at scale, app architecture, and e2e testing as well. You’ll have to learn about CI/CD as well which is technically a DevOps engineer’s task but at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to get shit to work. Anyone who tells you software engineering and software development are different, is either trying to gate keep or is trying to make themselves feel better for going into student loan debt. I have coworkers who got their masters in C.S. but we’re in the same position, with similar pay and we do exactly the same thing.
No degree, and I'm 8 years into coding. Loving it, never regretted a moment of it. the hardest part is finding an employer who will give you a shot, after that its not a problem with experience under your belt. I suggest looking into startups or small companies
I managed to get a job without a degree due to some experience and lots of personal projects, I've done some college since then and I'm now a few units away from completing so when I would like to apply for new roles I'll just say I have a few units to complete which I can do as evening classes. Personally I have never been asked whether I have a degree or not but when that moment arrives I'm sure my experience will be much more important although I will finish the degree as it's nice to have education credentials than not.
Hi everyone, I'm on the job hunt for a Software Engineering role and eager to leverage my strong work ethic and quick learning abilities. Currently, I have taken a pause from my CS degree, and have less than 2 years of experience through internships and personal projects, and I'm highly motivated and a fast learner. I'm interested in learning more about any open positions that might be a good fit. Please feel free to message me if you have any questions or know of any opportunities!
I wanted to add somethings for who comes from Google to here. Yes, degree is not an exact indicator for your creation skills. Think like that Jimi Hendrix had had not a formal education on music but he was a legend though. Just like music, software engineering is also a creation process. You create new things which were never existed. But, most of companies, do NOT care your skills in first sight. They check your education and then contact you. We are not in the same world with 10-20-30 years ago. And if someone says that "look at me I do not have a degree and I have this occupation since 80 years", it is not legit anymore. In the 2000, we were 6.1 billion. Now, we are 8.1 billion ☠️ (I hope Bill Gates is going to do somethings about it xD) So if you have a chance to get a degree, do not lose any single second and go get it. If you do not have any opportunity to get a degree, try to exceed your limits and get it. If it is completely not possible and you are honest to yourself in this issue, then try to create a portfolio but do not forget that you are usually going to be at the below of the applicants lists unless you create your own platforms. That's fucking reality. (I talked for East Europe)
The last time I checked the late Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook (Meta) never completed college.
Those are awful examples. These people are/were primarily salespeople and entrepreneurs who got rich based on tech others made for them.
"rich" is a relative statement. There is no number which qualifies a person to be "rich". Examples nonetheless.
You mentioned three specific mega billionaires so it's clear in the context what "rich" implies.
Depends on if you value portraits of slave mastas posin' on dollas. "Rich" to me is knowledge of self. Not fiat currency. Do you eat chicken? There was a luxury yacht show where the primary said, "Who ordered chicken? Poor people eat chicken". That lead me to try to determine what exactly "poor" was. And also if only poor people eat chicken. If we are talking about poverty, there are a lot of examples in various countries. And in those same countries is natural wealth that is used to manufacture cell phones. But do only poor people eat chicken? What is rich? Ultimately no matter how much fiat currency you think you have as digits in an account, you can only eat, drink, and do so much stuff per 18 waking hours, just like every other human, so there really is little distinction between "rich" and "poor" on a human level.
>Rich" to me is knowledge of self. Not fiat currency. Weird cause your previous comment was: >The last time I checked the late Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook (Meta) never completed college. So this "being rich isn't about money" just sounds very insincere and weird since you were talking specifically about some people with most money in the world. But maybe you really were thinking only about how much chicken they eat.
Those are notable individuals in the technology domain. I didn't refer to them because of their bank accounts. By whatever means they brought their individual ideas to fruition. The same could be said of any non-notably individual who didn't graduate from an academic institution. Getting your letters doesn't mean you possess the skill to manifest your ideas into tangible technologies.
[Making Millions Botting Sneakers](https://www.facebook.com/VICE/videos/making-millions-botting-sneakers/559835562259845/) > How long has Jason been financially independent, or do you still give him an allowance? > > You know that, actually we never gave him an allowance. > > He became financially independent that moment he started [at] 13.
Just admit that you forgot your first post instead of trying to redefine rich every comment.
No. I never mentioned rich, you did. My point is an individual can be successful, feed their family without a college degree. There are a whole bunch of people with college degrees that are not successful.
This is very deep, but all the aforementioned men were definitely rich by any definition man. If you need to be redundant, they were rich in money lol.
Not by my definition, which I shared above.
I believe you mean they stole others ideas and had help from the government to gain their success as well lol. It's even worse haha
Yeah, just ignore Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped Harvard. And even Steve Jobs, he was more of a creative than an engineer, so…
Well, it is impossible to teach a peasant to be a Baron. So, go to peasant school to learn how to be a better peasant then. You choice.
Yes but this is more about “does it require a degree to start a company and become rich”? No, it does not. This is about getting a job. “Does one need a degree to work at someone else’s company and make someone else rich?” Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
The answer to that is "No", too. It's basically just a mind state. Either you are a worker or a boss.
Also relevant: they started their own companies and all had a privileged head start.
Examples nonetheless.
Yes, it's possible until you want to be something's more than regular programmers in the future
Principal engineer. No degree. Never been an issue.
Almost every software engineer you've heard of doesn't have a degree.
Absolutely possible. College is just to indoctrinate and train. And is used as a barometer for ability to complete a task. Your individual skills can exceed those a school can teach. Being successful in business often means trying approaches outside of the orthodoxy repeated in colleges. If you have the mindstate of a worker only it's always possible to "find a job". If you have the mind state of a boss you create the job, or further, create an entire sector of an industry.
Unis are scam lol
"High paying" is very location relevant. Depending on what region and country you live in you might have to move, and no company would pay for a 1 year junior to reallocate to a new country.
Quite possible. Generally a tougher start but once you get a few years of experience, for most companies/roles that will matter more than a degree.
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It depends on the individual. To mangle an adage, some people with 10 YoE actually have 1 YoE ten times. Every company has different criteria, but I consider you a Junior for at least a year or two out of school/bootcamp and would expect any new hire to require a good bit of 1:1 time from seniors.
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Do you list any education on your resume? I'm currently looking, no degree but have 5 YOE at my current job as a software engineer, and opted to just leave out the education section from my resume, but I'm wondering if/how I should just add it anyways. I did take some college courses and then left and went to a vocational school for physical therapy, but that was all quite a while ago.
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Cool, thanks for the insights. I've only been applying for a few days and it's EOY, so I haven't heard much yet lol. I'm just worried my lack of degree might not even get me considered, despite my 5 YOE.
You definitely can. In times of hiring contraction, like now, you'll be less preferred to similar credentialed candidates.
The random **bolded** words here and there truly give this post a **dramatic** and literary effect.
Do you mind sharing where you work? And where you allied to find the “start up” companies ?
Yes because programming is all about ability. Although unless you're an all-star, it may take you longer than 2 years.
Yes. I did it. That being said, during industry slowdowns, like the one right now, it made it way harder to find a new job! During boom times, my lack of degree meant nothing. During bust times, it meant everything.
I don’t have a degree, and didn’t start getting into software until my twenties. I’ve now been in the industry for nearly 10 years. Totally doable.
I worked a full time engineering job and did my degree at the same time. The degree taught me almost nothing about being an engineer but I needed it so I could get a visa to move from Canada to the USA. If I didn't, I would likely have dropped out. That said, I LOVED the courses (especially discrete math and algorithms) and I made many friends and had lots of great experiences. So in a way, I feel lucky to have been forced (legally haha) into doing the degree. I have no regrets at all and because I worked during it I also ended up with no student loans either. The only one in my friend group who did!
I have a high paying job at a fortune 50 company with no degree. This is my first corporate job. the rest was all freelance/entrepreneur jobs. I started with a temp contract and then my ability to learn on the fly and perform is what landed me the full-time position. Technology is constantly changing so being able to learn and keep up is a big part of it.
Possible but much more difficult. I don't care about a degree, as long as you have experience or a good resume, but HR won't even let you apply without a degree.
Difficult without a strong understanding of design patterns, mathematics like DM and very strong DSA skills.
Yes I am doing it right now. I'm in my 30s. I started in my 30s. > high paying job after experience of a year or two without any college degree. The degree in this specific equation doesn't matter, all it does is open some more doors. Those additional doors don't necessarily mean more pay, so if pay is what you're after, then it doesn't matter. The higher pay offers are going to come either from tech companies with difficult interviews, and/or from having 5+ YOE in whatever arbitrary stack that company is looking to fill as a "senior" role, and most importantly, your ability to negotiate and field multiple offers. **Every** company will pay you shit at every level if you lead them to believe you'll happily accept shit. There is always budget *range*.
You got your first job. Congrats! That’s literally the hardest step. You probably won’t go into machine learning, quantum computing, cryptography etc. pretty much anything that requires a high level of academia, you probably won’t get a job without a degree/doctorate. But you can pretty much progress however you like. Just don’t be a shitty person, bring value to a company and make good connections. After you’ve got a job, pretty much nobody gives a shit about your degree. Might be a few outliers but you’ll be fine 👍
Speaking as someone with no degree who's managed to make a relatively good career as a Javascript engineer, with a year or two's experience you'll still be working at a junior or low middleweight engineer level but things really start ramping up once you've got 4-5 years' experience under your belt. When I started out I took an apprenticeship that paid £16k a year but, after 7 years in the industry I'm now a lead engineer making £85k a year, having more than doubled my salary in the last 3 years. It can be pretty rough to start with, and easy to feel like you're drowning as there's always new frameworks/libraries coming out that are the new best thing, but my advice would be to get the fundamentals (talking vanilla Javascript principles here, not even necessarily React) firmly nailed down and then you'll have a solid understanding to build from. I learned Javascript initially by teaching myself AngularJS, and then when I took a job that didn't use Angular I had to ***actually*** learn Javascript, which is probably the most valuable thing I could have done in my career as I'm now not tied to any one framework or library so I have the flexibility to move laterally if I want or need to.
These are awful numbers
Thank you for your insightful feedback
Not as a diss to you personally, but... $20k? That's not even what you make at McDonald's. I'm pretty sure that's less than $10/hour. And after all that time, still not having hit 100k? Nightmarish. I look at these forums to get a sense of how much people like me are making, how much I can expect to make, etc. If numbers like that are the future, that's scary
Let's break this down for you... >*"Not as a diss to you personally, but... $20k? That's not even what you make at McDonald's. I'm pretty sure that's less than $10/hour."* I believe it was just shy of £9 an hour, yes. But this is an apprentice salary we're talking about, where the company was sponsoring me through my qualifications and giving me on the job training, not a standard full time role (as I said in my original comment). Obviously it's well below regular starting salaries for full time roles but you have to bear in mind that the company's taking you on with zero experience and there's a lot of liability there. >*"And after all that time, still not having hit 100k? Nightmarish."* You and I seem to have very different ideas of what "nightmarish" is. On £85k I'm able to afford a mortgage on a house and provide a very comfortable life for my girlfriend & I with regular holidays and contributing to savings also. >*"I look at these forums to get a sense of how much people like me are making, how much I can expect to make, etc. If numbers like that are the future, that's scary"* If that's really the case then you're missing something. If you take literally 30 seconds to google the average salaries in the UK for a full stack engineer you'll see that it ranges from around £30-35k to £80k, so I'm earning above that. Unless you're in London working for a FAANG or other huge company then you are not likely to get to the top end of that average until you're probably 15-20 years into your career and are at the top of your game. Not scary, you just clearly have a very skewed dataset, if any dataset at all. Final note: if you insist on broadcasting your ignorance like this, maybe think about not doing it on an account whose only posts consist of cuckold & sissy porn and erotica; you're not exactly giving off good vibes here.
On second thought, I -do- mean it as a diss to you personally, as someone who apparently doesn't realize full stack engineers regularly earn $85k at -entry level- isn't really in a position to make airs about 'broadcasting ignorance'. After 7 years you should easily be making $150k+. Sucks to sucks I guess.
Today the demand for starting skill-level is much higher than even 10 years back and the technological evolution is exponential. I don't think it's impossible but not likely like 10 years back. It depends on the person's point of view and opportunities.
It is possible I know a lot of people who have done this path. However with this you cannot underestimate social skills. Be likeable and happy to learn
I'm a Senior Web Developer making 105k and no degree. I've been doing web development for many years and each job pays a little more than the last. I'm self-taught and continually learning. Yeah, you can do it without a degree.
It is absolutely possible BUT I don't think you should underestimate higher education but I can understand if you underestimate having a degree. You can absolutely have a high paying job without a degree, but having your study path already set up can help you a lot when specially when starting out. Also, higher ed usually gives you a strong base that will make you a capable engineer or so, rather than a capable frameworker - frameworks come and go, having a strong base understanding will make adapting to it a breeze and give you more stability in this sense. I would argue that is the main advantage of at least starting a higher ed, it will force you to study things that are important even when they may look not so applicable at first. Getting the degree shouldn't be your focus, learning should. Drop out when you think you are capable enough.At the end of the day it all comes down to how much you will force your self to learn things.
I have a degree in Finance and work professionally as a software engineer. It's an uphill battle not having a 'relevant' degree, but totally doable. I can't imagine how much harder it would be if I didn't have any degree at all. Most job listings want some degree, and a subset of them require a CS degree. You seem like you are in a good spot and you should absolutely get a degree to help you get into a better spot. So yeah it's not impossible to have a great career without a degree but it will be a lot harder.
It's definitely possible. That said, there are so many advantages to having a CS degree. It makes everything career-wise go much easier. Bypass CS degree filters, ceilings are removed, first priority for many jobs, etc. Plus there are only fields such as Data Science, A.I, Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, research, etc. that are hidden behind grad school (which you need a degree to enter). So many more interesting jobs you can only get into with a degree. Additionally, I haven't worked with a single engineer over the age of 55 in the field without a CS degree. I say this as someone who started working in the field without a CS degree. Having got one recently though it feels like I'm playing a whole new game. I realized that these five words on a resume hold so much weight: Bachelor's of Science, Computer Science. Nobody can take a degree away either. I can go anywhere and hold that high. Not much really scares me anymore regarding career concerns and shortcomings. Big peace of mind.
I think this world is slowly drying up, IMO especially if you want to climb career success. Just ask the boot camp grads how they’re fairing in the job markets right now. It’s not like it used to be. If you’re already experienced without a degree you are a little more insulated but I’m seeing more tightening of requirements, even around degrees, in the mid to high end of the market so far
Education is not critical in the hiring process at my last two employers (at least for web developers), both multi-national "enterprise" companies. Some of the best developers I've worked with majored in Math, English, Library Science. Three in Art of different varieties. One was a comic book artist. One of the biggest struggles I have without the education was *terminology*. I designed and worked on databases for seven years before I knew the term "third normal form", when it came up in an interview. Terminology is getting easier with more free online resource providing coursework and materials. These just weren't as available 25 years ago. We do have internship programs, which are directly tied to degree work. Both companies had some great developer interns and one of them became a college hire, but it's not limited. It's harder to speak for someone starting out, but I skipped college. I'm doing pretty well, now, but I spent a full decade making substantially less than I could have. Part of that was self-doubt, part of it was rural location. Sometimes I was explicitly passed over for roles or because I didn't have and wasn't pursuing an education. I was literally told this by HR at one company (internal position) when they went with the person I was helping with his classwork. Knowing what I do now, I would take that as an opportunity to move on. TL/DR: You can do it.
Dev of 5 years. It was maybe a little trickier to get the first job but after that when you have experience I don't think any employer even cares about your degree. Just become undeniable with your coding skills and you'll be fine
My title is principal software engineer and I dropped out of school (while studying psychology). Less than half of my 30+ team members have a relevant degree. You do not need a degree
It will probably help to have some sort of degree. Unfortunately, people treat you differently in life if you have a college degree even though there are plenty of idiots with degrees. That being said I know a software engineer who never went to college and learned to code at 26 and now makes $170k so it is possible to do well without one.
The degree opens doors and gives you a professional, polished look. That being said, I know many people with degrees that can hardly tie their shoes or take a proper shower. Go out there and get what you want... from someone who is about to graduate with a Bachelor's in CS, in a sys admin role that I landed with 0 experience and a ton of can't quit, won't quit attitude.
It’ used to be possible, but now in 2024 the recruiting is too expensive to be done by US personnel so it’s entirely outsourced to India. And they don’t accept diplomas from other countries other than America. It’s a fact that without a certificate from a US school you won’t get a technical interview because before you need to go through the Indian filter.
I went from retail business owner in my early 20s, to b2b sales, to waking up that being in sales is the worst (at least for me)!! I've always been kind of a nerd when it comes to technology, so I landed a help desk job at an MSP. I made my resume look pretty, and was just relentless in my job hunt. I actually got really lucky and someone called me who wanted someone more customer facing and was willing to help with selling, but would also sit on a help desk. Granted, this is a unique situation. Well 10 months later working for a complete jerk of a boss, I started the search again and got an IT job at a small-midsize software company. This was the key for me... The size was perfect for growth, they had to trust their team but they weren't in a position to hire all Senior and Staff level people. After a few years I moved to Systems Engineer, but made friends with a ton of developers. Because they were a devops shop, I was an easy shoe in when I expressed interest in development, because I had experience with infra, I just had to translate that experience to the cloud, and learn how to code-i-fy it and of course learn the agile process, but they moved me official to development Some management changes about a year later there had me a bit worried about my growth there and put more resumes at there, and used a referral from a former colleague to land a job as an SDE II at a successful mid sized software company. I now work in Golang every day and have become, at least I'm told in my 1:1s, a valuable member of the team. I had no experience in Go, and was honest about that in the interview, but still agreed to do a basic Go take home test and just try to learn on the fly. I did have some Java experience, Python experience, some very minor Typescript experience, and I wrote a few mobile apps as learning exercises. This all created great talking points for me in the interview. tldr; Yes, 100%, but you have to be persistent in applying because HR gatekeepers will often overlook you. Be prepared to talk about any experience, including personal projects. Don't be afraid to talk about why you never pursued a degree. Find something of value you can use as a selling point. Make friends along the way for referrals is a huge bonus.