[skewart]

Interesting. I wonder if that necessity for lending credibility is a somewhat recent thing. Perhaps the popularity of bootcamps makes people who recently got into coding and didn't attend one look worse - companies might assume they couldn't get in to a decent one?

I'm a developer who didn't study CS in undergrad, and I didn't have a problem getting job offers when I was starting out several years ago, self taught and unproven. But bootcamps weren't really a thing back then.

[bdcravens]

I'm self-educated as well, but back then (starting around 1999) there was no Github (so less visibility into a prospect's activity) and no frameworks (so problem solving was more valuable than structure)

[twblalock]

I think it's partially a new form of credentialism. But there is also the question of a candidate's suitability for the job. If you want to hire a Rails developer, for example, someone who just got out of one of the Rails boot camps is probably a more attractive candidate than a self-taught programmer who did not focus on Rails -- even though that self-taught programmer might know more about programming in general.