[sealord]

I'm heading engineering at a startup that works on making the likes of Apache Cloudstack and Openstack work for telecom behemoths. I studied Russian at university. I've been writing code for the last 7.32 years. Personally, I don't care about the nanodegree, so long as the person demonstrates a natural affinity for writing code. That's all that matters to me.

I don't know where you're based right now, but I'd say most recruiters across the world wouldn't understand the concept of a Udacity nanodegree. Most of them don't understand that you really don't need a piece of paper stating that you can write code; recruiters simply don't understand that it doesn't matter whether the person is even a graduate or not, if s/he can write code.

I'd just tell the person to keep trying. I kept trying, and I got lucky with a media house that was okay with hiring me to write code without a relevant degree or experience. I'm sure I can't be the only one to get lucky.

[coralreef]

By "natural affinity", did you actually mean some level of "skill" or "competence", or did you literally mean "natural affinity"? (If so, how do you measure "natural affinity"-ness?)

[sealord]

Unfortunately, this is subjective. For me, it's a combination of both. The other day, I interviewed a lady who'd just started off with her career, working on creating Oracle forms. She hated it. In the meantime, she'd started dabbling with Python. She didn't know what pip was, or how to install Python packages, but it was pretty clear she had a knack for writing code. With a bit of a push, she'd do wonders. So I hired her.

TL;DR - "Natural affinity" should include some level of skill/competence, plus that glint in the other person's eye when you talk about writing efficient, beautiful code.

[marktangotango]

Interesting please follow up here in a few months with how she worked out. Not being snarky, I'm genuinely interested.

[sealord]

Haha, definitely! She's joining us on the 15th. I'll come back here and tell you what it's like in 2-3 months.

[usgroup]

You'll find those who studied computing for example or those who hold higher degrees will be less sympathetic to unusual routes into the profession.

[sealord]

As a general rule, yes. Very true.

[gigatexal]

So have a portfolio of work to prove competency?

[sealord]

That's one way to go about it. But sometimes, even a portfolio may not be possible. Maybe someone never really thought about putting their code up on Github. So there are some slightly tricky situations where you need to ascertain how someone writes code without a portfolio or a Github profile.