[direfungasaur]

obvious and unobjectionable steps like "recruit junior devs from the ranks of biology grads

I don't follow how this is an obvious decision. Would you please elaborate? If the target software isn't dealing with the biology domain, why would I prefer biology grads over computer science grads? It seems like the lack of formal knowledge around CS fundamentals could prove a hindrance, while the biology knowledge wouldn't be an asset.

This principle may be workable for some portion of the work space, especially for your typical webapp or webservice. We flout the 'anybody can learn to code' concept, and that's true to some extent. But if the domain space is low-level hardware, highly algorithmic or heavy in the domain modeling space it seems completely reasonable to prefer someone with a formal background in CS.

[curun1r]

Not biology, but I've had great success hiring mechanical engineers to write code. I'm not sure what it is--perhaps some mindset they learn in school--but I've yet to meet one that didn't develop into an excellent software engineer as well.

So perhaps biology has a similar synergy.

[cuckcuckspruce]

The vast majority of jobs now are not 'low-level hardware, highly algorithmic or heavy in the domain modeling space'. They're corporate CRUD-style apps, existing software maintenance, and other such things. There's no reason that a bright student with a biology background couldn't be a perfect fit for these sorts of things if they have some contact with a computer science class or two.

[direfungasaur]

There's no reason that a bright student with a biology background couldn't be a perfect fit for these sorts of things if they have some contact with a computer science class or two.

Sure, it's completely realistic for a biology student (or any other discipline) to serve in a junior or line developer position in many corporate environments. If you're just wiring Spring beans together, writing test cases, or doing basic sysadmin work there's not much CS doing on.

My experience is that the differences show as you become more senior or you want to do things off the beaten path. Once you start dealing with comprehensive troubleshooting (back-to-front), non-trivial data modeling, and architecture the lack of fundamentals starts to slow you down. Understanding a DAG is pretty important in certain cases, and if you weren't exposed to it that's alot of outside learning. It's doable, but you have to put in more and more personal time to keep up. Whereas the CS folks are building on at least passing knowledge over four years of study.

To put my biases on the table, I'm a self-taught dev that went back for my BS degree. I have strong bias towards the value of a CS education.

[cuckcuckspruce]

Biases on the table: co-authored a paper on machine learning, graduated undergrad summa cum laude from an CS honors program with a 4.0 GPA in courses in CS, then dropped out in the first semester in an CS MSc program due to personal issues. You'll find no stronger proponent of a classical CS education.

There is plenty of time for someone to learn about DAGs (really, they're not rocket science) while they're a junior dev, and a bright person, given a series of tasks slightly increasing in complexity and difficulty, will have no trouble learning the fundamentals.

Most of my CS classmates were much more interested in going to school to get their degree to become the next Mark Zuckerberg or maybe work for him. They'd cram for tests between beer pong and bong hits and forget 90% of what they were there to learn. I'd rather hire someone who is bright with any college degree (best programmer where I worked at in my last job had a Masters in dramatic arts) than a random somebody with a CS background. Everything I need in theory from a junior dev can be tested during an interview - it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what quicksort is, or how to write documentation, or how to create a new class in Java without using an IDE.

I guess the major difference is that I don't see a CS degree as a sign of a good programmer. I see it as a sign that someone endured classes for four years, and I am open to the possibility that someone with another degree might be a better fit at a junior level than anybody with a CS degree that bothered to respond to the job posting.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

Seems like a waste of a bright biology student.

[notyourloops]

Not if that biology student wants a decent life. There's not much money in science. It pays much, much more to be a mediocre dev.

[cuckcuckspruce]

Nobody is forcing them to take the job, just widening the target audience of the job search.

[smsm42]

> There's no reason that a bright student with a biology background couldn't be a perfect fit

There's no reason that a bright student with Chinese poetry background couldn't be a perfect fit. But I think there's reasons why we still have CS degrees even though there's no reason why any bright person can't teach oneself coding. OTOH, if you go this route and say CS degree doesn't matter at all, just drop any connection to degrees and hire people based on tests or something - why link it to biology?

[cuckcuckspruce]

I'm not saying that it doesn't matter - clearly someone with a CS degree is more _likely_ to be a better fit, but I see no reason to limit targeting of job postings for junior developer positions to just recently graduated CS undergrads when there are plenty of other people with other degree backgrounds that might be a good fit as well.

I wouldn't link it specifically to a biology degree, but my initial response was to someone who asked about it specifically.