Ask HN: How to get a job without degree?

[stevavoliajvar]

I dropped out of college. Now I am looking for a job but I'm struggling with approach. What is your advice on getting a job without a degree ?

Mostly I have problems with making CVs and I get anxious if I get question about my education.

Areas I'm looking to work in are incident response, malware analysis and system administration.

[rxsel]

For context: No degree, Very comfortable (salary over 150, savings, family, etc) and in my mid 20s with 5 years of experience.

Here’s how I went from being generationally poor to that:

1) Taught myself the skill. Really put my head down and learned.

2) Demonstrate you know what your doing and have a passion for it (fake it if you don’t and just want to get paid) through projects, contributions, volunteering, having your own site with mentioned projects writing etc. You’re building an image here.

3) Literally get your foot in the door anywhere, doesn’t matter how bad. Mine was at a local web dev shop locally as an “intern” in a tiny office w/ 4 people.

4) Start racking up XP and use that XP as leverage going forward. I mean really sell it. And always talk up your previous experience.

People tend to care more about experience, ability to get shit done, and personality over education in this field.

But yeah that was my experience having been in the same boat.

[jbhouse]

Can (anecdotally) confirm

Just did some interviews last week. Read through each candidate's experience section so I would have an idea of what they worked on and how I should calibrate my technical questions.

Stopped reading after the technical section because quite frankly educational attainment, in my experience, is at best loosely correlated with being able to think clearly and get things done.

Also, kudos to you rxsel!

[rxsel]

Sorry for the late response, getting used to submitting on here, but thank you, and I agree, higher education in the US requires grit to get through especially if you’re not the “school type” yet it’s the baseline most people use to gauge someone’s “potential economic value” an ROI and I frankly just don’t agree with that. Some of the smartest, proactive, and most creative people I’ve ever met have been “structured education” adverse.

Im a huge huge huge believer of there being a massive opportunity in disrupting education, and I mean beyond the “shoehorn tech into everything” approach.

Education in the general term is the literal liberating factor within an individual. The more you understand the world around you the more confident you become in that world.

That’s why I push all my people and anyone who is willing to listen towards tech and other industries that are more “merit based” on the spectrum. As well as gravitating towards well paying trades that can fund their future intellectual endeavors.

I can go on about education forever but I’ll just stop before I get carried away :)

Thank you for the kind words @jbhouse

[PaulHoule]

Do you have experience? If a person has the right kind of/enough experience I wouldn't care about their degree or lack thereof.

In the case of malware analysis I would expect somebody to analyze malware and write a report, I am sure you have seen these. These aren't too different from the kind of reports you would write in school; if you blogged about how you took apart a bad SD card you bought, that would demonstrate you have the research and communication skills that somebody might have learned in school.

Malware analysis also requires a holistic understanding about computers that a CS education is supposed to give you. You can get that understanding through reading and tinkering if you have aptitude for it, enjoy it, work hard at it and manifest that.

[jbhouse]

Hi there, Java Dev at big tech company (not FFANG big, but big) here. Just did 3 interviews last week, and we have 4 more people lined up next week. I looked at resumes before each interview so I could see what experience they had and what they worked on, so I would know what to ask about, and could calibrate my technical questions appropriately.

I never once looked at someone's education. Quite frankly, I do not give a singular shit.

Management/HR might be different, other devs may have different attitudes. But I thought it might be worth putting my recent experience out there. Which, to reiterate, is that I care what you've worked on, and what you have experience with, not what credentials you have.

[hpen]

I recently started working as a software engineer and don't have a degree.

Build a strong portfolio of projects.

Supplement missing courses with MIT, stanford, etc from Youtube.

Don't take short cuts. Learn data structures and algorithms.

Be upfront about not having a degree. Call yourself "self-taught" it will cause you not to be so anxious. Well, that helped me be less anxious.

[julianeon]

I think the mistake of most people starting out is:

They aim too high.

“I’m going to go from total unknown to hotshot JS developer at a VC-backed startup in 1 year”

That’s a tall mountain to climb. Maybe 1% of people accomplish that.

Consider starting off more modestly?

There’s lots of client facing or biz-dev like jobs that would love someone who knows the command line, and isn’t too proud to do that work.

“Yeah, your tool is alright, but I could build a web app...” No doubt you could. But learn the tool. There’s an undersupplied world of jobs for people willing to do that.

From there, escalate to ever more arcane jobs for tooling or enterprise or for devs, escalating in skill level at each one.

From that point in - 3 to 5 years from the start of your journey - you can pick up a client who would like you for your by-now-formidable programming skills.

But don’t try to jump to the 5 year mark from square one - my advice.

[syspec]

Just keep making stuff, in your CV put what school you attended and be honest for how long. The fact that you started college says a LOT about the person. Many people do not finish college for many reasons.

Keep making stuff, make new libraries to fill niches etc. As you get older AND have made more things your college experience will have less and less meaning.

But importantly, make lots of stuff, contribute to open source where possible (making stuff is more important though in terms of getting a job since it's easy for your contribution to get lost in open source if the project is big)

[austincheney]

My education is one line on my resume. Because there is no common standard for hiring or qualifying software developers education is mostly, but not completely, irrelevant. I have worked with many excellent developers who never completed college.

Don’t think of software as a regulated profession. Software is a trade skill. When you practice in those terms you will become a better and more desirable job applicant.

[redmattred]

A lot of people start in customer support at a software company, become experts in the product, and eventually switch departments

[chrisrickard]

Maybe take a peek at https://www.nocsdegree.com - there is a story on the frontend page currently "Getting an entry level cybersecurity job thanks to Flatiron School"

[duxup]

Experience is what you need.

Find a place to get your foot in the door, hit up the local meetups if there are any and talk to folks and see what you can learn about local places and where you might get in.

[doopy1]

Just apply all over the place. You don't have to go for purely engineering roles, you can be a technical account manager or a sales engineer and then pivot.

[rocph]

I dont have degree but landed on awesome companies and now having own startup.

being scared has process to conquer. once its done, you can fly with wings.

[just_reader1]

Mind if I ask what kind of startup and more about your journey?

I just started learning web dev, looking for some inspiration