[cortesoft]

I have been in professional software development for 15 years, at both startups and a fortune 15. I have worked as both an individual contributor writing code, and am now a Director of Software Engineering at a large CDN.

I have zero formal computer science training. I have a BA in Philosophy, and haven't taken any classes on programming or boot camps or the like. I am completely self taught.

It was only an issue for my first job. I used a large personal project I created as proof that I could code, and I got the job. After that, it has never been an issue that I didn't have a degree.

I have also hired many developers over the years, and I only really look at schooling if they don't have any professional experience or if the work they did at school is interesting in some way.

Maybe not having a degree will be a detriment at some point in my career, but my lack of a degree has never even been mentioned to me as an issue after that first job.

[thaumasiotes]

> I have a BA in Philosophy

> Maybe not having a degree will be a detriment at some point in my career

Something's gone wrong here.

[ysavir]

I think they meant a CS or related degree.

[cortesoft]

Yeah, I meant a CS degree

[la_fayette]

The question is rather what one needs to know, to be a good software engineer?

Formally, I guess if you learn Logic in your philosophy courses you know everything you need to do programming. Moreover if you know about Plato's Forms you basically know the basics about object oriented programming...

Software design on the other hand is something you can only learn by experience anyway... I had an software architecture course at university, which made only sense to me a couple of years later...

[austincheney]

> The question is rather what one needs to know, to be a good software engineer?

As a JavaScript developer, which I am, you need to be really good at keeping up with trends. That's really it.

For most of this line of work your value is the ability to use a tool rather than engineer anything. About the time you attain mastery the industry will move on to another tool. Mastery of any skill takes about 6-10 years of frequent dedicated practice. The hot tool of the moment takes about 2 years to reach critical popularity, 6 years at critical mass, and then 2-4 years of eclipse by something else. If you aren't moving on to the next new thing your career mobility will erode until there is none.

Consider it from the employer's point of view. A good senior is worth about 4-8 junior developers. At first blush it would make more sense to hire that senior developer. Developers come and go though, and most JavaScript developers are extremely junior. Employers never invest in training except as a last resort to prevent internal obsolescence, and it costs a boat load of money to find excellent developers. So, just invest in junior developers as a limited value exchangeable commodity.

[xupybd]

I've seen developers have trouble traveling for work without a related degree but that's about it. Some countries have tight requirements for work Visas.

[beepbooptheory]

Yes but you need to get the first job initially. And that step, it appears to me, has drastically changed in the past ten or so years. I have tried many years at this point, I love programming and could do it all day if I could, but have all but given up on the idea that I will ever get a job without some kind of schooling, or finding enough time in my 4HL to make something killer.

I change and revise my resume, try to showoff the little things I've made. I keep learning and making, but after many years I believe I have gotten two (rejection) emails back total. I have tried everything. I am so envious of the older people on here who talk about learning on the job.

If I ever can pay back the (humanities) degrees I already have, the first thing I will do is look to a CS degree, for both the desire for that pedagogy and the even bare chance for a job doing something I love.

[sokoloff]

No obligation, but if you want a resume review and/or quick zoom call to give you personalized advice, my email’s in my profile. Put “HN resume” in the subject line. (I doubt I’ll get inundated here, but if I do, this offer is good for beepboop, ryan, and the next N until it gets overwhelming at which point, I can only commit to emailing back “sorry, this blew up more than I expected” but nothing more.)

[pcthrowaway]

Are you willing to relocate? Do you have a github? I don't know what things are like right now, but I have hired someone with no degree at a former startup (though he was fresh out of a coding bootcamp), and it seems like a pretty common thing to do. I frequently see a degree listed only as 'nice-to-have' now.

But you should look for smaller companies which need cheap coders, and be prepared to work at a massive discount from the market rate for a while.

It was actually hard for me to get that first job also (with a CS degree, but no internship and a bad GPA). Actually, the bigger obstacle was not having any relevant experience, I felt like the degree set me back because it taught me very little that was useful for most of the jobs I was applying for. In the end I sort of lucked my way into web development, but was pretty much self-taught or taught on-the-job.

[znpy]

One might argue that the industry and the market are a lot different than how they were 15 years ago, however.