Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mullethunter 4039 days ago
This was me. I left my 4 year degree my senior year in 1999 for to write code for a living. After the crash I started to be declined even an interview because I didn't have a degree, even though I had been working for great, well known companies doing some great work. HR people literally shooed me away on phone interviews, and even startups were only looking at people with degrees. Four years ago it happened again, and I had enough. I went back to school (working full time with side projects, as well as 2 year old and newborn in my life), losing two years of credits to study business. I graduated last month with over $40k in student loans at 37 years old just so the next time I don't get the brush off for having completed 3.5 years of university.

The odd thing is that even without a degree I so see if the candidates I interview have one or not. I'll never not hire someone without a degree, but I do tend to ask about the lack of a degree or even about leaving school. I guess I do for personal reasons since I knew that it made me tense in some interview processes, but also to reassure the candidate that it's not going to hinder them in the consideration.

2 comments

>losing two years of credits to study business.

This is interesting to me because I'm a little younger than you, but considering a similar path. I feel like finishing a degree would be useful, but I'm at a point career wise that I don't know going back to do CS or similar would be worth the time and cost.

I've been toying with the idea of a business degree for a while now. The kind of shops that want a degree just to get past HR usually aren't overly particular about what the degree is and I'd be adding new skillsets instead of supplementing the ones I've already developed over the course of working professionally for a decade plus.

I think its a fair thing to check for. People leave school for a variety of reasons, not all of them are because they were exceptionally talented.