Getting a programming job is not contingent on getting a degree. There’s an easy test for competence at programming in a job interview: ask the candidate to write code on a whiteboard. I am aware of at least one Silicon Valley company that does that and have observed them to hire people who never finished their BS in CS. (I’d rather ask candidates to write code and debug on a laptop, but the HR department won’t permit it.)
Getting a degree doesn’t hurt. It might push up your salary—even if one company has enough sense to evaluate the competence of a programmer directly, the other companies offering jobs to that programmer are probably looking at credentials, so it’s rational for a company to base salaries on credentials even if they are willing to hire someone who doesn’t have them. Last I checked, a BS in CS made sense financially, a MS made some sense too, and a PhD was not worth the time unless you want a career writing research papers. I got a PhD apparently to postpone coming into contact with the real world. Do not do that.
If you can’t demonstrate competent programming in a job interview (either due to stage fright or due to not being all that competent), getting a degree is very important. I interview a lot of people and see a lot of stage fright. I have had people I worked with and knew to be competent not get hired because of how they responded emotionally to the interview situation. What I’m calling “stage fright” is really cognitive impairment due to the emotional situation; it is usually less intense than the troubles of a thespian trying to perform on stage. Until you’ve done some interviews, you don’t know how much the interview situation will impair you.
Does anyone know if ex-military people get stage fright at job interviews? You’d think that being trained to kill people would fix the stage fright when there’s only one other person in the room and that person is reasonably polite, but I have not had the opportunity to observe both the interview of an ex-military person and their performance as a programmer in a realistic work environment.
Having a degree seems like a good way to signal capability of doing the job. I will be studying, learning, and practicing as I go, and if I’m capable of getting a programming job without the degree, that would be ideal.
Is getting a job in programming really contingent on your getting the degree, or rather on you being capable of doing the job?
Getting a programming job is not contingent on getting a degree. There’s an easy test for competence at programming in a job interview: ask the candidate to write code on a whiteboard. I am aware of at least one Silicon Valley company that does that and have observed them to hire people who never finished their BS in CS. (I’d rather ask candidates to write code and debug on a laptop, but the HR department won’t permit it.)
Getting a degree doesn’t hurt. It might push up your salary—even if one company has enough sense to evaluate the competence of a programmer directly, the other companies offering jobs to that programmer are probably looking at credentials, so it’s rational for a company to base salaries on credentials even if they are willing to hire someone who doesn’t have them. Last I checked, a BS in CS made sense financially, a MS made some sense too, and a PhD was not worth the time unless you want a career writing research papers. I got a PhD apparently to postpone coming into contact with the real world. Do not do that.
If you can’t demonstrate competent programming in a job interview (either due to stage fright or due to not being all that competent), getting a degree is very important. I interview a lot of people and see a lot of stage fright. I have had people I worked with and knew to be competent not get hired because of how they responded emotionally to the interview situation. What I’m calling “stage fright” is really cognitive impairment due to the emotional situation; it is usually less intense than the troubles of a thespian trying to perform on stage. Until you’ve done some interviews, you don’t know how much the interview situation will impair you.
Does anyone know if ex-military people get stage fright at job interviews? You’d think that being trained to kill people would fix the stage fright when there’s only one other person in the room and that person is reasonably polite, but I have not had the opportunity to observe both the interview of an ex-military person and their performance as a programmer in a realistic work environment.
Having a degree seems like a good way to signal capability of doing the job. I will be studying, learning, and practicing as I go, and if I’m capable of getting a programming job without the degree, that would be ideal.