skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A Bachelor's degree (even in CS) isn't just job training. At least half the classes required for a degree are not related to your major. When you graduate with a CS degree you've (hopefully) learned some CS theory and some practical skills but also you're more well-rounded from learning composition, speech, math, history, science, etc. If being a developer meant pounding out code all day long then a college degree shouldn't be a factor in the hiring process. Most developers I know spend more time doing other things - planning, estimating, communicating with other teams, etc. - than coding. This non-coding workload increases as you move up the ranks so most HR departments hire with an eye toward the future as well.
So given what you know to be true - that most companies require a degree - you have two options:
1. Get a degree
2. Work for a company that doesn't require a degree

And one more thing - the plural of degree is degrees not degree's. I learned that in school.
Actually, I am inclined to believe that work experience is a better filter. If you are hiring freshers, than ask them to build something in a day or a week and use that instead.

Now, that doesn't mean that a person without a degree doesn't have a chance... it just means that they will have to prove themselves in some other way (being famous coder/blogger/speaker helps there)...

Actually the onus is on the employer. Shouldn't you want to hire the best?
For apparently good reason.
The assumption does not hold with more information.

First, self teaching processes filter out idiots too, since idiots can't self teach.

P(qualified | (no degree + autodidactic)) > P(qualified | (Degree + little self teaching ability))
Yup. Given the omission it's not a proper Fisking. Well done otherwise.
I worked 20 years in software and publishing with no degree. In my experience, no one cared.

I did not see any correlation between skill level and degree. Programming is a craft, like carpentry. You learn it by doing it, by doing it with other people, by thinking about it and talking about it, a little bit by reading books about it, and almost not at all by watching lectures about it.

That said, people who don't have the kind of experience with programming to tell a good programmer from a bad one have to resort to proxy measures like credentials. I usually worked for small companies, where this is less of a problem.
This link gamed the HN system!
look at who voted it up?
Well duh. TechCrunch make their bread and butter from being the first to announce news X (and from various aggressive rants against twitter, rails, and Blaine Cook).

Isn't this fairly well known already?
Part of me wonders what would happen if you just faked some school on the paper. It worked wonders for the dean at MIT, so if you are smart enough give it a try.
Just curious, how did you teach yourself programming?

To me a degree would not so much signal skill in any programming language, as a general skill in learning new stuff, which to me seems to be the most important skill of a programmer. A university degree seems to indicate that ability of learning stuff to some extent. Sure, if you taught yourself programming, you have learned something by yourself, too. But I think it is a lot easier to learn one particular programming language than to have a general understanding of computer science, be able to write down stuff, learn things you are not as interested in, and so on.
TC and Mashable cater to similar audiences, and TC gets about double the hits. We could, perhaps, estimate that you'd get 400 hits from TC.

Unfortunately (and unfortunate for many reasons), science isn't a huge draw in a generalized audience (and both Mashable and TC aren't exactly science-oriented).
Would you please stop signing your posts? They are already signed with your username.
For example, the P(A | B) notation is something you learn at a University Probability class. A good feeling for elementary probability thoery is something that makes you much better at modeling, understanding and predicting the world, and not just as a programmer. And there's lots of other classes like that in a Uni. curriculum (although the overall percentage of really useful classes is in my estimate only 25-50%). Before you say that you could learn that at home, well, normal people who want to learn such things choose to go to school, and corporate HR is usually not interested in deviants. My personal opinion: I also have friends who are very smart and great programmers and dropped out of school, and I think that that particular choice was not very smart on their part, they could have just finished it, and would be in a much better position. Eg. they wouldn't be reliant on personal recommendations when applying for jobs; also, how do you ask for a raise w/o a degree --- where are you going to go instead?. etc.
Yeah TC DEMANDS news from small start-ups first. I guess once you're bigger, you can kind of choose who you want to give news to...and at that point, don't forget Mashable.

Oh and PS you should definitely try to see about some coverage here:

http://blogs.discovery.com/good_idea/

http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/

http://science.discovery.com/
There is nothing suspicious about the voting on it.
I am not a regular TechCrunch reader, but I find it difficult imagine that they would pass on writing about a hot new startup, just because some other site already wrote about it.
What does a virtual job fair have to do with integrity? It let an HR person from Seattle interview someone in Italy for a job in Luxembourg...

To me it seems like Amazon being smart.

Regarding your edit, I don't think you understand how important technical evangelists are at places like Amazon, Microsoft, Sun, etc... They are essentially technical sales-people; they're the ones who say "Hey, this is what we're working on, and this is why it's important".

To be completely honest with you, your post seems like sour grapes.
Yes, after three or so I would start saying "look, are you interested or not?". Time is money, after all - perhaps one should simply ask for money for further interviews?
Actually they are fairly rigid about not writing about a launch that has already been covered, especially by Mashable.
Interesting points. However, you seem to be assuming that people without degrees disappear into some kind of a time warp while everyone else is at university.

Team work, communication, planning and organisation skills can be picked up in real life environments too, if anything in a better fashion.

When you enter employment at a young age, your employer and your colleagues are more willing to show you the ropes and give you time to learn on the job, considering you usually start at a low position. Then you proceed to learn real world experience for a number of years, depending on how quickly you dropped out of education, and how quickly you landed a job.

I had been working as a developer for 5 years by the time my friends of the same age finished their degrees. Put that into perspective and compare to people fresh out of university.

I'm not saying people with a degree have wasted their time, or that it wasn't the right thing to do. Just give those of us who chose a different path some credit too.

As far as my options go, I'm now self employed and loving it.
Great points. Thanks :)
I was really surprised from the low hits # from mashable, considering the traffic it gets. I think your explanation make sense, but I think I would have got much more hits from TC.
Make sense when you think of it, its their competitor.
Sorry for the confusion. I never meant to imply any secrecy.
"When you learn by yourself, you tend to learn enough to do what you need to get done. In school you learn things that are not immediately obvious that you need them."

No, no, no. YOU tend to only do the minimum to do what needs to get done without outside pressure. Don't project your flaws onto us self teaching people who don't share them. Any autodidactic person will constantly be learning both generalist and specialist things. Just because you don't have enough fire in your belly to do more then the minimum learning when you're on your own doesn't mean anything about anyone else.

(EDIT: Sorry. Not to be too harsh on you. Your quiz is relevant. Of course, if the OP can't answer questions like yours in his field, he isn't the kind of autodidact I'm defending. But if he can, (and given that many self teaching people can do things like that easy) your point about learning just enough to get stuff done is more a personal thing then anything about autodidactic people)
The onus is not on the employer. The employer's job is to fill the hole with the best that they can easily ascertain. I can tell you from doing hiring in the past that people have gotten very good at filling their resume's with bullshit.

The last time I hired someone for a Senior Developer position, I had to filter through almost 500 resume submissions. Of those, I did a telephone technical interview with about 200 applicants. We did face to face interviews with the 6 applicants who passed an incredibly simple technical interview - Things that any programmer who has done any real work would almost be insulted by.

Any available filter to help sort the wheat from the chaff is helpful, and a degree is one of those filters.

That being said, I do not have a degree in anything, I got into the industry at 17 and haven't had time to go to school. But, I've been able to get far by working harder than everyone else; in the conversation of degrees making a difference, I'd like to have one, sure. But I've never needed one. I think it's come up in one interview once, and it ended up being a nonpoint.
A degree is a proof that you were able to complete something where other have failed, and that you are willing to learn and learn fast. It also proves that you are not completely dumb, since few people fail at university.

Even without degree, I think that you still have a chance to get a job if your resume and your projects you have are good enough (or if you run a business in the past). It probably get's more difficult in the consulting business, as the company sells you (and your resume) to their customers, so it get's difficult to sell you for a premium rate if you got no degrees or certification.

That being said, If you haven't done so far, I would read a few algorithm classes, because that's something you normally never learn while programming (also a good tip for the Twitter guys... ;))
True, but it's getting "more information" that is costly. If someone else can do it for you, so much the better. Personal recommendations are the best source (if you know and trust the recommender).
Matthew, I agree, however, there's a general trend I've noticed within this conversation: technical v thoughtful ability.

From my experience, programming requires both understanding and experience. What you learn in college does not necessarily correlate to success in a technical field (especially when you're coming out of a Liberal Arts university as I did).

Simply put, when it comes to a technical field:

(Past experience + understanding + execution) > a Liberal Arts degree.

But you shouldn't disregard a degree when it comes to thinking + innovation. College provides an invaluable means to look/analyze the world around you.

I wrote about this a few days ago that may be of interest:

http://datainsightsideas.com/post/35471878/
I've consulted for a lot of years with out a degree. I don't think it would be possible without a massive stack of recommendations and success stories.
Perhaps, but the problem with both sites is what Jason Kottke calls "infoglut": they are filters with too much content, so readers have to filter the filter. Most readers are going to instantly filter out content that doesn't speak to their audience, and most readers (again, unfortunately) are going to filter out science.
The most desirable companies get so many resumes that they need to filter out most of them. I used to work for a popular search engine before Google came into the picture. As an engineer I had to interview people every week. HR handed me lots of resumes from people with CS degrees from top universities for phone screening. They didn't bother with the rest unless someone was heavily recommended by a trusted source.
Maybe it just seems to me like an investment obviously worth paying.
Free Ruby on Rails book (require free registration)
Sun seems serious about Ruby ... I wonder for how long or for how far!
No need to apologize. After rereading your post, I don't think you did. I may have been reading "between the lines".

I definitely agree with your original post. Sounds like it was from someone who has been there.

I guess I get a little sensitive these days when people take shortcuts without thinking things all the way through. My apology.
But a carpenter is not an architect. The barrier to entry for pure programming is rather low.

I see programming today as in a similar state as auto mechanics was in the 1970s & early 80s in the US. If you had good sense and aptitude, you could be one, and the barrier to entry was very low.

Now it's different. You (for the most part) need some sort of certification to be a "grease monkey;" and even then, you are fixing, tuning and rebuilding engines, not designing them.
Stop the presses.
No one has humor here.
No, it doesn't really make sense. What it the AP wouldn't write about something that Reuters already did? News is news, but demanding first or nothing is a very poor technique.
I "caught the bug" when I was 14 and messing around with mirc scripting with some IRC buddies.

I scripted a bunch of stuff for controlling mp3's, and a few socket bots to protect from channel takeovers.

Then I wanted a mp3 player more like itunes is today, and so I set about making one in VB.

From there I progressed to games, in VB and Java, such as space invaders etc, dabbled a bit with 3d programming.

Moved to the web, HTML, JS, followed by PHP, then some JSP/Servlets and ASP through a work requirement, learned SQL Server and databases in general from a MCDBA who was also a MCT.

Messed with C and linux, borrowed some books from the library and read every page, lost my way a bit and learned about creating exploits.

Then got back on track, some c++, some ASP.NET/C#.

And the list goes on. My language and framework of choice is now Ruby on Rails.
i just bought "programming collective intelligence". it's basically machine learning for engineers rather than mathematicians.
in india that's exactly how it works.
Sigh. Here's some helpful advice: when you're in a hole, stop digging!

> As far as that last "valid point", it's one that I stated awhile ago, and you've only addressed it now.

You did? I've just been back over your posts in this thread, and nowhere else do you mention moderators making (or not) submissions. But hey, I'll just add 'lacking honesty' to 'sucks at maths' and/or 'poor reading comprehension'.

> Your latest example no longer talks about moderators.
Oh? how about this: "So, under the system I propose, is it the prolific poster, or the quality poster that gets moderater status? Well, seeing as my system works on averages, it's obviously the quality poster."
This is the sort of thing that just makes you look silly. As I have previously said, either you have poor reading comprehension, or you're a liar - the evidence is there for all to see...

> Ignoring this, if a poster averages 30 points per "post", this still falls back to points, and the idea of "popularity contests" and "vote when you agree" mentalities, which are _points_ Giles brought up in his post.

Oh, here we go again; "but, but, you're disagreeing with Giles!". Yes, and what's your point exactly? I've already said that I disagree with Giles (twice before this post, but, hey, I'm happy to repeat myself if that'll help you). Apparently you're not terribly good at picking up on things that aren't explicitly stated (an even then!), so I'll explain.

Giles suggests that popularity contests (points systems) suck, because they are won by people that waste their time on blogs/news sites. I propose a system that keep points, but hopefully rewards quality rather than quantity of posting. Do you see what I have done there? I have attacked one of the assumptions of Giles' "Popularity contests suck" position - namely that popularity contests are always won by time-wasters, who generally speaking are not interesting people.

If you want to argue against my position, you need to demonstrate why my system won't correctly give voting rights to interesting people, or show why people that write interesting posts are not necessarily the best people to be deciding which other posts are interesting. Or maybe suggest a superior system that doesn't use points in any way.

What you can't do is simply repeat back to me Giles' position. I know what Giles' position is, he's been kind enough to write a big long entry on his blog to inform us all. Your repeated restating of his position, without adding anything new to the discussion, and completely failing to address any of the concerns I have raised is nothing other than good ol' fashioned trolling.

Look, what can I say. I suggest that you go back and read PG's essay on disagreeing again. Please note that he places a high value on actually addressing ideas presented in a post. Maybe you should try doing that rather than whinging about others being what you perceive to be condescending... When you start doing that, you'll be amazed by how quickly the condescending reponses disappear.
The thing is this: There are some things that ones does not know that one does not know. And only in a formal teaching environment is one introduced to these topics. Most schools give a healthy dose of general knowledge together with the domain specific knowledge. And most self learners tend to stick to domain specific topics.

I don't know how self taught you are, but 100% of my income comes from things I learned myself and applied myself. I spent $0 to learn those things, and now I make, well, a fair bit more than $0.

In spite of all I learned by myself, when I went back to school, I discovered things I did not even know where useful to me.

I'm not saying that a person is flawed because he is not aware of some specific area. He just is not aware of it because it's not something he directly requires. What Web programmer needs to know about register transfers? Well, if he went to do a CS degree, this knowledge would be forced on him, making him a better programmer in general!

Civilisation only exists because of the institution of school. Don't bash it, it's a very good thing.
I wouldn't worry about it. TechCrunch is not always a huge traffic driver (nor is Mashable obviously) and I wouldn't want to reward their petty games anyway.

What's TC's goal? Covering web startups or covering web startups that Mashable hasn't written about? The content at TC has been going down hill for a long time, but this is really pathetic.
Actually, it will be the best job ever. Technical Evangelism is impactful, fun, and all-consuming and I would be happy to tell you more off-line.

As Simone's new manager I am happy that we were able to find such a talented person using Second Life as our first point of contact.I am also happy to know that he has experience and interest in leading-edge technologies.

Hiring great people is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. You have to find them, screen the resumes, conduct phone screens, and ultimately meet them in person. If there's a way to use an advanced technology to optimize and reduce the time and expense involved, then what's the problem?
I think you misunderstand me. I do not learn exactly enough to get things done. That would be impossible. If I am asked to program a web app in PHP, I would study PHP, Databases, Web server configurations, and have enough knowledge to develop a web app. I would not start by studying design patterns, software modelling techniques and abstract functional programming.

That's the difference between self learning and structured learning - most of the time people learn things specific to the topic they are interested in. If you are trying to claim otherwise, then your worldview is deeply flawed.
With an altitude (to succeed), with an altitude (to create), with an altitude (to make a difference in our World), with an altitude (to ensure fair play and to be a good citizen), and finally, with an altitude (to fight the good fight in spite of all odds and adversities). That's what I had in mind. Thanks.
Humans share more DNA with Ayn Rand than apes do.
The Future Without IPv6
I also find OpenID hard to explain to people who are actually smart and fairly technical. It seems to fill people with low-level dread and confusion.

This is one of the fundamental reasons why OpenID is a failure. Its complexity-to-utility ratio is way out of whack.

OpenID always reminds me of one of Spolsky's lines:

For some reason most people seem to be born without the part of the brain that understands pointers. Pointers require a complex form of doubly-indirected thinking that some people just can’t do, and it’s pretty crucial to good programming.

What is OpenID? It's a system that asks you, not for a username and password, but for a pointer to a site that wants your username and password. And, lo, Spolsky is right: it causes many, many people's heads to explode.

Nevertheless, if OpenID prevented cancer everyone on Earth would try to figure it out. There'd be special schools to teach it. But all OpenID does is replace usernames and passwords. Most people use the same ones on every site. Or they have cookies turned on so they rarely have to login, and they use email reminders on those rare occasions when they do. Or they pay their $35 for 1password and just solve the problem. There are a few use cases that can't be solved like this, but not enough of them to justify the overhead of OpenID for most people.

OpenID might have a future as a coder's tool, like SSH. Coders can learn to use the protocol fairly quickly, and they're more likely to understand the security tradeoffs.
As a self-taught hacker, this just isn't true of me. I'm constantly reading about things that I have no immediate use for. In fact, one of the reasons I dropped out of my CS undergrad program was that I felt like its focus was too narrow.
(I don't mean to sound harsh on you, you sound smart and what I wrote has the wrong tone.)

"most of the time people learn things specific to the topic they are interested in."

Your structure is wrong. It's not most of the time all people. It's most of the people all the time. An autodidactic person (admittedly rare and an outlier) will have already studied design patterns or whatever, because they read obsessively and learn best that way.

I'm not trying to claim most people don't work that way. I'm saying there is a group of outliers that has both an ability to learn way better and faster than school can teach, and who dropout. These outliers are both highly desirable employees and cast off by the system. I think that normal people are projecting their own inability to self teach well at a college level onto the freaks who have this ability.

If you think there isn't a group of outliers who is better off self teaching, as able as any PHD's, and who drop out or don't attend school because it is stifling to their natural urge to learn, your worldview is excluding a lot of the most talented and creative people on the planet.
> Sigh. Here's some helpful advice: when you're in a hole, stop digging!

> But hey, I'll just add 'lacking honesty' to 'sucks at maths' and/or 'poor reading comprehension'.

> This is the sort of thing that just makes you look silly.

> either you have poor reading comprehension, or you're a liar - the evidence is there for all to see...

> Apparently you're not terribly good at picking up on things that aren't explicitly stated (an even then!)

> good ol' fashioned trolling
A View From The Top: Burj Dubai
Nitpick: Jeff Han is affiliated with NYU and his own company, Perceptive Pixel, not Microsoft.