My own anecdotal experience working with corporate recruiters and hiring managers is that, no one really cares about education compared to experience (outside of maybe a "wow, nice" when seeing a PhD), but they are all scared to not put the typical boilerplate "Bachelors degree or related experience" line at the top of the job post. I've noticed a trend lately for more progressive companies to leave this bit out in the name of diversity, hopefully this catches enough that it just becomes the norm.
Note that I'm a software engineer who dropped out of college, so you can take what I say with a few grains of salt. :)
Germany has a interesting education system after you finish school[0]
And in my very own experience companies favoured me over people with "only" university degrees, simply because of my work experience + the knowledge I acquired, even tho the knowledge was probably less in-depth.
There are also corporative study programs, but the majority either studies or does [0]
> but they are all scared to not put the typical boilerplate "Bachelors degree or related experience" line at the top of the job post
Makes sense though. The only reason businesses ever started putting "bachelor degree required" on job ads is to help protect themselves in case of a hiring discrimination lawsuit. I provides a defence of "We didn't hire <person of minority> because they did not have the required degree." Courts have shown a willingness to accept this defence.
It is not there as information for job seekers, but to keep the lawyers happy.
Yes. Which is why, in more recent times, businesses have started to transition to "Bachelors degree or related experience", as it can be claimed that those who work there had the required experience where the person bringing the case forward did not.
Not applicable globally. For example in my country a degree is an absolute must.Even those companies that dont care about degrees in US and have their subsidiary here, do a serious gatekeeping with respect to educational qualifications. You must have an undergrad degree in CS and that too from reputed schools.
Right good point, I should have mentioned my hiring involvement was very much NYC / USA focused. What country are you from if you don’t mind me asking?
There are many fields where a formal education is quite important (e.g. Legal, Medical, etc.)
But there's many more where the requirement to have a degree seems counter intuitive. Universities were about expanding and democratising learning and seeking new knowledge and understanding. I never understood why people leave university expecting a job out of it - it may have worked for the previous generation because few had degrees but I doubt it works now.
Hopefully, in the near future, students will be enrolling in universities because they want to learn - not because they feel its their only ticket to a decent job.
It would be like an opiate manufacturer advertising "FDA approved pain management solutions" for decades, and then turning around and saying "well you never should have expected to avoid becoming addicted to opiates."
That's only part of the equation. The other part is hiring managers that feel like candidates should have put forth "as much effort as they did to obtain a degree." These are the folks who will only consider/hire candidates from <insert small subset of 'prestigious' schools here>. Perhaps they are trying to justify the time/money they spent obtaining a degree, and don't want to allow others to avoid the trouble even if they are qualified to do the job?
Universities we're once institutions of learning and enlightenment. Apart from medicine and similar, they really only serve three purposes today: networking (as you mentioned), burning money in order to print degrees, and staying in the black.
The intrinsic value of a modern degree is that it demonstrates that a person can finish something that they started, regardless of being a number during that process.
I have been working in Silicon Valley area companies for over 10 years and a degree or my lack thereof has never been an issue.
I also have had PhD's reporting to me.
It is interesting when I do run into companies who think a degree is important and I tend to compare them in a less than favorable light to those who do not.
Yea, I saw a few in there that I didn't think required anything special. Maybe it's a hangover from the last recession when employers could be choosy like that.
A lot of the others fell along the same category. No, you don't need a degree to be a developer, and you never did. But now you can get a job because employers have no choice but to acknowledge that fact.
Overall, it's a good thing, but it shouldn't have taken this much pressure for it to happen.
Most of these jobs never did--did anyone think they couldn't get a retail job or warehouse job without a degree? Starbucks barista? Seriously?
It's also wrong about listed jobs:they list Publix as hiring pharmacists. That job absolutely requires a degree, I know of no way to get liscenced without one. So overall this is just crap, the only mildly interesting info was IBM being listed.
I used to work at Publix. They don't hire pharmacists without degrees, as it requires a PharmD and being licensed with the state, however they do, very rarely, hire pharmacy technicians without any kind of degree and train them on the job. I have only seen this happen one time.
It’s not an issue getting a job if you’re smart and can manage to get some experience under your belt, and you can pass the technical interview.
That said, I still wish I would have had the opportunity to go to school. I’m increasingly finding I don’t have the same kind of network had I went to school.
It’s possible to build a network while you are working but it’s much harder because you are at the mercy of your employer and the work power dynamic is different than university. You are also at the mercy of your employer and the people he chooses to surround you with, and don’t have as much control or exposure as I feel you would in university.
At least for me employers always talk a big game when it comes to investing in their employees education but I’ve never experienced that personally. They are too focused on the sprint, the next sprint, the quarterly OKR’s and with most of their employees not lasting more than a year or two why invest in someone long term? This puts all the effort on the employee who must then learn on their own time in addition to working and making their boss & co-workers happy.
The last one is killer for me. Most of the people you meet at work aren’t entrepreneurial. I think there’s a reason why a lot of people start companies from people they know in school. Many of the people I’ve meet throughout my career in tech don’t even like tech, they’re just working a job. I feel like at a university it would be easier to filter these people out of your professional network, where as at work you can be stuck with them for years. It’s easy to drop or add a class and be exposed to new people but try dropping a team or a boss.
Then it isnt engineering work. Engineers are professionals, acredited by societies and licensed by governments. It is akin to the differance between simple "medical work" done by any number of people with the skills, and medical doctoring.
In the US, there’s a difference between a professional Engineer and a Professional Engineer. Professional Engineer requires certification (I think they even give you a ring or something), but you can still work professionally as an Engineer without the certification.
The difference, roughly, if I remember correctly, is that Professional Engineers are the only ones who can “sign off” on work and essentially assume liability. Therefore, you can be an uncertified Engineer as long as you’re working under someone certified or if your work doesn’t require sign-off from someone certified.
Are there any PE’s here that can tell me if that’s correct?
Reminds me of this lawsuit, where an engineer was sued by Oregon for criticizing traffic infrastructure (a red light camera) and calling himself an engineer:
So if you are doing the same work, maybe even better than a Professional Engineer, they are doing engineering work, and you are just... twiddling your thumbs?
That might be "engineering work" but it isn't the type of work that legally requires a P.Eng (or P.Eng supervision). I can have my assistant to draft a memo, even interview a client, that doesn't make him a lawyer. And he certainly isn't allowed to hold himself out as such to the public.
Someone should go back in time to inform DaVinci to make sure he refrains from all of that not-engineering work.
It’s easy for people to forget that the engineering came first. The students came after. You can argue the point all day, but it will always come down to one person figuring shit out by themselves.
This isn't true at all. Most engineers never get a PE. It's not worth it unless you are working on public works projects or civil engineering things. It's very reductive to say that work isn't engineering unless you have a PE.
It is the definition of a professional. Engineering is a recognized profession, alongside doctors and lawyers. It fought to be there. Work needing an engineer cannot be done by anyone who isnt. Companies should not muddle the distinctions between those legally able to do such work and those who may not.
From wikipedia:
"In many countries, engineering tasks such as the design of bridges, electric power plants, industrial equipment, machine design and chemical plants, must be approved by a licensed professional engineer. Most commonly titled professional engineer"
"In the United States, engineering is a regulated profession whose practice and practitioners are licensed and governed by law. Licensure is generally attainable through combination of education, pre-examination (Fundamentals of Engineering exam), examination (professional engineering exam),[19] and engineering experience (typically in the area of 5+ years). Each state tests and licenses professional engineers."
You're arguing this on a forum loaded with software developers, often without college degrees, more often without an "engineering" degree, all of whom are in jobs with "engineer" in the title.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying you might be fighting collective delusion in the wrong place.
The word engineer is a protected title in the USA, sure, but it's only relevant when dealing with the gov't. I and many others have the word engineer in their official job title, but both me and the company are fully aware I never took the PE exam.
On the other hand, if you claim you are an engineer to the usa gov't then yeah, that gets you in hot water. I also tend to avoid calling myself a software engineer specifically to avoid potential issues like that, but I do lost the full job title given to me by previous employers when asked and on my resume.
Engineering as a profession has some regulation and licensure in the US, but the word "engineer" is not protected. Someone can call themselves and engineer without legal trouble. Not so much if call yourself a doctor.
Did you even check the link? The Wikipedia article has a definition of a professional engineer right in there, and what you said did not agree with it at all.
Not sure what you’re reading, but it said nothing about requiring a license - what the person said was very different than the definition cited. In fact, the obsession over the license part clearly misses the mark.
This is what the summary mentions as the only supporting evidence of any sort of credentialing:
“The foundational qualifications of an engineer typically include a 4-year bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline, or in some jurisdictions, a master's degree in an engineering discipline plus 4–6 years of peer-reviewed professional practice (culminating in a project report or thesis) and passage of engineering board examinations.”
Note that the word used is “typically” - this is very different than being a requirement. The definition of a professional engineer cited mentions no such credentialing required, speaking in broad terms of the characteristics & responsibilities of one, but no narrow hallmark of how one reaches the title.
The part he quoted is far from verifying his/her claim - just the opposite, it is evidence that he/she is misusing the term professional engineer and is not distinguishing from a licensed professional engineer from a professional engineer.
The profession is regulated, but not all practitioners are licensed professional engineers. A licensed engineer needs to oversee, verify, and sign off on the work. It does not need to actually do the work. I worked for four years as an electrical engineer, but never even took the FE (then the EIT) or had any intention of gaining licensure.
And even that oversight is only required in some circumstances, mainly when the project involves potential risks to public safety. Not every project needs to involve a PE.
Yeah and Publix is apparently hiring pharmacists without a degree apparently.
Total BS, to be a pharmacist you need to have a Doctor of Pharmacy (which is an advanced degree!) and be licensed by the appropriate government entity. Those 6-8 years of schooling aren't exactly optional.
You are correct about the title. But the need for a pharmacy degree in a pill dispensary seems dubious. They literally take the RX and count the pills out.
Obviously, you can ask the pharmacist questions and get additional info, but that's not required for someone to hand me my vitamin D supplements.
I agree that for some engineering fields an official certification of some sort should be required. There are other roads to obtaining the required knowledge for that certification though, and attending university should absolutely not be the only way to obtain certification. At the very least standardized tests.
It would save highly motivated self learners or people learning in an apprenticeship type situation such as an open source contributer years of their life, lots of money, and allow them to more quickly contribute to society.
anecdotal disclaimer -- I think I've worked with more brilliant people with no degrees or uncompleted education. They just had more drive and do not let anything hold them back. They do not need to be told what to do. Not saying that the rest of the people that I worked with 9.8/10 that had degrees were not great. Just there was something positively different about the people I encounted without it.
I don't have a degree or formal education but I managed to work for Google about 10 years ago and left to start a company that engages in HFT.
What I'd argue is that your observation is a form of survivorship bias. Of the very small people who manage to succeed without a degree, those people will likely have a great deal of drive, self-motivation, and other traits to compensate for that lack of degree. I'd then argue that in the long term, those traits end up having a much greater impact on your ability to succeed than an education.
But that doesn't mean not having an education is overall a good thing. The majority of people without a degree will be absolutely incompetent software developers compared to those with a degree... you would just have never met them because they don't last long enough to work with you.
Well if you work in any sort of specialized field or at a level beyond entry, you've got some obvious bias in your sample.
If a degree or formal education has been used as a barrier to restrict access for any time only the strongest and most driven of the degree-less are going to persevere and make it.
So my own anecdotal evidence against this is that the hiring process at my very first job did not weight having a relevant degree very highly, and hired a number of boot camp grads as software developers, many of whom literally could not do the job. I would say many of them had much less drive than the degree holders (not saying this is true for all non degree holders or even bootcamp grads, I know that some of the most driven people out there do not hold a degree)
I could certainly see that happening. But I would lump them in with being educated. Since they most likely did do a 9-5 4-5 days per week bootcamp (assuming). I've encountered people with masters degrees unable to do very basic development. Understanding all the jargon but not able to perform anything beyond basics. Some how these people survive in some businesses. Staying under the radar.
Note that I'm a software engineer who dropped out of college, so you can take what I say with a few grains of salt. :)