133
Two points:
A degree is more than technical skills.
Web Development "high-demand skills" go obsolete every 5 years.
I've been around before Google existed. Hard to imagine, but the internet predated Google by multiple decades. I was in NGO organizations dealing with Netscape and IE5/6 compatibility issues as CSS started rolling out.
Guess what? ...
61
A CS education (including a college degree) will teach you timeless concepts. It may use seemingly outdated languages for that, but it's the concepts that matter, not whether you place the semicolon at the end of the line or not.
That is why you may think "this is not directly related to what I do right now". It isn't. It is related to the basic ...
23
While the other answers are good, they are extremely on the pro-degree side, and I think it's only fair to shine the light on the other side of the world.
Is finishing my CS degree critical to being employable as a web
developer if I already have good experience and an internship?
First of all, single internship as nice as it is, is not equivalent to ...
16
You haven't mentioned your current location or the location that you plan to seek employment in in the future, and whether those two are the same, so I'll mention an aspect that might or might not be relevant to you: immigration. If this is not relevant to you - you can stop reading here.
I landed my first job in IT after my second year of studies and had ...
15
I didn’t see this mentioned yet. A major reason for me to prefer hiring someone with a degree is because it proves someone can put their mind to something and finish it. It makes it more likely this person won’t leave on a whim. It’s also an indicator for the marshmallow test, will they be able to delay gratification.
Obviously exceptions are there but the ...
14
Can you get a job in the future without finishing your degree? Yes.
The more interesting question is should you.
The answer to that one is more complicated, because it depends on you. Are you a 21-year old college junior? Finish your degree. It will be worth more over the span of your career
(in terms of jobs with HR departments that absolutely require it ...
11
It is not inappropriate, but mostly pointless
I wouldn't see a problem with asking as it can let you know whether you could be applying for other positions within the company or whether there is an overall hiring freeze, making any applications futile. But I would not expect a reliable answer.
Beyond learning that, what do you have to achieve other than ...
10
Is it inappropriate to ask the company why the position was cancelled?
It's not inappropriate, but it would likely be pointless. There could be any number of reasons. Knowing the reason isn't going to change anything.
Do I have any right to be given some sort of justification or just
avoid being ghosted?
The company doesn't owe you anything and you, ...
9
Would most companies auto-reject my as an applicant for not having a degree even if I have long-running experience with high-demand skills in web development?
Yes most companies will reject you if you have no degree. To test this lookup 10 jobs for software development and check the requirements you'll find that a high percentage will require a degree.
...
9
No, not even a little bit. There are some dev jobs where having a degree makes a significant difference to your chances of getting hired, but for most of those, it isn't a CS degree that matters — it's a postgrad math degree, or a business degree, or an engineering degree, or some other specialized field that shows that you would be able to provide some kind ...
7
Most would not auto-reject you, since devs are usually in high demand. But if you have the chance to finish your degree, there is no point to drop out. It will always be an advantage to have a degree.
6
There is a huge, epic, difference between
• Web development
• Software engineering
Web development is incredibly awesome, amazingly lucrative, wonderful, a great career, and an all-around great way to spend your worklife.
But scripting web sites and doing css has no connection at all to things like programming airplanes to fly, programming cars to drive ...
5
This is a highly controversial subject you're asking about and on both sides choice supportive bias tends to play a huge role. Especially those who have spend 5 years of their lives getting a degree often feel the need to justify that investment. Having been in the position where we had to hire juniors and a short stint as a programming 'mentor' at a ...
4
Recruiters/engineers can stay irrational longer than you can afford to be unemployed.
You would think that cool companies are smart, they do not discriminate based on education, your wardrobe, ... but truth is that most of the companies, including the good ones have biased heuristics when filtering candidates. In fact unfortunately you will learn in your ...
4
I've been in software development for 28 years now and am currently a Director and make hiring decisions. It is possible to learn a narrow set of skills pretty quickly and be useful in only that thing... but frankly there is a LOT of stuff people learn over 4 years of blood sweat and tears getting a degree that is easy to discount if you don't really sit ...
4
I've been told over and over to include my Github page in my resume as
it's a way for potential employers to gauge my skill and past projects
That's usually a very good idea to get through the CV screening. You will usually want to include this as a few lines somewhere in your experience, together with a link they can follow to see the code you've written (...
3
Most of what you learn in a CS degree has negligible practical value, just like what you learn in any other pure science degree (e.g. physics).
If you wanted to learn something practical, you should have studied software engineering not computer science, just as you would choose mechanical, electrical, civil or chemical engineering, not physics or chemistry.
...
3
To answer the actual question:
Would most companies auto-reject my as an applicant for not having a
degree even if I have long-running experience with high-demand skills
in web development?
Some companies will reject you for not having a degree.
However, the follow on question is... who cares?
You don't need more than one job at a time... so the real ...
3
This will likely depend on the job and the company (and even the specific hiring team). I can tell you that I've known several programmers who had degrees in electrical engineering, so many employers will likely consider it related.
Ultimately, the only way to know for sure is to apply - if they don't think it's related enough, they'll just reject you.
...
3
A degree is not usually a hard requirement in webdev and you won't be "auto-rejected" for not having one. There are many people in the industry who don't have a degree and do well, so a degree tends to be more a proxy of ability. If you can demonstrate ability directly through experience and skill then obviously a degree is not critical.
However, a ...
2
Self thaught programmer here, like others have said; it depends.
First off, I have been very lucky in my carreer and was able to transition slowly from a business role to a developer role over many years, to the point where I was working as a full time dev. Secondly, I have spent a lot of my free reading and learning. Thirdly, I really like developing and I ...
2
Fields as defined in academia can be quite large, as to accommodate the varied interests of faculty and researchers. Job roles as defined in industry can be very narrow, because companies are (almost always) looking to solve a specific business problem by filling that role. Correspondingly a degree in ECE could be solid preparation for a dev role, but it ...
2
While there is little you can do to make your projects public by default (due to NDAs, school anti-plagiarism rules, etc.), there are a few possible alternative solutions:
Place a link to your GitHub profile besides your contact information. You would have your phone number, address/location, and then your GitHub profile.
This would only be beneficial if ...
1
I stuff it in the top along with my other contact information, such as my LinkedIn and DevPost. I make them both nice clickable hyperlinks as well as easy to just type into the web browser.
Like this:
1
I lost a chance at a job that I really wanted because the interview process was conducted by, and therefore oriented toward, people with CS degrees. I had been in the industry 15 years and was, I am sure, completely qualified to do the work. But the questions were all oriented toward stuff you would learn in an algorithms class, for example. I am CS-...
1
Can you get a job in software development without a degree! Sure!
Story Time
I have a CS degree from a Big 10 school known for engineering. In one of my first jobs after college, I worked at a 10-person shop with a brilliant developer of similar age who also didn't finish his degree because "there was nothing practical to learn." He could program ...
1
Based on the curriculum at the college I go to, there aren't many skills that I would learn from the remainder of my degree (mostly C++ stuff) that would translate to applicable skills in my career in web dev, causing me doubts about the direct value of the degree.
This is a terribly misguided perspective that couldn't be farther from the truth.
What do you ...
1
I would reply back with something like,
Interviewer, thank you for taking the time to reply. It is disappointing to hear that the position was cancelled. I was really interested in the position and look forward to any future position you may have open. Attached is my updated resume and links to any online resume I may have. Looking forward to hearing from ...
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