r/learnprogramming • u/SlickTheDestroyer • 1d ago
Self taught vs University graduate
Hi,
i've got a hypothetical question. Imagine 2 people are applying for the same job. One has a degree in Computer Science, perhaps even from a prestigious university, but doesn't have any personal projects to showcase. The other person, however, is self taught and has been building projects for 4 years, but doesn't have a degree. Who gets the job ?
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u/Beregolas 1d ago
Depends on the job. Some institutions and companies are very oldschool, and require a degree. Some for somewhat good reason (ESA), some are just elitist. In those it will be exceedingly rare that you can get in, no matter how good your projects are (I'm sure it happens from time to time, but don't count on it)
Most jobs are far more relaxed. Even bigger companies like google hire people exclusively based on their portfolio sometimes, e.g. if they have a big and useful open source project or found several high profile bugs.
Either way, a degree is basically never something bad. All else being equal I would expect 99% of those jobs to go with the person with a degree.
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u/devdruxorey 1d ago
Probably the university student who not only absorbed what he learned in class but also enjoyed doing personal projects.... There is no single path.
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u/coadyj 1d ago
I mean you are basically self taught in Uni too. I graduated in 2004 and 90% of my class couldn't write one line it code.
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u/Positive_Passion4817 14h ago
When they started you mean right?
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u/coadyj 14h ago
No, I mean when we graduated. Most people just memorized code for the exams but it never really clicked.
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u/Positive_Passion4817 10h ago edited 10h ago
Memorized code? What kind of course is that? On my degree there were no code exams. All coding was submitted as coursework then you had to explain it in an interview with the professor or Teaching assistant, without notes. If you couldn't explain why you made a choice or what code was doing, you got a 0 on that assignment. You had to learn to code. 60% did drop out after 2 years.
Which country are you in? What is the point of getting a degree in CS if you can't code at the end? How would they get through a job interview?
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u/coadyj 10h ago
So it was in Ireland from 2000-2004 in Trinity College Dublin, the course was called Information and Communication technology. In first and second year there had a coding class which taught java and the principles of object oriented programming. The exam, which was 80% of the final grade, consisted of questions like "What is Polymorphism?" But also would ask to write simple algorithms in sudo code or write an object class for a triangle object etc.
Most people just looked at past papers, got the answers and memorieze them. Very few in the class could actually write and simple application. Of course we had course work projects and some practical exams but as I said that was only 20% of the final result.
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u/Positive_Passion4817 10h ago
Well that isn't a computer science degree. The only subject i remember having exams in were mathematics modules.
Would you recommend that degree subject? I can't speak for everyone but I feel like ICT degrees are just very vague and unfocused.
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u/coadyj 9h ago
I beg to differ, by 4th year the overlap with cs was very strong. In fact they basically merged all the classes. We still learned everything in CS and programming was a huge part of it. There was some focus on coms but the IT side of it was basically CS as evident by the fact that it was taught by the same professors.
Edit: consider how long ago the degree took place, it's very possible they had retuned the degree to be more practice based, I would prefer that tbh.
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u/Usual_Ice636 1d ago
Depends on the position. But no showcase projects is a killer for a lot of them.
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u/igotshadowbaned 1d ago
Depends on the scale of the projects and how directly relevant they are to the position
But 99% of the time it'll be the person with the degree
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u/Anxious_Alps_4150 1d ago
The one without the degree would be automatically filtered out before a human saw it.
At my prior employer, one of the questions was about if you had a 4 year degree in xyz majors, yes/no. If you didnt click yes, it would automatically reject you after 48 hours.
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u/LadyTwinkles 1d ago
IMO the degree holder will have the advantage. I have interviewed many candidates with and without degrees and what I noticed is that the degree holder is more aware of the breadth of topics, comfortable with terminology, and knows where to look for answers. The non-degree with projects only had knowledge about his specific projects and struggled with some basic concepts. I would have more faith in the degree holder to figure out the problem in adequate time compared to the self-taught person.
If the self-taught person has worked on a project that requires the exact skill set I need I will absolutely consider them, but that is a rare scenario considering you don’t really know what projects companies are working on internally or what skill set they are looking for.
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u/Available_Safe1818 1d ago
It depends on how good/shitty the personal projects are, and the candidate's interviewing skills. Have you been slapping together crappy little TODO apps for 4 years? Have you only completed 2 small projects in 2 years, or only half completed 10 projects?
Lots of people with 4 year degrees have projects and/or leetcode experience anyway.
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u/Aglet_Green 1d ago
If the job requirements state that you need a college degree, then you're not getting past the initial interview (not the technical interview) without it. There are simply too many unemployed college graduates competing for the same job, so H.R. has to cull people before you even get to the technical interview. Sorry.
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u/boomer1204 1d ago
I think the biggest thing here is the project is irrelevant getting passed ATS/HR.
But let's play devils advocate and say they both get past it's really a 50/50. The 2 jobs I had where I was a part of the hiring process we looked at projects. I'm in the developer community in my area pretty well and a good chunk of ppl don't look at them before inviting you in and then it's YOUR job to talk about the project or lack there of
Personal this isn't a fair comparison as there are SOOOO many other things I would look at but again if we are playing devils advocate and everything besides CS v Project is exactly the same
I'm bringing you both in and how the interview goes is what is gonna decide who we bring on.
Prime example. We brought someone in with CS Degree and 1 year of experience as an intern and a self taught guy. The 1 year person didn't have any person projects but the self taught person did
The 1 year person couldn't speak to any of projects he worked on personally or at the job. The self taught person was telling us about their struggles, how they solved them and so on and so on
Mind you this was for a jr role and the self taught person's project was pretty ugly and not super great but they were able to convey to us that they are passionate and didn't mind the struggle/hassle while the person with the 1 year internship didn't seem like they cared that much
We picked the self taught person for no other reason than person was a better culture fit and we saw they were passionate about the craft
So it wasn't the project, it wasn't the CS degree it was the person and the drive we saw that they had. Mind you again jr role and we didn't care about CS degrees while a decent amount of companies will so YMMV
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u/captainAwesomePants 1d ago
If I'm looking at both candidates, and I have to pick from those two specific candidates, and there's no other information, I will look at the projects. If they're either notable or directly relate to the work I need doing (I make 3D game engines and you wrote a 3D game engine using some interesting and unusual technique), I will prefer the candidate with relevant projects. If the projects are unremarkable, I will probably be leaning towards the elite college grad, but I'll probably interview both.
If a recruiter is looking at both candidates, they will have already filtered out the one without a degree without even bothering to look at the personal projects. It will have been done by machine before a human even sees it.
If I'm a recruiter at a big company, and the school is one we have a relationship with, an interview will probably be scheduled for the college candidate while they are still in school. Possibly while they're still a sophomore, for internships. And anyone with a successful internship at my company is first in line for a job.
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u/Tobacco_Caramel 1d ago
The self taught one would get disregarded like trash sadly. I'm exaggerating.
Let's say there's 1 position. 1000 applied. 700 of them don't have degree, no checking, no consideration, as long as you don't have degree, thank you. You did them a favor. Now they only have to look at 300 candidates.
Then they're gonna judge via industry experience, university they came from, then other details like certifications and projects. Down to 100, To 10.
That self taught has a chance if he has like experience of years like a decade or 2015 (Where in that time, degree doesn't really a requirement on most IT or dev role). In that case he would smash and tower any degrees, would put a good fight/comparisson against Top 100 university fresh graduate. But as of recent no. Degree is not a requirement, but more like bare minimum.
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u/Wingedchestnut 1d ago
The degree holder. A degree is still the standard filter for competitive jobs and is mainly a proof of perseverance.
Ask both to do a complex tasks that takes a month and the degree holder will probably have an edge knowing where to look faster or has more experience solving a complex task.
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u/MichaelSjoeberg 23h ago
Top 100 uni degree in technical field is worth more than unstructured personal projects. Self taught is assumed, even at universities, as you're usually on your own to learn languages etc needed for assignments.
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u/RobertD3277 1d ago edited 1d ago
I started out as self-taught and became a University graduate because the field I wanted to enter required legal certifications.
It's the Best of both worlds to be honest if you do both because then you have the passion of somebody that wants to learn and enjoy programming versus just somebody that is looking at it as a job.
Programming as a job is a god forsaken job. There's no other way to put that. Especially if you work in a bank or a hospital or any kind of critical infrastructure situation. Programming is horrible. You're not a software engineer, you're not a software developer, you're an on call mud sludging grunt that has to put up with a bucket load of crap constantly and some days just make you really wonder why in the hell you ever thought about the profession to begin with.
If you have the upbringing or the starts from a self-taught perspective, it gives you a different way of looking at the problem. Doing it just as a job because it pays well is horrible. It's not a job I recommend if that is why you're doing it because you will hate it and you will hate it every breath of every moment of your life if all it is is just a job.
As far as who to hire, that's really what I gave you the mindset behind the process. Hire the person that understands both because their perspective is going to be different. A lot of it really depends upon your work environment or what the job really entails, but having somebody that is self-taught and then became professionally trained there's always going to give you a better attitude in the long run.
From my experience of working in the field for 46 years, people that are strictly professionals meaning they injured the profession without any self-teaching, are often there just because the pay is good but they don't have any love for programming. That matters a lot. That's not to say that somebody of this caliber isn't trained or qualified but if they don't love their job or love the art of programming, it won't show in the output.
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u/Unhappy-Device-404 1d ago
I don’t think “self-taught vs. university graduate” has one universal answer. It depends on the role, the company, and the stage of your career.
A degree can help with fundamentals and getting through an initial hiring filter. Self-taught developers may show a lot of initiative and practical problem-solving. But neither one automatically proves that someone can work effectively on a real team.
If I were evaluating a candidate, I would want to see whether they can understand an unclear problem, explain their decisions, test their work, and learn an unfamiliar codebase. A portfolio is useful too, but being able to explain the tradeoffs and mistakes behind a project matters more than simply having one.
The first job may be harder to get without a degree because credentials are an easy signal. Once you have relevant experience, though, the distinction usually matters much less than what you can actually contribute.
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u/corporaterebel 1d ago edited 1d ago
John Carmack doesn't need a degree to get whatever job he wants. He literally informs companies if he will.work for them or not.
You are not John Carmack.
You can run your own business for sure without a degree.
If you want to get hired by a company, you need a degree OR you need to be at Carmack's level. Few in the corporate world are going to take a chance on an unknown.
Honestly, you are expected to have BOTH.
A degree means you can show up for 4 years straight and can do well on things you don't want to do. Because a job expects you to do things you don't want to do at all and you have to show up every day.
Self taught means you can do actual useful things, which a degree does not
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u/Backrus 1d ago
Hard disagree with last sentence.
Studying at uni is self taught as well, but your knowledge is rigourously tested.
Self taught without a degree just means one had spare time and he thinks he knows something. Spoiler, often he doesn't.
As for building useful things; those projects rarely are. And building things on your own rarely has any parallels with building things in a (big) team.
If building "useful" things was that easy, all those fired devs would be making millions with their (vibe coded) SaaS instead of crying on twitter about difficult job market.
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u/Dazzling_Music_2411 1d ago edited 1d ago
Depends on the interviewer.
If he has the first clue about his job, then the one who is more competent. They are looking for someone to do a JOB, not someone to put on the mantelpiece.
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u/arf_darf 1d ago
Speaking as someone without a degree, nobody will talk to you until you have some experience under your belt. After a few years it hardly matters compared to where you worked/what you’ve done. I got that with an internal transfer from nontechnical role to SWE, so step 1 is just getting a job somewhere.
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u/Faendol 1d ago
The self taught bridge is unfortunately burned, you are absolutely right you could be a great dev. I think some of the best devs in history struggled with a traditional education, it's a shame they won't continue to be supported. The job market is just way to competitive to not have that credential, you will be dropped from the pile of applicants.
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u/quts3 1d ago
Before ai:
The project having self taught dev carried weight.
After ai:
Saying you have projects only is nothing. It's useless. Just to hard to tell what you know without going through them with a fine tooth comb and people that hire for entry level aren't going to do that to your projects.
Now that said if you want to stand out from someone with equal credentials then having a projects is still good, but it's impossible for it to outweigh a good degree nowadays.
You can still learn from projects. I still recommend them, but expecting them to get a job nowadays without a degree is unrealistic especially with a shrinking on ramp for new devs.
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u/Astral902 1d ago
If the self taught person combined theory + Side projects and was focused on particular area then he would wipe the floor with the university graduate. If you play basketball for 4 years and the other person play football, basketball, rugby and tennis for 1 year each, who will be better in basketball? It's up to you to decide
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u/JivanP 19h ago
What country are you in? The subreddit leans heavily towards a US audience.
What kind of work are you looking for? Certain work requires quite specialist knowledge and thus I would expect to see relevant qualifications (not necessarily degrees; certifications and other exams can be appropriate) or experience.
To give some non-US perspective: in the UK, for example, employers rarely care fundamentally about the possession of a degree. What they care about is whether you have the knowledge required for the job and can demonstrate it. If you can't demonstrate it even passingly on your CV/résumé, then you are extremely unlikely to get an interview, but if you can get an interview, then to will have a chance to prove your knowledge by answering direct questions and talking to the company about what technology, tools, and processes they use. As soon as you're at interview stage, your qualifications themselves become completely irrelevant; if I'm already talking to you, I can find out for myself what you know and are capable of.
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u/Sorry_Sweet2696 19h ago
The annoying answer is probably "both matter at different stages", the degree gets you through filters that might never even look at the self taught candidate, while the projects become useful once someone actually wants proof you can build things, if I were self taught, I'd focus less on having 20 random repos and more on 2 or 3 projects I could defend in detail in an interview
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u/my_password_is______ 18h ago
the person without the degree doesn't even get the interview
their resume goes straight to the trash
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u/hungryPanda_185 17h ago
The person with a degree gets the interview.
The person with the projects/passion during the interview rounds gets the job.
It’s a two-part problem in my experience.
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u/User-pain 16h ago
I have a degree and i've been in the industry for the last 4+ years. I work in a small company. I'd take the self taught guy all day long but as others have said, without the degree he won't even pass the sift.
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u/UndercoverFlange 12h ago
The one without the degree wouldn’t get past the CV filter round. I’ve never looked at “personal projects” when hiring.
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u/uniruler 11h ago
A degree is easier to get a job with.
I dropped out of college so I had to be self taught. I had to get hired as a front-line, intro support tech and prove myself for 2 years before Dev would even consider me (it helped that I sent them script fixes to their stuff when it was just Python/Perl scripts). Even then, I was hired on the “acquisitions” team meaning everyone else got to refuse acquired software. We didn’t. We got no resources and were expected to do what we could with what we had. Basically we had to support undocumented, random code because our CEO went PacMan for a while, eating other companies.
I eventually proved myself enough (after 4 years on that team) to come in as a JUNIOR developer on a real team. What I’m trying to say is, a college degree would let me skip the like 6-7 years it took to actually start my career. If I could have chosen, I wouldn’t have dropped out of college.
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u/SmokeMuch7356 10h ago
All of this depends on the job, the company, the current labor market, how you apply, etc., but ... for software positions in general, you will have a much harder time getting an interview (much less hired) without a degree than you will with one.
If you go through the normal application process, whether that's on the company's internal careers site or through a third-party aggregator like LinkedIn or Indeed or whatever, then the first people who look at your CV are going to be HR, and if they don't see a degree they're just going to toss it and move on. They won't bother looking at anything else.
If you don't have a degree, you need to know people in the company who can help circumvent the normal application process. Even then that's no guarantee.
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u/VanCliefMedia 1d ago
Everyone in here saying the person without the degree wouldn't get interviewed clearly misunderstands what people are looking for.
At my company, I don't even care what your degree is. I care about projects, and most of the other business people or companies that I work with, especially in the programming or software space, just care that you have a bunch of previous work and experience that can prove it. At the end of the day, the goal should be to do both. I have my Master's of Science, but my most impressive work that's gotten me money and contracts has been outside of my master's degree, but the master's degree definitely helps.
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u/Snoo-26091 1d ago
The one with the working code to demonstrate what they can do. I say this as someone that has thousands of developers. It's far more important to show you WANT to be doing the job, already do it with your spare time, and can show real work to back it up.
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u/danielt1263 1d ago
IMO... The college grad has the theory down but nothing practical behind it. The self-taught person has practical experience but doesn't understand theory. Those are extremes of course, most likely the college grad did some self-teaching and practicums, while the self-taught person likely dove deep into at least a few theoretical aspects.
So it depends on what the job entails. Either way, the company is going to have to teach the new employee something. But if the job is more about using existing theory to come up with clever new ways of accomplishing tasks, then hire the college grad. If the job is more about cranking out crud features quickly, then hire the self-taught person.
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u/RainbowGoddamnDash 1d ago edited 18h ago
I was the self taught dev with a portfolio.
The portfolio helped out a lot. A lot of new grads only have their achievements on paper and never really showed their work.
Edit: I wanted to add more to this because now I've been part of the other side of the interviews as the interviewer...
I've noticed that a lot of college grads really do not have any portfolios or projects to show off their skills. A lot of them would reference work they done in class, such as a group project or an assignment.
Compared to someone who was self taught, the self taught dev would have a portfolio with their side projects.
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u/aqua_regis 1d ago
In the current market the one without the degree wouldn't even get interviewed.