Really? For software dev jobs? I admit that I haven't looked at the market much, but when I look, experience almost always seems to trump education.

My software company, for instance, requires "an undergraduate degree in CS or equivalent experience", leaving open door for people without the degree.

Depends on the job and the type of work applicants have done. If I want a senior engineer working on a whole new networking stack at Facebook, I don't expect a fresh graduate will fit the role. There are exceptions, but I bet that number is so small I will neglect it.

If I were to look for a junior-level software engineer, I still expect some projects he/she can proudly show off. It can be a class project, or an internship project. Having an internship in the resume is a major triple +.

Some people have 5-10 years experience but they aren't the great fit perhaps because they don't know the technology we use. I want to find people who can pick up the stack quickly but I prefer to find someone who already have the experience so we can get the most out of the new hire right away.

I only have a few years of piratical experience in the area I focus on, but I am already considered senior. In the end your ability to grow as an individual is very important. Having 20 years under the belt is great advantage, but that doesn't mean a young engineer with 3-5 years experience isn't as strong.

When I consider hiring someone, I look at

* the resume (long resume is a negative, because I really don't care what you did 10 years ago, you can tell me that during the interview, not during the resume screening. Please also have a consistent formatting).

* internship / project

* experience and technology familiar

* ability to interact with me like we are building a tent together

I encourage people to get a college degree. As a student get involved in either a research project, or join / start ACM club, or do anything to help yourself marketable like giving talks or volunteering at tech meetup which will allow you to use your technical skills. College degree is not a necessity, but it does provide an unique experience.

There are people who managed to get a CS (or similar) degree but can't program or problem solve, but manage to get hired at enough places to appear to have experience, but still can't program or problem solve. That's why I interview with a programming programming problem that I hope is at least a little bit interesting.

I did that at 45 and landed an interesting job at FAANG (and I'm not the only one). I think it's a bit contradictory to think old programmers are still as capable and sharp as 25 years old, and at the same time insisting to be judged on different standards.

I’ve interviewed many people with 4 year CS degrees who can’t really code. I’m not sure how this happens, but it definitely does. I disagree that having a CS degree should excuse candidates from coding interviews.

Why exactly is this? And why would anyone go into a profession where they will be unable to find work when they are half way through, and at the peak of their powers? In every other intellectual enterprise--doctors and lawyers particularly--they hit their peak earning years just as software developers because (supposedly) unemployable.

This makes little to no sense. It isn't like good older developers become magically incapable of learning new langauges or frameworks. It isn't as if they become less reliable than a 20-something just out of school. It isn't as if they suddenly forget 25 years of history that lets them make more accurate effort estimates than anyone else.

So where does this perception that developers must be young come from, and why does anyone go into a profession that by definition (apparently) is going to require the to change feilds mid-career?

It's not really feeling that we're owed anything. It's more of a wish that older generations would take a look at the world as it is today, realize that what worked in decades past is no longer viable, and adjust their expectations accordingly.

Regardless of education, you can't just walk into a job today. Worse, employers expect you to be ready to hit the ground running fresh out of the gates – few provide workplace training, even for entry level positions. If one isn't fortunate enough to land an internship, this creates a nasty catch-22 situation where you can't get into X industry due to lack of experience, but you can't get industry experience because nobody will employ you. Even if you do have a degree and experience, it's likely that you're not any company's first choice.

As a result, you end up with a ton of young people who if were entering the workforce 40-60 years ago would be on a path to a solid career instead grinding away years of their lives (sometimes upwards of a decade) working at places like Starbucks and Walmart in hopes of a glimmer of opportunity presenting itself. Some lose hope entirely and resign themselves to that kind of life.

I was lucky. My parents wanted to help but couldn't and I don't have a college degree. Thankfully I had cultivated some level of programming ability in my teens which with a couple years of living on nothing I was able to develop into a well-paid software development career, but this was only possible due to my being in the right part of the country, the current crazy demand for SEs, and because this field doesn't obsess over degrees too much.

Software dev is an odd bird in that respect. You can't do that in most other fields, and thus the idea of young people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is largely unrealistic. Most are going to need at least a little bit of assistance to become a productive member of society, but the older generation is denying them of that.

Experience in software development is sadly irrelevant for much of the software development industry. Instead what is today valued is knowledge of some new framework, the ability to describe data structures and algorithms (for interviews only), and the ability to pick-up (hack) at things quickly and without complaint.

All of these things are equally well done by a newcomer, of which there are ever increasing numbers. What future does someone increasingly older have over time, in an industry where the only qualifications (really) sought are "smart, eager, compliant, cheerful, and quick to learn"?

As someone who started coding at age 9, I agree. :-)

It's not about hiring someone in their 40s per se, but rather about recognizing the value of 20 years' experience. Age alone doesn't impart wisdom.

Instead of being 59 you will be 49? I don't think it will help. Instead, put a spin on it and sell yourself as experienced in technical matters.

Unfortunately this isn't really unexpected. Between inexperienced kids with nothing to lose, ambitious graduates with strong short term experience, and experienced programmers specializing in one area it's hard to be competitive solely based on experience. The programming profession is very "free", but that also means you have to manage your own career and make sure that you're "selling" something that is relevant for the "buyer".

From an industry perspective the blondy is right. When you're in your mid-thirties you're expected to either to progress in your career to a role with greater responsibility, have an established career at larger companies or sell your services on the open market as a consultant/freelancer. Basically something that is using your experience. Anything else might not only not be competitive, but also a red flag.

This doesn't mean you aren't eligible for a job, just that it will be harder to find one.

(And I know that all this might sound arrogant which is why people won't really tell people how it is)

You seem overly concerned about this. If a company wants to prevent themselves from hiring someone perfectly capable of doing the job (namely you), then they're probably foolish and you don't want to work there anyways.

On the other hand, it's possible you're mentally hung up on having a desired skill set that's seemingly forever out of reach. If that's the case, just resign yourself to the fact that software development requires perpetual learning in a field where the ground is always shifting beneath you.

Keep in mind that a typical senior developer is just someone who has enough experience to know how to learn fast and not fall victim to common pitfalls in the process.

I suggest finding a job at a nice place to work where you'll be doing something that you enjoy, then worry about the technology stack later. Good companies usually understand that both whiteboard-style interviews and formal degree requirements are bad. The best ones explicitly state that they don't care if you're inexperienced with their stack, so long as you have solid experience.

>I really feel like giving up.

If that means starting a company as some of the other comments suggest, don't. You're 24. Enjoy your youth while it lasts, don't piss it away doing a startup.

Google contacted me for a position years ago. I later found out they hire only 1 of 1000 applicants. I talked to the recruiter (before I went back to college) and she said most Google programmers not only have Bachelors, many of them had masters degrees and doctorates.

One of the questions involved context switches. I never even heard of context switches again until I went back to school and took my computer organization and architecture class.

> any problems getting coding jobs in silicon valley. It never even came up.

I have been working in IT professionally for over 20 years. Read about what was happening in 2000-2001. In a scenario like that, when startups are going bust, are not being funded, the economy is in a recession and many programmers are employed, having a Bachelors that can get you into a Fortune 500 company that requires it helps.

Also - although I have met CS graduates who can not code, most of the "talented coders" I have met have a college degree. I can count on one hand the ones I can think of who are not (and I include on my hand John Carmack, who I don't even know, but I know he is a talented programmer with a college degree).

This has always been the case. In the 1980s, when I was in my 20s, this was the deal, and very well known to all of us in university. Nothing new. One was too old after 35-years-old, UNLESS you were some amazingly great programmer, of course. Obviously. I remember having many conversations about this topic. And this was the case way back then, when the whole industry was young.

That being said, there's always room for older programmers. Maybe it is not quite as easy, but there's a lot of room. Maybe you won't get the Google, Facebook type of jobs, but the government sewer district, or an auto parts store with 20 stores would hire you. So it might not be the glamor of a high-end company.

I'm a lot older than you but I can move from company to company pretty easily, because I guess I have more experience - not on the technical side, but on the political savvy side. Office politics. Knowing how to find the back doors.

However, this is not about that. You hate the tech field, so none of that matters.

I personally have gone from industry to industry, different types of jobs. I have a huge and massive source of skill sets.

I know that many say that being a "jack-of-all-trades, master of none" is bad but I've never felt that way. Sure, I won't make the huge bucks by being a neurosurgeon making $2 million per year, but then again, even if I did try to do that, I still would never be able to be a neurosurgeon (or leetcoder) anyways. So the point is moot. And I'm not really a jack-of-all-trades, more like a "near master of a shitload of trades." That's how I see it, anyways. And, I LIKE being a "jack/near-master-of-all-trades" so why does it matter if I am not a superstar master? I don't want to do that.

So what I am saying is that it is possible to move from one industry, from one trade, to another.

I've done programming, sales, insurance, ran a sports school, worked as a high-level bookkeeper/financial person, ran multiple companies of my own, worked in retail (I really like it and dealing with the public, unlike most people). I've also worked in a number of other specialized niche fields that I don't want to say as it might doxx me. Over the last year I learned a boatload about SEO/SEM/Social media/digital marketing. I did this for others, but now I'm going to start creating websites of my own and use that knowledge to create my own websites.

I do what I want to do. Sometimes it takes me 3 or 6 months to figure out my next move when it is time to move on.

I am just showing you that it is more than possible. I've done it tons of times. And what one man, or woman, can do, so can another.

But the question is, what do you want to do?

As far as your existing work history, of course you have to include it. But you always want to skew your resume to the job you are applying to, as much as possible.

So if you are going to do technical writing as your next thing, you then change your resume to say how you wrote reports, or manuals, or instructions and that was the favorite part of what you are doing as a front end web designer, and other things like that. If you decide to, oh, work in a hotel industry in the administrative department, maybe you created a website for a hotel and were intrigued by it and want to work in that industry now. Just make it link up, that's easy to do. It's totall random association.

.

If you can go to any kind of meetings in person, if you can find any, that is the best case. You never know who you will meet. I went to a computer security even earlier this year and met the CIO of a Fortune 100 company and spent 3 hours talking with him. He had 10,000 technical people working for him, and here I was talking to him. He offered me a job, but I didn't want one.

I've been to so many in-person meetings and if you put yourself out there and talk to people, you will find commonalities. So maybe you decide to work in commercial real estate and want to get into landscaping. So you just start attending commercial real estate assocation meetings and boom, you have a job without having to jump through hoops by applying through their website if you impress them. Maybe still apply through a website but it is a formality.

>Appreciate any guidance, thanks.

What do you want to do? Can't help you until you know that.

This is 100% true for new CS grads I think.

It's even true for people like myself (who have been working in industry for over 5 years, but then don't know a particular tool that a new tech job is asking for...if I don't have to use it at my current job, and I can only program small things on the side using a particular language/tool, how does one get the needed experience that the startups want you to know if they won't hire you so you can learn it, firsthand?).

I just finished a 3-4 month stint having a past student volunteer with me so I could give him the additional direction and practical experience I knew he needed to actually get a job locally (and web developer positions are few and far between where I live). This is a few years AFTER he had already graduated from San Diego State's CS program.

Now with that additional training he was able to get a part-time position at a local web development firm (a foot in the door) and is also on his way to a 2nd interview for a web developer position at our local county office.

It hurts when you can see the potential in someone and know that it's not being developed properly because no one else (a.k.a. potential employers) can see it and make the jump to hire the person based on their potential and then give a bit of their time to train that person properly.

It's also awesome to know that my past student is going in the right direction now through my guidance (partially) but also through his hard work these past few months to acquire the needed skills :-).

P.S. I forgot to mention in our area, most of the graduates of our CS program can't find actual software development jobs (because there are hardly any available) so many of them end up in regular IT work, which makes them even more overqualified (and underqualified) since their schooling really didn't teach them about the IT stuff, per se, so they have to learn a whole lot on the job (once they are even able to get one).

Well, absolutely nothing, and it's a shame to see people (I have to imagine mostly college interns and fresh grads who already fancy themselves as "mid-level" developers) waste money on this nonsense.

Unfortunately this is what happens when you see job advertisements requiring "Senior Developers" and specifying 5 years of total work experience. In no other industry can you be a 27 year old and be anything other than junior-to-mid. I say this as someone who was a senior developer in my late 20's, and you don't know anything in your late 20's.

But I suppose if you're a senior developer after a couple years, what's to say you can't advise people on their careers when you haven't even made it through a Presidential election?

Are those entry-level jobs? For those I can see it. If you're hiring somebody with 5+ years of experience, though, only considering those with a CS degree is pretty short-sighted.

That's so right. But that is experience, so I think when you know most the candidates don't have it, you end up looking for other stuff to test, and then your interview process gets infected, and eventually when you are interviewing for positions that should have experience, you get a lot of the same bullshit questions.

There are plenty of stories here of novice programmers doing some passion project, and 6-12 months after learning to program they are busting out some fairly complex algorithms that to someone that took the long route of getting a CS degree can look somewhat amazing, and frankly, humbling. But I think what's going on is that's the easy stuff to get a hold of, because all it takes is some judicious googling, or more likely, asking some professionals from help, and you're pointed in the right direction for the tool that solves your need, so you use it. Getting amazing progress on a new project isn't really hard.

Getting sustained progress, or being able to fix your problem a year or two in once you realize a major architectural change is required, and not being bogged down for months and losing interest, those are amazing, and those take experience or constant mentoring to achieve usually.

Or maybe I'm just projecting what I currently value.

That's a situation I've been in now for a few years now. I'm somewhat burnt out on software engineering, but the last 13 years of work history, a bachelors in CS, and about half a PhD in theoretical CS, my options on who will hire me are kind of limited.

It seems like my only options are:

1) Start a fresh career with a fresh new degree and accept about 1/3 of my salary that I have now for the next 13 years after that.

2) Take a career in non-degreed labor and probably permanently have about 1/3 of my salary.

3) Try and pivot into the management side of things.

4) Start a business.

5) Just live with it.

Since I don't really want to take a loss salary for 13+ years, I'm extremely risk-averse, and I don't want to become a manager, I'm more or less stuck with option 5.

I like software and computer science, but "software engineering" barely counts as either. I expected to be utilizing a million data structures or figuring out proofs of correctness or designing the next amazing distributed system, but it feels like 2/3+ of software engineering is "add field to JSON" or "write a for loop to convert something to a different shape" or "change color of button" or "change width of page layout and then modify selenium tests", and the only data structures that ever get used are hashmaps and arrays. I spent so much time learning the minutia of CSP and TLA+ and set theory and I feel like I have basically nothing to show for it, and now I can't really even change to a career where I would get to use them.

Not that it's really a thing to complain about; I'm pretty lucky to be in a postion where I make about 3x more than I realistically need, so I'm not really trying to garner sympathy, but it's also a situation that becomes kind of easy to burn out on, and sometimes it depresses me more than it really should.