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Google, Apple and 13 Other Companies That No Longer Require Employees To Have a College Degree (cnbc.com)
The economy continues to be a friendly place for job seekers today, and not just for the ultra-educated -- economists are predicting ever-improving prospects for workers without a degree as well. From a report: Recently, job-search site Glassdoor compiled a list of 15 top employers that have said they no longer require applicants to have a college degree. Companies like Google, Apple, IBM and EY are all in this group. In 2017, IBM's vice president of talent Joanna Daley told CNBC Make It that about 15 percent of her company's U.S. hires don't have a four-year degree. She said that instead of looking exclusively at candidates who went to college, IBM now looks at candidates who have hands-on experience via a coding boot camp or an industry-related vocational class.
Apple has never required a college degree. Neither Woz nor Jobs had a degree when they started Apple.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
To the extent I help out with hiring iOS developers, my primary concern is apps in the store, and their quality. How you learned how to make a quality app is less important.
A sign the collage bubble will soon burst.
I've had a 20 year career without a degree. Most employers don't really care, and the ones that do aren't much worth working for. It's a bit of a red flag if you care about a check mark (in what could be a completely unrelated field) over actual experience.
How many non-college degree holders at those companies are getting the huge six-figure salaries vs $10-15 an hour support roles? And for those lucky enough to get more productive roles, is their pay comparable with their coworkers who have 4 year degrees, or are these companies using this as cost-cutting and just bringing in cheaper people to do the same roles?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
With college costing more and more, I think we are way way past the point where going to college actually makes a lot of sense for almost anyone.
You could get housing near a college, take only online courses, and learn more than most students for probably 100 times less outlay than a college would cost. And probably eat a lot better.
Sure for technical degrees you can make back the money you spend on a college degree, but it's still a lot of money that you have to pay back, that you could have used to start savings earlier - and it's not like what you learn in a CS degree cannot be replicated by external courses.
I would say hiring-wise it's harder to tell if someone knows something without a degree but is that really true? People get interviewed anyway and that is where you are supposed to figure out if they know enough to be helpful; it's not like all college graduates know the same things anyway.
It's especially good to see Google dropping the requirement for a degree, as I believe they used to require not just a degree but a graduate degree for some positions...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You could get a job as a Slashdot editor, you don't even need to know elementary school English.
I can get a job as a stocker at Costco without a college degree?! Thanks for the info....but I've been working as a developer in High-Tech for the past 30 years...without a degree...
To be fair, a lot of the people who have had long careers got into tech early enough where a degree wasn't really necessary, and have now gained enough professional experience to make up for that lack of degree. But someone with no degree and no long work experience will have a much tougher time.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
In my experience, many people who have a degree in computer science are worse coders because they are taught that there is a specific way to do something rather then being able to creatively solve problems.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
There is a difference between formal education and intellectualism.
The problems is having College degrees being a prerequisite for a good job, means more people will get a college degree, and being that the paper to say you have a degree is a major factor in your life. Colleges will need to lower/adjust its standards to accommodate. The hard working but dumb as a box of rocks student will often still pass and get the degree, because they are a hard worker, and the college and professors see the person as a general asset to the community and can probably do the work assigned to him. But he isn't really college material.
College should have the best of the best, and people who are in college to study the topics they are interested in, not for people who need the paper to get a job outside of education.
Back 40 years ago. An Employee with a college degree was actually someone special to employ and wasn't given entry level work. Today a college degree is the requirement for entry level work, because they are handed off so easily.
Growing up, Expectations from my parents were the following.
Graduate from high school: a Must
Then.
Go to college (preferred path)
Join the Military or the Seminary (Secondary path)
Go to a trade school (if all other options are out of the picture)
Going to full time work out of high school would be just bad parenting.
However for some people they just want a job not a career. And they are skilled at a job and should be able to do it without extra education to delay their earning potential.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Makes sense.
"I'm sorry, we only hire people who have proven their maturity by spending their parent's retirement for four years while burning couches on the weekends after drinking binges."
Well for a lot of businesses we need more Programmers and Less Developers and Architects.
Having too many skilled people in a room will just make a lot of arguments.
With new programmers fresh out of college with their shiny BS in CS degrees, eager to impress with their knowledge, only to have them spend hours arguing over every decision I make as an architect, because that isn't what they taught them in school.
I have taken the same classes, that covered the same topics just with older technologies. But with decades of experience I know when trying to make an OO model is worth it or not, and I know the type of changes the program will need without the detail what they are. So I need to you code it that way, so when these changes are in place we don't need to recode from start again.
For some jobs we need people to do what needs to be done just because there isn't enough man power for someone to do it themselves. And when working in a group people will need to do their jobs wither or not the final location is clear.
Education is great, I recommend it. However for a lot of jobs even ones that needs smart people, it is overkill and in general harmful at some levels.
Get a job as a programmer out of High School. If you want to get promoted take night classes and get a degree.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've found the exact opposite. People with degrees not only are faster at picking up new things, they have more exposure to different paradigms and can adapt more easily, their critical thinking skills are better...
And most importantly, they learn best practices that help them avoid pitfalls down the road.
Although I have to ask... what do you mean by 'creatively solve problems'? I've seen a lot of code that was 'creative'. Typically it's been the worst, most unmaintainable code I've had to deal with. WAY too may people think that once they've solved the immediate problem at hand, they're done. That's not how software works.
The Y2K event should have demonstrated very clearly that code you write will be around for MUCH longer than you think, and somebody has to maintain that code. I don't want creatively solved problems. I want boringly solved problems with obvious, self-describing code that can be easily updated later on.
> In my experience, many people who have a degree in computer science are worse coders because they are taught that there is a specific way to do something rather then being able to creatively solve problems.
In my experience, the exact opposite is true. When you don't have a background in thinking about the structure of code, the algorithms it will use, how that will translate to memory and CPU usage, you are likely going to code your way into a big mess. A good CS school will not teach a specific way to solve each problem - they teach various programming styles, algorithms, and concepts. If you think that a coding bootcamp can make you a good programmer, I simply beg to differ. What makes a good programmer is having the right knowledge and the right experience. That's not to say that all CS schools do a great job of this, or that the right hands-on experience and post-graduate learning can't replace it. IMO it can if someone is passionate enough about their craft. That is the key - passion, experience, and studying the craft. And talent. I just take issue with the idea that somehow having a background in CS would make you a worse coder. I have never experienced that. Maybe you've just worked with people who had degrees but no passion or talent? That I have experienced.
And most importantly, they learn best practices that help them avoid pitfalls down the road.
You definitely don't learn this in college. That's the main thing I've had to teach new grad hires for most of my career.
Although I have to ask... what do you mean by 'creatively solve problems'? I
I've seen many people with no flexibility in problem solving. Just too few tools in their mental toolbox. They think there's One True Way to solve problems, and that all problems are really the problems they know how to solve. I haven't seen any correlation with college degree on that one though - it's mostly people who have not worked for software companies who have that problem. Not enough exposure to multiple coding styles, tools, and methodologies, since everyone in their shop (e.g., bank) was forced to rigid compliance with one approach.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It will still be harder to move between jobs without a degree;
Not once you have a few years of experience. Once you've proven you're really a developer, by delivering real commercial software, few people care. College only matters when it's still the majority of your experience. I don't have any information about a degree on my resume (or anything more than 10 years back, really), and only Google has ever asked me about it in over twenty years and quite a few job changes.
It's really tough to get that first software development job without a degree, though.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> creatively solve problems.
Do you want to read code that is logical or "creative?" I know my opinion on that.
With new programmers fresh out of college with their shiny BS in CS degrees, eager to impress with their knowledge, only to have them spend hours arguing over every decision I make as an architect, because that isn't what they taught them in school.
You know, I've never had that problem. I expect some discussion, of course: you should be able to explain your design convincingly to anyone technical. But I've never had a lengthy argument over choices of data structure or algorithms or the like from junior devs. They ask "why don't you do X instead, isn't X better?" and I reply with the ways X will fail in production and make life suck for everyone. It's pointless to have philosophical arguments, but practical explanations based on experience shuts them down, and is useful and educational to them. Maybe they can avoid some of the mistakes I made.
All of my painful arguments about architecture have been with semi-technical managers, who think the thing they once did 5 years ago must be the best possible way, but aren't technical enough to understand how it will fail.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Computer science (one of my degrees) doesn't teach you how to code, it teaches you how to learn. The percentage of code-monkies stemming from Computer Science is minimal compared to coding boot-camps or whatever.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
When you're looking for skills rather than credentials, that tells me you're more concerned with doing good work than looking good in sales proposals.
While some career-minded people might seek credentials to "demonstrate" their skills to potential employers, there are a lot of great people out there who don't bother.
And you may see less poaching of skilled employees simply because they don't have the right mix of buzzword bingo to attract the scavengers.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
My day job is cleaning up after 'educated' programmers.
Some individuals have the ability to design elegant solutions. Comp-Sci degree plans can be passed without those abilities, and the skills can be learned outside of a classroom.
The gist is that degrees have been used as an indicator of coder quality and it's a very poor tool for that.
Is this a click bait or something? There aren't a lot of context in this article - of course you wouldn't need a degree for jobs that do not require higher level education/training (e.g. operations/maintenance, receptionist, book-keeper, security, janitor). And in the top 15 it has Costco, Whole Foods, Lowes, Home Depot, Publix, StarBucks, Nordstrom and Chipotle. Wow that's tons of insights.
Yes I agree in many ways. I have heard the excuse of "but we didn't learn that in school" several times.
New languages don't solve things. As the saying used to go back in school, "you can write Fortran in any language".
Some people do better at college than others. Some people are good learners but poor test takers.
Look at the NBA for example. Kevin Garnett, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant didn't play college ball but were (are) exceptional players. Does that mean that every high school kid is ready for the NBA? Of course not...but some of them are. Some kids have great college careers (Jimmer Fridette for example) but lousy pro careers. Steve Nash nearly switched to soccer because he couldn't get any college to give him a try. Yet he had a great pro career.
Similarly, there are lots of outstanding college educated IT professional and lots of outstanding IT folks without a degree. As near as I can tell, from over 20 years in the business, there is no direct correlation between a degree and success in IT. Some have it and do well, some don't have it and do well.
Personally I don't think that having a degree should be a hard and fast requirement. As long as someone can demonstrate that they have the skills, aptitude and attitude I think they should be given a chance. Where they obtain those attributes is immaterial.