Skills, not degrees. (Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn)
In Brazil, I can see a lot of companies changing their mindsets about hiring only people who have a college degree. With the ascension of online learning, and well known educational organizations, like Udacity, some companies are valuing more the skills than the degrees.
Unfortunately here in Brazil, although some companies are changing, this is a distant reality.
In your environment, does a college degree matter?
Oldest comments (19)
US here, and skills are considerably more valuable than a degree. If you can do the work, it shouldn't matter where or how you learned it. While I have a degree, it's not in anything related to computer science. My degree was in fine art! But I taught myself how to code through online resources and was able to change careers. I am grateful that things have shifted this way, too. I would have never been able to afford getting another degree, nor been able to take weeks off work for a bootcamp. For that reason, I think valuing skills over a degree is a great thing. It allows a lot more opportunities to people who want to change careers and/or can't afford to go a full college tuition in the first place.
Very much, In Bangladesh, it's a requirement for most of the companies to have at least a Bs.c on computer science/software engineering and then some.
South Africa here, I got into university for teaching but due to issues with enrollment in that stream I switched to computer science. It sounded fancy and I had no idea what it was. I've been sharpening my skills ever since but I'm struggling with finishing my degree. I was helping people ahead of me with their final year projects as a first year student, I've even hosted free programming classes for anyone interested, I tutored IT at a high school on a contractual agreement but still with all the skills I have I can't find job offers that don't require a degree.
A degree here is a footstep in the door, I can't get in anywhere I want unless I start my own company or startup.
Here in Spain, most companies ask for a degree, but not necessarily a college degree. We have different levels of education and training, some of which don't require college tuition. For example, what we call "Professional Formation" offers 2-year software development courses and are very accessible.
In India, all companies are giving equal priority to both skills and the college degree
In The Netherlands, skills are definitely more important. It is a fact however, that more bigger corporations have put value on degrees. However a degree in that case is more used to gauge the intelligent level of the candidate. It’s not nessesarily always a requirement in software dev world.
Agree @YogiCodes. In India, many tech companies requires a college degree, but even without one it is possible to land on a good programming job. Number of options will increase considerably if you got a college degree at your disposal.
Romania: a faculty/college degree is not necessarily needed to get a tech job in the IT industry, because most if not all companies focus on your skill set during recruiting rather then (just) a college degree. Having a college degree helps though, because here owning a degree in a tech area (Computer Science, Automation, Electronics, Telecommunication, etc.) will make you eligible for the local "Tax exemption for IT employees", which spares IT workers the 16% income tax. This helps both the employee and employer also, by reducing the overall employee cost for the employer, thus allowing companies to more easily pay higher wages to developers who own a tech degree.
India here, many companies require a college degree but there are some where college degree doesn't matter specially in startups.
Worked in different countries. Skills rule, your degree matters if it somehow confirms your skills or shows how wide your knowledge can be.
The degree itself is more about soft skills now, hm?
France here. Due to high demand for developers things tends to change, some companies recruit solely based on skills (especially small ones / startup) but a degree is still a big plus.
New formations / bootcamps of 2-6 months are becoming popular and sometimes give degrees,it works pretty well.
I have worked for two small companies in Berlin, Germany, so far.
Nobody cared about degrees so far. The three best senior developers I have met in those companies had, in order: 1. no degree, 2. studied computer science and quit, 3. studied law.
I personally was never asked about my higher education during by anyone (I studied sound engineering and quit, and computer science and quit).
There is only one exception: my current company has a need for image recognition specialists, for that position higher education is important.
Hi! I'm from Nicaragua and I have never been asked for a degree and I've worked in 5 different companies, but if you want to work for a Government organization most of them ask for a degree
At my company (in Germany), there is at least a strong bias towards some formal education. That would roughly translate to university degree, but for most positions an apprenticeship in the IT sector would also be sufficient.
The apprenticeships are paid programs where you are an employee of a company, but part of your work time is spent in vocational school, and the rest is spent hands-on working in your company. They usually last for three years, but can be shortened, usually dependent on your secondary education.
Self-taught (often: domain expert become programmer) is not unheard of, but it's becoming less common. Coding bootcamps are not - or at least: not yet - a mass phenomenon. I think most larger companies would have a little trouble to intergrate those into their rather conservative recruiting mindset...
Egypt here .. Big companies require a collegue degree.
Some other smaller companies consider it as a plus but not necessary.