Programmer

Can being a very good programmer cope up with not having a college degree?

Keeping up as a programmer without a college degree can be split into two phases.

1. Getting an offer.
2. Kicking ass and being recognized as an A-Player.

You can be the best programmer in the world, but without getting an at-bat to show off your skills you’ll have a hard time keeping up.

1. Getting an offer.

In order to get the first offer, you’ll need to pass the technical interview. But before we go any further, let me get the bad news out of the way:

If you don’t have a degree, some companies will discriminate against you and not give you a chance. They have policies in place that require a degree.

It’s stupid. But it’s better to acknowledge reality than to fight it. Luckily, this is a more old-school mentality and it’s starting to change. It’s less and less common to have a “CS Degree” requirement (or a similar any degree requirement).

Here’s the next bit of bad news:

Some companies will focus the technical interview on topics you’re unlikely to know unless you have a CS degree.

I’m talking about things like:

• Various sorting algorithms
• Data structures, like Linked Lists, Trees, Graphs, Queues, Stacks, Priority Queues

If you’re a Ruby developer, you might think it’s crazy to worry about implementing a sorting algorithm. After all, super fast, efficient algorithms are built into the language. Why worry about them?

But interviewers will ask you about these things. So you need to get familiar with them

Here’s another thing to think about if you want to get an offer without a college degree:

Some interviews will involve a whiteboarding exercise.

Initially, this will be really difficult. But the more experience you get with whiteboarding, the easier it gets.

To practice, try writing code challenge solutions out with a pen and paper instead of a keyboard and a text editor. It’s going to feel strange, but it will really help.

Here’s another thing that really matters for you:

Many interviewers will care about soft-skills.

Make your likability a strategic advantage. The people interviewing you are going to potentially be spending 40 hours/week with you. Be someone that they want to spend time with.

So, to get the offer, you should:

• Ignore the opportunities you don’t have.
• Get the computer science background that people will judge you on.
• Master the art of whiteboarding
• Be likable.

If you do those 4 things, you should be able to get a competitive job offer.

2. Being an A-Player

There’s tremendous upside to being an A-Player. As an A-Player, your goal is to bring as much value as possible to the company. Once you do that, nobody will care if you have a college degree.

Your chances for a promotion, raise, and increased responsibility are more tied to your performance.

In programming, there’s a concept of a 10x programmer. A 10x programmer is capable of getting roughly 10 times as much work accomplished as an “average programmer.”
Focus on improving your productivity each day and working towards becoming the 10x version of your current self. That’s how you can make up for the fact that you might not have a college degree.

Whatever you do, just don’t make the same mistake that the former president of PayPal made as CEO of Yahoo!