Should a developer have a higher education? On the one hand, many companies do not look at whether a developer has a tower; on the other hand, some, on the contrary, only consider a candidate with a diploma in Computer Science. To explore this topic, we collected opinions from recruiters and developers.
What do the statistics say?
According to a Stack Overflow survey , 75% of community members have at least a bachelor's degree. It turns out that every fourth programmer works without a higher education diploma. Of those surveyed who write code professionally and also attended university, more than 62% have a degree in computer science or computer or software engineering, and only about 10% have a degree in another engineering field. Almost 10% of respondents had a degree in business, humanities, or fine arts. According to the DOU resource survey, the majority of IT specialists have completed higher education . Despite the statistics that speak in favor of higher education, it does not mean that the quality of education allows you to get a job as a developer. Rather, it provides the necessary technical background. More than 86% of surveyed IT professionals independently studied the language, frameworks and development tools they needed, according to a Stack Overflow survey.
Programmers' opinions
Artem Goy
I am currently studying at the university with a degree in Cybersecurity. I have been working as a developer for several years. I decided to go to university because I felt that I lacked basic knowledge, for example, in the operation of processors, programming in assembly language, the C language, algorithms and data structures, and the operation of networks and the Internet. I am sure that studying the base will help me quickly understand new technologies and other programming languages that I may need in the future (at the moment this is what happened: learning C/C++ slightly speeded up my understanding of Swift, which I needed to solve problems on iOS). Could this knowledge be obtained outside of college? I’m sure yes, but the advantage of higher education is that at the university all the information is already collected in one place. And there is additional motivation (that is, sessions) so as not to stretch out the study of the material for a long time. A very good opportunity to communicate with teachers, both “theoreticians” and practitioners, who can always improve your understanding of the material and answer questions. In any case, you need to sit down, figure it out, practice with code and technology, be it courses or an institute. Good programming can only be done through practice. As far as I know, they very rarely ask about a diploma during interviews: the main thing is to have an understanding of your subject area.
Dmitry Titov
I graduated from the Faculty of Informatics and Computer Science at Kyiv Polytechnic University. I can say that the educational program is definitely outdated. And the fact that I did not receive the knowledge that I use in my work there is also a fact. But the university gave me many other things: the opportunity to move to Kyiv, free housing in a dorm, a legal exemption from the army, friends/acquaintances/connections, and finally a piece of paper at the end of my studies, which helped with finding a job in Norway. The university also helped me find my first job in my third year, through courses offered by the department. There were benefits, but they were all indirect and not directly related to the educational program. The diploma itself was asked for when I was hired as a developer at a university in Norway. There he was closely studied: both grades and the thesis itself.
Recruiters' opinions
Anna Geletey, Talent Acquisition Team Lead, Proxet
Our company operates on the “outsource and outstaff” model, and we also have our own product. Our clients are companies from the USA. They are all different. For example, we have one client for whom it is critical that the candidate has a higher education in Computer Science ( Computer Science is a specialty in foreign universities that teaches programming. In Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, we are talking about the “Information Science” faculties technology,” ed .). Today, the IT market is overflowing with offers from companies, which has led to a significant demand for specialists. Candidates sometimes receive up to 30 offers from employers per day. As a result, recruiting processes have become significantly more complex. Therefore, sometimes we can show people without a degree in Computer Science, but always with a higher technical/engineering or mathematical education. If we talk about our clients, for 30-40% it is really important that the developer has a higher education in Computer Science. We have vacancies in which we indicate that having a higher education in this specialty is mandatory. Such candidates are valued by clients and are in high demand in the market. We understand that a person without an appropriate background simply will not pass a technical interview with a client. They are looking for engineers, technically strong specialists already with experience in development, and not those who decided to change their type of activity and chose IT as a more promising or simply interesting direction for themselves. There are also other types of clients for whom having an education is not so important, and they are ready to communicate with a candidate if he is a strong specialist. Now we have several positions open for which we are ready to consider juniors, but with a mandatory technical education. And its presence will be a significant advantage for the candidate. We are ready to consider candidates with an education in economics, humanities or a diploma in International Relations. We also show such candidates to clients. But it is necessary to understand that for a client in the IT market, at a minimum, it is important to have a technical education, and at a maximum, relevant relevant experience.
Olga Zhukova, HR manager and recruiter JavaRush
Today, when looking for a programmer, we first of all look at his hard skills: the stack of technologies he owns, the programs he has worked in, examples of developed sites/applications, etc. Only after analyzing the matches between our requirements (which, by the way, do not specify the presence of a graduate as a mandatory criterion) and the candidate’s skills, do we make a decision on a possible interview. Among programmers, especially juniors, it is a very common situation when higher education does not intersect at all with the programming that a person has decided to do at the current moment. Or it simply doesn’t exist, and a person, for example, has been programming since school. All this will in no way strengthen or weaken the candidate’s status in front of rivals who have previously graduated from the university. The reason is very simple: courses, studying at school or university are a theory, and the question of how a person shows himself in practice can only be answered by his portfolio, passing a technical interview or completing a test task. Of course, we can debate for a long time whether higher education is necessary in principle for modern man, and several philosophical treatises can be written on this topic. But most likely we will come to the question: what should this higher education give to a modern person in general? And this, most likely, is a conscious choice of one’s vector of professional development, the ability to work with large amounts of information, find solutions to new life problems and achieve one’s goals. Now answer your question: are such skills acquired only within the walls of academies and universities? I think no. But what helps you become a good programmer is hard work, hundreds of lines of code, a good mentor and real projects. So if you decide to become a programmer, program. And when you reach Middle/Senior positions and have cool projects in your portfolio, believe me, the recruiter is unlikely to be bothered by having a higher education. You will simply be hounded and bombarded with offers.
conclusions
A higher education for a programmer is not at all necessary, but it helps to strengthen the developer’s technical knowledge base.
A technical or information technology degree increases your chances of getting a developer job on projects based in the US or Europe.
In Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, they often do not look at the tower and getting a job without a diploma is much easier than in the USA.
Tell us in the comments if you have a higher education and in what specialty? And did it help you when finding a job as a developer?
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