Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
How do you know someone doesn&#x27;t have a CS degree? They&#x27;ll tell you.<p>You&#x27;re right: Nobody cares you don&#x27;t have a degree. It&#x27;s not impressive, it is just normal. What I have a problem with is the huge chip on people&#x27;s shoulders about &quot;not having a degree&quot; and insisting on dissing anyone who chose to go a different route.<p>I have a CS degree, I went to school on a scholarship, did not have these massive loans and &quot;wasted years&quot; everyone keeps harping on about. I volunteered my time, I was on the programming team, I did internships, I got amazing insights and advice from my professors. I went to school at night and worked during the day.<p>I consider my CS degree the best decision I ever made. I found the training and education I received extremely valuable. However, not all degrees are created equal. I went to a really great school. Probably would have had a different experience if I went to whatever crappy state school was nearby.<p>I also don&#x27;t think it is necessary to have a degree to be a great programmer. What I DO think is necessary is study and honing your craft. Experience for software development is worth much less than people give it credit for.<p>Hacking sucks. Just hacking at stuff for years on end leads to you being an expert beginner. Do you have 10 years of experience? Or have you done the same thing for 10 years. This applies to everything: You can get twice as far in half the time if you don&#x27;t have to figure everything out for yourself, and listen to and learn from experts.<p>What I look for in a developer: READS BOOKS. ( Audio books count )<p>That&#x27;s the only thing. I&#x27;m sorry, if you are not reading and studying to keep up, you are getting left behind. There are so many brilliant people writing amazing books on a huge array of subjects. If I could get every one of my developers to read ONE book in on software design[0] a year, I would die happy and the entire industry would be 10 years ahead.<p>They don&#x27;t even have to be technical books. I just want to see intellectual curiosity and a commitment to self improvement.<p>- 0: In the vein of Clean Architecture, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Mythical Man Month, Designing Data-Intensive Applications, The Google SRE book, etc.