Is it mandatory these days to have a computer science degree from a university or college to get a programmer’s job? Let’s answer that in this video.
The question was, “Is it mandatory to have a computer science degree to succeed as a programmer?” Well the short answer is, no, although that hasn’t always been the case. Up until recently, it has effectively been mandatory, and certainly if you wanted to work for Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, large companies of that scale, then it was mandatory, and they enforced that. And if you didn’t have a computer science degree, generally you wouldn’t make it to an interview, or certainly not pass an interview process.
Thankfully that’s changed. And I say thankfully, because in my opinion, it should be down to your skills. If you are skilled enough, you’ve obtained those skills, you should be able to get a job, basically the bottom line. And we can see now that the larger companies are starting to think along those lines. And I’ve actually got another blog post related to this topic. There’s lots of comments made by other people relating to that blog post. Have a read at that and see what you think.
But the bottom line is though, these days it is now not mandatory. Now the next question probably that comes up is, is a computer science degree worth it? Well, that’s another question entirely. So I’m not discounting the fact that there is important things that you’ll learn in a computer science degree. And in fact, one of the things that a computer science degree does give you, is a structured way to learn the software engineering/programming. So certainly there are advantages and if you wanna succeed without a computer science degree, you need to find another way to learn those skills. The bottom line is those skills are still valuable, and you’ll need to have those skills that are taught in computer science courses. You need to have those skills ultimately to be able to become a programmer.
So these days, no, it’s no longer mandatory, but you still will be faced at- a certain point you’ll be backed up against the wall. If you haven’t got a computer science degree, and someone else who is competing for the same job has, you’ll need to prove yourself. Prove that you’re capable to help the interviewer, the person who is interviewing you for the position, to show them that you are a real force to be reckoned with, and basically you wanna convince them that you’re able to do and solve the problems that they’re looking to get solved with this programming job.
So basically you still need to work hard. You still need to learn. Go through some courses and understand how to become a programmer. But no, it’s not mandatory to have a computer science degree in 2019 and beyond.
Alright, so, that’s my tip for today. I hope you got a little out of it, and I’ll talk to you again in the next one. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.