Making it explicit that you will accept "experience and a good resume" in place of a CS degree might increase the diversity of your applicant pool.

[1] https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless...

I might attempt to make that more explicit next time but it's a slow process.

Last time I was applying for work, I sent out 150 applications/resumes, every single one I look at the list of requirements, if I don't meet one of them, I don't apply because it's a waste of my time.

Sending in a resume or filling out an application is pretty low risk. If a company absolutely won't hire you without a degree, you just won't hear back. Big deal.

I would just say, "Degree in CS related area or related experience highly desirable".

I once got a job with zero qualifications for it -- in fact, the interview was almost entirely just me asking the interviewers how to do the job! They had other applicants but I guess my total and complete lack of experience didn't scare them off. The job was initially daunting but otherwise a fantastic experience overall.

I've gotten many jobs and not met all the requirements. If you're good in something they want, but miss something they want, they might hire you.

Especially if you're the best candidate among all the candidates, none of which often have all the requirements.

Not applying certainly takes you out of the pool.

If you're not confident in your fundamentals then you won't apply because you can't tick all the boxes.

If you ARE confident in your fundamentals then you'll apply and probably get the job and the posted 'requirements' won't even factor into it.

Knowing that is the difference between 150 applications, and just 1.

Unfourtuantly, these features are often inversly correlated.

I did an interview with one of the FAANG.Co once and ended up arguing with the technical interviewer because he was a douche. When I found out he would have been on my team I told the recruiter I wasn't interested anymore. They ended up turning me down anyway because I didn't get along with the guy. Basically he was asking me to implement a JSON parser in brainfuck, not a legit use for either of our time.

When I interview people, I ask straight forward, probing questions looking for how the candidate approaches the problem and the path they take to the solution. I don't ask trick questions, I don't mislead the candidate, and I help them as much as I can to get to a solution on their own. However, I look for and probe for information throughout the process. It's relatively easy to discern whether someone knows what they're talking about and can apply it versus someone who crammed for the interview. Moreover, if someone did cram for the interview and was able to apply the knowledge that quickly - great, I want to work with people like that.

Had someone asked me to implement a JSON parser in brainfuck - I would have got up and left. More generally - if someone asks me to use a _specific_ language in an interview; it's not someplace aware enough to know that 99% of the time the language is unimportant and not somewhere I want to work.

With all that being said - technical interviews are not "the worst thing ever". They serve a vitally important task of ensuring I work with competent and personable people.

sure is emotionally charged, but I don't know that it is myopic. I have thought many many years about the contents of a technical interview. Taking a step back from the argument I recall decades ago noticing that, I believe it was the bureau of labor statics, software programmers are considered "unskilled technical labor." I was initially offended by this. I have now come to the realization that this is generally true. Skill is not required to make software, nearly anyone can do it. Leading back to the argument though, what makes someone good at being a software developer is not technical skills. It is general competency, critical thinking, and being a good communicator.

> Had someone asked me to implement a JSON parser in brainfuck - I would have got up and left. More generally - if someone asks me to use a _specific_ language in an interview; it's not someplace aware enough to know that 99% of the time the language is unimportant and not somewhere I want to work.

to be fair that wasn't the exact request. It was more along the lines of "using whatever (approved) language you'd like, implement x with that assumption that your base language can only loop and increment." x in this case was something like do division. Which I know is possible, but also something I would never need to do and as such the solution wasn't immediately available to my brain.

> With all that being said - technical interviews are not "the worst thing ever". They serve a vitally important task of ensuring I work with competent and personable people.

was definitely hyperbole, but my point is that a technical interview doesn't serve the purpose that you lay out for them being vitally important. A non-technical interview is far better and easier to evaluate a persons competency, problem solving, communication, and "personable people".

Point being an entry level person with competency and problem solving skills can be taught technical skills very quickly and/or learn as they go. Non-entry level, well, their resume should tell you they have the technical skills assuming their references check out. So I really think we should stop wasting time and talent on "technical interviews"

This sounds like a great interview question. It calls on the candidate to show they understand what a turning complete system is and then put that knowledge into practice to create the fundamental building blocks that are normally given to you.

You used hyperbole to make it out to be something it definitely wasn't.

> Which I know is possible, but also something I would never need to do and as such the solution wasn't immediately available to my brain.

In fact, you do need to do it, you needed to do it for an interview. The fact that you see it that way might underscore a personality trait that the interviewers might not have liked. Thus giving credence to the interview process immediately.

> A non-technical interview is far better and easier to evaluate a persons competency, problem solving, communication, and "personable people".

No it's not. It's far better at providing a "comfortable" place for someone to chat without actually proving anything. A good technical interview is problem solving _with_ time to chat and prove understanding of concepts.

> Point being an entry level person with competency and problem solving skills can be taught technical skills very quickly and/or learn as they go.

This is clearly false otherwise we wouldn't be starved for competent technical candidates. There're thousands of companies looking for qualified candidates and they can't find them.

> their resume should tell you they have the technical skills assuming their references check out. So I really think we should stop wasting time and talent on "technical interviews"

Resumes are worthless - doubly so now that politicians have made lying OK. The majority of people I've interviewed lied on their resumes, either as small white lies, or as large ones. And personal references are also garbage - there was a recent radio host that called random numbers and asked for a "reference" for a candidate they were interviewing. People went out of their way to talk up the fictional candidate.

> Leading back to the argument though, what makes someone good at being a software developer is not technical skills. It is general competency, critical thinking, and being a good communicator.

Yes to critical thinking and communication. You just aren't going to get a good read on a candidate without asking thought-invoking questions. You've either never had a good interview or you don't interview well and disparage the process to feel better.

So, you lie about your actual requirements (how hard is it to add the classic “or equivalent experience” qualification?) and expect potential applicants to intuit your hidden meaning?

All requirements on a job application, from degrees to the technical, are all subject to negotiation. If a job requires JavaScript but you can demonstrate that your other skills more than make up for it (and you can learn) then maybe you'd still be a hire.

As with any kind of transaction in business, the terms of employment are negotiable. A job posting is simply an initial ask.

Ethics are another question, but the rationale is clear.

After all, it's the law that fails to recognize that 7 years of experience in different environments may trump having a degree. Policy makers recognize this and allow the situation to exist because they know that you're not going to get residence for the 7-year-no-degree dude, you're going to get it for the 5-year-Masters-from-CMU fellow and it's better to have that guy in than out.

As a hiring manager you probably dream of finding more people like your best performers, yet this makes it harder.

I agree there is value in a theoretical foundation and would also encourage people to pursue it.

However it seems like a separate point from the reality of the market today. Even historically, could you have lost out on a chance to hire Faraday or Ramanujan because they were scared off from applying by boilerplate text?

To be fair, I may have lost people with lower confidence in their abilities and a greater fear of failure. That doesn't sound like a great loss. I'd rather encourage people to have confidence and get over their fear than lower the requirements.

It's not as if these aren't important requirements; everyone in the department has a CS degree right now. If we put background in a technology, it's because we use that technology. But I'd open to the possibility that an applicant who isn't a perfect match might still be a great candidate. That's all. I suspect most hiring managers feel the same way.

That HBR article I linked in the other thread actually addresses that. Their survey indicates that people are deterred less by lack of confidence in their abilities, and more by lack of confidence in your process to assess their abilities in the absence of a credential. The top-given reason (from both women and men) for not applying was “I didn’t think they would hire me since I didn’t meet the qualifications, and I didn’t want to waste my time and energy.”

Now maybe you're actively looking for people who hustle and won't take no for an answer (which isn't quite the same thing as "confident in their abilities"). Maybe that's your team culture, or your company culture. That's certainly your choice if so.

So if you don't have a degree, you probably shouldn't let that hold you back. And maybe because you don't have a degree you should hustle a bit more than those who do. Again, that shouldn't be controversial.

1) Are there diamonds to be found in the hiring pool of candidates without a CS degree?

2) Whats the most efficient way to hire people in an era where a hiring managers or company HR can receive thousands of resumes for a position?

You're refuting my point on the basis of (2) for which I made no claim. To that point, yes obviously any process chosen has to be practical and take into account many requirements.

However (2) is an issue whether or not you screen based on CS degree. Moreover, it doesn't necessarily get worse.

Any major change to evaluation process should be holistic and take into account number of evaluations, time and money invested to evaluate, and where resources are spent in the process. You could come out the same or better in time and complexity, hence "process optimization".

Lots of approaches have been tried and some are anecdotally successful. The biggest obstacle I've seen to improving process is scaling it up to large numbers. What's optimal for organizations of every size and requirement set can't be written in stone.

I would just hope that whatever the policy at my organization would have been, still someone would have whispered Faraday's name to me, along with countless other folks who wont be famous but who we've all seen make great contributions.

These days, even job descriptions at a lot of the FAANG and other big tech companies phrase it as "CS degree or equivalent experience required". Hopefully that's a practice that will trickle down to smaller companies over time.

Then don't list it as a requirement..?