Do you need Computer Science formal degree to become an employed coder?
The Education model is changing around the world, and it was mainly forced by the COVID-19 pandemics. But even before that it was possible to see, mainly in technology industry, that having a formal degree at University is not always the best way to achieve success getting a job.
I would even say that if we compare between people who are employed in jobs that one of their main activities at work is coding (and I will generalize them as ‘coders’, and I excuse for the developers or software engineers for also call them like that), we can see that many of them didn’t even had an undergraduate certificate, or when they had it came from courses not related to Computer Science.
It is clear that the access to information on the Internet like “How to learn something” is becoming easier each day. We have millions of videos on YouTube teaching how to code and many foruns between coders to help each other to know new techonologies. I’ve heard one day from my husband who finished Computer Science Bachelor degree (err… almost finished, but at least he already have a well payed job) that the main thing he learned at University was to Google “How to …?”. And I really believe that the main goal is to learn how to research or learn how to learn, but it is really necessary to have a formal degree to achieve this hability?
Considering this, I found some interesting results obtained from datasets provided in Stack Overflow Annual Survey. I used the datasets from 2017 to 2020 to get insights to evaluate the coders profile along the time and how their major degree influenced in their opinion about this necessity of doing a formal course in Computer Science and the relation with their salaries.
From this Survey there are thousands responses fielded from over 180 countries and dependent territories. All of the responses come from the developer comunity and professionals from the area and examines all aspects of the developer experience from career satisfaction and job search to education and opinions on open source software.
So, considering these datasets I decided to compile the survey answers to the following questions in order to find the answer for the general question: Is it really necessary to study in a formal degre Computer Science related course to get a job as a coder ?
- How important is a formal education, such as a university degree in computer science, to your career?
- Is there any bias in the above opinion depending on their major undergrad?
- What is the proportion between these two type of professionals along the years?
- Depending on your degree, is there difference in salary or compensation if you work coding? How does it is indicated along the time?
FIRST & SECOND QUESTIONS: How important is a formal education, such as a university degree in computer science, to your career? Is there any bias in the opinion depending on their major undergrad?
This question was actually made to each of the interviewed. But for our purposes I filtered from the whole dataset the people who were still studying or who didn’t worked in the market at the moment coding (e.g. someone unemployed or someone who codes just for hobby). The concern here was to know the opinion of people who really work/worked coding.
This question was made only in 2020 Survey. The chart bellow shows the opinion from three groups of people: 1. Who actually studied Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems or Web Development (all of them study a lot about programming) — green bar 2. The people who never studied in a formal degree of Computer Science — blue bar 3. Everyone who works coding — red line.
In 2020 survey, the Computer Scientist (or people from related fields in their formal degrees) — CS, represented more than 67% of the interviewers, therefore the results showed in green, CSs, have the same trend to point that the formal degree is fairly to critically important to their career, influencing in similar results to the group of all coders in red line. Otherwise, the non CSs believe that it is somewhat important or even not necessary have a formal degree in Computer Science.
Of course that the CSs would say that their degree is very important — They are working with it! So, yes, their opinions are biased. But more than that, I see with these results that the non CSs coders who got a space in this market are expressing that they achieved the same level of knowledge needed to their career with alternative ways, they showed that it is possible to get into this field without a paper proving you learned from some University.
Actually, just the fact that the non CSs coders answered this survey, shows that the technology field is much more open to break paradigms of traditional markets that requests a certificate paper, and give new opportunities to teach different multidiplinar professionals. And sometimes they are much more valuable to a company, because they’ve moved out from their confort zones to learn by themselves a new field, proving they are very skilled.
THIRD QUESTION: What is the proportion between these two type of professionals along the years?
As I said before, only the fact that the non CSs had answered these survey reveals a market very atractive who gives opportunities for who actually know HOW to do things, and not just for who HAVE a formal degree. But being realistic that any field is purely kind to accept anyone and there aren’t a lot of Steve Jobss borning everyday, let’s see the numbers:
The results obtained here may not be accurately representative of all the coders in the world, but they are much better than just guess something. And it shows that along these four years the ratio between non CSs and all the coders seems to keep almost constant in 32%, comparing to 67% of CSs, that can still be considered an expressive number if you compare to regulated professions like other engineerings or advocacy.
And this absence of regulations to define the careers related to the activitie of coding, like software engineer, may be one of the causes that allows anyone who wants to change career to get into this field, beyond that there are many available resourses online nowadays that teaches how to learn, how to program in many languages and how to use new technologies.
FOURTH QUESTION: Depending on your degree, there is difference in salary or compensation if you work coding? How does it is indicated along the time?
Another relevant indicator to know if someone succeeded in their career is to evaluate their salary or compensation. To analyse the chart bellow it is important to consider that the datasets from 2020 and 2019 used annualy compensation to measure how much each respondent earned in his job, and it was used the variable of annualy converted salaries to U$ dollars. In 2017 and 2018 the variable was ‘Salary’ and in 2017 was only considered the people who earned in U$ dollar, because there wasn’t the variable ‘converted sallary’.
This indicator also cannot represent the reality worlwide faithfully because the salary average varies by country, currency, and career type (even between who codes). But even with these inconsistencies it is possible to see a pattern that repeats every year in the technology industry: the difference in salary average between non CSs and CSs is always positive (*according to the formula represented in OY axis), it means that the people who is not CSs tend to earn more than who is CS and this difference increased (adding that their percentage remained “constant” along the years).
After this information, what should be the education level of these people to earn better than the CSs??
The non CSs earned in 2020 U$111,249 annualy in average, while the CSs, U$100,838. The above chart shows that not only people with a Bachelor degree or Doctoral earned more than their own average of non CSs (unlike the masters), but mainly people who had an Associate degree, people who went to college but didn’t earned a degree and the ones who just finished their Primary!
And, to analyse even more completely, considering that the people with a Bachalor’s degree were the marjority, I decided to see which courses they studied as major undergraduate and also to compare their salary averages:
As expected, the people from Engineering, Natural Sciences and Mathematics are the marjority, probabily because of the familiarity with exact sciences, but, apart from Maths and Natural Science, Engineering was the second worst undergraduate in salary average. And the people from Arts and Humanities earned the best averages contrary to any expectation! Maybe they assume roles of leadership who also codes or have minds more open than the restrict logical minds from CSs and other people from exact science courses… This is another thing to find out…
TO conclude…
All of these results showed that is more than clear that the knowledge learned in a regular formal Degree in Computer Science is very relevant to get into the market as a coder. However it is also very clear that anyone from different educational levels or from different undergraduate courses can succeed as a coder too.
What I can see from here after all of this analysis in the Stack Overflow data and from the coleagues around me is that the technology field is changing and evolving so fast, that maybe some Universities or formal degrees aren’t following the rythm. The urgency to find more tech professionals is so big that the market itself is providing education for the people who wants to learn how to code.
The goal here is not to discredit the formal degrees, but mainly it is to open our minds to the ease of learning we already have and not limit ourselves with the possesion (or absence) of a formal degree certificate to achieve new careers — this is a message to the old fashioned companies too: “Hire us considering our real skills and facility to learn, not only because one certificate! Thanks (: ”
The findings here are observational, not the result of a formal study. You can check my Git Hub repo of this project here: https://github.com/NataliaKitaoka/coder-evolution
