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Good news: You really don’t have to blow your life savings (plus a ton of money that you don’t actually have) to land a job with a web development company! Expensive four-year degrees are no longer the only option for people who want to break into the industry.
The demand for computer programmers in the United States has exploded over the past decade, vastly exceeding the supply. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in fact, projects that by 2020, one million (yes, one miillion) programming jobs in the country will go unfilled. It's impossible for us to expect these jobs to be filled exclusively by college grads.
Luckily, many CEOs in technology don't require or expect college degrees when hiring their programmers. It’s not that a degree in computer science will hurt your chance of finding success in the industry. It’s just that you really don’t need one.
Take Integrity, where we prioritize a job applicant’s personality and willingness to learn and grow over the credentials listed on her resume. Our focus is on educating and empowering each member of the Integrity team. Not on collecting diplomas and years of experience.
And we’re not the only people in the industry who feel this way. LaunchCode Executive Director Brendan Lind explains that when reviewing applicants for tech apprenticeships, it’s not about credentials.
“We look for reasons to believe that someone is ready to succeed in the tech workforce,” he says. “Those reasons could be a degree or previous experience, but for us they are frequently projects one has built in their free time, one's ability to demonstrate a skill they have taught themselves, one's ability to work with other people."
We're telling you that you don't need to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to learn how to code, and you're probably wondering how you're supposed to learn. First step: teach yourself! As Lind says, demonstrating that you're motivated enough to learn on your own is pretty important.
There are lots of resources right here on the web for learning coding basics. (Check out Codecademyand Code.org.)
Other alternatives to four-year computer science degrees are popping up all over the country – some of them non-profits like LaunchCode, some offering on-the-job training and others offering online training, and many simply providing a cheaper option.
So whether you studied programming for four years, taught yourself how to code or just want to break into the always evolving technology industry, the world of web development is opening up for you – you just need to bring your ambition.
Do you love to program? Want to build cool stuff with cool people for cool people? Interested in being your own boss and having donuts every Tuesday? Then you’d probably like Integrity and we’d probably like you. Let’s meet!
