Can YOU code professionally?
A look at how age and education play for/against you when trying to enter the professional coding arena.
Simply Yes, No? While for a great number the answer is simply is yes, a more truthful answer would be Yes*.
* accompanied by a supplementary explanation detailing that whilst there is no physical barrier; time, knowledge and the industry may no longer be on your side.
Can the choices made by someone make them incompatible with the industry or is there a bias from those within for the early-mid 20s Computer Science graduate?
As someone who sits within this bracket I decided to head to the Stack Overflow Survey developers survey to have a closer look.
The survey itself is put to the coding community and has been powerful in understanding the demographic of coders over the years. The 2020 survey is no different and contains results from over 60 questions and over 64,000 entries from all over the world including some incredibly useful questions such as:
NOT including education, how many years have you coded professionally (as a part of your work)?
How important is a formal education, such as a university degree in computer science, to your career?
1. Are you too old to code?
Dropping straight into arguably the most thought about question to anyone new to any industry. As a fast moving and rapidly changing industry, coming in later to coding or tech in general certainly daunting.
Looking at what age people started their professional career comfirms this isn’t the norm with over 50% starting in their early 20s. it certainly fits the stereotype of the young computer graduate.
A quick look at the spread of ages shows a good proportion of the respondents are themselves still in their 20s-30s. Perhaps there is simply a younger demographic on the survey? As a society, we are generally expected to have our career choices worked out by our 30s so maybe the numbers are just be a reflection of that? Regardless, the overwhelming norm is to enter the professional workspace of coding in you early-mid 20s, as per the Computer Graduate stereotype.
2. Unless its Computer Science, Formal Education is Irrelevant… Right?
How important is a formal education, such as a university degree in computer science, to your career?
A very good question and an important addition to this year’s survey. Perhaps not so surprisingly, the majority of those who responded to this question were computer science graduates. It is somewhat interesting though that there is only 10–15% difference between the group.
What I find more noteworthy is the disparity in answers to the question on formal education between the groups. For those who were educated in Computer Science, they hold their education with higher regard with Very Important and Fairly Important being the most popular answers.
For everyone else they don’t see this as being the case though. The greater percentage of them finding less importance with Somewhat Import being the most popular.
However perhaps it has an effect on employability. Surely that’s why the stereotype of the young 20s Computer Science graduate exists or is it, like most stereotypes, completely unfair?
3. Do you need a Computer Science degree to professionally practice Computer Science?
Extrapolating the data further reveals the percent of each group that’s in employment. Maybe it’s the wording of the question or the platform that attracts largely employed base but the negligible difference in employment percentage is very exciting. There is negligible difference between either group which is great news for anyone who’s studied a different field or hasn’t had the opportunity to get a higher education.
Conclusion
We’ve had a look at whether you are able to join the professional coding crew according to the Stack Overflow survey.
1.
The greatest factor when combatting the tech industry stereotype is the age bracket. With such a significant proportion of people starting their careers in their early to mid 20s, it becomes rapidly less common the older you get.
2.
We also looked at whether those in the survey consider formal education, particularly in Computer Science important. Whilst definitely the more common option and was important to those who took it and probably the clearer route it is by no means the only one. This was confirmed with the ‘No Computer Science Major’ group largely considering formal education of less importance.
3.
So happily, if you don’t find yourself at the end of a CS Major all is not lost. Whichever route you go down you are still incredibly employable! As we saw at the start though, there is a much higher percent going the traditional route. This means competition is going to be against you if you choose a different route.
With all these questions there are many more layers and details to be drawn and this is by no means a full answer to the question. This is all observational data and not the result of a formal study. So the question remains:
Can YOU code professionally?
Hopefully, right? but heres a link the my github repository so you can see how I found my way into this data driven cul-de-sac.
