What would get you a job faster in software engineering - a degree, or showing something that you have done before?

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A degree. Because you wouldn’t be looking for a job if you had a real app with a real audience. You’d be looking for business inputs to help contain and manage your rocket ship.

If you’ve never done software before, there are three things you can do that can help you get taken seriously. In order of how seriously they get taken by employers, they are, a tech-focused degree, code school completion, and side projects.

I’m not saying you can’t get a job on the virtue of side projects. I’m saying they’re the low-rent version of code school. And code school is what people do when they can’t get a CompSci degree. And even there they only really help out with web development, not software engineering.

If you want a career in software engineering, suck it up and get your degree.