“Startup culture" on the job listing. FANG-style ATS vetting in the inbox.
I applied for a Junior Solutions Engineer role today.
Not a senior role. Not a staff role. Not some "10 years of experience required" fantasy posting.
A junior role.
The requirements were things like:
- Hands-on experience in solutions engineering, technical support, sales engineering, or automation-focused work
- Python
- SQL
- Data tooling
- Automation
- AI-driven products
- B2B software
- The right to work
And one other thing:
A degree in STEM, Finance, or another strong analytical field.
I don't have one.
I applied anyway, because I actually have experience doing a lot of the work they described.
I recently built an internal operations platform for a real business. The client was managing appliance inventory through a largely manual WooCommerce workflow, including product creation, photos, pricing, descriptions, and updates. I built them a custom inventory management system that turns appliance manifests and uploaded photos into structured product listings, automatically matches inventory data, generates titles and descriptions, surfaces sale price and MSRP, and lets staff review and edit everything before publishing changes to WooCommerce. I also built multi-device synchronization and safeguards so multiple people could work with the same inventory without overwriting or duplicating completed manifests. Along the way I handled API integrations, database work, deployment, troubleshooting, synchronization problems, and user feedback.
That is not a tutorial project. That is not "I followed a YouTube video and changed the button color." That is software being used to solve an actual business problem.
So I did what job seekers are constantly told to do: I tailored my application. I wrote the summary. I wrote the cover letter. I answered the extra question explaining my hands-on experience. I connected my actual work to the responsibilities of the role.
Then I hit submit.
A minute later, I got the application confirmation. About a minute after that, I got the rejection.
That's the part that got me. I couldn't help but burst out laughing. Then it hit me: they signed it with a human name instead of just "Company X," which somehow made the whole thing feel even more insulting.
There is no way a human meaningfully reviewed that application
Maybe the degree requirement triggered it. Maybe one of the screening questions did...
I don't actually know. But that's not really the point.
Two minutes is not enough time to open a resume, open a cover letter, read a custom answer, cross-reference all three against a job description, and reach a considered decision. That's not skepticism — that's arithmetic. A recruiter who is fast, good, and fully focused still needs more than 120 seconds to read three documents and actually think about them.
Some rule fired. And that was that.
We hear constantly that tech hiring is becoming more "skills based." Build projects. Contribute to open source. Show initiative. Learn in public. Demonstrate impact. Have a portfolio. Solve real problems.
Cool. I did that.
But if the first layer of the hiring pipeline is still:
degree == true
then a huge amount of that "skills-based" rhetoric starts to feel cosmetic.
The weird part is that I actually understand why filters exist
Companies get hundreds or thousands of applications. Nobody can manually inspect every GitHub profile. Recruiters need ways to reduce the pile. Applicant tracking systems exist for a reason.
I get it.
There is a difference between filtering noise and accidentally filtering out the exact kind of unconventional candidate the industry keeps claiming it wants.
“Someone without a traditional computer science degree is already doing something harder...”
But there is a difference between filtering noise and accidentally filtering out the exact kind of unconventional candidate the industry keeps claiming it wants.
Someone without a traditional computer science degree is already doing something harder: we have to manufacture our own proof. We build. We document. We learn in public. We find real users. We create our own experience because nobody handed us an internship pipeline.
Then we arrive at the application and discover that the credential may still matter more than the evidence.
That is exhausting.
"Equivalent experience" should actually mean something
If a company truly requires a degree because the work genuinely depends on academic training, fine. Say that clearly.
But if the role is fundamentally about Python, SQL, APIs, automation, debugging, integrations, customer communication, and solving business problems, then actual demonstrated experience doing those things should at least earn a human look. Especially for a junior position.
I'm not arguing that I deserved the job — there may have been candidates with much stronger backgrounds, and that's hiring.
What bothers me is the possibility that none of that comparison ever happened. The application may have been dead before my projects mattered.
I'm still going to keep applying
This isn't a "give up on tech" post. Quite the opposite.
I'm building open-source software. I'm doing client work. I'm learning Python more deeply. I'm working with databases, Linux, APIs, automation, and deployment. I'm documenting what I learn.
And I'm going to keep applying to jobs where I can do the work, even when I don't perfectly match the pedigree section.
Because I refuse to pre-reject myself for companies.
They can do that themselves.
Apparently very, very quickly.
