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Early disappointment
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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...then don't study computer science. I study CS and it's annoying when someone in a more math/logic oriented course is like "If I get a job at a tech company I won't need this". All that IS computer science, if you just wanna code, learn to code.
The problem is a lot of people who want to learn to code, and are conditioned to desire the college route of education, don't actually know that there is a difference and that you can be completely self-taught in the field without ever stepping foot in a university.
I always wanted to believe this, but, at least in my country, not even a specialized high school degree is enough to get me anywhere for months, it's crazy.
Maybe you could even make it without formal education, but everyone's always looking for those sweet 3+ years of experience in the field (ಥ﹏ಥ)
I certainly experienced this at the start of my career. Everyone wanted me to have at least bachelors degree despite the fact that I was able to run circles around fresh college graduates. It wasn't until someone gave me a chance and I had real world experience that people stopped asking me about my college education. In fact later into my career when they learn about the level of experience I have and that I'm entirely self-taught, it's often seen as something positive. It's a shitty catch-22
So it really is like that eh?
Do you have any tips for what could help me, even a little bit, to have better chances?
Build an open source portfolio. Being able to show employers what I was capable of was a massive benefit both then and now. You can say you know all of these things, but when you're looking at hundreds of applications one of the first things they do to reduce the pile is filter out people who don't have some kind of online presence like Github. This allows them to see that you're actively engaged with the field and if they want to interview you, to look at your code quality and experience.
A personal website that highlights your best work is also a good idea, as it helps to even further distill down the things you're ultimately going to end up talking about in an interview. It doesn't need to be anything fancy, just something that shows your competent. I wouldn't expect the person interviewing you to actually hit view source and criticize your choice in frontend framework.
Without any prior professional experience, is an extensive open-source/[other non-professional software development related experience] portfolio perceived as more valuable than a degree to employers?
That entirely depends on the employer, but in my anecdotal experience that has been the case. Especially in more recent years versus the start of my career (nearly 20 years ago).
The reality is that Computer Science is useful for building strong engineers over the long-term, but it doesn't at all prepare you for the reality of working in a team environment and contributing code to a living project. They don't even teach you git as far as I'm aware.
Contributing to open source demonstrates a lot of the real-world skills that are required in a workplace, beyond just having the comprehension and skill in the language/tool of choice you're interviewing for.
Yeah, I do that actually, though I keep a "serious" profile where there's little activity and another one where I can just do whatever so I engage a lot more with other projects and make some experiments for myself, so it also ends up being the most active, but I don't show it, maybe I should?
In my experience interviewers look very pleased when I show them what I made, but they don't seem to dig into it much most of the time, so I don't know how important they really find it.
I'll definitely try to put more emphasis on those anyway, so they can see a good showcase.
That sounds interesting, I'll definitely try that, thanks!
Yeah, I do that actually, though I keep a "serious" profile where there's little activity and another one where I can just do whatever so I engage a lot more with other projects and make some experiments for myself, so it also ends up being the most active, but I don't show it, maybe I should?
In my experience interviewers look very pleased when I show them what I made, but they don't seem to dig into it much most of the time, so I don't know how important they really find it.
I'll definitely try to put more emphasis on those anyway, so they can see a good showcase.
That sounds interesting, I'll definitely try that, thanks!
Yeah, I do that actually, though I keep a "serious" profile where there's little activity and another one where I can just do whatever so I engage a lot more with other projects and make some experiments for myself, so it also ends up being the most active, but I don't show it, maybe I should?
In my experience interviewers look very pleased when I show them what I made, but they don't seem to dig into it much most of the time, so I don't know how important they really find it.
I'll definitely try to put more emphasis on those anyway, so they can see a good showcase.
That sounds interesting, I'll definitely try that, thanks!
Just a heads up, you replied multiple times to this. If the client you're using doesn't submit immediately, that just means it's not doing error handling properly and not disabling submit buttons while the request is in flight. You've actually submitted once for each time you pressed the button
Omg haha, sorry about that! I believe the server was having problems just at that moment, since I couldn't access lemmy.world anymore, I guess they ended up being sent through after the outage (was I the only one experiencing it?)
Looks like it wasn't just you, a bunch of large instances just had an outage
Yeah, I do that actually, though I keep a "serious" profile where there's little activity and another one where I can just do whatever so I engage a lot more with other projects and make some experiments for myself, so it also ends up being the most active, but I don't show it, maybe I should?
In my experience interviewers look very pleased when I show them what I made, but they don't seem to dig into it much most of the time, so I don't know how important they really find it.
I'll definitely try to put more emphasis on those anyway, so they can see a good showcase.
That sounds interesting, I'll definitely try that, thanks!
We're not closing schools despite having libraries and the internet, having (good) teachers is useful to learn faster and get pushed further. There are some good programming schools that can make it more efficient for you. I think the main problem is rather the insane cost of higher education in the USA which create anxiety about being certain that you can repay it in the future it may open for you. It is sad.
It is really difficult to get a good job being self taught.
Can you get well paying coding jobs with upward mobility without at least a BA in CS?
It's harder to break into but I make 150k and barely graduated high school. Software engineering is largely a field that doesn't care about degrees but about ability. It's harder these days to break into the field than it was 10 years ago when I did but it's absolutely still possible
When I was looking for coding jobs with a decent portfolio, but no computer science degree I got 1 interview out of 300 applications. They absolutely will not look at you if you don't have the CS degree, or already know someone at the company who can force you in.
This is also just the reality of the job market, especially in this industry. Dev positions get hundreds if not thousands of applications which all vary widely in quality.
I have 20 years of experience and a six figure salary, the last time I went looking for work and was putting out applications I sent out easily over 100 applications and only had 4 interviews. I've found it's best to form a relationship with a competent recruiter, and work with them anytime you're back on the market. They're incentivized to find you a decent position so that they can make their commission. Of course finding one that is decent is almost as hard as the process of sending out applications, but once you do it's a relationship worth maintaining.
I'm guessing this is US-centric?
Canada.
I can agree with this. Landed my first dev job after working as a tradesman for a decade, but I liked computers enough to learn on my own. My 'trade' offered a 'unique persepective,' I guess.
I have a fine arts degree and I'm a lead dev 🤷♂️
You must write beautiful code
It's all ASCII art, but it runs like shit ;P More seriously; what constitutes beautiful code is very open to interpretation. Someone would say that a single line of list comprehension expression is beautiful while another would say the same thing expressed over several lines making the logic abundantly clear is beautiful.
Maybe not what you're asking but people with a non-CS M.Sc or PhD commonly switch to coding, especially in the data fields.
Anecdotally, I have an associates degree in horticulture and am currently the engineering lead for a team of six
If you entered the field 10 years ago, sure. If you're trying to enter the field now, I have bad news...
I used to work at a small tech company (5-10 employees) and when we hired for entry level coders we’d receive hundreds of applications. Most of them would be grads from bootcamps, some with undergraduate degrees and some without. My boss would just throw out any that didn’t have a bs in something, but preferred a stem degree. He knew they didn’t need a degree, he knew you didn’t need actual coding experience, it was just a quick (maybe illegal) way to make that list of applications more manageable. Edit: as other people have said - after your first job you are basically “in” and are a very desirable candidate. Your education matters much less after your first job.
I've never been to college and my job title today is Software Architect, I've been doing this for nearly 20 years.
It was extremely hard at first to get a job because everyone wanted a BA, but that was also 20 years ago. Once I had some experience and could clearly demonstrate my capabilities they were more open to hiring me. The thing a degree shows is that you have some level of experience and commitment, but the reality is a BA in CompSci doesn't actually prepare you for the reality of 99% of software development.
I think most companies these days have come to realize this. Unless you're trying to apply to one of the FANG corps (or whatever the acronym is now) you'll be just fine if you have a decent portfolio and can demonstrate an understanding of the fundamentals.
I would have done CS if every math class at my school didn't have 500 people in it. Even college algebra. They basically made everything a weed-out class
I do think many of the CS concepts are pretty cool :)
Well what i felt working at a tech company that there are instances where we run into specific problems those may need to devise an algo ,and most of my non computer science peers fail to understand why!!