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>While bar exam pass rates in other states range from 18% to 33%, Washington state has a surprisingly high pass rate, at 56%. Washington’s state bar, more than

>While bar exam pass rates in other states range from 18% to 33%, Washington state has a surprisingly high pass rate, at 56%. Washington’s state bar, more than any other state’s, provides extensive support for students who choose to apprentice, including a volunteer network who sets study standards and monitor progress. Last year, these resources resulted in 67% of Washington apprentices passing the bar exam, nearly as high as those who graduated from ABA-accredited schools. So where is the support network for people trying to learn our field in depth through self study? As nice as HN/Reddit/etc all are, they're not really a replacement for a study in the rigorous theory foundations that let you break away from having your career defined by one transient technology after another.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Most of those lawyers won't get jobs, and if they do get jobs they won't be well paid. There's a glut of lawyers at the moment, and it's not at all the easy money outsiders think it is. Law has the usual power curve for income and prestige - a relatively small number of partners, mostly from privileged and connected backgrounds, make most of the money and get most of the opportunities. A few potential stars get useful mentoring. But there's a huge army of law workers who only really only do crappy clerical work (boilerplate wills, property sales, debt chasing, and such) and handle petty criminal cases. IME a lot of these lawyers aren't that good. They get results because the public are intimidated by lawyers, not because they're brilliant at their jobs. It's not hard to self-study procedure and case law if you're going up against them, and give yourself a better than average chance of winning. I think dev culture is more open. If you want to talk to the creator of <some cool thing> you often can. If it's a FOSS project, you can get involved and add it to your resume. There are IRC channels and blogs and mailing lists and many other options. This is not to be confused with startup culture, which is a different thing, and does seem to suffer from social exclusion. But if you're more interested in cranking out code than feeding money to your pet unicorn, dev culture really does seem to be relatively open and meritocratic.
vinceguidry 11y ago
> a study in the rigorous theory foundations that let you break away from having your career defined by one transient technology after another. There's a much easier way to accomplish that shift. Start a business, perhaps SaaS or a software product. Alternatively you could just stop hopping jobs every few years.
tracker1 11y ago
A lot of that information is freely available online, as well as in books that are under $40 from Amazon. There are a lot of courses fully published online including videos. There are tutorials and articles that are open and freely available. We are not the legal system, where our practice is locked away in professional journals or in professional libraries that cost more than a car. There are user groups, interest groups, free lectures, etc. There's even IRC, freenode in particular has a lot of really great people that will answer many questions. Software development is a field with more liberal availability of knowledge than any other professional field in human history. Transient technology and even hacking away at something allows for people to break into a field at the edge... doing what is interesting and learning from there. You are able to go as deep as you like, and expand as much as you want. Self-directed learners range from guys that can barely pull off a wordpress template, to the guy that came up with BabelJS. The sefl-directed software developer/learner has a focus that you don't have in an educational environment... that is generally a real world goal that you are trying to accomplish.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

Most of those lawyers won't get jobs, and if they do get jobs they won't be well paid. There's a glut of lawyers at the moment, and it's not at all the easy money outsiders think it is. Law has the usual power curve for income and prestige - a relatively small number of partners, mostly from privileged and connected backgrounds, make most of the money and get most of the opportunities. A few potential stars get useful mentoring. But there's a huge army of law workers who only really only do crappy clerical work (boilerplate wills, property sales, debt chasing, and such) and handle petty criminal cases. IME a lot of these lawyers aren't that good. They get results because the public are intimidated by lawyers, not because they're brilliant at their jobs. It's not hard to self-study procedure and case law if you're going up against them, and give yourself a better than average chance of winning. I think dev culture is more open. If you want to talk to the creator of <some cool thing> you often can. If it's a FOSS project, you can get involved and add it to your resume. There are IRC channels and blogs and mailing lists and many other options. This is not to be confused with startup culture, which is a different thing, and does seem to suffer from social exclusion. But if you're more interested in cranking out code than feeding money to your pet unicorn, dev culture really does seem to be relatively open and meritocratic.

vinceguidry 11y ago

> a study in the rigorous theory foundations that let you break away from having your career defined by one transient technology after another. There's a much easier way to accomplish that shift. Start a business, perhaps SaaS or a software product. Alternatively you could just stop hopping jobs every few years.

tracker1 11y ago

A lot of that information is freely available online, as well as in books that are under $40 from Amazon. There are a lot of courses fully published online including videos. There are tutorials and articles that are open and freely available. We are not the legal system, where our practice is locked away in professional journals or in professional libraries that cost more than a car. There are user groups, interest groups, free lectures, etc. There's even IRC, freenode in particular has a lot of really great people that will answer many questions. Software development is a field with more liberal availability of knowledge than any other professional field in human history. Transient technology and even hacking away at something allows for people to break into a field at the edge... doing what is interesting and learning from there. You are able to go as deep as you like, and expand as much as you want. Self-directed learners range from guys that can barely pull off a wordpress template, to the guy that came up with BabelJS. The sefl-directed software developer/learner has a focus that you don't have in an educational environment... that is generally a real world goal that you are trying to accomplish.