8 ms·

I worked in landscaping and then as a custodian making $7/hr before I started learning to code. Working as a programmer has transformed my life. I've got a lot

• andy9775 11y ago
  I have a side question, did you end up pursing a CS/Engineering degree? I'm trying to get a dev role and have a business background and looking for some advice on getting in.
  • rjbwork 11y ago
    I can give you a little advice from seeing some non-degree-having peers make it. Have some idea what you're doing. Talking the talk is great, but you must be able to walk the walk. Apply to everything that sound like you can/want to do it, even if you don't technically meet the requirements. Those are mostly for HR pre-filtering since HR doesn't really know what they're talking about in 99% of cases - they're just looking for keyword hits.
    • andy9775 11y ago
      Great thanks. I've built stuff before and have been learning/coding for the past ~4 years so I don't classify myself as a complete beginner. When applying without a CS background how tough are the technical interviews? Do they tend to expect more or are they more lenient and look more at fit and ability to grow?
      • klibertp 11y ago
        > When applying without a CS background how tough are the technical interviews? It's very rare, in my experience, to be asked a pure CS question in the interview. For some positions you may be silently expected to have some degree of familiarity with CS concepts, for other - especially entry-level - positions you don't need CS knowledge at all. Being able to produce working and good looking code is all most companies want from fresh employees, I think. It's unfortunately still hard to find people with that skill, but if you have it you can learn everything else. In short: apply everywhere, go to interviews and don't be afraid. You'll be pleasantly surprised (I hope).
      • rjbwork 11y ago
        Depends where you're going. Top companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc are looking for people who can pass some tough CS questions, whereas more standard corporate or mid-stage startups are going to be a bit more lax. I've seen everything from "parse this integer from a string without your language's built in parse function" to "build a small database schema using ER diagrams" to "write us a P2P chat server with a central login server".
      • marktangotango 11y ago
        I interviewed a referral once, this kid had written a couple of trivial android apps in notepad, which was something at least. But when I drilled down he really didn't understand anything he was doing with respect to the build (ie didn't know what the classpath was), didn't know anything about basic collections, didn't know tools like eclipse, version control. He claimed to be eager to learn, but no one has a full time dev to spare teaching anyone intro classes on this stuff. So, from my perspective, if he would have known the tools, basic concepts, and had taught himself more, he would have been a hire. Otherwise, he just wasn't self starting, and really wasn't eager to learn, or he would have come with more ability.
        • rjbwork 11y ago
          In that kind of situation you can basically do a contract to perm internship kind of thing, point them at resources, and see if he's fully competent to be junior at the end of the contract. Not everyone can afford this of course, but sometimes people don't even know what they should be learning, but will gobble up knowledge if pointed in the right direction. A weapon waiting to be aimed, if you will.
  • alawrence 11y ago
    I have a similar background in that I was primarily self-taught before finding a paid apprenticeship that lasted almost a year and then being employed as a consultant by the company. If you can afford it, I'd recommend pursuing a formal route. It exposes you to a lot of ideas and ways of thinking that are hard to get in practice. After having programmed for around 4 years now, I often wish I'd studied CS. In lieu of that, I think Udacity's nanodegrees programs are probably a good way to end up in a paid position relatively soon. (I'm assuming you're looking to break into web programming. I can't speak for other areas.)
    • andy9775 11y ago
      I eventually want to purse the formal route and do a part time BSc or perhaps get a MSc, for now I need something to pay off loans
  • emergentcypher 11y ago
    The majority of the CS degree isn't very useful to dev work. Most of what you'll use in your day job you'll learn on your own, or on the job. A CS degree is mostly academic, and also mostly a sampling of a bunch of different domains to whet your appetite. However there are a few topics I consider essential... operating systems, algorithm runtime/performance, data structures, basic software engineering/design patterns, memory management (seriously, everyone should have a course in C or C++) and functional programming (like Haskell). Even hacking away at a PHP or Node server, there are times when a bit of knowledge of Big-O runtimes can save you from creating a script that never finishes.
  • hipsters_unite 11y ago
    I'm self-taught and I got my first job through going to user groups and scoping out what was going. Second job was with a much more difficult problem domain, but I'd taught myself some CS from textbooks during my first job so in the interview I came with lots of examples of work (both day job and freelance) and piped up about CS topics where I knew about them, and admitted when I didn't but stressed that I wanted to learn. I beat several other people to the job even though I was the most junior. A lot of devs even at a mid or higher level have little curiosity for the theory side of things, and eventually you'll run into problems that require knowledge of it, so being enthusiastic (and a bit self-starting) in that area pays dividends in my experience even if you're not the most experienced dev going for a job. The only caveat is that both were/are small companies, so no HR apparatus to go through.
  • 49531 11y ago
    I had a friend who started his CS degree at the same time I started learning on my own, and he is just about to graduate while I've been in the field for about 2 years now. So it worked out for me to not seek a degree. He's also a vastly different person than I am, writing code is not a passion of his, while it is of mine. I'd be writing code whether or not it was my job, while he'd rather be doing other things.
• dev360 11y ago
  I joke with programmer friends that we should become gardeners instead. I guess the appeal of physical labor is you get to leave work at work.
  • cosinetau 11y ago
    It wasn't landscaping but, I worked in a shop where the supes were often abusive. That isn't always true.
  • unknownknowns 11y ago
    I've enjoyed working in national security and defense. It's a laid-back environment and I can leave work at work without feeling stressed.
    • ryandrake 11y ago
      What a world we live in. Defending the security of a nation = laid-back, no stress. Writing yet another CRUD backend for a mobile app = crazy hours and ulcers.
      • morga3sm 11y ago
        I mostly agree that the environment in government contracting is pretty laid back. We definitely have surge times, but generally we're focused more on getting things done correctly over fast. I think there's also a good understanding that people aren't as effective when they work over 40 hours/week for consecutive weeks.
        • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
          Having been in government, this seems to be the opposite of what I've seen. Makes me think it is fully a byproduct of culture, independent of the work done.
    • sciguy77 11y ago
      Woah, can you expand on this? Are you a contractor or a government employee? What makes it laid back? Are the deadlines just more reasonable?
• marknutter 11y ago
  > I think it's easy for programmers to hate life sometimes. This is almost entirely due to a severe lack of perspective.
  • estefan 11y ago
    Definitely agree. Try taking a job that pays minimum wage (if you have one), or work in a shop, as a builder, or find friends who have to work all hours to survive and you'll realise how damned lucky you are.
    • aerovistae 11y ago
      No. Just because "it can be worse" doesn't mean someone doesn't have the right to be unhappy. It's a totally specious argument. "Your kid died? Well, what if BOTH your kids died? You have a lack of perspective..." Yes, they would no doubt prefer their high-paying job over a minimum wage job. But that doesn't mean that they no longer have any right to be unhappy with their lives. This is exactly the point of the hedonic treadmill[1]. There are happy people with rough jobs and unhappy people with great jobs. [1]The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.
      • estefan 11y ago
        > "Your kid died? Well, what if BOTH your kids died? You have a lack of perspective..." Glass half full vs glass half empty. The hedonic treadmill has nothing to do with it. It's about being thankful and making the best of things. That's the antidote. However you look at it being a programmer in today's society has the potential to give you an amount of choice and wealth enjoyed by very few other industries. You can make your own luck by simply being motivated enough to learn, and the initial outlay to create a massively profitable business is tiny compared to many other fields. So make the best of it. You could work for 3 months a year and do what you love for the other 9. Are you really telling me you can't make that work? It is about perspective.