5 ms·

Any advice for those who have a degree in an unrelated field, and has been coding since they were 11 and are approaching thirty. I'm considering other options s

by mgr86 11y ago

Any advice for those who have a degree in an unrelated field, and has been coding since they were 11 and are approaching thirty. I'm considering other options sometimes, but feel this might be an issue. It wasn't every middle schooler who reads a book on perl for leisure.

jwhitlark 11y ago
The book "Cracking the Coding Interview" is a huge help for getting through interviews. It's a real grind to work through, but worth it. You don't have to do all the problems, but make sure you do some from each section. Most business degrees can be useful, because you understand the business much better. Accounting actually turns out to be useful for distributed systems. Edit: It wouldn't have occurred to me, but I think Anthropology would be very helpful in understanding why systems were put together the way they are.
- mgr86 11y ago
  and here I am with an anthropology degree. In fairness, I am a developer for an anthropological research agency at a large university. That is a plus. I'll take a look at that book. Thanks.
terminalcommand 11y ago
Not sure if this helps. I'm also a self-thought programmer coming from a similar story -started programming at 10 and never stopped since- I'm in law school now, but I continue to spend nearly all my time hacking. Sometimes I think it's better not working as a programmer, because I'm very passionate about computers. I was depressed for a long time that I couldn't study CS. Then I realized, I can learn what I want freely. I have an entire life dedicated to computers. Although I secretly dream about inventing the next facebook, I mostly embraced the fact that I won't be able to get a formal education and a job in the field. Tinkering with computers is part of who I am. The rest is not in my hands.
estefan 11y ago
Use Coursera to get the education you wish you'd had.
sokoloff 11y ago
It depends on what you're experiencing. For me, I'm self-taught from age 8 and got a degree in Mechanical Engineering as I thought I wanted to work in automotive. Did an internship for MB in Stuttgart and when interviewing for permanent positions was steered away from US auto by a Ford engineer. If I had his address, I'd send him a Christmas card and a nice gift every year. I've had zero issues finding work in computing. If you're also not finding issues, the advice is "do nothing and continue to ignore the line in any JD that says 'BS in CompSci required'". It's almost certainly not. If you are experiencing issues getting interviews, consider leaving your degree off or explicitly highlighting your self-taught nature and work experience. Anyone who was reading a Perl book in middle school for pleasure and has stuck with computing since then is almost surely a strong candidate, at least way more than sufficiently strong.
filthydumbidiot 11y ago
In short, emphasize the skills and experience you do have. Apply and interview far and wide at all the companies that remotely interest you. A bit of background: I have been coding since an early age and hold an arts degree. I had no serious experience in the industry a few years ago, but had work experience in other fields and I had many independent projects to showcase. I have been gainfully employed in software for the last few years as I approached 30 myself. Now I feel somewhat established enough that the arts/self-taught background is not as big of a deal as it seemed when I was just trying to break into the field. They even have me performing technical interviews now for some reason, which I'm mentioning to show that I've now been on both sides of the table. My advice to you is to build your resume around the skills and experience that may be unconventional but are as relevant to the job you want as possible. Where most people would have job experience or education front and center, I placed a rundown of projects that detailed what techs I used to accomplish what ends and what results I got out of each project. These may have been even unreleased, work in progress personal projects (clearly stated as such), not for profit projects or websites or communities that I had a technical hand in creating, open source software contributions, and so on. Of course, if you don't have any projects to show at all then you should work on that before trying to get a job. But I assume you have some personal stuff, even incomplete and unseen by anyone, that you can showcase to demonstrate your skills. Links to working demos are a major plus, and you should always prefer concise descriptive text over just namedrop lists. I list work experience where I think it is relevant to the job in software. Any previous office experience, for example, can at least show that you know how to work on a project, meet deadlines, act professionally (arguable), etc. Highlight the transferable skills of your previous employment. Likewise, highlight the transferable skills of your degree. It often became a point of intrigue that I had this esoteric degree after we've talked in-depth about programming for an hour -- so don't think of it as a weakness. In your resume, stay focused on the goal, which is to get a job in software. Do not use a generalist resume as your software resume. Finally, pound the pavement. Do not wait. Tweak your resume and send it out often. I lost track of the number of companies that I've actually applied to, but in getting my first job I had in-person interviews (sometimes multiple rounds) at over 10 companies. I flat-out bombed some interviews. It didn't click in others. And sometimes it seemed like I was going to get the job, but with my untested background it was too 'risky' or I was too 'junior'. Don't let this stop you from going to the next interview. Embrace rejection and use it as an opportunity to learn. Try to strike a balance between quantity and quality in the jobs you apply for. Be directed and intentional in that you only apply to jobs that actually interest you and that you actually think you can do (so no "Sr. Dev", of course), but don't be so focused on one or two companies that you just sit around watching their careers page for an opening. Find a middle ground somewhere between "The One True Dream Job" and loading 100,000 copies of your resume into a biplane and dumping them over the city. In my case, beyond the usual job sites, I got a list of all the tech companies in my city in some local tech magazine's annual hottest tech company edition (or whatever it was) and went through the list applying to every single one that seemed like it would fit. And that got me my first job in tech, which has been utterly game-changing. Others have already mentioned that you need to practice that awful hurdle that is "the coding interview". So be sure to do that as well, and take every interview as a learning experience. Hope this helps.

by mgr86 11y ago

jwhitlark 11y ago

The book "Cracking the Coding Interview" is a huge help for getting through interviews. It's a real grind to work through, but worth it. You don't have to do all the problems, but make sure you do some from each section. Most business degrees can be useful, because you understand the business much better. Accounting actually turns out to be useful for distributed systems. Edit: It wouldn't have occurred to me, but I think Anthropology would be very helpful in understanding why systems were put together the way they are.

mgr86 11y ago
and here I am with an anthropology degree. In fairness, I am a developer for an anthropological research agency at a large university. That is a plus. I'll take a look at that book. Thanks.

terminalcommand 11y ago

Not sure if this helps. I'm also a self-thought programmer coming from a similar story -started programming at 10 and never stopped since- I'm in law school now, but I continue to spend nearly all my time hacking. Sometimes I think it's better not working as a programmer, because I'm very passionate about computers. I was depressed for a long time that I couldn't study CS. Then I realized, I can learn what I want freely. I have an entire life dedicated to computers. Although I secretly dream about inventing the next facebook, I mostly embraced the fact that I won't be able to get a formal education and a job in the field. Tinkering with computers is part of who I am. The rest is not in my hands.

estefan 11y ago

Use Coursera to get the education you wish you'd had.

sokoloff 11y ago

It depends on what you're experiencing. For me, I'm self-taught from age 8 and got a degree in Mechanical Engineering as I thought I wanted to work in automotive. Did an internship for MB in Stuttgart and when interviewing for permanent positions was steered away from US auto by a Ford engineer. If I had his address, I'd send him a Christmas card and a nice gift every year. I've had zero issues finding work in computing. If you're also not finding issues, the advice is "do nothing and continue to ignore the line in any JD that says 'BS in CompSci required'". It's almost certainly not. If you are experiencing issues getting interviews, consider leaving your degree off or explicitly highlighting your self-taught nature and work experience. Anyone who was reading a Perl book in middle school for pleasure and has stuck with computing since then is almost surely a strong candidate, at least way more than sufficiently strong.

filthydumbidiot 11y ago

In short, emphasize the skills and experience you do have. Apply and interview far and wide at all the companies that remotely interest you. A bit of background: I have been coding since an early age and hold an arts degree. I had no serious experience in the industry a few years ago, but had work experience in other fields and I had many independent projects to showcase. I have been gainfully employed in software for the last few years as I approached 30 myself. Now I feel somewhat established enough that the arts/self-taught background is not as big of a deal as it seemed when I was just trying to break into the field. They even have me performing technical interviews now for some reason, which I'm mentioning to show that I've now been on both sides of the table. My advice to you is to build your resume around the skills and experience that may be unconventional but are as relevant to the job you want as possible. Where most people would have job experience or education front and center, I placed a rundown of projects that detailed what techs I used to accomplish what ends and what results I got out of each project. These may have been even unreleased, work in progress personal projects (clearly stated as such), not for profit projects or websites or communities that I had a technical hand in creating, open source software contributions, and so on. Of course, if you don't have any projects to show at all then you should work on that before trying to get a job. But I assume you have some personal stuff, even incomplete and unseen by anyone, that you can showcase to demonstrate your skills. Links to working demos are a major plus, and you should always prefer concise descriptive text over just namedrop lists. I list work experience where I think it is relevant to the job in software. Any previous office experience, for example, can at least show that you know how to work on a project, meet deadlines, act professionally (arguable), etc. Highlight the transferable skills of your previous employment. Likewise, highlight the transferable skills of your degree. It often became a point of intrigue that I had this esoteric degree after we've talked in-depth about programming for an hour -- so don't think of it as a weakness. In your resume, stay focused on the goal, which is to get a job in software. Do not use a generalist resume as your software resume. Finally, pound the pavement. Do not wait. Tweak your resume and send it out often. I lost track of the number of companies that I've actually applied to, but in getting my first job I had in-person interviews (sometimes multiple rounds) at over 10 companies. I flat-out bombed some interviews. It didn't click in others. And sometimes it seemed like I was going to get the job, but with my untested background it was too 'risky' or I was too 'junior'. Don't let this stop you from going to the next interview. Embrace rejection and use it as an opportunity to learn. Try to strike a balance between quantity and quality in the jobs you apply for. Be directed and intentional in that you only apply to jobs that actually interest you and that you actually think you can do (so no "Sr. Dev", of course), but don't be so focused on one or two companies that you just sit around watching their careers page for an opening. Find a middle ground somewhere between "The One True Dream Job" and loading 100,000 copies of your resume into a biplane and dumping them over the city. In my case, beyond the usual job sites, I got a list of all the tech companies in my city in some local tech magazine's annual hottest tech company edition (or whatever it was) and went through the list applying to every single one that seemed like it would fit. And that got me my first job in tech, which has been utterly game-changing. Others have already mentioned that you need to practice that awful hurdle that is "the coding interview". So be sure to do that as well, and take every interview as a learning experience. Hope this helps.