7 ms·

I feel like im in the authors worst case scenario, as a PHP dev coming up on three years experience, im having a hard time even getting interviews at java/.net

I feel like im in the authors worst case scenario, as a PHP dev coming up on three years experience, im having a hard time even getting interviews at java/.net shops. I've lost track of the times ive heard "you have a math degree? Not CS?"

cryptozeus 8y ago
Do you have product like op created in his personal time ? I have seen people without any degree get hired in FANG. If you don't have exp in java .net then you need to show ghis to a company by creating public projects.
- ndr 8y ago
  What does FANG stand for?
  - qaq 8y ago
    Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google
    - aswanson 8y ago
      I like that acronym far better than AmaGooFaceSoft.
    - ultrasounder 8y ago
      GAANDU(Google,Amaazon,AirBnB,Netflix,Dropbox,Uber). Found this in this thread on teamblind.The acronyms get out of hand pretty quick.
      - spears_are_best 8y ago
        Hahahaha. I am sure that acroynm came from an Indian and played a joke on unsuspecting people. Gaandu is a Hindi abuse whose closet counterpart would be asshole in English. Like the acronym though.
- trentmb 8y ago
  Thats the plan, up until last week ive been without a personal computer though.
  - topkai22 8y ago
    If you are looking outside pure software shops (FANGs and startups, etc...) getting a .NET or Java certification can be useful. I think they are a bit ridiculous, but they help get past clueless HR types and open up the convo to other parts of your resume.
- throwaway080383 8y ago
  Yep, plenty of mathematicians get hired by FANG and co. If you can do the whiteboard coding interviews, you're pretty much in, at least for junior positions.
aeontech 8y ago
In my experience, places that filter you out based on that, are places I would not want to work in the first place. There are tons of companies that would kill for candidates with math background. Aside from that, you may well be getting filtered by the HR department’s recruiter who is just going down a checklist. Smaller companies/start ups are more likely to have actual developers looking at candidates and more likely to be more flexible in requirements.
jstewartmobile 8y ago
That's weird. The reverse would make more sense. Math is an actual study. CS is definitely not a science--unless opinions and bad statistics count as science these days?
- jl2718 8y ago
  I am in complete agreement, but that’s not the way companies interview. It’s a CS world. Strange because many used to regard a CS degree like a consolation prize if you couldn’t RTFM.
  - jstewartmobile 8y ago
    I wonder if this is a valley thing? I'm in flyover country, and it's pretty much engineering, physics, mathematics, or bust.
natecavanaugh 8y ago
As someone who has around 16 years of dev experience, whose background is originally illustration and graphic design, and then picked up PHP and JavaScript and who has been working at a Java shop for the last 12 years, I can say that much of getting the job is a mix of two things. One is like the other comment pointed out, having personal endeavors that you can show off is huge for showing that you can build something and that language and degree are less relevant than creatively being able to solve problems. I had built a commercial CMS tailored for artists all in PHP, built my own theming framework, ORM as well as the payment process and all of the visual design for the system, themes and website. Mind you this was from 2004-2006, and had a lot to learn as I went. I say that not to brag, though I am proud of it, but it's a big part of how I got noticed at the company I'm with. It showed that I could handle multiple areas and solve a domain specific problem (this product formulated when Movable Type was the way to get a blog going, and visual artists, including me, didn't understand all the weird unixy stuff like the command line and the PATH, etc). So I'd recommend finding an itch you'd like to scratch and see if others have that itch as well and build something. Another upside is you are actually making your life easier in some way. The second factor that led me to joining this company (I still hate Java and .Net, though I understand their strengths), was because of the company culture itself. Not only had I technically shown that I had value, but they actually saw my background as a good way of avoiding a monoculture where innovation can't happen. The company was young and it was a risk (we were about 20 people then, now over 800), but it was one that I took mainly because the company's cultural and work values mirrored mine. If you're getting rejected because of your background and the type of degree, you may just not even wish to work there. I've had interns and hires come in with degrees ranging from math, electrical engineering, and biology to music and even intercultural outreach, and they became amazing software developers. Heck the original creator of normalize.css and svg4everybody was one of those with a very non traditional background. So also think of the place you'd like to work for. I'm not saying those companies are wrong per se, they gotta do what they need to, but personally, I value pragmatism, creativity, transparency and flexibility more than boxes that are just checked on a piece of paper.
aswanson 8y ago
If you're a strong logical thinker, like your math degree implies, you'll be better off avoiding shops that filter like that. They don't understand that picking up a syntax is secondary and structured thought is the real strength of a possible hire.
booleandilemma 8y ago
That’s funny. Hiring managers see my CS degree and they say something like “so you have no experience with framework X?” The industry is so self-defeating.
ebullientocelot 8y ago
As others have said, these are probably the wrong shops. My math degree has (I'm told) been a differentiator from pools of CS applicants.
hangtwenty 8y ago
If you’re anything like me, you’re better off skipping the java and .net shops. Have you tried Python?
w0rd-driven 8y ago
I came from the other way around. I only studied CS in college and my cs101 course is where everything clicked back in 1998. I didn't get my degree and took 10 years of IT to realize I needed to be a developer. I jumped to a company for abysmal pay but they took a chance and I proved I could hack it. The transition from .NET to PHP took a similar leap of faith where I wasn't even sure I wanted to take that divergence. Looking back, I feel I made the right choice but in both instances it required very good friends vouching for my skills as my interview chops were frankly abysmal and may still be. Now I'm looking to jump to JavaScript or Elixir and analysis paralysis has set in. Unlike the previous transitions, I couldn't have these as my primary focus. I have to resort to personal projects or get very lucky to work with Vue from time to time. Proving myself to myself or other people seems much harder without a very current Github profile and gearing up for interviews requires a form of study that's difficult. I use these techniques consistently enough to be highly proficient but it's not easy to keep that breadth of knowledge on hand to answer most interview questions. I feel like this matters more than a degree at all tbh but there seems to be a bit of selection bias if they're specifically commenting on the type of degree you have. When CS is largely rooted in mathematics and a math degree tends to cover way more advanced topics that I feel are largely applicable.
baus 8y ago
I definitely think you need to apply to different companies. Almost everywhere I’ve worked a Math degree was considered an asset not a liability.
wwweston 8y ago
One of the things I quickly learned as I got close to graduation is that the primary problem with a math degree is that everyone thinks a math degree represents little more than extra time doing the math that they know (or are at least aware they've encountered). There's apparently a blub paradox of education. There's a somewhat similar dynamic with PHP; when people aren't simply outright going by their own language preferences, they may assume that your caliber as a dev is roughly equivalent to the highest quality PHP codebase they've encountered & groked. And not only has there been an awful lot of low-quality PHP code written, the most commonly deployed PHP code probably doesn't fit the most common web MVCish architecture choices that've coalesced over the years. You can, of course, use both kinds of judgment in a form of reverse-discrimination. I think the other solution is to get more concrete about the kinds of problems you've studied/solved. If your Math degree brought you to lots of material about matrix & numerical analysis, hey, you studied machine learning foundations. :) PHP? Maybe you're now partly a domain expert in content management systems. (But also, probably best to add a language Java/C# folks look at with respect...)

cryptozeus 8y ago

Do you have product like op created in his personal time ? I have seen people without any degree get hired in FANG. If you don't have exp in java .net then you need to show ghis to a company by creating public projects.

ndr 8y ago
What does FANG stand for?
- qaq 8y ago
  Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google
  - aswanson 8y ago
    I like that acronym far better than AmaGooFaceSoft.
  - ultrasounder 8y ago
    GAANDU(Google,Amaazon,AirBnB,Netflix,Dropbox,Uber). Found this in this thread on teamblind.The acronyms get out of hand pretty quick.
    - spears_are_best 8y ago
      Hahahaha. I am sure that acroynm came from an Indian and played a joke on unsuspecting people. Gaandu is a Hindi abuse whose closet counterpart would be asshole in English. Like the acronym though.
trentmb 8y ago
Thats the plan, up until last week ive been without a personal computer though.
- topkai22 8y ago
  If you are looking outside pure software shops (FANGs and startups, etc...) getting a .NET or Java certification can be useful. I think they are a bit ridiculous, but they help get past clueless HR types and open up the convo to other parts of your resume.
throwaway080383 8y ago
Yep, plenty of mathematicians get hired by FANG and co. If you can do the whiteboard coding interviews, you're pretty much in, at least for junior positions.

aeontech 8y ago

In my experience, places that filter you out based on that, are places I would not want to work in the first place. There are tons of companies that would kill for candidates with math background. Aside from that, you may well be getting filtered by the HR department’s recruiter who is just going down a checklist. Smaller companies/start ups are more likely to have actual developers looking at candidates and more likely to be more flexible in requirements.

jstewartmobile 8y ago

That's weird. The reverse would make more sense. Math is an actual study. CS is definitely not a science--unless opinions and bad statistics count as science these days?

jl2718 8y ago
I am in complete agreement, but that’s not the way companies interview. It’s a CS world. Strange because many used to regard a CS degree like a consolation prize if you couldn’t RTFM.
- jstewartmobile 8y ago
  I wonder if this is a valley thing? I'm in flyover country, and it's pretty much engineering, physics, mathematics, or bust.

natecavanaugh 8y ago

As someone who has around 16 years of dev experience, whose background is originally illustration and graphic design, and then picked up PHP and JavaScript and who has been working at a Java shop for the last 12 years, I can say that much of getting the job is a mix of two things. One is like the other comment pointed out, having personal endeavors that you can show off is huge for showing that you can build something and that language and degree are less relevant than creatively being able to solve problems. I had built a commercial CMS tailored for artists all in PHP, built my own theming framework, ORM as well as the payment process and all of the visual design for the system, themes and website. Mind you this was from 2004-2006, and had a lot to learn as I went. I say that not to brag, though I am proud of it, but it's a big part of how I got noticed at the company I'm with. It showed that I could handle multiple areas and solve a domain specific problem (this product formulated when Movable Type was the way to get a blog going, and visual artists, including me, didn't understand all the weird unixy stuff like the command line and the PATH, etc). So I'd recommend finding an itch you'd like to scratch and see if others have that itch as well and build something. Another upside is you are actually making your life easier in some way. The second factor that led me to joining this company (I still hate Java and .Net, though I understand their strengths), was because of the company culture itself. Not only had I technically shown that I had value, but they actually saw my background as a good way of avoiding a monoculture where innovation can't happen. The company was young and it was a risk (we were about 20 people then, now over 800), but it was one that I took mainly because the company's cultural and work values mirrored mine. If you're getting rejected because of your background and the type of degree, you may just not even wish to work there. I've had interns and hires come in with degrees ranging from math, electrical engineering, and biology to music and even intercultural outreach, and they became amazing software developers. Heck the original creator of normalize.css and svg4everybody was one of those with a very non traditional background. So also think of the place you'd like to work for. I'm not saying those companies are wrong per se, they gotta do what they need to, but personally, I value pragmatism, creativity, transparency and flexibility more than boxes that are just checked on a piece of paper.

aswanson 8y ago

If you're a strong logical thinker, like your math degree implies, you'll be better off avoiding shops that filter like that. They don't understand that picking up a syntax is secondary and structured thought is the real strength of a possible hire.

booleandilemma 8y ago

That’s funny. Hiring managers see my CS degree and they say something like “so you have no experience with framework X?” The industry is so self-defeating.

ebullientocelot 8y ago

As others have said, these are probably the wrong shops. My math degree has (I'm told) been a differentiator from pools of CS applicants.

hangtwenty 8y ago

If you’re anything like me, you’re better off skipping the java and .net shops. Have you tried Python?

w0rd-driven 8y ago

I came from the other way around. I only studied CS in college and my cs101 course is where everything clicked back in 1998. I didn't get my degree and took 10 years of IT to realize I needed to be a developer. I jumped to a company for abysmal pay but they took a chance and I proved I could hack it. The transition from .NET to PHP took a similar leap of faith where I wasn't even sure I wanted to take that divergence. Looking back, I feel I made the right choice but in both instances it required very good friends vouching for my skills as my interview chops were frankly abysmal and may still be. Now I'm looking to jump to JavaScript or Elixir and analysis paralysis has set in. Unlike the previous transitions, I couldn't have these as my primary focus. I have to resort to personal projects or get very lucky to work with Vue from time to time. Proving myself to myself or other people seems much harder without a very current Github profile and gearing up for interviews requires a form of study that's difficult. I use these techniques consistently enough to be highly proficient but it's not easy to keep that breadth of knowledge on hand to answer most interview questions. I feel like this matters more than a degree at all tbh but there seems to be a bit of selection bias if they're specifically commenting on the type of degree you have. When CS is largely rooted in mathematics and a math degree tends to cover way more advanced topics that I feel are largely applicable.

baus 8y ago

I definitely think you need to apply to different companies. Almost everywhere I’ve worked a Math degree was considered an asset not a liability.

wwweston 8y ago

One of the things I quickly learned as I got close to graduation is that the primary problem with a math degree is that everyone thinks a math degree represents little more than extra time doing the math that they know (or are at least aware they've encountered). There's apparently a blub paradox of education. There's a somewhat similar dynamic with PHP; when people aren't simply outright going by their own language preferences, they may assume that your caliber as a dev is roughly equivalent to the highest quality PHP codebase they've encountered & groked. And not only has there been an awful lot of low-quality PHP code written, the most commonly deployed PHP code probably doesn't fit the most common web MVCish architecture choices that've coalesced over the years. You can, of course, use both kinds of judgment in a form of reverse-discrimination. I think the other solution is to get more concrete about the kinds of problems you've studied/solved. If your Math degree brought you to lots of material about matrix & numerical analysis, hey, you studied machine learning foundations. :) PHP? Maybe you're now partly a domain expert in content management systems. (But also, probably best to add a language Java/C# folks look at with respect...)