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Yes. I think I could have excelled in other areas. As a programmer I'm just average or below average. I was quite motivated and bright in my youth, and could h

by pr813 8y ago

Yes. I think I could have excelled in other areas. As a programmer I'm just average or below average. I was quite motivated and bright in my youth, and could have picked a number of careers where I had some skills. Decided to go with programming because I was excellent in math (and liked it), and wanted to do something applied instead of teaching. Coming from a poor background, I had ZERO knowledge about what programming is really like as a career, and what other applied math careers exist out there. I thought if you study math, you become a teacher. There were also other areas besides math that I liked and excelled at, so I could have picked a number of those. So when I started with CS, I was already late in the game compared to others who started younger, had very little support in my learning and no peers to connect with as a woman in 90's/early 00's. It resulted in stumbling around a lot in my career and ending up as a probably below average programmer. Also realized too late that it's going to be very hard to find any math-intensive work as a programmer unless you hold a PhD. Add to that some discrimination - I think young girls today have it a bit better than before, but women above 35, moms? Not many people want that. I had to remove my picture from LinkedIn because it got me less recruiter hits WITH a professional picture.

itamarst 8y ago
For what it's worth, there are areas where you can do math-intensive stuff without a PhD. E.g. personally after not doing anything math-y for two decades I stumbled into a job doing image processing. There's also graphics programming, although I get the impression that can be extra toxic environment. However, https://twitter.com/sehurlburt https://twitter.com/sehurlburt will occasionally post links to companies that aren't toxic that are hiring people, and some of them are welcoming to people without prior knowledge of the specific domain. E.g. https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/1043182104140345345 https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/1043182104140345345
- shoo 8y ago
  > For what it's worth, there are areas where you can do math-intensive stuff without a PhD. i agree. there aren't a huge abundance of such job opportunities, but there are a few out there. for me it was a few years doing development with splashes of applied operations research (discrete optimisation, liner programming, etc).
quickthrower2 8y ago
I also empathize with "I had ZERO knowledge about what programming is really like as a career". I decided I wanted to do it around 10 as a career (or "electronics") but I thought I would be making games in machine code for the Acorn Electron :-). My dream would have been to use a "compiler" ha ha. I think the role of the programmer has changed maybe from a pioneer / highly technical research to mostly a tool for businesses. All my jobs since 2012 for example have required me to log time into some system an be called up when things take too long, and since 2011 being using 'agile' methodologies of some sort, which are processes trying to in my opinion make programming more like a production process. I think my best be in hindsight would be to have done a PhD and then moved to the USA and worked for Google for a bit. Then i'd have the killer company on my CV plus the PhD and then can get some cushy jobs anywhere in the world. Not that it would have been easy to get into Google in the early days. But who can predict these things ... and if I could predict that well I'd just have hoarded Bitcoin or something.

by pr813 8y ago

itamarst 8y ago

For what it's worth, there are areas where you can do math-intensive stuff without a PhD. E.g. personally after not doing anything math-y for two decades I stumbled into a job doing image processing. There's also graphics programming, although I get the impression that can be extra toxic environment. However, https://twitter.com/sehurlburt https://twitter.com/sehurlburt will occasionally post links to companies that aren't toxic that are hiring people, and some of them are welcoming to people without prior knowledge of the specific domain. E.g. https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/1043182104140345345 https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/1043182104140345345

shoo 8y ago
> For what it's worth, there are areas where you can do math-intensive stuff without a PhD. i agree. there aren't a huge abundance of such job opportunities, but there are a few out there. for me it was a few years doing development with splashes of applied operations research (discrete optimisation, liner programming, etc).

quickthrower2 8y ago

I also empathize with "I had ZERO knowledge about what programming is really like as a career". I decided I wanted to do it around 10 as a career (or "electronics") but I thought I would be making games in machine code for the Acorn Electron :-). My dream would have been to use a "compiler" ha ha. I think the role of the programmer has changed maybe from a pioneer / highly technical research to mostly a tool for businesses. All my jobs since 2012 for example have required me to log time into some system an be called up when things take too long, and since 2011 being using 'agile' methodologies of some sort, which are processes trying to in my opinion make programming more like a production process. I think my best be in hindsight would be to have done a PhD and then moved to the USA and worked for Google for a bit. Then i'd have the killer company on my CV plus the PhD and then can get some cushy jobs anywhere in the world. Not that it would have been easy to get into Google in the early days. But who can predict these things ... and if I could predict that well I'd just have hoarded Bitcoin or something.