4 ms·

I've interviewed quite a few people in order to assess their technical skills. Here are some takeaways: 1) I look at skills, not grades. 2) I look at skills,

I've interviewed quite a few people in order to assess their technical skills. Here are some takeaways: 1) I look at skills, not grades. 2) I look at skills, not which university someone went to. 3) I look at skills, not weather or not they someone to university. Just read the docs and practice in order to learn relevant skills. You can done quicker than those to went to uni, have more practice in a shorter amount of time and not have any debt.

francis-io 5y ago
The highest education I have is secondary school (highscool) and what you say couldn't be more right in my expirence. I got some CompTIA certs while working a night shift to get into IT and prove I knew the basicis. Everything beyond that has been learning in my own time and on the job. I'm now 30, no debt, self employed (by choice), contractor working in "senior" roles, what ever that means. I do regret not having some basic comp sci theory, but I've never really needed it or had the desire to learn it on my own time. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing, but it's not stood in my way so far. This might be a controvertial view, but I feel that having to self learn a topic is a good filter to see if you actually enjoy the topic. If you don't want to sit and self learn a dense topic (assuming lives dont depend on it), then you will likely hate working on it. University for a lot of people is a free holiday for when you havn't decided on what you want to do.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  > This might be a controvertial view, but I feel that having to self learn a topic is a good filter to see if you actually enjoy the topic. If you don't want to sit and self learn a dense topic (assuming lives dont depend on it), then you will likely hate working on it. Maybe, but I’ve felt my ability to self teach myself anything steadily collapse over the years. Particularly, while I enjoy some topics, I do not enjoy having to understand their prerequisites independent of the original topic, and any prerequisites to those, at which point I’m just is abstracted and far away from the initial thing I was interested in in the first place. One common thing for me personally is math. There are many things I’m interested in, where a solid understanding of calculus is necessary. Now I could maybe manage to maintain interest if the calculus was all I needed, but I had a terrible math education and have no interest in spending all the relearning algebra and other calculus prerequisites, far displaced from what originally caught my interest.
  - ivan_ah 5y ago
    Check out the intro-to-calculus section in the preview PDF of my book: https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSmathphys_v5_preview.pdf#page=93 https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSmathphys_v5_pr... It's just a few pages and you'll know the basic ideas. Learning calculus and all the prerequisites is really not that bad. Yes you'll need to do some review on prerequisites like algebra, functions, and maybe a bit of trigonometry, but it won't take you more than a month or two. See also Figures 1, 2, and 4 in this concept map of the different "game levels" you'll have to go through: https://minireference.com/static/conceptmaps/math_and_physics_concepts.pdf https://minireference.com/static/conceptmaps/math_and_physic... As a coder you've had to learn much more complex things, so I bet calculus will turn out to be easier than you think. Also, if you know Python syntax you will have SymPy on your side which is like math superpowers, see https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/sympy_tutorial.pdf https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/sympy_tutorial.pd...
ratww 5y ago
Yeah, I've had the exact same experience. My previous managers always pushed me to hire based on which school the person went to, grades (for interns), or even ability to solve trainable problems (leetcode, whiteboard), but most of the time that didn't go well and we always got problem-people that knew how to pass a test but not to work on real world problems. Looking only for skill, on the other hands, is hard but it pays off.

francis-io 5y ago

The highest education I have is secondary school (highscool) and what you say couldn't be more right in my expirence. I got some CompTIA certs while working a night shift to get into IT and prove I knew the basicis. Everything beyond that has been learning in my own time and on the job. I'm now 30, no debt, self employed (by choice), contractor working in "senior" roles, what ever that means. I do regret not having some basic comp sci theory, but I've never really needed it or had the desire to learn it on my own time. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing, but it's not stood in my way so far. This might be a controvertial view, but I feel that having to self learn a topic is a good filter to see if you actually enjoy the topic. If you don't want to sit and self learn a dense topic (assuming lives dont depend on it), then you will likely hate working on it. University for a lot of people is a free holiday for when you havn't decided on what you want to do.

the_only_law 5y ago
> This might be a controvertial view, but I feel that having to self learn a topic is a good filter to see if you actually enjoy the topic. If you don't want to sit and self learn a dense topic (assuming lives dont depend on it), then you will likely hate working on it. Maybe, but I’ve felt my ability to self teach myself anything steadily collapse over the years. Particularly, while I enjoy some topics, I do not enjoy having to understand their prerequisites independent of the original topic, and any prerequisites to those, at which point I’m just is abstracted and far away from the initial thing I was interested in in the first place. One common thing for me personally is math. There are many things I’m interested in, where a solid understanding of calculus is necessary. Now I could maybe manage to maintain interest if the calculus was all I needed, but I had a terrible math education and have no interest in spending all the relearning algebra and other calculus prerequisites, far displaced from what originally caught my interest.
- ivan_ah 5y ago
  Check out the intro-to-calculus section in the preview PDF of my book: https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSmathphys_v5_preview.pdf#page=93 https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSmathphys_v5_pr... It's just a few pages and you'll know the basic ideas. Learning calculus and all the prerequisites is really not that bad. Yes you'll need to do some review on prerequisites like algebra, functions, and maybe a bit of trigonometry, but it won't take you more than a month or two. See also Figures 1, 2, and 4 in this concept map of the different "game levels" you'll have to go through: https://minireference.com/static/conceptmaps/math_and_physics_concepts.pdf https://minireference.com/static/conceptmaps/math_and_physic... As a coder you've had to learn much more complex things, so I bet calculus will turn out to be easier than you think. Also, if you know Python syntax you will have SymPy on your side which is like math superpowers, see https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/sympy_tutorial.pdf https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/sympy_tutorial.pd...

ratww 5y ago

Yeah, I've had the exact same experience. My previous managers always pushed me to hire based on which school the person went to, grades (for interns), or even ability to solve trainable problems (leetcode, whiteboard), but most of the time that didn't go well and we always got problem-people that knew how to pass a test but not to work on real world problems. Looking only for skill, on the other hands, is hard but it pays off.