4 ms·

Speaking as someone actively hiring here and having worked with top teams on the PhD + industry side: Pick an area, get dangerous over say 6-9mo on your own tim

Speaking as someone actively hiring here and having worked with top teams on the PhD + industry side: Pick an area, get dangerous over say 6-9mo on your own time through a mix of planned practice (vs random noodling) + projects, then get more dangerous via an employer with senior talent happy to train some junior talent over 2yrs. From there, you're firmly in. That's not an option for everyone (aging parents, needy kids, ...), but for software engineers with modern salaries, it's often approachable. Ex: We'd bite if someone demoed us some impressive GLSL JS work, discussed how they'd get another 100X of scale, and their code style looks like it'd be practical for us to collaborate around. We require the same from someone with a degree. To your advantage, it shows (a) you can hit the ground running (b) you've got the "slope" / drive we're looking for when choosing to invest in someone new to the area. A degree does unlock some things for us. Some US Gov grants needs it. But more important, degree or no degree, is the independent projects/papers/grants/etc. along the way that demonstrate they can do more of the same. But much of that is about going beyond research engineering (=> RFPs, ...), and you get much of that experience on-the-job... if you've already show you can do the core coding.

culopatin 5y ago
This shows some light at the end of the tunnel, thanks! How does one find the “employer with senior talent happy to train some junior talent over 2yrs.”? I’m in a similar situation than OP, but I find myself in the IT Operations side of tech, not software where I want to be. I know I will devote myself to any project they give me and turn 1% of mentoring into loads of progress, but I can’t seem to arouse the HR filter enough and I don’t have contacts in the software world to get through the personal route. I do have a somewhat big (viewed from my junior point of view at least) project I’m working on and it’s constantly updated in GitHub, but I don’t think anyone even gets to look at it.
- lmeyerov 5y ago
  Going from software operations to software engineering is a bigger leap, so go for it and good luck! I have thought about it less, and we have never took on such a candidate, but we are small and scrappy . Some thoughts from discussions with bootcamp students looking for their first job: - Become a maintainer / trusted committeer of an open source project popular with companies and they are likely struggling on. You will get professional mentoring on your PRs and they will come hunting for you. - Lean into a niche, esp that uses your background. Ex: If you are great at ops, specialize in something like k8s, or even more niche. We are looking for someone doing k8s for our infra to help our users turn their GPU knob to 100 without feeling the pain. If we had someone mid/senior on it already, would have been inclined for person #2 or #3 to be junior just b/c their enthusiasm on doing the basics. It's niche enough to expect to have to train on, and you ops experience gives you an advantage over other junior candidates. If you run your own k8s (or some oss/volunteer groups) for a year and are an accepted k8s ecosystem contributor , that means you are doing it right . DevOps lets you transition to other Python jobs, and has some lucrative niches, like security automation/engineering. good luck!
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
How is any amount of practice going to get past the ML filters that reject all "unworthy" submissions as determined by somebody in HR filling in some config settings?
- avmich 5y ago
  Tell computer that you have an education. Get to talk to the human. Prepare a good explanation why the education part is not so straightforward as a computer may think. Some humans will understand.
  - satisfice 5y ago
    You can also explain the situation to the computer using the hot keywords. When a human gets to it, you will not have told a lie.
    - avmich 5y ago
      If computer offers as much as a checkbox, that approach could be problematic.
- lmeyerov 5y ago
  don't apply through HR filter routes nor with a normal application. you need just one person on the team or senior on the decision path to advocate a look. stuff like DEI, veteran hiring, high energy, etc are real, and junior hires are all protected categories, so managers do care about non-unicorn hires and will bat for them . -- startups, esp those scrappy (read: no $30M funding rounds) so aren't using HR recruiters, will do hiring directly through founders or later leads. in general, up to 100+ employees, a good CEO should be involved in every hire -- everyone else: LinkedIn sleuthing -- identify the team you'd want to join and likely hiring lead in both cases, direct reach out via LI/email to that person: ~2 sentences proving you are legit ready to provide value on week 1-2 (ex: impressive demo page/video link), leading to a coverpage of 3-4 paragraphs why you<>them specifically (project, ROI, ...) + regular CV ex: if you want to do GLSL JS at Graphistry, I'd jump on an email / LI msg that linked to a cool GLSL video/demo and a good GitHub behind it. normally we have to hunt to find that kind of thing, so A+ for candidates who show they already align on our mission and can do the legwork. 80%+ of applications we get could have been applying for any webdev job, not ours: if we were looking for that, our job search would have taken 1-3 days. so don't present yourself that way nor apply that way. Numbers wise, instead of below the bar on 100 jobs so ~0% chance, at least get a 5-10% chance on 10-20, giving you a 100% shot heck, as someone senior, i'd still never apply through the front door, including for co's I don't know anyone at
satisfice 5y ago
Excellent advice. Comports with my own experience (high school dropout w/38 years as tech professional). Listen to this one, folks.

culopatin 5y ago

This shows some light at the end of the tunnel, thanks! How does one find the “employer with senior talent happy to train some junior talent over 2yrs.”? I’m in a similar situation than OP, but I find myself in the IT Operations side of tech, not software where I want to be. I know I will devote myself to any project they give me and turn 1% of mentoring into loads of progress, but I can’t seem to arouse the HR filter enough and I don’t have contacts in the software world to get through the personal route. I do have a somewhat big (viewed from my junior point of view at least) project I’m working on and it’s constantly updated in GitHub, but I don’t think anyone even gets to look at it.

lmeyerov 5y ago
Going from software operations to software engineering is a bigger leap, so go for it and good luck! I have thought about it less, and we have never took on such a candidate, but we are small and scrappy . Some thoughts from discussions with bootcamp students looking for their first job: - Become a maintainer / trusted committeer of an open source project popular with companies and they are likely struggling on. You will get professional mentoring on your PRs and they will come hunting for you. - Lean into a niche, esp that uses your background. Ex: If you are great at ops, specialize in something like k8s, or even more niche. We are looking for someone doing k8s for our infra to help our users turn their GPU knob to 100 without feeling the pain. If we had someone mid/senior on it already, would have been inclined for person #2 or #3 to be junior just b/c their enthusiasm on doing the basics. It's niche enough to expect to have to train on, and you ops experience gives you an advantage over other junior candidates. If you run your own k8s (or some oss/volunteer groups) for a year and are an accepted k8s ecosystem contributor , that means you are doing it right . DevOps lets you transition to other Python jobs, and has some lucrative niches, like security automation/engineering. good luck!

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

How is any amount of practice going to get past the ML filters that reject all "unworthy" submissions as determined by somebody in HR filling in some config settings?

avmich 5y ago
Tell computer that you have an education. Get to talk to the human. Prepare a good explanation why the education part is not so straightforward as a computer may think. Some humans will understand.
- satisfice 5y ago
  You can also explain the situation to the computer using the hot keywords. When a human gets to it, you will not have told a lie.
  - avmich 5y ago
    If computer offers as much as a checkbox, that approach could be problematic.
lmeyerov 5y ago
don't apply through HR filter routes nor with a normal application. you need just one person on the team or senior on the decision path to advocate a look. stuff like DEI, veteran hiring, high energy, etc are real, and junior hires are all protected categories, so managers do care about non-unicorn hires and will bat for them . -- startups, esp those scrappy (read: no $30M funding rounds) so aren't using HR recruiters, will do hiring directly through founders or later leads. in general, up to 100+ employees, a good CEO should be involved in every hire -- everyone else: LinkedIn sleuthing -- identify the team you'd want to join and likely hiring lead in both cases, direct reach out via LI/email to that person: ~2 sentences proving you are legit ready to provide value on week 1-2 (ex: impressive demo page/video link), leading to a coverpage of 3-4 paragraphs why you<>them specifically (project, ROI, ...) + regular CV ex: if you want to do GLSL JS at Graphistry, I'd jump on an email / LI msg that linked to a cool GLSL video/demo and a good GitHub behind it. normally we have to hunt to find that kind of thing, so A+ for candidates who show they already align on our mission and can do the legwork. 80%+ of applications we get could have been applying for any webdev job, not ours: if we were looking for that, our job search would have taken 1-3 days. so don't present yourself that way nor apply that way. Numbers wise, instead of below the bar on 100 jobs so ~0% chance, at least get a 5-10% chance on 10-20, giving you a 100% shot heck, as someone senior, i'd still never apply through the front door, including for co's I don't know anyone at

satisfice 5y ago

Excellent advice. Comports with my own experience (high school dropout w/38 years as tech professional). Listen to this one, folks.