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I remember watching office space when it came out and thinking "welp that's going to be my life." In high school I talked to someone who had a bachelors in CS a

by srj 4y ago

I remember watching office space when it came out and thinking "welp that's going to be my life." In high school I talked to someone who had a bachelors in CS and he cautioned me that it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on (this was around the dot com crash). Oh well, I was having a blast coding AOL punters and knew programming was the only thing I was good at. The gold rush has certainly brought in a different crowd. Many of them can excel past nerds like me just from sheer intelligence and quickness. It's still great having opportunities to work with fellow hackers colleagues though.

dehrmann 4y ago
> Many of them can excel past nerds like me just from sheer intelligence and quickness Really? Usually breadth and depth of knowledge makes people who really like the stuff stand out.
moomoo11 4y ago
I mean someone who wants to build a business vs have a hobby are going to be vastly different. The former is going to be ultra competitive since they have to survive against the competition and face extinction level events on the regular. The hobbyist can take forever and do whatever because it’s a hobby and even if their model airplane never flies that’s okay. It’s like playing ranked vs people who never play ranked and do whatever meme custom game.
olliej 4y ago
I think there are a few issues here: * sure a degree alone isn’t instantly valuable, you can skip it in CS, but it requires substantial time commitment regardless. The goal is to have the knowledge and skills to be valuable (in a purely utilitarian sense). A CS degree can do that, but so can for example working on large OSS projects - the difference is largely how focused the approach is on bringing up core knowledge. On the one hand I know a lot of “self taught”/non degree devs who have annoying gaps, on the other hand you get people who know O(N) but not how a computer works. You really need both. > many of them can excel … No, the super successful “young founder” startups are largely luck plus connections, not any magical ability others lack. There’s often after the fact assignment of brilliance, but that happens in many fields and is often kind of questionable. Strategic/tactical brilliance is also super susceptible to survivor bias. Just focus on doing the best you can, and worry less about what others are doing. There will always be someone who might be smarter, or richer, or luckier, etc and there’s nothing you can do to change that, so don’t bother.

by srj 4y ago

dehrmann 4y ago

> Many of them can excel past nerds like me just from sheer intelligence and quickness Really? Usually breadth and depth of knowledge makes people who really like the stuff stand out.

moomoo11 4y ago

I mean someone who wants to build a business vs have a hobby are going to be vastly different. The former is going to be ultra competitive since they have to survive against the competition and face extinction level events on the regular. The hobbyist can take forever and do whatever because it’s a hobby and even if their model airplane never flies that’s okay. It’s like playing ranked vs people who never play ranked and do whatever meme custom game.

olliej 4y ago

I think there are a few issues here: * sure a degree alone isn’t instantly valuable, you can skip it in CS, but it requires substantial time commitment regardless. The goal is to have the knowledge and skills to be valuable (in a purely utilitarian sense). A CS degree can do that, but so can for example working on large OSS projects - the difference is largely how focused the approach is on bringing up core knowledge. On the one hand I know a lot of “self taught”/non degree devs who have annoying gaps, on the other hand you get people who know O(N) but not how a computer works. You really need both. > many of them can excel … No, the super successful “young founder” startups are largely luck plus connections, not any magical ability others lack. There’s often after the fact assignment of brilliance, but that happens in many fields and is often kind of questionable. Strategic/tactical brilliance is also super susceptible to survivor bias. Just focus on doing the best you can, and worry less about what others are doing. There will always be someone who might be smarter, or richer, or luckier, etc and there’s nothing you can do to change that, so don’t bother.