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"Life is unfair. Deal with it." There is no doubt that if someone's parents had the means to give them a computer, and that grade school student or high schoo

by tytso 14y ago

"Life is unfair. Deal with it." There is no doubt that if someone's parents had the means to give them a computer, and that grade school student or high school students was able to start practicing the craft of programming early, they will have a huge leg up on someone who didn't have that opportunity. For better or worse, that's the world that we live in. Accept it, and move on. OK, you weren't someone who had the opportunity to learn Cisco IOS at an early age, and was configuring core Internet backbone routers as a job and wearing a pager in high school, before you started at MIT as a freshman. OK, you're not someone who contributed so much to the Linux kernel in high school that you were invited to the annual Kernel Summit, which brings together the top 75 or so linux kernel developers, the summer before you started at MIT. These are two real people that I know. There's nothing I can do to change society to make things "fair"; and there's nothing you can do about either. So stop whining about it. I've looked at LockeWatts's resume, and the problem as someone who has been a hiring manager, is there's absolutely no signal in his resume that he would actually be a someone who could "compete with the best of them". He's made that assertion, but lots of people have made that assertion. And while he might be really bright, unfortunately, I've met many people who claimed to be super bright, but then when I asked them to code up a simple function on the whiteboard, they couldn't do something incredibly basic. Furthermore, although it will no doubt be painful for him to hear this, I very much doubt he is a rockstar. He might have the potential to be a rockstar, but takes a huge amount of practice to get there. It is rare, and no doubt requires privilege, for someone to have that status right out of college, or in the cases I detailed above, before they even started college. The good news is that this is something that time and experience, and a lot of determination on Colin's part, can fix. You can't change your family circumstances; but you can control how much time you spend honing your art and your craft. Sure, you need to focus on bringing home your biweekly paycheck. But you can control whether you go to movies, or go out drinking with your buddies, or whether you spend that working on open source projects, or learning new computer languages, or taking time to read self-help books to do what Stevey Covey called "Sharpening the Saw" (cf 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). Maybe it will take you an extra 2 or 3 or even 5 years. But you can give yourself rockstar-like skills and experience, if you are willing to make the appropriate choices and sacrifices.

LockeWatts 14y ago
"I've looked at LockeWatts's resume, and the problem as someone who has been a hiring manager, is there's absolutely no signal in his resume that he would actually be a someone who could "compete with the best of them". " It might surprise you to hear I'm happy to hear that. Tell me what it's lacking, I want to improve it. "but then when I asked them to code up a simple function on the whiteboard, they couldn't do something incredibly basic." What's your metric of incredibly basic? "Furthermore, although it will no doubt be painful for him to hear this, I very much doubt he is a rockstar. He might have the potential to be a rockstar, but takes a huge amount of practice to get there. It is rare, and no doubt requires privilege, for someone to have that status right out of college, or in the cases I detailed above, before they even started college." Okay. That doesn't really hurt, because I'm not asking for someone to just blindly accept that I'm amazing because I wrote a blog post. I want the opportunity to prove that I'm capable, that doesn't happen if you don't pay attention to my school. "Maybe it will take you an extra 2 or 3 or even 5 years. But you can give yourself rockstar-like skills and experience, if you are willing to make the appropriate choices and sacrifices." Besides working on my personal projects, working, getting an education, what else is on that list? Just more of the above? I ask that honestly, I want to know what you think will help.
- tytso 14y ago
  "Tell me what it's lacking, I want to improve it." What's missing is experience, or at least evidence of experience. That's OK; it's not your fault. There are design decisions I made in my first major large-scale programming project (and by major I mean requiring more than 10 person-years of effort) that I regret to this day. This is after graduating from MIT with a bachelor's degree and straight-A grades, including several graduate-level classes, and after working as a systems programmer part time during the school year, and full-time during the summer months for three years. I made mistakes which required the experience which only time and exposure could bring me, and I didn't have the opportunity to do large-scale systems work before I my college or high school career. (That's OK, most of us didn't; it's only the few lucky people who have.) But that experience is necessary to be a "rockstar" who doesn't need to go look for a job, and who is courted. Very few people fall into that category right out of college, and when you say that you can compete with them, that's either arrogance or ignorance which is speaking. So any job that you get is going to be an entry-level one. That's fine. We all have to start at the bottom at some point; it's only the incredibly lucky who are able to do this before or during the college years. This brings me to the other thing I really want to say. In order to rise to the top of the heap, you need both opportunity (aka luck) as well as hard work. For some, the luck comes as an accident of birth; for others, it comes later in life. For me, the fact that I happened to be in the right place at the right time so I could become the first North American Linux Kernel Developer was definitely luck. But the fact that I was willing to pour all of my free time for several years into Linux was a vast amount of hard work was necessary or that opportunity would have completely passed me by. The fact that I was able to get into MIT, and my parents were able to extend loans to me so I could attend, was certainly a matter of privilege. But the straight-A's came from averaging 4-5 hours a sleep a night, and going everything I could to learn everything I could, and work on as much as I could, during that time. The effort did come with some sacrifices; both socially, and from a health perspective (I became horribly obese due to the lack of sleep, lack of exercise, and vast amounts of non-diet Coke which I drank while honing my craft during all available free hours). I can't say that I would necessarily recommend the choices that I made to everyone. If you aren't sufficiently passionate about honing a piece of code to perfection, you're not going to stay up until 2am making that happen; and you won't be happy doing what you did after ten or twenty years. I'm fairly content with the choices that I made, even though they did come with drawbacks. (It's only now, 20+ years later, that I'm finally losing the weight so that shortly, I will no longer be obese, but merely overweight.) So before you say that you want to be a rockstar, make sure you understand what the costs might be. If that really is your passion, then work really hard, so that when the opportunity comes your way, you can recognize it and take advantage of it. The fact that your opportunity didn't come as an accident of birth is just bad luck; but you never know when your incredibly great stroke of good luck will come your way, and the question is whether your skills will be ready to take full advantage of it when it does. (I will note by the way, that my passions didn't extend to just technology; I also spent time listening to management and self-development books on tape when I commuted to work --- and I took advantage of a benefit from working at MIT as a staff member at the time to take a class every semester or two at the MIT Sloan School, where I learned took classes on negotiation, law and technology, etc. This was also on my spare time, while I was earning much less than my peers who had gone to work at big companies in the private world, since I was working for MIT that underpaid its technology staff by a factor of two or more at the time. So I was sharing an apartment with two other people, and driving the cheapest car I could find at the time. So I was certainly privileged, and I was lucky --- but at the same time, I very much paid my dues. I never graduated from MIT expecting that I would be recognized as a rockstar straight out of college!)

by tytso 14y ago

LockeWatts 14y ago

"I've looked at LockeWatts's resume, and the problem as someone who has been a hiring manager, is there's absolutely no signal in his resume that he would actually be a someone who could "compete with the best of them". " It might surprise you to hear I'm happy to hear that. Tell me what it's lacking, I want to improve it. "but then when I asked them to code up a simple function on the whiteboard, they couldn't do something incredibly basic." What's your metric of incredibly basic? "Furthermore, although it will no doubt be painful for him to hear this, I very much doubt he is a rockstar. He might have the potential to be a rockstar, but takes a huge amount of practice to get there. It is rare, and no doubt requires privilege, for someone to have that status right out of college, or in the cases I detailed above, before they even started college." Okay. That doesn't really hurt, because I'm not asking for someone to just blindly accept that I'm amazing because I wrote a blog post. I want the opportunity to prove that I'm capable, that doesn't happen if you don't pay attention to my school. "Maybe it will take you an extra 2 or 3 or even 5 years. But you can give yourself rockstar-like skills and experience, if you are willing to make the appropriate choices and sacrifices." Besides working on my personal projects, working, getting an education, what else is on that list? Just more of the above? I ask that honestly, I want to know what you think will help.

tytso 14y ago
"Tell me what it's lacking, I want to improve it." What's missing is experience, or at least evidence of experience. That's OK; it's not your fault. There are design decisions I made in my first major large-scale programming project (and by major I mean requiring more than 10 person-years of effort) that I regret to this day. This is after graduating from MIT with a bachelor's degree and straight-A grades, including several graduate-level classes, and after working as a systems programmer part time during the school year, and full-time during the summer months for three years. I made mistakes which required the experience which only time and exposure could bring me, and I didn't have the opportunity to do large-scale systems work before I my college or high school career. (That's OK, most of us didn't; it's only the few lucky people who have.) But that experience is necessary to be a "rockstar" who doesn't need to go look for a job, and who is courted. Very few people fall into that category right out of college, and when you say that you can compete with them, that's either arrogance or ignorance which is speaking. So any job that you get is going to be an entry-level one. That's fine. We all have to start at the bottom at some point; it's only the incredibly lucky who are able to do this before or during the college years. This brings me to the other thing I really want to say. In order to rise to the top of the heap, you need both opportunity (aka luck) as well as hard work. For some, the luck comes as an accident of birth; for others, it comes later in life. For me, the fact that I happened to be in the right place at the right time so I could become the first North American Linux Kernel Developer was definitely luck. But the fact that I was willing to pour all of my free time for several years into Linux was a vast amount of hard work was necessary or that opportunity would have completely passed me by. The fact that I was able to get into MIT, and my parents were able to extend loans to me so I could attend, was certainly a matter of privilege. But the straight-A's came from averaging 4-5 hours a sleep a night, and going everything I could to learn everything I could, and work on as much as I could, during that time. The effort did come with some sacrifices; both socially, and from a health perspective (I became horribly obese due to the lack of sleep, lack of exercise, and vast amounts of non-diet Coke which I drank while honing my craft during all available free hours). I can't say that I would necessarily recommend the choices that I made to everyone. If you aren't sufficiently passionate about honing a piece of code to perfection, you're not going to stay up until 2am making that happen; and you won't be happy doing what you did after ten or twenty years. I'm fairly content with the choices that I made, even though they did come with drawbacks. (It's only now, 20+ years later, that I'm finally losing the weight so that shortly, I will no longer be obese, but merely overweight.) So before you say that you want to be a rockstar, make sure you understand what the costs might be. If that really is your passion, then work really hard, so that when the opportunity comes your way, you can recognize it and take advantage of it. The fact that your opportunity didn't come as an accident of birth is just bad luck; but you never know when your incredibly great stroke of good luck will come your way, and the question is whether your skills will be ready to take full advantage of it when it does. (I will note by the way, that my passions didn't extend to just technology; I also spent time listening to management and self-development books on tape when I commuted to work --- and I took advantage of a benefit from working at MIT as a staff member at the time to take a class every semester or two at the MIT Sloan School, where I learned took classes on negotiation, law and technology, etc. This was also on my spare time, while I was earning much less than my peers who had gone to work at big companies in the private world, since I was working for MIT that underpaid its technology staff by a factor of two or more at the time. So I was sharing an apartment with two other people, and driving the cheapest car I could find at the time. So I was certainly privileged, and I was lucky --- but at the same time, I very much paid my dues. I never graduated from MIT expecting that I would be recognized as a rockstar straight out of college!)