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> The reactive ingredient is passion, not the learning modality. As a self-taught programmer I agree with this. I started teaching myself on 8 bit computers i

by louthy 1y ago

> The reactive ingredient is passion, not the learning modality. As a self-taught programmer I agree with this. I started teaching myself on 8 bit computers in the mid-80s and didn't go to university. By the time I got my first full-time programming job, at the age of 19, I'd already been programming for 9 years. By the time most people are leaving university I was already nearly 15 years into my programming journey. It's hard to ignore that kind of passion and drive. I'm now four decades in and love it in the same way I did at the start. I'm a maker, I like making. I keep reading the papers and am constantly interested in where this thing is going ... and I write a lot of code! However, I don't like the premise that self-taught engineers lack foundational concepts just because they didn't go the academic route. I think many of us find the academic aspects just as interesting -- it really depends on the field you're in I think. For sure, we don't normally have the time to do a deep dive of something, but by the time you're decades in you've probably got just as many if not more 'foundational chops' than someone who spent a few years at school. Anecdotally, as someone who's hired and fired plenty over the years, I think there is something to the Self-Taught Engineers Outperform theory. But I think it's purely that they spend much more time doing. They do more in work and they do more in their free time. The passion brute-forces the learning.

danaris 1y ago
I think that what most people mean is that with a self-taught engineer, you have no way of knowing whether they have the foundations. It's going to be much more common with self-taught engineers than with formally-educated ones to have areas of surpassing brilliance, and areas where they don't know their arse from their elbow, and no easy way to predict what those will be until you get to know the specific engineer. With formally-educated software engineers, so long as the school they got their degree at is a reputable one with a decent program, you can be reasonably confident that they'll have a solid foundation, and if you're familiar with the institution you may even know what their strengths and weaknesses are likely to be.
- louthy 1y ago
  > With formally-educated software engineers, so long as the school they got their degree at is a reputable one with a decent program, you can be reasonably confident that they'll have a solid foundation Based on the 100s of candidates that I've interviewed over the years, I disagree. In fact I often wonder what on earth people are doing at these university courses, because they rarely seem to have even a basic grasp of computer science. I've had to personally mentor many (academic route) engineers over the years on what I would consider absolute basics. Frankly, I don't consider a degree a useful barometer of quality at all. They're only useful if the candidate is applying for their first job out of university. After that, experience is much more important and I basically ignore the education part of a CV.
  - devin 1y ago
    This used to be my experience with credentialed candidates, but I do think the programs universities have been putting together (which are from what I gather, extremely expensive tech school programs that optimize for FAANG acceptance) have made the hit rate for juniors that can actually hack slightly higher than what I remember. Whether they actually are interested in the work still seems more important than the paper though.
  - bongodongobob 1y ago
    I completely agree. Where I'm at right now, most of the brilliant engineers and admins don't have a degree at all. The ones with degrees are the do nothing look busy with meetings managers.
  - theteapot 1y ago
    > .. they rarely seem to have even a basic grasp of computer science. I've had to personally mentor many (academic route) engineers over the years on what I would consider absolute basics. This is kind of fascinating. Please give some examples.
  - genghisjahn 1y ago
    When I was hiring back in maybe 2020, I used a basic FizzBuzz test. Yep, the FizzBuzz test you've all read about. About half the people (all college grads) who took it could not pass in the allotted hour. Yup, an hour to do FizzBuzz. Whatever language you want. Whatever you want to Google. I'd say 40%-50% could not do it. A common error was not being able to get the first number evaluated to be 1. They had written(copied) for loops as `for i:=0;i<100;i++` so many times that they couldn't understand that setting i to 1 was all they needed to do. They didn't see the code. Just the "loop line" and it wasn't doing it right. Then it was making it stop at 100 instead of 99. All that before even trying to test mod 5 and mod 3 first. The people who did pass it would have written it before I'd even finished describing the problem and they would all but sneer (in a professional manner) at the rest of the code "challenges." We made offers to those people and they worked out great.
- fluorinerocket 1y ago
  I find it's a crapshoot even with formally educated engineers whether they know what they have supposedly been educated in or not

by louthy 1y ago

danaris 1y ago

I think that what most people mean is that with a self-taught engineer, you have no way of knowing whether they have the foundations. It's going to be much more common with self-taught engineers than with formally-educated ones to have areas of surpassing brilliance, and areas where they don't know their arse from their elbow, and no easy way to predict what those will be until you get to know the specific engineer. With formally-educated software engineers, so long as the school they got their degree at is a reputable one with a decent program, you can be reasonably confident that they'll have a solid foundation, and if you're familiar with the institution you may even know what their strengths and weaknesses are likely to be.

louthy 1y ago
> With formally-educated software engineers, so long as the school they got their degree at is a reputable one with a decent program, you can be reasonably confident that they'll have a solid foundation Based on the 100s of candidates that I've interviewed over the years, I disagree. In fact I often wonder what on earth people are doing at these university courses, because they rarely seem to have even a basic grasp of computer science. I've had to personally mentor many (academic route) engineers over the years on what I would consider absolute basics. Frankly, I don't consider a degree a useful barometer of quality at all. They're only useful if the candidate is applying for their first job out of university. After that, experience is much more important and I basically ignore the education part of a CV.
- devin 1y ago
  This used to be my experience with credentialed candidates, but I do think the programs universities have been putting together (which are from what I gather, extremely expensive tech school programs that optimize for FAANG acceptance) have made the hit rate for juniors that can actually hack slightly higher than what I remember. Whether they actually are interested in the work still seems more important than the paper though.
- bongodongobob 1y ago
  I completely agree. Where I'm at right now, most of the brilliant engineers and admins don't have a degree at all. The ones with degrees are the do nothing look busy with meetings managers.
- theteapot 1y ago
  > .. they rarely seem to have even a basic grasp of computer science. I've had to personally mentor many (academic route) engineers over the years on what I would consider absolute basics. This is kind of fascinating. Please give some examples.
- genghisjahn 1y ago
  When I was hiring back in maybe 2020, I used a basic FizzBuzz test. Yep, the FizzBuzz test you've all read about. About half the people (all college grads) who took it could not pass in the allotted hour. Yup, an hour to do FizzBuzz. Whatever language you want. Whatever you want to Google. I'd say 40%-50% could not do it. A common error was not being able to get the first number evaluated to be 1. They had written(copied) for loops as `for i:=0;i<100;i++` so many times that they couldn't understand that setting i to 1 was all they needed to do. They didn't see the code. Just the "loop line" and it wasn't doing it right. Then it was making it stop at 100 instead of 99. All that before even trying to test mod 5 and mod 3 first. The people who did pass it would have written it before I'd even finished describing the problem and they would all but sneer (in a professional manner) at the rest of the code "challenges." We made offers to those people and they worked out great.
fluorinerocket 1y ago
I find it's a crapshoot even with formally educated engineers whether they know what they have supposedly been educated in or not