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Plenty of formally educated engineers will try to solve new and unfamiliar problems. What you're describing isn't self-taught vs. formally educated. It is curi

Plenty of formally educated engineers will try to solve new and unfamiliar problems. What you're describing isn't self-taught vs. formally educated. It is curious vs complacent w/ a heavy sprinkle of hard work, creativity, and intelligence. Both groups can have those traits. Self-taught can ONLY work well if you have those traits, so maybe you more obviously see it in that group since it's a requirement to succeed when self taught, whereas a classically trained engineer without those traits will probably still "make it". An engineer with those traits and the formal education will do better than either category most of the time.

cyanydeez 1y ago
It sounds more like corporate culture selects for people who are rarely self taught because they will fall outside the "meritocracy" parade.
- jrvieira 1y ago
  "We want you to be good, not better than us"
FrustratedMonky 1y ago
Maybe the perception is because of the larger percentage in each group. Self Taught -> Already is curious, be default, so 99%-100% are curious. Just by the nature of going out of the way to learn something. Educated -> Also has a curious % in the group, but also has the large group of complacent "i heard software makes money so i'm hear to learn it, but i don't know what i'm doing". So when you do find complacent, they mostly came from the educated path.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  That's my experience as well. People came to CS because they love computers and want to learn how they work were so different than "I just want a job which makes money" people in every way even in the university years. Curious people got high on the caffeine and code, and the other group just got high.
  - aatd86 1y ago
    All I know is that if my coding ability had been measured through mandatory assignments that I would be force-fed without any immediate need, I would have been disgusted. "Locking-in" on some esoteric topics just because one wants to is probably the best way to improve in my opinion. On the other hand I have been through a pretty generalist undergrad education in engineering and it helped in acquiring general math, physics, chemistry knowledge.
    - bayindirh 1y ago
      I also went through a very generalist CS course, that we call Computer Engineering, which covered from hardware to software plus math, physics, chemistry. I was already a nerd when I was attending the university. My chance was my instructors and professors let me roam free and convert every assignment to a rabbit hole. Poisoned by demoscene earlier, I was already an elegance/performance freak before even I got graduated, and this made me dive into unknown territory head-on instead of being afraid of it. I have written a compression algorithm from scratch for graduation, then written a multi-agent trading system for M.Sc. project. For Ph.D. I have written a BEM based material simulation which was able to saturate the system very effectively, reaching practical IPC limits of the processors it ran on.
- Nicook 1y ago
  not all self taught are curious, at least recent batches.
- SecretDreams 1y ago
  Ya, agreed. I even tried to allude to as much.
- michaelcampbell 1y ago
  This goes both ways. I think the vast majority of my colleagues who got into CS later post-college did it because they needed a job, and that's where jobs were. > Self Taught -> Already is curious, be default, so 99%-100% are curious. There is some of this but IME that % is half your estimate, if not lower. It could be different in today's market because CS IS NOT where a lot of jobs are, and my observations are based on when it was very very hot, so there's that. But, no matter what you or I say anecdata is not data, but in my 30+ years of doing this, I find these broad generalizations mostly wrong.
brailsafe 1y ago
Well, I agree with both of you a bit. I'm mostly self-taught with a backing of a technical diploma and half a CS degree. The part I'd pull from the parent here is that I could not reconcile my level of curiosity and so on with the corporate world at all. I tried, it did not work, I just burnt out and resented programming for a while because what they actually valued was the thing other people were really good at, but what they thought they wanted were the qualities that make a scrappy startup great; namely showing up on time for the standup, wearing the right clothes, being tremendously dull with predictable ideas, endless meetings and low level risk mitigation, little agency over work. I've since realized that it might have been the easiest job ever if I didn't have any curiosity, and didn't overcomplicate things or care about quality, because nobody did. I don't think that's the difference between a CS grad and a self-taught person, but it might be what drives a self-taught person to pursue it at all, whereas I've met many in CS who are just there because they were capable at math or made the call to do that degree instead of something else, and some of them really panic when faced with ambiguity. For me, if there's no ambiguity or no aspect of creativity, I just get bored and zone out (yes adhd). Just different alignments in some cases.
hilbert42 1y ago
"It is curious vs complacent w/ a heavy sprinkle of hard work, creativity, and intelligence." Formal training brings with it information that others have shown to be vital knowledge that must be known. No doubt many self taught people master a profession better than those who've gone through formal training with a complacent attitude but it's the latter's training that guarantees students master certain points that the self-taught might put less emphasis on. I'd be much happier crossing a bridge built by a structural engineer who has had certain rules (safety margins, etc.) drummed into him ad nauseam.
- austin-cheney 1y ago
  > that must be known That sounds rather foolish. That must have knowledge often becomes a layer of vanity concerns to cloak the ignorance lying beneath as defined by comfort and not utility. For example if developers are formally educated in the style of OOP with classes for inheritance then for most of those people all programming must resemble that style even when it does not apply and costs more to use. Any attempt to deviate from such familiarity often results in purely emotional responses. This such nonsense becomes frustrating when it unnecessarily limits work progression. > a bridge built by a structural engineer Civil engineers are qualified by license while software developers are not. That distinction is monumental.
- Mawr 1y ago
  Comparisons between software and structural engineering make no sense, ever. Structures are one-and-done projects with engineers having access to concrete data on material strength, load calculations, etc. Software projects are never ending, always chasing ever changing requirements. There are no comforting rules of math and physics to fall back on. There are no "load and safety" calculations that another software engineer can perform on a program to verify its integrity.
  - hilbert42 1y ago
    "Software projects are never ending, always chasing ever changing requirements." Exactly, and that's the problem. Writing software isn't engineering (it ought to be—my opinion and that of many others). Read this (things are actually worse since it was written): www.researchgate.net/profile/Wayt-Gibbs/publication/247573088_Software%27s_Chronic_Crisis/links/0046353b4cb57cc197000000/Softwares-Chronic-Crisis.pdf?

cyanydeez 1y ago

It sounds more like corporate culture selects for people who are rarely self taught because they will fall outside the "meritocracy" parade.

jrvieira 1y ago
"We want you to be good, not better than us"

FrustratedMonky 1y ago

Maybe the perception is because of the larger percentage in each group. Self Taught -> Already is curious, be default, so 99%-100% are curious. Just by the nature of going out of the way to learn something. Educated -> Also has a curious % in the group, but also has the large group of complacent "i heard software makes money so i'm hear to learn it, but i don't know what i'm doing". So when you do find complacent, they mostly came from the educated path.

bayindirh 1y ago
That's my experience as well. People came to CS because they love computers and want to learn how they work were so different than "I just want a job which makes money" people in every way even in the university years. Curious people got high on the caffeine and code, and the other group just got high.
- aatd86 1y ago
  All I know is that if my coding ability had been measured through mandatory assignments that I would be force-fed without any immediate need, I would have been disgusted. "Locking-in" on some esoteric topics just because one wants to is probably the best way to improve in my opinion. On the other hand I have been through a pretty generalist undergrad education in engineering and it helped in acquiring general math, physics, chemistry knowledge.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    I also went through a very generalist CS course, that we call Computer Engineering, which covered from hardware to software plus math, physics, chemistry. I was already a nerd when I was attending the university. My chance was my instructors and professors let me roam free and convert every assignment to a rabbit hole. Poisoned by demoscene earlier, I was already an elegance/performance freak before even I got graduated, and this made me dive into unknown territory head-on instead of being afraid of it. I have written a compression algorithm from scratch for graduation, then written a multi-agent trading system for M.Sc. project. For Ph.D. I have written a BEM based material simulation which was able to saturate the system very effectively, reaching practical IPC limits of the processors it ran on.
Nicook 1y ago
not all self taught are curious, at least recent batches.
SecretDreams 1y ago
Ya, agreed. I even tried to allude to as much.
michaelcampbell 1y ago
This goes both ways. I think the vast majority of my colleagues who got into CS later post-college did it because they needed a job, and that's where jobs were. > Self Taught -> Already is curious, be default, so 99%-100% are curious. There is some of this but IME that % is half your estimate, if not lower. It could be different in today's market because CS IS NOT where a lot of jobs are, and my observations are based on when it was very very hot, so there's that. But, no matter what you or I say anecdata is not data, but in my 30+ years of doing this, I find these broad generalizations mostly wrong.

brailsafe 1y ago

Well, I agree with both of you a bit. I'm mostly self-taught with a backing of a technical diploma and half a CS degree. The part I'd pull from the parent here is that I could not reconcile my level of curiosity and so on with the corporate world at all. I tried, it did not work, I just burnt out and resented programming for a while because what they actually valued was the thing other people were really good at, but what they thought they wanted were the qualities that make a scrappy startup great; namely showing up on time for the standup, wearing the right clothes, being tremendously dull with predictable ideas, endless meetings and low level risk mitigation, little agency over work. I've since realized that it might have been the easiest job ever if I didn't have any curiosity, and didn't overcomplicate things or care about quality, because nobody did. I don't think that's the difference between a CS grad and a self-taught person, but it might be what drives a self-taught person to pursue it at all, whereas I've met many in CS who are just there because they were capable at math or made the call to do that degree instead of something else, and some of them really panic when faced with ambiguity. For me, if there's no ambiguity or no aspect of creativity, I just get bored and zone out (yes adhd). Just different alignments in some cases.

hilbert42 1y ago

"It is curious vs complacent w/ a heavy sprinkle of hard work, creativity, and intelligence." Formal training brings with it information that others have shown to be vital knowledge that must be known. No doubt many self taught people master a profession better than those who've gone through formal training with a complacent attitude but it's the latter's training that guarantees students master certain points that the self-taught might put less emphasis on. I'd be much happier crossing a bridge built by a structural engineer who has had certain rules (safety margins, etc.) drummed into him ad nauseam.

austin-cheney 1y ago
> that must be known That sounds rather foolish. That must have knowledge often becomes a layer of vanity concerns to cloak the ignorance lying beneath as defined by comfort and not utility. For example if developers are formally educated in the style of OOP with classes for inheritance then for most of those people all programming must resemble that style even when it does not apply and costs more to use. Any attempt to deviate from such familiarity often results in purely emotional responses. This such nonsense becomes frustrating when it unnecessarily limits work progression. > a bridge built by a structural engineer Civil engineers are qualified by license while software developers are not. That distinction is monumental.
Mawr 1y ago
Comparisons between software and structural engineering make no sense, ever. Structures are one-and-done projects with engineers having access to concrete data on material strength, load calculations, etc. Software projects are never ending, always chasing ever changing requirements. There are no comforting rules of math and physics to fall back on. There are no "load and safety" calculations that another software engineer can perform on a program to verify its integrity.
- hilbert42 1y ago
  "Software projects are never ending, always chasing ever changing requirements." Exactly, and that's the problem. Writing software isn't engineering (it ought to be—my opinion and that of many others). Read this (things are actually worse since it was written): www.researchgate.net/profile/Wayt-Gibbs/publication/247573088_Software%27s_Chronic_Crisis/links/0046353b4cb57cc197000000/Softwares-Chronic-Crisis.pdf?