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It might amaze you, but most of the people I know in IT never had an internship. It's a fairly recent phenomenon. (I'm old, so recent may mean different things

• koakuma-chan 1y ago
  > It might amaze you, but most of the people I know in IT never had an internship. Not amazed. I presume it used to be easier to get a job back in the day. I am in a similar position as OP's son right now, and I am trying to get into a university to do CS because I believe the only way to enter the field right now is through internships. I believe this because I don't even see any alternatives. Like, if you are not going to go to university, what are you going to do instead? Contribute to some open source project and hope for the best?
  • esseph 1y ago
    Having a solid code repo that people can check out filled with projects is always good. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/mentorship-programs/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/mentorship-programs/
    • koakuma-chan 1y ago
      > Having a solid code repo that people can check out filled with projects is always good. It's nice to have, but ROI on that is terrible. Most of the time people don't even read your resume. > https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/mentorship-programs/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/mentorship-programs/ Huh, didn't know this existed. Looks promising.
    • scarface_74 1y ago
      Absolutely no one looks at random open source contributions or your personal repo. They barely look at resumes for more than six seconds. Yes, my open source contributions got me a job the year before last as the second highest contributor to a popular in its niche official “AWS Solution”. But no one cared about my other open source projects that I highlighted that were also well documented, solved a unique need and were on the official “AWS Samples” GitHub repository.
      • esseph 1y ago
        Some of us Actually Do when hiring, yes.
      • __d 1y ago
        Anecdata: my employer hires C++ programmers, and absolutely looks at a FOSS contributions portfolio.
        • JustExAWS 1y ago
          So you expect your candidates to work everyday and spend time after work contributing to open source? Shouldn’t that tell me something about the WLB at the company?
          • __d 1y ago
            No, it means that if you have a public history of both code and team interaction, it’s something that will influence our hiring decision. It’s not necessary to have one, nor to maintain it. But for a recent graduate, it’s one way to demonstrate competence both technically and socially.
            • __d 1y ago
              Or, for the OP, a way to maybe get hired without a degree.
              • scarface_74 1y ago
                And people are acting like it’s still 2010 and not 2025. Today’s market is a lot more competitive with fewer jobs and less need of junior developers period. What company is going to hire a junior developer with no experience and no degree over a slightly more expensive one with experience and a degree?
      • Ancapistani 1y ago
        > Absolutely no one looks at random open source contributions I’m sure it’s far from the most common modality, but this is obviously false. I’ve personally referred people to apply at my company based on their PRs to F/OSS stuff, and at least a couple off the top of my head have been hired.
• scarface_74 1y ago
  Yes and you are old (as am I) so your experience really isn’t relevant for someone trying to get a job in 2025 as a new grad.
  • esseph 1y ago
    That's my experience hiring people, too ;)