7 ms·

i could not have said it better myself. even if he is smarter and not just luckier, so what? the fact of the matter is, in sheer production terms it's becoming

by zem 14y ago

i could not have said it better myself. even if he is smarter and not just luckier, so what? the fact of the matter is, in sheer production terms it's becoming increasingly unnecessary for everyone to have a job; it's just that the "working and 'making your own way' is the only right/moral/ethical/deserving way to live" mentality is so deeply ingrained in people that they are unwilling to face up to the fact.

zanny 14y ago
I am in this exact age group, and my circumstances are almost similar. I got lucky, my family is very close knit so I'm able to live with my mother, and up to 3 relatives have given me opportunities to move in if my mother couldn't handle me playing parasite. I made the dumb mistake of going to a small private college for CS. There were only 2 professors in the department and at most around 8 seniors, so we had an insanely good professor to student ratio. Problem is, the career center had no connections in the tech industry and as a result I have been trying to solo my way into a software job having graduated in 3 years with my bachelors with a 3.3 gpa and no internships since the year I was planning to have one in the summer, I found out I could graduate early so I took the chance. Then I found out almost every intern opportunity requires an active .edu email or some other validation to show you are an active student. So I'm in the awkward position where I'm working on FOSS projects whenever I can, while playing homemaker for my mother to "earn my keep", and trying to get a leg in. But the real getter is that I am not some rock star coder. I'm not really good at it, at all. I don't have great recall of the myriad of algorithms (I know what A* is, but would have to Google a proper implementation). Same with with a spline or a rope. If I write software, I usually end up spending a few hours on ~300 lines just debugging it into a working state with a standard library reference open the whole time. I understand the languages I use - I can write regexes, I know locks, etc, but I usually just hit some gap in my knowledge snag that gets me caught up for a while. For example, I was trying to use Python subprocess to do some calls into nvidia-settings and various other fan controllers(I was writing a script to intelligently control my machines fans since the default Linux fan controls kind of suck). Took me 3 hours to figure out that the best way to get standard out was to use subprocess.check_output because temp files as pipes didn't work (at least for me). So all my interviews so far have basically gone the same way - I don't produce perfect code from memory, and as a result I don't get consideration (there are more reasons than that, but I get the impression), especially without any past employment experience and only 2 personal projects (which are really just scripts) across github and gitorious. I also have an awful personality most people can't relate to - I'm an introverted cynic. Even if I can try to fake behavior around others I always crack and act like myself again at some point. I have a really hard time making small talk and being chummy, for example. So I can relate to the large portion of the population that isn't an Elon Musk super-genius entrepreneur or some John Carmack coding god whose every line of code reads like prose that five hundred years from now professors will read off to CS students like Shakespeare. I'm not even particularly average, because I have very little concrete experience - I just have a gigabyte of source files for homework and projects from school, a few commits to various FOSS projects that changed a line or two. I'm trying to make something I can show off but I lack the imagination to come up with something novel that I can realistically build by myself in a month or two (since I'm always worried I might end up just like the kids in this article, out on the street). Sorry for the rant, I just feel like the guy two posts up is kind of lucky to be talented.
- hfsktr 14y ago
  I'm in the same boat. 2 yr degree and 3 yrs experience (one employer). Reading through your comment I imagine that many people are in this boat. The part that is most frustrating around HN is it seems like everyone has ideas and is a rock star and many successes and jobs are falling from the sky. It can be discouraging when you have none of that. Most discouraging is when people say things like "Just move here and you'll have jobs flung at you daily!" Relocating isn't something I can do on a whim. I know that given the chance I can excel but no employers want to give it. It seems almost like a fix when the same positions are left open week after week but you've already been turned down (with and/or without an interview). For me ideas are hard to come by so what I've been doing is finding things that annoy me as I do them. Can I do anything about that? Most of the time I can't but recently I've stumbled onto a couple ideas that I can. So this post is slightly relevant: I believe many people, including some of the ones that seem to have it all figured out, are just like us. Continuing to learn and having to research to get things to work; not machines. Edit: nobody here has said this but many times it's the tone I read it in.
  - zanny 14y ago
    3 years experince sounds like a lot from this side of the fence. Every rejection letter mentions the lack of any industry experience. > It seems almost like a fix when the same positions are left open week after week but you've already been turned down (with and/or without an interview). I have gotten the impression after about a hundred cover letters that a lot of these open positions are not meant to be filled by candidates fit for them, but they exist as HR's always available gap for the rock star with 10 years experience in every language to come and apply for so they can get a third the salary they can get elsewhere. Like they just leave positions open in case a genius feels dumb enough to take it. > For me ideas are hard to come by so what I've been doing is finding things that annoy me as I do them. Can I do anything about that? Most of the time I can't but recently I've stumbled onto a couple ideas that I can. I mentioned in another post but I do the same. Currently am implementing desktop keybinds in Firefox Mobile if you have a hardware keyboard connected, since I use my tablet + keyboard a lot and having no ctrl-t, ctrl-w, etc is annoying. Started today on that project :)

by zem 14y ago

zanny 14y ago

I am in this exact age group, and my circumstances are almost similar. I got lucky, my family is very close knit so I'm able to live with my mother, and up to 3 relatives have given me opportunities to move in if my mother couldn't handle me playing parasite. I made the dumb mistake of going to a small private college for CS. There were only 2 professors in the department and at most around 8 seniors, so we had an insanely good professor to student ratio. Problem is, the career center had no connections in the tech industry and as a result I have been trying to solo my way into a software job having graduated in 3 years with my bachelors with a 3.3 gpa and no internships since the year I was planning to have one in the summer, I found out I could graduate early so I took the chance. Then I found out almost every intern opportunity requires an active .edu email or some other validation to show you are an active student. So I'm in the awkward position where I'm working on FOSS projects whenever I can, while playing homemaker for my mother to "earn my keep", and trying to get a leg in. But the real getter is that I am not some rock star coder. I'm not really good at it, at all. I don't have great recall of the myriad of algorithms (I know what A* is, but would have to Google a proper implementation). Same with with a spline or a rope. If I write software, I usually end up spending a few hours on ~300 lines just debugging it into a working state with a standard library reference open the whole time. I understand the languages I use - I can write regexes, I know locks, etc, but I usually just hit some gap in my knowledge snag that gets me caught up for a while. For example, I was trying to use Python subprocess to do some calls into nvidia-settings and various other fan controllers(I was writing a script to intelligently control my machines fans since the default Linux fan controls kind of suck). Took me 3 hours to figure out that the best way to get standard out was to use subprocess.check_output because temp files as pipes didn't work (at least for me). So all my interviews so far have basically gone the same way - I don't produce perfect code from memory, and as a result I don't get consideration (there are more reasons than that, but I get the impression), especially without any past employment experience and only 2 personal projects (which are really just scripts) across github and gitorious. I also have an awful personality most people can't relate to - I'm an introverted cynic. Even if I can try to fake behavior around others I always crack and act like myself again at some point. I have a really hard time making small talk and being chummy, for example. So I can relate to the large portion of the population that isn't an Elon Musk super-genius entrepreneur or some John Carmack coding god whose every line of code reads like prose that five hundred years from now professors will read off to CS students like Shakespeare. I'm not even particularly average, because I have very little concrete experience - I just have a gigabyte of source files for homework and projects from school, a few commits to various FOSS projects that changed a line or two. I'm trying to make something I can show off but I lack the imagination to come up with something novel that I can realistically build by myself in a month or two (since I'm always worried I might end up just like the kids in this article, out on the street). Sorry for the rant, I just feel like the guy two posts up is kind of lucky to be talented.

hfsktr 14y ago
I'm in the same boat. 2 yr degree and 3 yrs experience (one employer). Reading through your comment I imagine that many people are in this boat. The part that is most frustrating around HN is it seems like everyone has ideas and is a rock star and many successes and jobs are falling from the sky. It can be discouraging when you have none of that. Most discouraging is when people say things like "Just move here and you'll have jobs flung at you daily!" Relocating isn't something I can do on a whim. I know that given the chance I can excel but no employers want to give it. It seems almost like a fix when the same positions are left open week after week but you've already been turned down (with and/or without an interview). For me ideas are hard to come by so what I've been doing is finding things that annoy me as I do them. Can I do anything about that? Most of the time I can't but recently I've stumbled onto a couple ideas that I can. So this post is slightly relevant: I believe many people, including some of the ones that seem to have it all figured out, are just like us. Continuing to learn and having to research to get things to work; not machines. Edit: nobody here has said this but many times it's the tone I read it in.
- zanny 14y ago
  3 years experince sounds like a lot from this side of the fence. Every rejection letter mentions the lack of any industry experience. > It seems almost like a fix when the same positions are left open week after week but you've already been turned down (with and/or without an interview). I have gotten the impression after about a hundred cover letters that a lot of these open positions are not meant to be filled by candidates fit for them, but they exist as HR's always available gap for the rock star with 10 years experience in every language to come and apply for so they can get a third the salary they can get elsewhere. Like they just leave positions open in case a genius feels dumb enough to take it. > For me ideas are hard to come by so what I've been doing is finding things that annoy me as I do them. Can I do anything about that? Most of the time I can't but recently I've stumbled onto a couple ideas that I can. I mentioned in another post but I do the same. Currently am implementing desktop keybinds in Firefox Mobile if you have a hardware keyboard connected, since I use my tablet + keyboard a lot and having no ctrl-t, ctrl-w, etc is annoying. Started today on that project :)