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Ask HN: I failed a lot, what should I do?
I somehow got in to a top 5 CS program.
I got D's in a lot of classes because they didn't want to give me F's.
It was very hard following lectures and reading and understanding test questions.
I graduated about a year ago.
I did interviews and each one I got I was mercilessly shot down with tough CS questions.
I got a job in sales, I was fired for paperwork errors.
I am now unemployed, occasionally making web sites for people.
It turns out my doctor says I probably have ADHD and I have been working with him on getting this diagnosed correctly but it takes time and I am already on medication, I don't want more.
I can't get to grad school, I am having a hard time finding a job. I don't know what to do, I narrowed it down to either
1) going back to school for another degree taking on more loans to improve grades
2) trying my hand at a startup but I have about $1000 in my bank account and no ideas.
3) Looking for a job that requires a degree and no skills like selling insurance or loans at a bank but I am worried about being bored and prefer computers.
I don't know what to do next, I live with my parents and they don't care what I do so long as I leave. My confidence in myself has been completely destroyed by all of this.
- Inception 13y agoI would suggest finding an employment opportunity that is in an area that you are passionate about. Figure out the requirements and do some reading and/or small projects that use the skills you will need in the position and apply when you are ready. There is a huge difference between classroom learning and independent learning. You absorb the information at a lot higher rate when you are passionate about what you are learning about.
- noahc 13y agoI would suggest finding ANY employment opportunity. You can always leave if your resume later. Your resume isn't a chronological list of everything you've done. It's a narrative about your greatest hits.
- quackerhacker 13y agoMy suggestion seeing as you have webdev experience...what is your passion? Follow that. I'm hoping you have a site in mind, or a project that has been sitting on the back burner...code like crazy and shoot for the stars! Realize one thing, you are your biggest investor, if you don't invest in your self (the time in your own passion), then no one else will. Not to appear overly optimistic, but there is alot of money and opportunity out there...put your name on it.
- copperkid 13y agoI'm in the exact same position, except I'm waiting for results to come out this week to officially confirm that I've failed my degree. It's unfair to think that I've only started getting all interested in computer stuff right after my final exams. Before that, my best effort was pulling allnighters and scraping middle-marks in everything. My morale was super low until I decided to shift my procrastination from the Daily Mail to places like this. I then started to read articles on how to be happy and how to be self-sufficient and blah blah, and amazingly I feel quite encouraged by it. I then reached the milestone of "Mebbe programming isn't so bad after all" and now I'm looking at Ruby4Kids. I know your level's not as low as this, but I think it really helps to stop thinking about the future and just take baby steps in any direction you feel like doing. I'm not even bothering to fill in graduate job application forms because of the stupid computer-filtering thing that guarantees of my rejection anyway, but my 'plan' for the future is just keep crawling with my 'self-education' and keep eyes and ears open for ANY opportunities. As crap as the situation looks like now, I don't believe at all that I'm ungifted and because I'm not like the others chasing grades and stuff [tries to look smug] I think I've got qualities that most others don't. And failures aren't bad at all, in fact it can be a USP. And don't think of the future too much! Opportunities are always everywhere, guaranteed :) (now need to repeat all this to myself)
- quackerhacker 13y agoI decided to shift my procrastination from the Daily Mail to places like this Careful, HN is drug to many of us coders, proof is in the account settings with the maxvistis and mintimeaway settings.
- copperkid 13y ago1) Coder? I said I'm looking at Ruby4kids!! 2) Anyway too late, I've just found out the 'new' link at the top, now I keep having to refresh the site every 5 mins xS
- rdouble 13y agoWhere do you live? There's a lot of "digital agency" type work that is good for someone with ADHD. But it's all in LA or NYC. edit: also there's always QA
- vijayr 13y agoBy digital agency, do you mean web dev shops?
- rdouble 13y agoPlaces like r/ga, instrument, canvas, huge, etc. Usually marketing/advertising oriented. Make promo sites, web games, iOS apps, facebook campaigns, etc.
- vijayr 13y agooh okay, thanks. how would you advice him to approach such companies, as he probably doesn't have a portfolio yet, plus he is new to web dev?
- lemaudit 13y agoI live near Chicago so maybe there is something local but I like your idea, it seems flexible and stimulating enough that I can focus on it.
- atsaloli 13y agoWhat do you like to do? What makes you feel alive and happy? Is there any way you could do more of that or something like it and get paid for it?
- monkeyspaw 13y agoFirst, take a deep breath. You're going to be OK, even if it doesn't feel like it right now. Next, take a look at today's Zen Habits -- http://zenhabits.net/failed/ http://zenhabits.net/failed/. It can help you set perspective regarding what you've gone through. Money quote: "Someone once said there isn’t failure, only feedback. That means the failure is just a point of information, a part of the learning process. I like to say, it’s not a failure of me as a person, just a failure of my method. Which means I need to change my method." Take some time (minutes, hours, or days) to identify the intersection of what you like and what you've excelled at. I find I like what I'm good at, so beware that bias. Are you good at translating tech -> normal people speak? Possibly look to work in consulting. Were you good at making sales, but bad at the paperwork? Try to develop your own system to get better at the paperwork. Try to look objectively (meaning without judgement) at your past. What have you learned from your experience? I can promise you, you're not the first person to barely pass a tough CS program, nor will you be the last to get fired for sloppy paperwork. You'll be OK -- in fact, now is the perfect time for you to take your first step in your new direction. If you need a job right away, I would suggest trying to get a position in any industry that will pay you. Learn the ropes in that industry for a little time while you get stability. You will be a technical wizard in whatever you do, if it involves technology. Once you learn an industry, and gain a little confidence in your capabilities, take a shot at combining your technical abilities with the industry. Manufacturing, as a for example, relies entirely on technology that is run by people who have very little idea about how to use technology. And relax. You have a world of options in front of you; they're hard to see because of all the pressure, but they exist. Be well, monkeyspaw
- waqasx 13y agocan you link ur cv, portfolio, anything?
- lemaudit 13y agohttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1av8zfzjw5l4-HQSmKE2s3Sudun5E3ky_1U9TPo8x6Y0/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1av8zfzjw5l4-HQSmKE2s3Sud... If this ^ link works, I excluded the sales portion. My cv is a bit embellished, the courses I barely passed were algorithms, real analysis, graph theory, number theory, and a statistics class. I couldn't follow the teacher's talking and reading was difficult. I have talked with several hedge funds in my area who shot me down, a couple startups who shot me down, and microsoft. The gpa was looked at, algorithms was the most crucial thing I missed.
- lemaudit 13y agoI made it no longer public if anyone reads this, it was probably a stupid idea broadcasting who I was publicly in this context because that is a sure way of shooting yourself in the foot in case an employer didn't ask about the specifics.
- waqasx 13y agocan you link ur cv, portfolio, anything?
- factorialboy 13y agoTry hard, don't worry about results, stop thinking. :)
- tptacek 13y agoWhat's an example of a tough CS question? Maybe you're getting shot down because the interviews you've been getting are unreasonable, or maybe you're getting shot down because there's a real deficit, at which point you'd need to make a decision between a career in software or something else. Both are equally plausible scenarios. There's nothing intrinsically meaningful about your CS grades, so let's not interrogate those. You're too young to have anything "completely destroyed" by a GPA and a couple bad interviews.
- lemaudit 13y agoWell I was asked to parallelize a loop where it was totally unobvious in one interview something like a sum of elements in an array where elements are replaced by the sum of elements from the previous elements(they didnt even shake my hand they just showed me the door silently), in another I had 30 minutes to design an algo that outputs from a matrix it's spiral in C(I think I know how to do this now but I couldn't solve it and program it there under pressure in 30 minutes and my solution is ugly), in another I had to use a semaphore to make a loop that increments up to some number and I didn't know what a semaphore was, I had to find if a linked list was looping, I had to write a code that deletes duplicate elements from a linked list and puts them in to a new sorted list in 30 minutes, the financial engineering jobs required the transcript so they didn't work out. I think I like CS and blame a lack of attention or preparedness for the grades. Maybe I am deluding myself though and need to move on.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 13y agoYou need more practice coding, because it doesn't look like you got a strong intuitive grasp for it from school. Those aren't great interview questions, but they're not serious CS problems either. Also, you should definitely know what a semaphore is. Write some threaded Python code to get a feel for concurrency.
- avifreedman 13y agoMy suggestion is to hack. If you can't do that you won't be happy in the field. If you can, all you needed from the CS education was a guide to googling math in the future. If you can find things that need implementing them and do it and they're useful, work will come. When interviewing for a job, showing that you can: - identify problem spaces - review the tools - find a need for a better tool - spec - and implement it Is what I look for when hiring geeks. So my recommendation... Find problems, build solutions (even if small and tool-like), get out and socialize at meetups and geek fora in your city and confidence should come.