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I have no degree. I have worked for tiny startups, small businesses, Yahoo, the IRS Modernization Project, Big Co Consulting companies, with degree-heavy dev te

by aristus 19y ago

I have no degree. I have worked for tiny startups, small businesses, Yahoo, the IRS Modernization Project, Big Co Consulting companies, with degree-heavy dev teams and with multi-talented cowboy hackers. I never planned on taking the man's money either. But I go where there is interesting work. There is a pay discount wherever you go and are not a founder. I have ten years' experience but usually not the same pay as someone with 10 + bachelor's, or even 5 + master's. Often, I have lacked the theory, the mathematics and the discipline of creating and analyzing algorithms. It is a big hole that takes years to become aware of. Another hard-to-see hole is what you take for granted in college or a tech-heavy city: where else are you going to meet other people with the same interests, work on problems with them, have late-night bull sessions, etc? So now that I live a few train stops from Berkeley I am taking some of the harder courses that people have said are worthwhile. Take the good stuff. Meet people. Stay loose. Follow the interesting problems. But take neither the pros or cons of college too seriously. You are choosing the general heading of a ship, not choosing a single set of tracks.

cowmoo 19y ago
A question for you from a graduating college senior who's trying to decide between grad school and work: Do programming work get boring in a business-setting? I am trying to decide whether I should go to grad school or to work. My experiences at the so-called "tech-heavy" cities and companies is that the "smart people and high-tech" is all hype. Maybe my experiences are just too biased, but do people at the Valley really push the envelope, or do they just do the same Java/PHP/Ruby stuff that high school students could do, and put a Web 2.0 stamp on it.
- aristus 19y ago
  Business work is usually boring compared to self-directed work. The reason is simple: established companies want predictable returns on investment. There is little chance you and two friends will stop working on that internal reporting app and go into VOIP, to loud applause from your boss. That is not your job. The same applies to grad school, btw -- you are a paid research assistant, not a freebird. But the problems can sometimes be cooler. But it's a continuum and part of being happy is being humble and learning where you fit. I know many happy people at Yahoo who do cool new things. Others are chair-warmers. A large number are genuinely interested the thankless task of supporting hundreds of millions of users and petabytes of data, every damned day. Those people are the salt of the earth, and I salute them. As for the second part: There is a sampling problem when you say things such as "all hype" or "people in the Valley do/are X". If you poke your nose into 20 companies, Valley or no, you will find overwhelming crap. 90% of everything is crap. But you do not experience the world as an average. The trick is to find the 10% that are not crap, and the 1% within those who are really good, and see if you can hang with them. In every field there are people who are so awful they don't know it. There are the elites. There is a large field of the mediocre who ape the elite without deep understanding. Then way out in left field are the crazies who scandalize, confuse --and somtimes inspire-- everybody. Find them all, learn to tell the difference, and find your niche.
  - cowmoo 19y ago
    Thanks. Your advice have been very helpful. What I am gonna take away from this, is that it's not environment that makes the man, because the environment tends to smooth out to the averages, even if the environment is the "high-tech" startup's. One has to make one's own mark and not get too comfortable.
    - aristus 19y ago
      No problem, and good luck.
- menloparkbum 19y ago
  > Do programming work get boring in a business-setting? Yes. One of the things you aren't going to hear too much on a site that promotes the start-up lifestyle is that 80% of the work you are going to be doing is not intellectually interesting in any way. It is somewhat interesting from a "holy shit I can't believe life is really like this" perspective, but if you are into ideas that aren't just superfically interesting it can be a real drain. On the other hand, I did a year of grad school after working for four years and I couldn't believe how much it was like "The Office." Most people just surfed the internet, played fantasy sports games online, went to every journal-club/data-sharing/journal-data-sharing club event, and did the bare minimum of work to get by. I'm not sure what to tell you. If I had to do it all again, I would have gone to grad school straight out of college, finished version 1.0 of my product during the first year of graduate school, then dropped out and turned it into a business.
  - cowmoo 19y ago
    Here's the kicker though: Grad school is by definition, professional training for academia, if you were more a hacker-type, would you be eventually forced into "publish or perish" thinking instead of building real world applications. And If you were to immerse yourself eventually in the hallow halls of the ivory tower, would you (meaning an average person) be able muster the courage (and I'm serious) to have enough faith in your ideas to become a grad school drop-out?
    - rms 19y ago
      >Grad school is by definition, professional training for academia PhD programs are but a lot of master's programs are very expensive, high-end vocational training, like Master's in Software Engineering and other engineerings. It's a good way to pick up an engineering skillset when you had an undergraduate degree in something other than engineering.

by aristus 19y ago

cowmoo 19y ago

A question for you from a graduating college senior who's trying to decide between grad school and work: Do programming work get boring in a business-setting? I am trying to decide whether I should go to grad school or to work. My experiences at the so-called "tech-heavy" cities and companies is that the "smart people and high-tech" is all hype. Maybe my experiences are just too biased, but do people at the Valley really push the envelope, or do they just do the same Java/PHP/Ruby stuff that high school students could do, and put a Web 2.0 stamp on it.

aristus 19y ago
Business work is usually boring compared to self-directed work. The reason is simple: established companies want predictable returns on investment. There is little chance you and two friends will stop working on that internal reporting app and go into VOIP, to loud applause from your boss. That is not your job. The same applies to grad school, btw -- you are a paid research assistant, not a freebird. But the problems can sometimes be cooler. But it's a continuum and part of being happy is being humble and learning where you fit. I know many happy people at Yahoo who do cool new things. Others are chair-warmers. A large number are genuinely interested the thankless task of supporting hundreds of millions of users and petabytes of data, every damned day. Those people are the salt of the earth, and I salute them. As for the second part: There is a sampling problem when you say things such as "all hype" or "people in the Valley do/are X". If you poke your nose into 20 companies, Valley or no, you will find overwhelming crap. 90% of everything is crap. But you do not experience the world as an average. The trick is to find the 10% that are not crap, and the 1% within those who are really good, and see if you can hang with them. In every field there are people who are so awful they don't know it. There are the elites. There is a large field of the mediocre who ape the elite without deep understanding. Then way out in left field are the crazies who scandalize, confuse --and somtimes inspire-- everybody. Find them all, learn to tell the difference, and find your niche.
- cowmoo 19y ago
  Thanks. Your advice have been very helpful. What I am gonna take away from this, is that it's not environment that makes the man, because the environment tends to smooth out to the averages, even if the environment is the "high-tech" startup's. One has to make one's own mark and not get too comfortable.
  - aristus 19y ago
    No problem, and good luck.
menloparkbum 19y ago
> Do programming work get boring in a business-setting? Yes. One of the things you aren't going to hear too much on a site that promotes the start-up lifestyle is that 80% of the work you are going to be doing is not intellectually interesting in any way. It is somewhat interesting from a "holy shit I can't believe life is really like this" perspective, but if you are into ideas that aren't just superfically interesting it can be a real drain. On the other hand, I did a year of grad school after working for four years and I couldn't believe how much it was like "The Office." Most people just surfed the internet, played fantasy sports games online, went to every journal-club/data-sharing/journal-data-sharing club event, and did the bare minimum of work to get by. I'm not sure what to tell you. If I had to do it all again, I would have gone to grad school straight out of college, finished version 1.0 of my product during the first year of graduate school, then dropped out and turned it into a business.
- cowmoo 19y ago
  Here's the kicker though: Grad school is by definition, professional training for academia, if you were more a hacker-type, would you be eventually forced into "publish or perish" thinking instead of building real world applications. And If you were to immerse yourself eventually in the hallow halls of the ivory tower, would you (meaning an average person) be able muster the courage (and I'm serious) to have enough faith in your ideas to become a grad school drop-out?
  - rms 19y ago
    >Grad school is by definition, professional training for academia PhD programs are but a lot of master's programs are very expensive, high-end vocational training, like Master's in Software Engineering and other engineerings. It's a good way to pick up an engineering skillset when you had an undergraduate degree in something other than engineering.