Ask HN: How many of you are employed, self-taught SWEs?

- Taking care the system, developing new features. Yes, It is.

- I built a course system for my school, worked free about 6 months. Learnt a lot of things and this experience gave my first job.

- Make real your every absract notion by coding and drink coffee madly.

I never planned on being a coder, I was a derivatives trader at first. It turns out being able to code helps a lot in finance. I co-developed my skills between building quant strategies with coding. And coding quickly swallowed up everything, it turns out it would have been easier to be a systems coder first, then develop quantitative skills. I've done an enormous amount of coding in different areas now from that journey as well as a variety of web side projects. A small amount of GUI/FE coding, a lot of micro performance and networking type stuff.

- What are you doing at your job? Is it everything you dreamed of and more?

I have a lot of freedom to decide what I want to do. So I code a lot, but it's what I want to do.

- How did you break that first-job barrier?

Responded to an ad out of uni, went to interviews.

- What were you doing before this?

Uni, where I learned a little bit of coding, but not enough to appreciate the depth. Zoomed over algos and data structures, which it turns out I ended up relearning.

- Any tips for the rest of us?

You can't really do this if you don't like it, but you also won't like it if you haven't learned a bunch of code-related skills. For instance if you don't know how version control works, you'll forever be reluctant to modify your code, which will stunt your growth. Same with sysadmin type skills like how to set up a network, how to move files around, how to set up the OS. You'll think everything is a chore if you can't write some scripts to simplify your coding flow. Something like Docker takes learning before you can use it, but once you have it it helps a lot.

Fell into it - the first computer I owned happened to have a basic interpreter in ROM, and at the time a lot of software was published in magazines (you had to type it in by hand), so that started me on my way.

- What are you doing at your job? Is it everything you dreamed of and more?

Being able to code brought me to a lot of places I would have never expected. Things change very rapidly, what you are doing today is completely different then what you will be doing tomorrow, you have to constantly challenge yourself and expand your horizons. I’ve met plenty of people who were really great at version X of framework Y in language Z and five years later they are unemployable because the world moved on while they did not. You need to get beyond versions and frameworks, entire languages came and go out of vogue, the more generalist you are the better you’ll fare.

- How did you break that first-job barrier?

I worked cheap at my first job, a year later I used my experience to trade up to a position making more the prevailing wage, things took off from there.

I did programming all through high school, then went to uni for Mechanical Engineering since I thought programming would be too frustrating.

Realized I hated it, switched to 2nd yr CS for a semester.

Then realized I'd learned a lot of the content in high school and it was quite boring, so I dropped out.

Spent the next year bumming around a bit, doing some coding and getting up to speed modern web dev then this year, I landed my first job just before the pandemic hit.

My job is quite depressing. Working with old tech, no feature work and the company is extremely disorganized. I do 10x more in my own time than I do at work. I think I'll be looking for a new job soon.

The only tip I have for learning is to code every day and build things, don't watch tutorials.

I did a short stint in the Army, ended up in a minor touring punk band till about my mid-20's. Decided that I wanted to pursue something different after realizing the band was a one way ticket to a dead end. I got the brilliant idea to pursue photojournalism. My timing was impeccable. As I was finishing the "great newspaper crash" had started and after working freelance for a few years I started a small photographic advertising firm. But... during all this I was still coding. This was in the early days of what was being called "New Media." A lot of the places I was working with, the older journalists were not interested in how to use the web for better story telling. I didn't hesitate to get my hands dirty creating web sites for stories, working with flash to create interactive pieces, etc.

When I started the advertising firm, a client asked me if I could create a website for their business. Never being one to pass on the chance to make a few bucks, I confidently said "Yes" and proceeded to learn PHP and WordPress as fast as possible.

Around this time I also took the plunge and got married, which ended rather quickly in divorce. I decided to give up my rights to anything we accumulated during our marriage and was living on my friend's couch just trying to get a fresh start. A friend told me about a company his partner worked for that was looking for a developer. With her reference and the pressure of being homeless and hungry, I was able to land a gig as the companies "Web Master" (yeah, they were still using that title lol). The company was sold and the purchaser had their own team and cut the local team to the bones so I started freelancing.

My tips? - Most developers and SWEs are just as clueless as you even if they have a degree, don't be intimidated. - Realize that as a self-learner, you have an advantage of knowing how to learn quickly and efficiently. - Don't make money a priority, salaries for the most part are a side effect if you love what you do. - Realize you need a break sometimes, burn out is real and will kick your behind if left unchecked (as my own failure of my first tip, I always am dealing with imposter syndrome which leads me to constantly spending even my off time trying to learn more so that my co-workers don't ever say anything negative about me being self-taught) - Ignore trends and just follow what you enjoy doing or this will quickly become "work". In my own recent experience, I've been feeling the pressure about moving into ML/AI. After a nice long think these last few months as I end my first decade in this field I realized I have no interest in it, I just like building software. Coming to terms with that has done wonders in my mental state and brought a lot of inner peace.

Eventually a friend told me about a gig as a developer with an F500 energy company and helped me get my foot in the door. Worked my way up from a junior SWE to a lead position. I've now moved a few times and am now working in a financial company that is a major player in the world economy. Not because I think it will change much other than making me a better engineer, I've recently returned to school to get my CS degree and am preparing for another pivot into other areas of development once I'm done.

All in all, it wasn't the life track I expected. What I have learned in all this is I love doing what I do. As others have said I think my enthusiasm and passion have taken me a lot farther than the typical "coder bro" that comes out of college with a CS degree because they heard they can make big money quickly.