London is good. I'm a self-taught dev who moved from tech support to QA to engineering. There's a lot of work here and quite a bit of competition, but I wouldn't say not having a degree has been a problem.
Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?
31–40 of 59 posts
Re: Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?
#32Build something. This transcends geography. Show competency by building something that demonstrates your technical ability. Better yet, build 2 things. Be able to demo your projects, and talk at length about the technical challenges in building them. That said, your best best is always going to be small / medium sized companies. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are mostly going to be looking for solid CS fundamentals…
You can brush up on data structures and algorithms and pass their interview. It just takes a bit of extra effort. Plus its knowledge that helps on your everyday work. Source: Self taught who constantly studies CS stuff.
Learning LALR parsing is fun; for production work the intuitive approach of recursive descent in fine.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?
#33Build something. This transcends geography. Show competency by building something that demonstrates your technical ability. Better yet, build 2 things. Be able to demo your projects, and talk at length about the technical challenges in building them. That said, your best best is always going to be small / medium sized companies. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are mostly going to be looking for solid CS fundamentals…
> Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are mostly going to be looking for solid CS fundamentals in their interview I gotta second the above statement. A software engineering job often has so many unqualified applicants that it's just not practical to give every applicant a courtesy phone call. In these cases, a CS degree requirement is a way to filter out the people who are spamming their resume; or the crazies who just d…
You misread apparently. No one said anything about a CS degree. And your intuition is wrong. The Facebooks and the Googles are the companies who are confident enough in their screening that they don't care much about your formal education anymore.
CS fundamentals absolutely. CS degree nope.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are mostly going to be looking for solid CS fundamentals in their interview I gotta second the above statement. A software engineering job often has so many unqualified applicants that it's just not practical to give every applicant a courtesy phone call. In these cases, a CS degree requirement is a way to filter out the people who are spamming their resume; or the crazies who just d…
You misread apparently. No one said anything about a CS degree . And your intuition is wrong. The Facebooks and the Googles are the companies who are confident enough in their screening that they don't care much about your formal education anymore. CS fundamentals absolutely. CS degree nope.
Should I be able to get an interview with a pure math degree, but data structures + algorithms study on the side?
Re: Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the only answer. I'm self taught, but even after working with different software companies for years, side projects are always the thing that gets me my next role.
> This is the only answer. I'm self taught, but even after working with different software companies for years, side projects are always the thing that gets me my next role. Under what section in your resume do you put your side projects? Is it under Work Experience?
I have a section called "notable projects", which lists about 4 or 5 in detail (I don't believe that resume's need to be a single page). But generally - the cover letter is always more important anyway (and especially if you don't have an intro). I usually like to try and tie why I'm the right person for a role, to some specific work I've accomplished in XYZ side project.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are mostly going to be looking for solid CS fundamentals in their interview I gotta second the above statement. A software engineering job often has so many unqualified applicants that it's just not practical to give every applicant a courtesy phone call. In these cases, a CS degree requirement is a way to filter out the people who are spamming their resume; or the crazies who just d…
You misread apparently. No one said anything about a CS degree . And your intuition is wrong. The Facebooks and the Googles are the companies who are confident enough in their screening that they don't care much about your formal education anymore. CS fundamentals absolutely. CS degree nope.
You misread apparently. "self-taught devs w/o college degrees?"
Re: Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?
#37Build something. This transcends geography. Show competency by building something that demonstrates your technical ability. Better yet, build 2 things. Be able to demo your projects, and talk at length about the technical challenges in building them. That said, your best best is always going to be small / medium sized companies. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are mostly going to be looking for solid CS fundamentals…
> Unless you've taken a Data Structures & Algorithms class recently, you can forget working there.
IMHO, if someone claims to be a self-taught programmer but doesn't understand these things at the same level as someone who graduated and have had a few years of real experience since, he isn't really a competent programmer. Putting together libraries without understanding of underlying mechanisms isn't programming.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?
#38There's probably a general cultural or sociological alignment to such openness you could identify in an area but the best chances are likely where the demand simply outstrips the supply enough that companies will be more flexible in their hiring. Personally, I have zero degrees and no formal education in ANYTHING, not to mention a general distaste for traditional classroom training in general, yet starting with a gra…
TRS-80 was my first computer. Dad eventually threw it away and I was sad. I wish I still had it.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?
#39I get the impression that the Washington, D.C. area is probably good for this. There are a massive number of non-profits and other "associations" here with varying budgets and needs. Many of them will turn to larger IT consultant companies, but direct hire and contract work is probably still pretty solid in the area just because there are so very many organizations and they all want websites.
Re: Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?
#40Don't focus on location. College is a way to shortcut the "I have training/experience and/or am able to learn" requirement, so without that you're going to need to prove that you have the skills, experience or ability to learn.
Mucking about with location is going to turn into a side quest that will just distract you from the important things.