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

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

#71

Post by pksebben »

wincy wrote: post #70
pksebben wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magnesium; I assume you mean magnesium amino chelate - I use that too. I was kind of pissed that I had to find out about it on the internet and my doctor looked at me funny when I mentioned it. A huge gamechanger for me was asking a friend who's also on the 'phetamines what time of day they stop taking it - now I'm religious about never ingesting stimulants after 3pm and holy crap what a difference. I was a bartender…

Wow you and I do sound like we've had a lot of the same experiences, glad to here you're figuring out all this too. 3pm is exactly my rule too, never ever past then. Most days not past noon because my wife will ask me "have you been taking Adderall?" because my personality is so different. I go from being fun and easygoing to absolute Type-A, everything including people is either an obstacle or a tool toward a goal.…

Glycinate; thanks for the tip. Always looking to sharpen the tools i use.

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

#72

Post by Ancapistani »

I am.

I got into the field because I have the aptitude for it, and it pays well. It’s honestly not more complicated than that.

I’m a backend-focused SSE working in healthcare.

I got an hourly position working on a legacy company intranet, where 99% of what I had to do was simply be able to write HTML. That was in 2005. I’ve worked my way up since then by constantly looking for new things to learn and apply to my job.

I did a bunch of stuff - stocking store shelves, retail, etc. My only other “career” type job was as an electrician, and even that seemed like a fallback even at the time.

Tips: as I said before, always be looking for new things to learn that are adjacent to your job. The more skills you acquire the higher the chance that one will “stick” and you’ll be able to move our of your current job and into one that is more closely aligned with where you want to be. Incremental progress was the key for me.

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