Been building, managing and hiring top talent engineering teams for a decade, and was kicked out of highschool myself... a CS degree means very little compared to your ability to communicate, emotional intelligence, and drive. There are many engineers with good grades but there is only one of you. Tell that story rather than worrying about the metrics. If you can solve problems in a team setting with humility thats what really matters.
Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?
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Re: Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?
#72School was a rollercoaster for me. In high school you could tell the classes I liked or checked out from by my grades. It was also when I was introduced to programming. The first time I went to college, I burned out after a year, drank too much, and flunked out. After doing minimum wage jobs for a year, I took another crack at college and did OK. I'm now almost 15 years into this profession.
Here's some of my advice:
* School and grades will one day be behind you and it won't matter.
* While you're in school, go and see a therapist for at least anxiety and depression. ADHD is co-morbid with those, so you might hit three birds with one stone. Even if nothing is "wrong" they can still point you to programs and services on campus.
* Computer Science curriculum is much harder than a programming job.
* You will be evaluated throughout your CS career. Don't take it too personally. Interviews are the worst offenders here, but there's also performance reviews. And yet nobody knows how to evaluate programmer performance properly.
> I came in as an English major because my grades weren't good enough to enter the competitive CS program
Especially don't take this personally. Lots of weird people find weird ways into this industry. For example, my old boss was an elementary school teacher five years ago, took a Masters in CS, and started as a junior programmer in his 30s.
As a final point, the mere fact you are reaching out here means you want to be here. You should be here. Don't let one little competition (especially for a crowded CS program) drive out that desire in you.
Re: Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?
#73Not me, I did great in school lol
Re: Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?
#74College level education was never meant to be easy. A lot of high schoolers who were the star student get runover when they're amongst other academically talented students at college. Not everybody has a right to get a college degree in the subject they chose. That level is meant to be hard requiring you to absolutely work yourself into the ground if it doesn't come naturally.
By the time you're attending college then you are old enough to understand what motivates yourself and how best you must apply yourself to learn. There's always multiple reasons why somebody might struggle but college also requires you to be responsible for yourself and figure out how to navigate that world through services available.
College has much less handholding than high school as you're an adult.
Re: Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?
#75I was a horrible college student. I came to play sports and being smart enough to never need to actually study I was completely unprepared for what was required to be a good student in college. I also didn't like to go to class, engineering classes at my uni started at 0800 and were done before noon, I'm a night owl so dragging my ass to class at 8am was painful -if it was 8pm I probably would have been a rock start. I also learned that if I went to class and did the minimum amount of studying I did very well -of course I didn't like doing the minimum amount of studying either.
The funny thing now that I'm 30+ years out of college, college is stupid easy. I try to take a class or two every year, just to learn things that interest me. These are normal college classes filled with people that could be my children and nothing has changed, all the young people sit in class like they are being forced to be there, they don't ask questions and to me it seems like they are totally uninterested in the subject matter. Of course as the older student I ask lots of questions and challenge the instructor if they are teaching outdated bullshit, which is more often than you'd think, I know the other students hate me because I blow the curve but now that I'm way separated from college life learning is a lot more fun.
Re: Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?
#76school is usually pretty boring. more importantly, who is in a position to judge you? hint: no one.
go work for 5 startups over 5 years. after that you’ll probably have a better perspective on everything, and some money in your pocket.
if you wanna play real fast and loose, you could even do 5 startups in 2.5 years. this might actually be a better idea, as startups vary wildly.
if you’re having trouble interviewing, build things that are interesting to you, and talk about them in interviews.
if you’re still having trouble interviewing, be open to lower paying (compared to faang) roles. think of it as high pay education rather than low pay employment.
glhf! building is fun, and software is malleable, accessible, and cheap.
Re: Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?
#77I teach part time at the university level (I am not going to say where). I would love to give you my perspective on this as I see a lot of non-neurotypical students. Some of these students do well in an academic environment; some don't - and to generalize this across schools; some schools have a more regularized population and select for this. Similarly, others accommodate more for these types of things versus school…
I would say just be a little bit cautious of the "what's your superpower" thing because it can imply effortless success if not delivered carefully.
I've seen many people try something to a very superficial degree "oh that's clearly not for me".
This is particularly frustrating dealing with people who haven't yet found their path but clearly have potential. They keep looking for something they can somehow do naturally thinking that's the way success happens. Even the best artists, programmers, mathematicians had to actually work at it before they became good.
Re: Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?
#78Yep! C to B student in high school, granted, taking the tougher classes. Got better grades in college (Which I got into mainly because I scored well on the SAT and applied as a music major, then switched immediately after), and graduated with a (in hindsight) bullshit degree in applied science. ~5 years after college, I learned to code, and it's been a passion since. 7 years after college, I started a path I am still…
Not to get far off topic, but functional doesn't have to mean Haskell etc. The more I more imperative code I write, the more and more it looks functional because it makes it easier to think about at any level without looking at everything. In fact, I believe that if software building was taught functionally (without the super abstract stuff), more people could understand programming better. The main benefit of functional style is it takes the step-by-step time element of code execution out of the equation. You basically get to treat everything like a black-box. Some things you can't, so you take note of those rather than worry about it all the time.
Re: Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?
#79Yep! C to B student in high school, granted, taking the tougher classes. Got better grades in college (Which I got into mainly because I scored well on the SAT and applied as a music major, then switched immediately after), and graduated with a (in hindsight) bullshit degree in applied science. ~5 years after college, I learned to code, and it's been a passion since. 7 years after college, I started a path I am still…
Not to get far off topic, but functional doesn't have to mean Haskell etc. The more I more imperative code I write, the more and more it looks functional because it makes it easier to think about at any level without looking at everything. In fact, I believe that if software building was taught functionally (without the super abstract stuff), more people could understand programming better. The main benefit of functi…
I'm with you! I incorporate functional concepts when coding in Rust, Python, JS etc, but have been unable to grasp Haskell.
Re: Ask HN: Did Anyone Else Here Simply Not Do Well at School?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to get far off topic, but functional doesn't have to mean Haskell etc. The more I more imperative code I write, the more and more it looks functional because it makes it easier to think about at any level without looking at everything. In fact, I believe that if software building was taught functionally (without the super abstract stuff), more people could understand programming better. The main benefit of functi…
I'm with you! I incorporate functional concepts when coding in Rust, Python, JS etc, but have been unable to grasp Haskell.
I read this great reply in /r/ProgrammingLanguages[0] that really spelled out the pros/cons of certain languages/type systems so that I don't think that Haskell is for me, even if I put in the effort to get better at it. F# is more my cup of tea.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/13voz...