I'm really bored in college help me(don't know what to do,waiting few hours just for college instructor,learning classic turbo c++, always get distracted by foolish when I'm thinking about my project/an idea)
I living in indonesia,
is there any website out there to find a job. Thank you very much!
Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers?
1–10 of 49 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers?
#2Do you have a portfolio? This is likely the most important factor. Proving your skills is a good start.
I think every programmer is self taught to a certain degree. You learn very little in tertiary education when compared to working 40+ hours a week as a programmer - in my opinion of course.
I learn by doing things, whereas others learn better in different ways.
Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers?
#3That's a hard question and I expect there'll be lots of wildly different answers. This is applicable to me, as an EU college non-CS dropout.
What matters most is to show competence. If you can make someone interested in some things that you've built, you can probably make do without a degree, but you'll have a tougher time getting through the door.
My two cents is try to stick with your formation, while you build yourself something impressive. Chances are you'll pick up something useful and the social network of peers will help you at least as much as the formation itself.
Best of luck whatever you choose!
Re: Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers?
#4It seems likely introductory courses will keep you bored if you are already interested in programming and/or CS. There is a lot to be gained from the higher level material, but you can also be productive with self-taught skills in many application development environments. To grow with your career, though, you will need a deeper background than self-taught programming skills, whether it comes from a parallel study of CS concepts or general scientific or mathematics training.
Re: Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers?
#5Typically with years of experience substituted for a degree.
For example, if hiring someone with a CS/MIS/CIS degree with 4 years experience. We'd accept 8 years experience in lieu of a degree.
If you find learning in college boring, what do you think this field holds for you? You have a world full of knowledge you could be learning if you're bored, no professor is preventing you from becoming knowledgeable across many programming disciplines.
It seems you don't even have a rudimentary idea of what goes into building software yet, you just want to skip ahead to the getting paid part.
If you can't build your project/idea already, why would someone pay you to work?
Keep learning, you've got a very long way to go. Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers?
#6I was in the same situation and after 3 years of open source projects, figuring out what language I wanted to stick with and finally nailing a interview "after many many strange ones" I got a great job. I've quickly grown in my company and others look to me for guidance "I actually introduced them to git".
I hated general college classes that weren't related to programming and sitting in rooms where after a semester people still didn't know how to add a image to a webpage. Now I've learned so much working 50 hours a week getting challenged left and right by so many real life issues.
There are plenty of jobs open to self tought programmers around me they simply want you to master your language and stack whatever that may be and my problem was trying to be a jack of all trades like trying to learn Ruby 3 days before a interview.
Re: Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers?
#7I also thought I would be bored with CS (well not with the subjects... with the nerdiness) so I decided to study design at University. I knew that whatever happened I would always eventually end up doing a lot of code as it's something I always enjoyed doing even if just for the sake of learning how something works.
Now I'm a web developer and after having worked in one of the most interesting design studios in my country I'm pretty sure my previous choices helped a lot broaden my horizons.
Re: Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers?
#8I also thought I would be bored with CS (well not with the subjects... with the nerdiness) so I decided to study design at University. I knew that whatever happened I would always eventually end up doing a lot of code as it's something I always enjoyed doing even if just for the sake of learning how something works. Now I'm a web developer and after having worked in one of the most interesting design studios in my co…
The Advice I give to a lot of people on the importance of school is that one should use it to learn the things you wouldn't learn by yourself anyway. So sometimes boring might be good if it's useful.
Re: Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers?
#9Sure, as long as you're able to provide value to a company, you can get a job. I recently got a job at a startup as a frontend developer, after going through a 3 month coding bootcamp. I had been learning coding on my spare time a couple of years before that, but no formal CS education. As for websites, use Upwork to get some clients. Won't be well paid, but it's a start and will help you grow your portfolio.
Re: Ask HN: Do companies accept self-taught programmers?
#10tl;dr - YES
I have hired personally self taught programmers several times.
But I wouldn't suggest you to quit college and seek for a sw developer job. In most cases those (usually talented) developers have knowledge gap when it comes to algorithms, data structure or deep understanding of the HW / OS. Thus, you might be able to find a job right now, but in time you will need to catchup or you will have hard time to compete other developers with formal education.