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Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

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Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#251

Post by mav3rick »

rmilejczz wrote: post #233
mav3rick wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Threads, processes and OS primitives are a big part of your foundational knowledge. In your own words, you are only limited at attacking an problem by the tools and language primitives afforded to you. What about thinking for yourself when those tools have limitations ? For example, when you have a "heisenbug" very few tools can help you fix it. However, if you understand how threads work, what data they share, you h…

Do you think I’ve never had a difficult to debug problem? Sure it might have been easier to solve with the knowledge of a CS degree but that’s hard to reason about since I lack one (aside: perhaps you should reconsider your perspective on bubbles friend, it’s not as easy as “looking” at something to escape your own limits and biases) but I was still able to solve it. I do see validity in what you’re saying but I fail…

Your employer may think it's better if you debug stuff faster. That may or may not directly lead to better career growth.

I can't make the CS education choice for you. And I have no personal beef with you or anyone who is self taught. You asked me a question and I replied with a context and situation. Cheers.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#252

Post by boopk »

swayvil wrote: post #227
Etheryte wrote: post #223

Not entirely on-topic, but the cover image on your homepage is scary — it looks like the exact type of workplace I wouldn't want anyone to end up, degree or not. Noisy open office where people are like cattle, essentially the same as cubicle era, except no cubicles.

It looks like a sweatshop.

looks like a college exam room

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#253

Post by learc83 »

taqwerty wrote: post #176
jedberg wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. But Big O still comes up in practical stuff depending on what you're doing. You can usually get by without it, but sometimes when you need to process a few 100 terabytes of log files, having a basic grasp on Big O comes in handy for reducing your processing time from days to hours by picking the right algorithm.

In practice I've always found avoiding premature optimization and then profiling better than worrying about Big O.

You save an awful lot of time when you know have an idea of what's going to be slow up front.

I've spent so much time trying to chase down bugs caused by junior programmers because something that worked fine with 100 rows in db, slows to a crawl when we move a feature out of beta and we suddenly have 1000 rows.

If they had some idea that the query they were writing was O(n^3) they could have done a quick estimate and saved us all the trouble.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#254

Post by sadahtay »

ticmasta wrote: post #250
sadahtay wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the opposite experience. I don't think I went to a terrible school but I learned way more practical skills through my internship and work experience after graduation than I did in school. The only language I used both during and after college is PHP. I never learned any C#, .NET or Javascript. I have not used C, C++, Java, Haskell, Scala, Big O notation, graph theory, NP&NPC, linear algebra since then. While a…

well, learning Java serves you well for C#; skills with C and C++ have huge transfer value; maybe you haven't been tasked with "figure out the cost of this algo" but I hope intuitively you've used some Big-O, linear programming, recursion and maybe graph theory; IMO those math courses have really helped you understand how a database works and costing execution plans; The practice in picking up new languages in less t…

Of course learning one languages improves your abilities to pick up other languages but the university curriculum is definitely geared more towards continuing your education or a career in academia/research. I feel like I would have gotten more valuable knowledge/skills from just going to a bootcamp in addition to saving a lot more time and money.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#255

Post by zzzeek »

busterarm wrote: post #53
zzzeek wrote: post #36

I don't have a degree (though I do have a few years of college in the CS /engineering fields) and I'm pretty sure every programming job I've ever had required a "degree", if you were to look at their posted job requirements. If it's known that you can do the work (which is the kicker of course), I've never seen an employer hiring people to write code actually care about the degree. Even in academic environments I've…

> I would have done a lot better having one even though I got by without it. Also, my career path was ridiculous and is entirely non-replicable. I don't know. I have to say "me too" here and I've encountered enough of us over the years that I think it's just a big lie. There are a certain number of high paying companies that perhaps overvalue a college education and algorithmic competence. But overall I think about h…

I meant, my particular career path was ridiculous and non-replicable. it was very dependent on the specific time and place that I was living for starters and overall everything about my career was based on very unlikely things that aren't occurring anymore (such as getting a job in the same 6 month period that the "internet" first became monetized, with a very specific set of people, etc.)

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#256

Post by papreclip »

lostgame wrote: post #113

My lack of degree has never been relevant in my 12-year-long coding career, I have never had issues getting jobs I want and often seen them choose me over someone with a degree. Side projects, my obvious passion for coding, and eventually, of course, my experience got me where I’m at, making a triple-digit salary as a senior iOS developer at a major bank here in Canada. I’m so very glad I avoided the horrors of stude…

>At the age of 18, it was: 1) make $50k a year doing something I’ve been doing for ten years every day, know how to do well and love

Many self-taught developers in the industry share this story. They didn't go to college, but they did invest thousands of hours into learning before entering the job market. Very different story than your typical bootcamp/udemy student, or a typical college freshman for that matter.

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#257

Post by zzzeek »

wendyshu wrote: post #75
zzzeek wrote: post #36

I don't have a degree (though I do have a few years of college in the CS /engineering fields) and I'm pretty sure every programming job I've ever had required a "degree", if you were to look at their posted job requirements. If it's known that you can do the work (which is the kicker of course), I've never seen an employer hiring people to write code actually care about the degree. Even in academic environments I've…

You say "I would have done a lot better having one". Explain?

if you scroll up you can see jedberg (one of the original founders of Reddit) saying how these days it seems most people know what A* is even if they don't have a CS degree. I didn't :). Just wikipedia'ed it, and sure, I've seen this kind of thing before but I've never had to actually use a shortest distance algorithm. So I'd fail jedberg's interview (even though reddit uses my software, at least they were some years ago :) )

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#258

Post by redleggedfrog »

Etheryte wrote: post #223

Not entirely on-topic, but the cover image on your homepage is scary — it looks like the exact type of workplace I wouldn't want anyone to end up, degree or not. Noisy open office where people are like cattle, essentially the same as cubicle era, except no cubicles.

[dead]

Re: Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

#260

Post by redleggedfrog »

This is a tough one for me. I wish I had a CS degree, because, well, I just want one.

But I don't have one - I studied for a different BA degree, found computers, neglected classes, and then proceeded on to 27 years of programming. I'm nearly 100% self taught.

And here's the weird part. At the handful of companies I've worked at there has most certainly been mild disdain for those with degrees. Nothing overt, but it was understood that if you didn't have the passion to teach yourself, and went to school to learn your programming, you were somehow inferior. We did have lots of people with degrees who turned out great, but they were always considered the exceptions, not the rule. I found this fascinating. Nearly all the senior developers, even lead developers, had no degree.

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