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How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

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Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#141

Post by k-mcgrady »

steven777400 wrote: post #2

The author's comment on access to a mediocre/unknown university instructor for a high fee vs free access to a very good set of lectures (Khan) is one of the doubts that led me to quit my job as a college instructor. I had kind of the existential "what are we doing here?" question -- why are students coming here and paying us money when better instruction is available for free online? Combined with a couple of educati…

>> why are students paying for that?

Because it's a LOT better than online courses are at the moment. I've used Coursera/iTunes U/Udemy etc. a lot since they came out and only ever finished a couple of things. Motivation is a big issue. Also very little of the knowledge I gained through it has stuck because it is not very engaging. I recently started University (mature student) and the things I'm learning stick much easier as you are constantly forced to pair with people to debate problems and work as teams to answer questions. This repetition and group debate is invaluable. Despite participating on the forums when doing online courses they don't come close. Previously, as a self-taught programmer I couldn't see the value in 90% of university courses and thought they were going to start struggling thanks to MOOC's. Now, as a student, I can see that they do offer quite a lot of value (by value I mean increasing my knowledge, not salary after degree). They are certainly very inefficient, but I would certainly consider my program value for money (although I am a student in the UK so fees are lower than a lot of places).

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#142

Post by gravypod »

shultays wrote: post #110
gravypod wrote: post #61

I don't think most of us want to be "Computer Scientists" as the colleges define it. I think most of us want some kind of Software Engineering degree which is not what a Computer Science degree is. Most colleges want to teach "Computer Science" as they see it which is basically just "Math with Data Structures and other BS thrown in to make people hirable". I think at this point what needs to happen is colleges need t…

There are some 'buillshit' classes in C.S. which are highly theoretical which and has nearly zero real world applications for an average programmer but data structures is not one of them. The schools don't teach data structure just so a graduate can answer related interview questions. I also don't think Software Engineering is as much of a "science" as it is a "trade" ... Most of the information that must be taught i…

> The schools don't teach data structure just so a graduate can answer related interview questions.

At my university, "Data Strctures" is one course where you write no code, another corse that is just about discrete math, and then at your senior year you actually do a Data Structures class.

I have no problem with Data Structures and I of course think they are important. I have a problem with what colleges think Data Structures are, or how they should be taught.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#143

Post by simonh »

mikekchar wrote: post #20
steven777400 wrote: post #2

The author's comment on access to a mediocre/unknown university instructor for a high fee vs free access to a very good set of lectures (Khan) is one of the doubts that led me to quit my job as a college instructor. I had kind of the existential "what are we doing here?" question -- why are students coming here and paying us money when better instruction is available for free online? Combined with a couple of educati…

I spent 5 years teaching English as a foreign language in a Japanese high school. In Japan, the school system is keen to hire foreigners who are fluent in English because they recognise that their students lack fluency. They think the problem lies in the instructor. However, the teachers at the school I taught in were almost all very accomplished English speakers. Yes, they had an accent. Yes, they made mistakes. But…

I have a friend who married a Chinese girl and now lives in China. He's worked off-and-on as an English tutor. He says he found the most effective approach wasn't to stick to some curriculum - the kids get that in their English class at school - but to talk with them in English about subjects that they were motivated and enjoyed to discuss. The topics he generally chose were aspects of English culture such as music lyrics, TV shows, films, jokes, engaging stories about figures from British history. That struck me as genius - make learning the language the road you travel on to a destination that's worth going to in it's own right. It also gives them natural topics they can use when talking to native speakers.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#144

Post by ghaff »

foota wrote: post #43
steven777400 wrote: post #2

The author's comment on access to a mediocre/unknown university instructor for a high fee vs free access to a very good set of lectures (Khan) is one of the doubts that led me to quit my job as a college instructor. I had kind of the existential "what are we doing here?" question -- why are students coming here and paying us money when better instruction is available for free online? Combined with a couple of educati…

As someone who's in school now, I feel one of the advantages of being in a physical class is that lectures are interactive. There are also the motivational advantages mentioned other places. There also also advantages to being surrounded by people that are also learning new things, you can study together, help each other, and encourage each other. To be frank, it's also probably in part a social thing.

Although my understanding is that, at a number of large schools that routinely video their big lectures, a lot of students just watch the videos. My recollection of 100+ person lectures is that the interaction was pretty limited.

The other points you make are certainly true. Whether or not you attend the lectures in person you're still in an overall environment that can help learning.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#145

Post by dualogy »

komali2 wrote: post #62
popdoit wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm a lazy asshole, but I how can anyone cram-learn like that? 8am-9p everyday? Come on?! I applaud your effort. I really do. As long as your employer, and you, have the proper expectations about your skill set then I guess it's the perfect match.

I certainly wouldn't recommend it for all sorts of learning. It worked for me because I had literally gambled everything on it - if I dropped out or got kicked out, I'd be 17k in debt living in the most expensive city in america with almost no savings. Failure wasn't an option. Furthermore, my fallback options were shitty. 40k/year doing sales or recruitment, busting my ass to reach 6 figures, being stepped on the wh…

> Maybe teaching english abroad, end up being that 40 year old white dude trapped in Taiwan, stuck every night in the foreigner bar and droning about what could have been.

At 5 years short of 40, doesn't sound half-bad if you cut out both the teaching and the bars =) there's gotta be worse "traps" than Taiwan, it's a comely-enough place, and one of the few capital cities in the region where cycling is as conveniently practical as it is in Western capitals

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#146

Post by dualogy »

qplex wrote: post #124
komali2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly wouldn't recommend it for all sorts of learning. It worked for me because I had literally gambled everything on it - if I dropped out or got kicked out, I'd be 17k in debt living in the most expensive city in america with almost no savings. Failure wasn't an option. Furthermore, my fallback options were shitty. 40k/year doing sales or recruitment, busting my ass to reach 6 figures, being stepped on the wh…

So I guess you should do something that makes you happy (good for you!), but please do consider that actions actually have other implications than money. The fact that you can make more money making webpages than teaching some poor kid english is mostly sad.

There's probably not too many "poor kids" in Taiwan.. as for the 20-something "English teachers" roaming the likes of Cambodia, Laos etc, unless actual NGO workers they're overwhelmingly teaching the better-off locals' offspring for comparatively slim pay --- more than accounted for by incredibly low and highly tweakable cost-of-living, lots of public holidays, low-to-zero minimum standards (other than "a proper attire" ie dress shirt, and saving everyone's faces at all times) --- which when motivated gives them great freedom to evolve their own didactic approaches and when not (such things ebb & flow after all) easily let's them approach the task at hand in a very laidback, relaxed, low-effort manner.

Not saying it's the best model for all societies, but it's assuredly not without it's charms for all parties involved. Different flow.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#147

Post by dualogy »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #135
qplex wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess you should do something that makes you happy (good for you!), but please do consider that actions actually have other implications than money. The fact that you can make more money making webpages than teaching some poor kid english is mostly sad.

> The fact that you can make more money making webpages than teaching some poor kid english is mostly sad. You're right in a sense; things that matter the most seem to pay the least. Teachers shape our kids tremendously and yet it's common they need donations just to buy simple school supplies. Now I'm not sure it's fair to necessarily compare the two but it is still sad.

At least though it's not without merit that this glaring gap between what people claim to value "most" and where funding flows the most remains as visible as it is. Reality is the best reality-check for most of us. ;)

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#148

Post by vlucas »

> " I eventually found what I was looking for: by changing a few lines of CSS, I could hack the layout of the page to push all the ads off the screen"

I remember doing stuff like this. I had a Geocities account back in the day as well as one on a number of other providers like Angelfire, etc.

One of the simplest hacks was to just leave an opening tag at the bottom of your markup. Since the ad code and scripts were appended to the bottom of the page markup, they would never execute or show up. One of the free hosting providers started fighting back by putting a bunch of tags in a row right before their ad code started. Savvy developers of course responded by placing even more opening tags. I forget which provider it was, but those were some good times to be a rebellious teenage coder. :)

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#149

Post by qplex »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #135
qplex wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess you should do something that makes you happy (good for you!), but please do consider that actions actually have other implications than money. The fact that you can make more money making webpages than teaching some poor kid english is mostly sad.

> The fact that you can make more money making webpages than teaching some poor kid english is mostly sad. You're right in a sense; things that matter the most seem to pay the least. Teachers shape our kids tremendously and yet it's common they need donations just to buy simple school supplies. Now I'm not sure it's fair to necessarily compare the two but it is still sad.

Yes, it's not fair: I made the comparison because the parent painted the picture of teaching English abroad as a "loser" job.

And that's ok, and you don't need to do that, but please do not assume that people who actually do such things do them out of desperation for money.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#150

Post by garysieling »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #141
steven777400 wrote: post #2

The author's comment on access to a mediocre/unknown university instructor for a high fee vs free access to a very good set of lectures (Khan) is one of the doubts that led me to quit my job as a college instructor. I had kind of the existential "what are we doing here?" question -- why are students coming here and paying us money when better instruction is available for free online? Combined with a couple of educati…

>> why are students paying for that? Because it's a LOT better than online courses are at the moment. I've used Coursera/iTunes U/Udemy etc. a lot since they came out and only ever finished a couple of things. Motivation is a big issue. Also very little of the knowledge I gained through it has stuck because it is not very engaging. I recently started University (mature student) and the things I'm learning stick much…

It sounds like my experience with school is similar to yours - I also felt that being self-taught it was helpful to have a program of courses, to round out deficiencies in my own knowledge.

Among the things you can get for free online, I think conference talks can be a better value for the time than some of the online classes. They are more self-contained, so you don't have to worry about finishing an entire course, and generally more focused on real-world use cases.

I've also found that browsing at random, and watching things that sound interesting works well for increasing what I remember. I'm currently building a search engine around this idea-

https://www.findlectures.com/?p=1&class1=Technology&type1=Co...

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