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

billmei.net

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

#171

Post by aquabib »

digler999 wrote: post #151
aquabib wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. SO is polluted with "noob" questions and answers, which is why SO is so useless. Google and now even MSDN search results are also polluted with SO hits which are mostly just noise. If anything SO needs more strict moderation.

> SO hits which are mostly just noise. I completely disagree. I'm an experienced dev from C++ learning Android/Java dev. Literally 90% of what I need is on SO (the rest usually from mkyong), thanks to google some of the answers even bubble up to the search page so I dont even have to click on them. I would be much worse off without SO.

That says more about you as a developer than SO. In just about any SO answer I find numerous things that are either wrong or bad advice. The difference between me and a lot of SO users, especially novices, is that they don't know a good answer from a bad one.

A lot of people on SO seem to be answering just for points, half the time, or more, they don't actually know what they are talking about all or have experience with what they are explaining; they have often literally just "researched" the question and now they condense a couple of sources into an answer. Without having a proper understanding of the subject.

SO is bad for the whole industry. And there is not much that is worse than a "developer" copying an answer off SO and putting it into a production code base, without even understanding the answer they just copied.

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

#172

Post by digler999 »

s_dev wrote: post #157
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…

>"what are we doing here?" Assessment. A university standard of assessment is better than anyones standard of self assessment.

Generally yes. My gripes in assessment were mainly with science classes that asked subtly different questions on exams than what was covered in class, and english/humanities teachers who had broad reign to judge your performance based on whether you found some highly subjective moral or nugget of wisdom in the literature material. Both cases to me felt more like Three Card Monte [1] than a straightforward "Here's some information, learn it, we'll test you on it."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-card_Monte

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

#173

Post by aquabib »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #104
acchow wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it standard to just go to Google when you're older and cruise it out there? Also, I think plateauing is fine.... Why do I need to move upwards when they're paying me plenty already?

"Standard"? What percentage of the industry do you think will ever work for Google?

About 0.1%

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

#174

Post by fizixer »

fizixer wrote: post #22
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…

Automated homework/exam creation and cheat-proof (or cheat-resistant) grading needs to catch up. In my opinion, it is making progress but isn't quite there yet. Once that is done, it's over!

Correction: not just grading but testing as well. (cheat-resistant testing and grading).

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

#175

Post by ashark »

aquabib wrote: post #171
digler999 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SO hits which are mostly just noise. I completely disagree. I'm an experienced dev from C++ learning Android/Java dev. Literally 90% of what I need is on SO (the rest usually from mkyong), thanks to google some of the answers even bubble up to the search page so I dont even have to click on them. I would be much worse off without SO.

That says more about you as a developer than SO. In just about any SO answer I find numerous things that are either wrong or bad advice. The difference between me and a lot of SO users, especially novices, is that they don't know a good answer from a bad one. A lot of people on SO seem to be answering just for points, half the time, or more, they don't actually know what they are talking about all or have experience…

Not going to argue the general case, but for Android in particular the documentation is also full of bad advice and half-explanations. Plus it's not uncommon to hit a long-outstanding SDK bug. SO is great for Android development to fill in those gaps, provided you can sort wheat from chaff.

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

#176

Post by HoppedUpMenace »

What I got from this was that you got your job because you learned to say the right things and show off the right stuff to the person(s) interviewing you, after 100's of failed attempts. I guess statistically, you were bound to get a hit eventually.

"Do a huge volume of work. It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions."

- Ira Glass

Yeah well... That doesn't necessarily translate into quality work in the real world now does it? I'll even go as far as saying that that quote in particular is the TLDR of this story.

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

#177

Post by gravypod »

jhall1468 wrote: post #169
gravypod wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why would writing code matter? Data structure aren't "code", they are a way of organizing data. Sure, in our jobs we use them practically, but the purpose of college is to explain them and (the really important part) when to use them. There is a core difference between implementation and theory.

What is implementation if not a perfect description of the theory?

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

#178

Post by ashark »

sauronlord wrote: post #161
seattle_spring wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mind your own business. Speak for yourself, champ. Not everyone's dream is to become rich, or wealthy, or anything of the sort. Some people just want to work on cool problems, be around interesting people, and be paid relatively well to do so.

You're missing the point. "Mind your own business" means structuring things simply and in such a way that you get paid more (ie: minimize tax expense... which IS your biggest expense). Wealth = Time * Health You basically proved my point with: "Some people just want to work on cool problems, be around interesting people, and be paid relatively well to do so." Those things are possible due to time and health. A job ta…

> "Mind your own business" means structuring things simply and in such a way that you get paid more (ie: minimize tax expense... which IS your biggest expense).

I'm having trouble figuring out what you could mean by this that isn't some variety of "you know how to make money? Already have a lot of money." What do you mean?

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

#179

Post by HoppedUpMenace »

hermitdev wrote: post #93
BadassFractal wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that in many of the top CS universities today the lecturer is just a top researcher who's forced to read off of slides for a couple of hours a week and doesn't have the time, desire, the skills or the incentives to be a great pedagogue to the hundred or more students sitting at his/her lecture. In many universities it does feel like you're basically paying for a very expensive real-life recording of someth…

I studied computer/electrical engineering at my institution. A year or two after I graduated, the CS department lost their accreditation. I wasn't surprised when I heard the news. Of the CS classes I was required to take, one was ostensibly on operating systems. It was taught in C, the grad student lecturer only knew Java. Another instance, we were studying MIPS architecture. The professor was moonlighting in a start…

What institution was this if you don't mind me asking? I can't say that I much enjoyed the CS courses I had to take as part of the computer engineering program myself, as it was mostly taught from power point and definitely the material in lecture was mostly useless for projects and such. MIPS architecture, though, was really fun and the instructor was great but kind of a jerk at times.

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

#180

Post by megablast »

luck_fenovo wrote: post #32
jotux wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual education part of a university is really a small part of what students leave with. What you're really getting is a network of professors (with ties to employers) and other students that become your friends. Once everyone leaves the university you now have a large network of people that can vouch for your technical knowledge and personality. What you don't get with an online education is the proximity to ot…

Well I feel cheated, as an introvert that never stayed in touch with anyone from college and who went into a wildly divergent field from my major. I didn't experience either of the major benefits you're touting; the education was everything. I still think it was worth it, but I absolutely think it could have been done better and cheaper online.

You know how they tell you, you get out of it what you put into it.

You didn't put anything into it.

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