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Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

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Re: Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

#271

Post by meko »

azthec wrote: post #198
chris_wot wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with dreadful experiences of the metal health system, I think the very last thing you want to do is see a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists are expensive and look at brain chemistry, more than likely you’ll end up on some sort of medication which you likely don’t need. By all means see a counsellor or a psychologist, but unless you have deep psychological issues where you are getting to an unbelievably unbearabl…

I don't know where you live, but generally that is applied to people who have all the other things and are still unhappy. Psychiatrists will generally try to steer you towards healthy fulfilling social lifestyles, and only then if you are still unhappy then usually you have some chemical imbalance that can be fixed, why be too proud rather than just fix it.

Psychiatrists are basically drug gatekeepers. They don't really listen to your problems, they just try to infer what medication is best for you (in a 10 min window) depending on how you act.

Re: Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

#272

Post by meko »

thomasfedb wrote: post #235
azthec wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where you live, but generally that is applied to people who have all the other things and are still unhappy. Psychiatrists will generally try to steer you towards healthy fulfilling social lifestyles, and only then if you are still unhappy then usually you have some chemical imbalance that can be fixed, why be too proud rather than just fix it.

Antidepressants are a first-line therapy. They're often very helpful in enabling people to make the changes that will help them improve their long-term health. They're excessively stigmatized however, which is incredibly unfortunate.

With good reason, the last medication my psych gave me left me with liver damage.

Re: Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

#273

Post by relaunched »

meko wrote: post #272
thomasfedb wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antidepressants are a first-line therapy. They're often very helpful in enabling people to make the changes that will help them improve their long-term health. They're excessively stigmatized however, which is incredibly unfortunate.

With good reason, the last medication my psych gave me left me with liver damage.

The side effects you experienced are unfortunate; if it happened to me, I would be very angry. However, the stigma around mental health is real and prevents many people from getting the help that they need. You can be angry without contributing to the stigma.

Re: Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

#274

Post by anothergoogler »

thewayofthebutt wrote: post #260
anothergoogler wrote: post #15

I'd guess that implementing Fizz Buzz or describing a basic database schema is enough to get hired to 50% of programming jobs. That includes quite a few senior positions. Not exaggerating, Fizz Buzz or a similarly trivial problem is the only tech screen more often than you'd expect. Not only that, but the algorithm challenges are less common now. It's been a long time since I interviewed with a company that didn't gi…

> the algorithm challenges are less common now That may be more a result of how your work history rather than shift in the industry norms.

Doubtful, I've observed the trend in how we screen junior candidates too. I hope you're not reading too much into my username, it's not serious.

Re: Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

#275

Post by [deleted] »

1001101 wrote: post #262
faitswulff wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're on the right track with therapy, just probably not occupational therapy unless you need rehabilitation for problems with fine motor movements (holding a spoon, writing, etc.)

> I think you're on the right track with therapy, just probably not occupational therapy unless you need rehabilitation for problems with fine motor movements (holding a spoon, writing, etc.) OT's can help with PTSD as well. [1] [1, PDF] https://www.aota.org/-/media/corporate/files/aboutot/profess...

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

#276

Post by ascherj »

jinfiesto wrote: post #175
whack wrote: post #101

> I experience PTSD like symptoms from the constant barrage of negative thoughts the difficulty and stress of doing these problems are causing me. A lot of the other posters have given some great advice from a technical perspective. I'd suggest taking some time to evaluate and improve your mental health as well. If you're putting yourself under so much pressure, that pressure alone will hold you back to a great exten…

This. If you can move in with your parents, or don't need to start making money immediately, I'd prioritize dealing with your mental health issues. See a therapist or do some meditation. Whatever you need to do to get centered again. If things are that bad for you, even if you get a job, you're either going to have trouble keeping it or make yourself miserable doing it.

This is great advice as well and is pretty much exactly the path I took after graduating with a CS degree. I had an internship leading up to my graduation that I really did not enjoy. I ended up leaving earlier than expected because I felt the need to focus on my mental health and address deeper questions about what I wanted out of life. I did not feel ready to start a career.

I ended up taking about 2 years to examine and reflect upon my situation. Meditation played a huge part during this time. I traveled, explored new hobbies and ideas, and experienced different ways of life. I eventually ended up moving back home to live with my parents as I continued to sort things out.

Currently, I feel much more stable and have a clearer idea of how I want to move forward. I now have a plan to move out and pursue a career utilizing my degree and feel very excited about the future. Taking time off to reflect in this way has been indispensable for me.

Re: Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

#277

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jokh wrote: post #39
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you can get there by finding jobs where the interviewers/hiring managers aren't using Leetcode as their filter. (They do exist, even if they're not as common as they should be.)

That's why I said "pay reasonably well". It seems to me that most places that don't interview and filter candidates by asking algorithmic problems don't pay as well as those that do. That's just been my experience as a student that's interviewed for internships and is going to start interviewing for new grad positions in the fall. Also > (They do exist, even if they're not as common as they should be.) I'm curious wh…

First, I never said that people shouldn't ask algorithmic problems. I said they shouldn't ask Leetcode-style questions. To me, that stood for a whole class of problems where you have to know the area in order to be able to solve the problem. When you have people talking about studying for interviews, I'm arguing that those are bad interviews.

Background: I've been a programmer for 33 years. I have never (directly) used a tree of any kind. (I've used STL and Java maps, which I think are trees under the hood.) Asking me to do something with a tree in an interview question is therefore probably a sub-optimal way of determining whether I'm a good fit. Yes, I know what a tree is. No, I don't know it like the back of my hand, and I don't know the algorithms in detail. Yes, I could probably figure it out during an interview. But expecting me to know that background when I come into an interview, when I have never used it so far in a pretty long career, and so I'm probably not going to actually use it at the new place either... that's asking me to memorize a bunch of stuff that isn't actually going to be useful on the job. That's a bogus interview approach.

Algorithmic questions should be something that the interviewee hasn't memorized the answer to, but also that they don't need to have memorized a bunch of background or know the "trick" to be able to answer.

Now, I'm in kind of a different world. I've worked mostly in embedded systems. If you're interviewing for a job where they use a lot of trees in their data structures, you probably ought to know them. If you are interviewing at one of the big boys (Google, Facebook, et al), where an improvement in the structure you use to represent the data can mean that you need several thousand fewer machines, they are going to really care about your grasp of the nuances of data structures. But, despite Google's size, most jobs are not at Google, or at that type of place.

If you're going to classify only Google, Facebook, Amazon, and their ilk as "paying reasonably well", then I do not agree with your definition, but I will agree that you'd better be able to pass Leetcode-type questions in their interviews.

Re: Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

#278

Post by w0rd-driven »

How do you know you're unable to be a programmer? Are you just basing that on having issues with leetcode or CTCI?

I spent 2 years in college studying CS before I couldn't continue. I had just started getting into harder courses using primarily assembly and my interest faded quick. I had this incorrect assumption that developers lived in terribly small cubicles and it didn't interest me much. I had also quickly burnt out, having a job at 40+ hours a week for an ISP and going to school full time in addition was unattainable. Networking and systems seemed to be more interesting at the time and I took a 10 year detour in IT.

In my IT tenure I slowly developed programs to solve business needs, starting with batch scripts and working my way up to very simple automation tools. Somewhere along the way I no longer cared about the work conditions a developer, doing the work was just too fun and I gained an immense sense of accomplishment when my creations were being utilized. Fast forward to getting my first full time developer-only position as a C#/.NET developer doing primarily Windows apps 8 years ago to now being a full stack web developer. It took being paid solely as a developer before I really felt like one and it took until probably 2-3 years ago before the imposter syndrome started to completely wear off. Where I may lack in algorithm knowledge I make up for it in understanding devops topics to have a more complete understanding of the full technology stack running the web apps I have a hand in. I believe every developer could benefit from a little operational knowledge as it usually makes debugging esoteric issues with a technology platform easier.

I'd describe my capabilities as more of an integrator. I used to write every library I used but I find other developers often have more complete solutions I could bastardize into something to fit a specific use case. While the puzzles I work with primarily involve fitting packages together into solutions, the end result still involves all of the same developer workflow of debugging and automated testing. I'm not incapable of algorithm knowledge, it just bores the ever living fuck out of me. I'm extremely fulfilled in spite of having some less than enjoyable positions, so hopefully you don't let this period try to define your future. There's an amazing breadth to this field to the point of easily having analysis paralysis.

Other comments give good alternatives but there are companies all over the planet paying great money for CRUD/LoB apps solving all sorts of interesting problems. There's also an amazing breadth of jobs for people with the knowledge of computing that comes from a CS degree if being a developer really isn't for you. You don't have to be in a wildly different industry but something else may involve solving interesting problems that keep you more engaged.

Re: Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

#279

Post by Tmp1234 »

I didn’t expect this many responses. It’s a bit overwhelming, but I'm thankful. I’m going to post a few important pieces of information I didn’t think of posting above that should help clarify my situation and how desperate it is.

I do have depression. Pretty bad one actually. I am just graduating from college at 31 because of the toll depression took on my life. I have no previous work experience because I spent my 20s just being depressed doing nothing basically. I've talked to therapists for years now and it's helped, but I've basically gone as far as that can go. My therapist and I both agree that basically as much as can be done from me through a psych has been done. My life needs to improve. Programming was supposed to be my ticket to a better life.

Some people have mentioned I should move home- My home environment is extremely toxic. I’ve cut off my mother completely because she has a severe, much worse mental illness and I only talk to my dad when I need something because he has quite the temper. I managed to get out of the house only because I’m on disability for my depression. To make things worse, my dad is past retirement age. Every single day I’m not making money forces my dad to prolong his retirement as he is the only one in the family with the mental faculties to maintain a job. It should be easy to imagine how this makes him more irritable and angry while also making me feel incredibly guilty and parasitic. This fragile economic state + my age is why I don't really have time to take it easy. I was supposed to be making money yesterday.

I’ve been preparing for technical interviews for over a year in reality, but intensely in the last month or 2. I couldn’t do Fibonacci recursively up until a few months ago until I looked it up and studied how the recursion was working. This is just one example. There are so many very basic things I can’t do.

Finally, I can’t depend on a network or friends in any form because I have none. I am a complete pariah in the computer science community I come from and every other community I’ve ever tried to integrate myself into, basically. No one will ever refer me to any job because no one likes me and, in the case of programming, everyone knows I suck.

Re: Ask HN: Got a CS degree, but I’m unable to be programmer. What can I do?

#280

Post by searene »

Me too, algorithms are extremely hard for me at first. It took me a really long time to solve easy problems, and I could only solve 1~2 middle-level problems in one day. But finally, I managed to handle them by getting to know some effective learning strategies, e.g.

1. Explain to yourself how algorithms work, like a teacher teaching his/her students. 2. It's even impossible to explain to yourself when facing some middle-level/hard problems. Then I got another good idea: write everything down on papers. Finally, I found out that it was not that hard to solve these problems.

There are a lot of other learning strategies. In retrospect, I think it's lucky to be an engineer. Although it's hard, tough, brain-racking, I get to know a lot of learning strategies along the road. Sometimes you wonder if others are way smarter than you, but maybe they just know some learning strategies that you don't know, and they never give up.

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