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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?

#311

Post by chris_wot »

relaunched wrote: post #273
meko wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, I found that the psychiatrists I saw universally did not listen to me, and one even told me to live with injustice (!!). I feel that the stigma is caused by the medical profession.

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

#313

Post by LaPingvino »

godot wrote: post #119

I don't know if this helps, but I personally find coding interview practice sites/problems to be extremely boring, difficult, not fun, and frustrating to work on. I'm saying this as a 13-years-of-experience software engineer; I've been called a rock star or ninja or something similar in almost every company and team I've worked in (big and small), and throughout my entire career and the numerous times I've job-hunted…

When I had to get the right people for a job, I made the sifting assignment simply: write an app that consumes a JSON API. I got an Indian guy with a long CV who never even tried, and a guy who machine translated the Dutch ad and sailed through this question. Guess who got the job...

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

#314

Post by mselinger »

CS majors that understand programming but don't want to be programmers can add great value in a number of areas including technical support roles, consulting roles, pre-sales engineering, professional services (helping companies to implement software), product and or project management, analysts, etc.

Some questions to think about - are you good with people and can you do well in a customer facing role? If not perhaps some of the more individual roles would be better.

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

#315

Post by mcovey »

For every job I've had, I never had a coding challenge during the interview. I had one where I had a homework assignment beforehand that we discussed during the interview, and mostly just talking interviews discussing my experience etc. I also work in a small city on the east cost and make less than half of what most people here do ($65k so maybe not really less than half) so that might have something to do with it...

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

#316

Post by generallyfalse »

Tmp1234 wrote: post #308
generallyfalse wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I tried, recursion taking care of puting the simplest cases first. I haven't checked the solution. I think this kind of problem is like a state machine. In each call of the recursion the length of the pattern or the lengh of the string should decrease, so finally one get to the easy cases of length in (0,1,2). This kind of problems are designed to test you can define a grammar and apply recursion. Anothe…

Your solution looks better than mine. Is there anything you've gleaned from the leetcode examples I posted?

I see that you prefer not to use recurrency in Python. That decision is correct since python is not optimized for recurrency but it also can make the code more complex. See https://realpython.com/python-thinking-recursively/

On the other hand, using iterators in python is nice. You didn't use iterators to compute the sum of cubes, many problems can be solved in one line using iterators. https://www.datacamp.com/community/tutorials/python-iterator...

Perhaps your code should try to go from the easy cases to the complex cases in pattern matching.

As a hobby programmer I program without stress, if I was to make a living by programming I think I shouldn't enjoy so much.

I think you should read norvig post: http://norvig.com/21-days.html, also to learn to program in python: https://github.com/norvig/pytudes

I believe that in a year or two you could be prepared to judge your progress

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

#317

Post by timje1 »

hermitdev wrote: post #243
giancarlostoro wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I took off about a year after I graduated, I kept working at my job and then when I decided to look for work it all lined up just perfectly. Look for jobs that want new programmers or interns is all I can say. Also: You do not have to ace the interview just show promise. What I mean is, even I've gone through interviews where I didn't know all the answers and they still kept wanting to follow up with me. Don'…

> where I didn't know all the answers and they still kept wanting to follow up with me. Absolutely this. The primary purpose of the interview is to establish whether or not you are competent enough to do the job. This doesn't necessarily mean having all of the skills out of the box, but whether you are capable of picking them up and have the basis to do so. Best piece of advice I could give is don't lie. If you don't…

Yep, when I'm interviewing a developer, if they try to bullshit an answer I instantly lose trust in them. How can I trust their work if, when they don't know something, they just try to BS their way through? Far more healthy to admit they don't understand and seek help / guidance from those who might. Humility is an important developer trait.

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

#318

Post by akho »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #61
jokh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At one of my companies we pay SF/BayArea market salaries and the way we hire (pretty much everyone, not just programmers) is: 1) short (10-20 min) phone interview, 2) if it seems like a good candidate we invite them for a paid test run, usually 2 weeks of actual real work, either remotely or in person, 3) if it works out, they get hired. Pretty much nothing will accurately predict how well someone is going to do on t…

You can’t use this process to hire someone who already has a job. So you’re limited to college grads and the otherwise unemployed. That is a pool not everyone can be content with.

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

#319

Post by cloverich »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #245

As someone who has never (and likely will never) pass these kinds of tests, am I in a minority in thinking maybe they're a good way of filtering the non-geniuses? I.e. Maybe the reason I can't pass these tests is I really am not sufficiently skilled/talented to work at Google? At some point, I think we need to accept that sometimes other people are not the problem.

Everyone has limits. However, people vastly overestimate the impact of intelligence and underestimate knowledge, experience, interest, and work ethic. If you like programming and expose yourself to a sufficient variety of problems and architectures, over time you'll slowly run out of situations where you're running into truly novel problems. At that point your intelligence will matter very little, high or low.

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

#320

Post by m0llusk »

akho wrote: post #318
ta1234567890 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one of my companies we pay SF/BayArea market salaries and the way we hire (pretty much everyone, not just programmers) is: 1) short (10-20 min) phone interview, 2) if it seems like a good candidate we invite them for a paid test run, usually 2 weeks of actual real work, either remotely or in person, 3) if it works out, they get hired. Pretty much nothing will accurately predict how well someone is going to do on t…

You can’t use this process to hire someone who already has a job. So you’re limited to college grads and the otherwise unemployed. That is a pool not everyone can be content with.

Employees ready to move on often have substantial time off built up and also have the ability to negotiate additional time flexibly.
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