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I’m 22 and I’ve failed

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Re: I’m 22 and I’ve failed

#61
I switched from an electronics engineering degree to a fairly poor music degree. I had a lot of fun doing the degree, but looking back, it probably crippled my early career.

On the other hand, I tried something different which has its own rewards, and I've never stopped learning. Eventually I did a master's degree in a technical subject. Partly to help get more interesting work, but also because I enjoyed the subject.

There is no failure here, only different choices, which may be sub optimal at different stages of your life. Keep learning and trying things out.

Re: I’m 22 and I’ve failed

#62
Art major with a 15+ y career in software development here. It can be done. The market may have changed since I got situated though. I think if I had to do it over I would do cs or business degree. Or aerospace. I sometimes think I missed my calling and would love to work at spacex or nasa.

Anyway, never look back too long. We all wish we’d done things different, and it’s good to learn from mistakes. But no good harping on them.

Get good at the basics: js, css, html, and a few backend languages. Learn all the frameworks etc on your own and never stop learning new ones. They’re all free to try and have plenty of tutorials. If you need a piece of paper saying you know stuff go get that degree too.

Re: I’m 22 and I’ve failed

#63

Man I feel this guy. After my past startup failed I just have not had the energy to find any work and its been almost two years. No math/algo experience, seems like everyone and their mother can build shit with react. The only industry I find interesting is simracing (simulated racing) and I'm trying to find some sort of "in" in this industry, or any motorsports. Applied to some formula1 web development jobs, red bul…

I started on a computer science degree when I was 28. Graduated at 30, had several job offers before the end of my last year.

It was tough to go through those 3 years working part-time while trying to keep up with a high load of university assignments, but at the same time, I never learned so much in my life and had fun while doing it, met lots of incredible people and campus life was pretty nice.

But now, all that is just a distant memory and I am just thankful to myself to have had the energy to do what I needed to find myself in a better position, and today I am happily working for over a decade in the software industry and could probably move anywhere I wanted, but am very happy where I am.

Hope this motivates you as you seem to be in a similar position I was in 15 or so years ago.

Re: I’m 22 and I’ve failed

#64
Actually yes, you did fail relative to the standards and expectations society and you have placed for yourself. And you have tasted the potential brutality of life and the fragility of ego at an early age, your parents were right.

And that might be a good thing...in fact it could be the best thing that ever happened to you. What happens next depends on your attitude toward this failure.

Grow and improve your independent thinking that led you there, sharpen your understanding of life, build more skills, deliver to people and make an impact and you'll go really far, or stay in self pity and perpetual cycle of defeat and you'll sink further and further in life.

Also, getting a job is not that hard if you are good at coding. Your art education and early failure will give you different perspective to life and this will be a value add to many companies and people if developed correctly.

I wish you the best of luck and look forward to see great things from you :).

Re: I’m 22 and I’ve failed

#65
You made mistakes. Welcome to life. Please take a seat. The stewardess will be with you shortly.

Sit down, concentrate on one main tech, continually make things, make imperfect but usable products, learn by mistakes, show employers.

Try to have fun.

Don't be dramatic. You made a mistake. That's all.

Re: I’m 22 and I’ve failed

#66
post #16

Picking an arts degree wasn't you first mistake. It was a consequence of earlier mistakes. Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn. I'm sure if you did a 100 Intro to Programming course you'd breeze through it but programming != CS. The worst thing you can do in college, at a job or even in life is to go into a situation thinking you have nothing to learn. That's just a…

> Do you really think your professors, your future colleagues or even your fellow students have nothing to teach you?

This is so important. When looking for a job, make sure you're not the smartest/most knowledgable person there. Seek out an environment with people who know more than you, at least in some fields.

Another big thing (at least for me) is to always challenge yourself. Work on stuff you don't know how to do in advance, things that require you to learn new skills. I find I get bored and burn out quickly if my work is just doing the thing, instead of figuring out how to do the thing.

Re: I’m 22 and I’ve failed

#67
post #16

Picking an arts degree wasn't you first mistake. It was a consequence of earlier mistakes. Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn. I'm sure if you did a 100 Intro to Programming course you'd breeze through it but programming != CS. The worst thing you can do in college, at a job or even in life is to go into a situation thinking you have nothing to learn. That's just a…

> you really think your professors, your future colleagues or even your fellow students have nothing to teach you?

I really like this. I mean, it happens often that I learn something from colleagues who have less experience that me just because while they searching for a correct way to do something ( which I already know ) they find interesting logically based solutions that maybe are not the best, but bring with them experience of some function or logic that I do not know

Re: I’m 22 and I’ve failed

#68
post #16

Picking an arts degree wasn't you first mistake. It was a consequence of earlier mistakes. Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn. I'm sure if you did a 100 Intro to Programming course you'd breeze through it but programming != CS. The worst thing you can do in college, at a job or even in life is to go into a situation thinking you have nothing to learn. That's just a…

> Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn. I made this exact mistake at 17/18 and even had a very similar line of thinking as OP, but my decision was not to go to school at all. I ended up in the industry a few years later, but have had a mostly crippled career. It was unfortunately drilled in my head around the time that people were handing out six figure salaries to a…

Being self taught doesn't have to cripple your career. I'm self taught and doing reasonably well, and there's another guy I worked with a few years ago who's also self taught and studied music in college who's now an engineer at Facebook making I don't know how many zillions of dollars. Looking at LinkedIn just now, I discovered that another self taught engineer I know, who doesn't even have a high school diploma, is now working at Netflix.

In a sense, we're all fortunate that we lucked into a career in an industry that de-emphasizes credentials in favor of knowledge, ability, and track record.

Re: I’m 22 and I’ve failed

#69
There's no age to start afresh. From [0]:

> Colonel Harland Sanders created the world’s largest fast-food chicken chain, Kentucky Fried Chicken or KFC. From an early age, after his father’s death, Sanders was responsible for looking after his siblings. He worked numerous jobs including being a streetcar conductor and a railroad fireman. When he was 40, he was running a service station in Kentucky which he eventually shifted to a restaurant across the street. A fried chicken recipe he came up with became so popular that the governor of the town named him a Kentucky colonel.A while later, Sanders began franchising his business. Over the next few years, he traveled to restaurants across the country, striking franchise deals. In 1964, with more than 600 franchised outlets, he sold his business to investors for $2 million. From a farm boy in rural Indiana to a fast-food chain mogul, Sanders had come a long way.

0: https://os.me/hard-work-beats-talent-when-talent-doesnt-work...

Re: I’m 22 and I’ve failed

#70

Why are we seeing so many whinny early-20-something 'I failed, I'm doomed' posts on here recently? Is there something wrong with the education system and culture that teaches, if you're not perfect, you're a failure? Honesty, at 22, you haven't failed, you've barely started. Come back at 40 and 60.

Have you been unemployed in the early 20s without a degree and desperate to find a job while nobody takes you seriously and you only get ghosted or turned down, while job ads seem to keep raising the bar all the time? It is a horrible horrible feeling.

Yes. And again late 20s. And 30s. Each time, I lived. And adapted (and improved).
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