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Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills

josephwalla.com

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Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills

#41

Post by potatolicious »

mikeg8 wrote: post #16
naner wrote: post #13

Step #1 for how to get into the tech scene is read a boatload of nontechnical articles?

I still think this point is valid because there is a lot more to the tech "scene" than just technical advice. reading about VCs, startups etc will still help you understand the system as a whole and can help you find better places to start learning more.

At the end of the day that's still massively putting the cart before the horse. At the core of it startups are about building products - if you have nothing to contribute to any part of the product building process (whether dev, design, bizdev, marketing, etc), you are literally of no use to anyone whatsoever.

Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills

#42

Post by MostAwesomeDude »

32bitkid wrote: post #4

"Do work for free" is the worst suggestion I've heard in a long time. Your time is valuable; it should be to you and it should be to the person you are working for. Even if you aren't getting a monetary remuneration for your services there should be some kind of compensation, and you should be clear – at least in your head – what it is. Never – ever –work for free. It may seem like a good idea but its not.

The author's time is apparently not worth much, considering the things that he recommends doing.

Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills

#44

Post by obstacle1 »

pdenya wrote: post #39
obstacle1 wrote: post #37

I don't mean to be a dick but this is completely devoid of content. It boils down to IF you don't have technical skills, THEN develop them OR meet people who don't care that you don't have technical skills that will hire you. Further I fail to see how someone wanting into tech would be better reading a bunch of PG essays than actually, y'know, learning to code. Unless I'm not taking the title seriously enough, and th…

Seemed to me like the goal was to land a non technical job in the tech scene. So for people who don't want to learn to code, here's a quick start guide for getting the skills you need to get into BD, QA, etc at a tech startup.

Right. But out of curiosity... If you want a non-technical job, why must it be in the tech scene? And if you want a job in tech, why aren't you willing to learn the requisite skills. Paradox, I say.

Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills

#47

Post by FailMore »

I don't think this article gets it quite right.

I think non-technical people that do best stumble into the tech scene - rather than want to get in. By this I mean if you want to make it anywhere - especially in a world where you have none of the technical skills needed to actually build anything - you have to LOVE it. And that love comes from a deep and not-too-well-understood place within us. The kind of place which is not very easy to access with the cognitive part of your brain that lets you create the sentence 'I want to get into the tech scene now - but I know nothing - what steps can I take?'.

I am (sadly) non-technical (for now (but learning!)) - an Economics graduate who was on the path to investment-bankdem - but I couldn't help myself but be part of the tech scene. Some old colleagues from a hedge fund I interned at wanted to start a community for motorcyclists and, as I was young and more tech savie than them, they asked if I wanted to help out. It was (and still is) SO much fun thinking about how someone could use things - have an enjoyable experience, gain value, and try to find a way for us to extract a little value too. That is such a beautifully complex challenge to think through.

Our budget for the build was £25,000 - which is how much I thought it cost to build a website - so my plans for my own ideas had to go on hold - as I didn't have that kind of cash. Then a friend told me he got a website built in Romania for £2,000 - I can afford that!!! I designed my first website in microsoft word - from top to bottom - and sent my files over to Romania, greatly confusing the web agency who had never received 30 microsoft word files as the basis to build off. I was learning Spanish in Spain at the time and happened to meet an awesome German graphic designer. He took me through my designs and showed me why they sucked, and he told me about a program called InDesign. I came back to England and learnt that.

Since then I've won prizes for tech entrepreneurship, worked in a company that existed to build other tech companies, built a team of 6 around one of my core ideas, and learnt a little front end code myself. I would love to say - the rest is history - but now I am learning how to execute on ideas. Something which I have not yet done well enough.

But the point is I couldn't help any of this. And I think if you have to force yourself to read PG, or it is a 'I want a job', not a 'I want to build what's in my head!' mentality that makes you write your first piece of code - then maybe the tech world is not the place you really want to be.

Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills

#48

Post by vickytnz »

mehrzad wrote: post #3

I've always been wary of the online programming sites like codecademy and the like, because when I did Rails for Zombies I realized it never shows you how to set up an actual Rails application nor how Git and Heroku work. Are all the tutorials similar in that they baby you?

I did Code Year and was pretty critical of it (I've blogged about it but won't spam here!), particularly as it got less and less immediately practical over the course of the year and spent the last 3 months doing Python (which was bad enough for me who has experience with PHP, HTML/CSS, and JS) I hate to think what it'd have been like for people still getting their heads around coding!

Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills

#49

Post by kaoD »

mattmanser wrote: post #12
kaoD wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they are. I had a couple friends who wanted to learn JavaScript and went to CodeAcademy's course[1] only to find it was more like Programming 101. Not a single mention of what is a closure, how you can modularize your code, how prototypes actually work, etc. [1] http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/javascript

That's because for 99% of javascript written today in the Real World you still need not know a single thing about those things. You simply can't cater for every ability level in a single course.

I don't agree.

Modules and closures are needed in any serious JS development out there. Believe me. I worked in a codebase where they thought they "still need not know a single thing about those things" and boy was that a mess.

No wonder JS devs are considered crappy coders with that kind of mindset.

Re: Getting into the tech scene when you have no skills

#50

Post by mattmanser »

kaoD wrote: post #49
mattmanser wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because for 99% of javascript written today in the Real World you still need not know a single thing about those things. You simply can't cater for every ability level in a single course.

I don't agree. Modules and closures are needed in any serious JS development out there. Believe me. I worked in a codebase where they thought they "still need not know a single thing about those things" and boy was that a mess. No wonder JS devs are considered crappy coders with that kind of mindset.

Most sites are not one page apps. Their js is silo'd per page.

You misinterpret my personal skill level, I don't believe you as I've worked on more than one codebase of both kinds. Most javascript today is still employed as the scripting language it was originally introduced for. It does very little apart from open a lightbox or get something via ajax or something trivial like that.

There is a tiny % of javascript coders like us that use it to write programs and an even tinier percentage that use coffeescript. It is worth keeping that in mind at all times when discussing coding.

You don't have to be an architect in order to make a wall.

I also spent time running courses for non-coders in basic coding in a previous job to allow them to slightly customize their own product. Going in with advanced and abstract concepts like closures is a sure fire way to frustrate a student, not enlighten them.

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