71–80 of 117 posts
"I’m still dealing with a bit of impostor syndrome and it still sounds weird when I tell people I’m a software engineer..." That's because you aren't a software engineer, and if you are saying so then the feelings of being an impostor are entirely warranted. 'Coding' is one thing, 'engineering' is something different altogether. I'm afraid this falls into the 'you don't know what you don't know category'.
I believe part of it is that the general age demographic here is pretty young, and a lot of people have not so much experience working across a range of projects with a large number of people.
A year does not an 'engineer' make, in any field. Why should it be different in the field of software? It's not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"That's because you aren't a software engineer, and if you are saying so then the feelings of being an impostor are entirely warranted." At face value this assessment feels very unfair. Where do you draw the line? Experience -- is a year not enough? Deliverables -- is YumHacker not enough? Education -- is it lack of formal training that separates the engineer from the coder? Is it the ability to build non-trivial sof…
This is a interesting post to me because I also started programming a year and two months ago. I took a much different approach because I wanted to be considered an engineer not just a "coder". I can say that I did not feel like one after three months of digging into Codecademy Code Year (yes, in three months). I didn't know how to build outside of their sandbox. Then I dug deeper in Javascript, reading every book I…
Well I am showing this to my 2 girls. They have got C++ & Unix books on their shelves but as far as I can tell, it hardly been read. Hoping your story gets the ball rolling.
in terms of the learning curve this can be pulled off by an above avg 13 year old in 2 weeks....
Nonetheless women + coding or women + investment banking etc. is the magic combo that will put you on the front page in these days. talk about gender equality/survival of the fittest....lol
I started to learn how to code back in August and got my first job as a developer at the end of February. I went through a bootcamp and didn't see anyone besides my girlfriend for 10 weeks. It's definitely tough not having a mentor, and I struggled a bit for a couple months after classes trying to figure out what I should spend my time learning. I still struggle with it when working on personal projects and often wor…
Many years ago (Makes me sound old...) I dropped out of a CS degree to pursue archaeology, and then dropped out of that when I ran out of money and needed a job...
That job (and all the subsequent jobs) taught me a lot about people and business, and trained me with the discipline to finish jobs by deadlines, work with the people around you, remain calm under pressure (most of the time...) etc. All of the time I was working I was training myself. I bought O'Reilly books on algorithms, read RFC's, specs, source code and anything else curiosity led me to.
Recently I left a position, and had to interview, choose and train my replacement. The person who got the job wasn't the most qualified. On paper, they only had half of the job requirements, but during the interview process I realized that this person learnt quickly. This person picked up new concepts, procedures and entirely new skill sets during the 3 weeks of one-on-one training, and they're still doing well in the position from all accounts.
What I'm getting at is that, although "safe" hiring practice is to pick people with CS degrees, there are many people out there who recognize learning ability, passion and personal motivation to be sometimes more important.
Don't lose hope, be confident, be honest, and don't stop learning.
nice story, but you cant call that "coding". looked at the website and its sophistication can be compared to a kid practicing how to write the alphabet in primary school. in terms of the learning curve this can be pulled off by an above avg 13 year old in 2 weeks.... Nonetheless women + coding or women + investment banking etc. is the magic combo that will put you on the front page in these days. talk about gender eq…
BUT I'd bet she's a better "coder" than me. She will be rock solid on all the basics, so she has a great base to do more complicated things. For the more complicated things I've done, I was relying heavily on stackoverflow searched and the like, and although I made complicated things that worked, they were probably fairly basic mistakes and things that could cause future problems that Jen wouldn't have made/done.
Too many people these days (me among them) jump in without knowing how to swim and then struggle to stay afloat. Jen taught herself to swim first.
nice story, but you cant call that "coding". looked at the website and its sophistication can be compared to a kid practicing how to write the alphabet in primary school. in terms of the learning curve this can be pulled off by an above avg 13 year old in 2 weeks.... Nonetheless women + coding or women + investment banking etc. is the magic combo that will put you on the front page in these days. talk about gender eq…