What I say to people who are looking for a job

What I say to people who are looking for a job
gregkamradt.com

My takeaway is 2 things:

- if you wanna do something for living, sound like you know it well, and hopefully actually well

- if you are not financially independent, keeping shaking the money tree until you have another money tree to shake

And calling myself out, here's a couple notes to self:

- don't judge a book by it's cover (or an HN link by it's title)

- don't assume things are gonna suck just because you're in a suboptimal mood in that moment

    1) Divide up that goal into pieces.
    2) Take those initial pieces and divide that up.
    3) Take one of the bits from 2, and create a lame, incomplete version of it
    4) Keep polishing that bit until it's great

An example is the movement syncing system in my MMO. First I went through an "Asteroids in HTML5" tutorial. Then I got hold of a "Chat in Websockets" tutorial. Then I hooked them up in the lamest way imaginable, then kept on iterating.

The very hardest part is 4, of course. In order to do that part, you have to know what it is you don't know. A good Comp Sci education gets you a good ways there. (Warning: If your profs and TAs keep telling you "you don't need to know [X]" because libraries/etc take care of that for you, you need to figure out if they're only saying that because they don't know themselves. If on the other hand, they give you some background information about when you do need to know [X] then that's valuable information.)

I used to think this, but after guiding some folks into coding I find this flippant and discouraging.

First, tech is lucky in that you can learn essentially for free, with the not-to-be-forgotten requirements of a computer and an internet connection. Other professions - say, carpentry - have costlier barriers to entry, even for that week.

Second, what are the baseline requirements to get there? Tech is in the opposite position here: depending on what you turn up in that hypothetical Google search, you might find things for different OSes, for different kinds of work. Ops is not Database is not Data Science is not backend service code is not front end web coding is not desktop application development (and mobile is in a place of it's own). It's VERY VERY easy for someone to get a very wrong impression. Someone "not good at math" but with a logical thought process can kick ass in coding in the right area, but they can get the wrong tutorials for what they want with no clue that's happening. Most tutorials (for good reason) don't try to overload you so they make a lot of assumptions...but those assumptions are wrong for a lot of people.

Third, the assumption of "a week" is very hard for most people. They have family considerations, whatever job(s) they currently hold (and the energy it sucks out of them, which for people wanting a career change is often higher than otherwise). Do you expect an hour a day for that week? 3? 8? Make this clear before telling people that if they can't handle the week they shouldn't try this.

I applaud what the author is TRYING to do, but this approach is most likely to end up discouraging rather than inspiring most people in my experience.

In the past when I told people they could just learn the basics of programming online, I was basing it off of me trying to do so with all of my knowledge and experience that I already have (which, not coincidentally, also includes a lot of info on how to find good ways to learn online). Expecting others to do so without accidentally steering themselves into frustration is optimistic at best.

This doesn't mean they CAN'T - it just means a little guidance helps a LOT. While I only really know coding and tabletopRPGs, I assume the same points apply to other professions: A guide - not asking them to teach you, but to help you define what you're asking and avoid pitfalls ("Don't pay $200 for a udemy course, wait for their very regular $10 sales") can help you make the most of any go-get-um attitude and dedication.