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The Apprentice Programmer

tobi.lutke.com

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Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#121

Post by barry-cotter »

kostya-kow wrote: post #47
ahoyhere wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a bias if you look at dropouts as a homogeneous group, because they aren't. It's just as ludicrous to predict the same outcome for someone like me, who was always way ahead and bored to death of school, and a poor kid from the city or country who couldn't read at grade level. I doubt Tobi ever had reading comprehension problems and I bet he was passionate about his hobby leading up to his track switch. A…

I completely agree with you. You expressed exactly what I was thinking. I am 15, and I am planning to drop out of school. It is extremely frustrating trying to persuade my parents that dropping out of school doesn't mean I am giving up on life, and that I am not a failure. I cannot function in this artificial society that exists in schools, and I learn much better by myself. Finishing school would be complete waste o…

Get a GED and apply to community college if the alternative is homelessness. Present it as a fait accompli. High school sucks ass but homelessness is worse. If you're not in the US, sorry I think you're pretty fucked unless they have something in the same line as community college.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#122

Post by genwin »

Surio wrote: post #119
genwin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When your boss tells you that he won't pay you any more because you don't have a degree, it builds. It's just a convenient excuse. If it wasn't a degree it'd be something else. The boss was negotiating, so negotiation skills are what's needed in this situation, rather than a degree.

>> The boss was negotiating, so negotiation skills are what's needed All right. Now I'm genuinely curious. What would you have said under those similar circumstances? :-)

It's best to ignore any objections and focus on getting paid a market rate (what other companies would pay). So something like "I'm worth $x". I find that the other side quickly stops raising objections and shifts to compromising on a $ figure. Still, jumping ship might be easier than getting a raise that's well beyond the rate of inflation.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#123

Post by icelancer »

xal wrote: post #89
LVB wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what did the OP really mean by this: Not that degrees matter anymore. They do not. Experience does.

I'm the OP. I meant that the experience that you have matters, the degree doesn't. Pursuing a degree gives you valuable experience - it would be a disaster if it didn't. There are other ways to get experience as well and some of those are better suited for certain individuals like myself. Our industry, when it works well, is meritocratic. If you are great at what you do the way you collected that experience is irrele…

We had a similar experience at my last company I worked for - except even worse. On average, applicants for the Data Science team that held degrees in CS/CIS/CE were on average FAR WORSE than ones who held degrees in other disciplines or simply did not have an undergraduate degree.

It got to the point where we heavily weighted applicants who studied Physics/Mathematics/Economics over the CS ones.

As my co-worker said: If someone in our city has a CS degree and needs a job, he probably really sucks at software development.

The real competitive advantage was hiring people with very good math/quant skills and teaching them software development concepts through Coursera and pair programming. We saved a lot on salary and we got very good developers.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#124

Post by icelancer »

necubi wrote: post #105
lsc wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I simply do not understand this anti-college anti-credentialling sentiment Speaking as an anti-college, anti-credentialist person, well, a lot of it, for me? is that I didn't go to college. I mean, everyone likes to pretend to be altruistic, but in the end? we all see the world from our own perspective. And really? most people seem to think that you go to school, you get a cs degree and you will be pretty good. And…

You don't learn to code in college, or at least not in class. Good coders almost universally learn outside the classroom. This is true for people who go to college and those that forgo it. So if you don't go to college to learn to code, why go at all? You go to learn the fundamentals of computer science and math which underlie everything that we do. It's certainly possible to obtain this knowledge on your own with se…

>So if you don't go to college to learn to code, why go at all? You go to learn the fundamentals of computer science and math which underlie everything that we do.

This is why my company hired Math/Physics graduates instead of CS graduates - they had far better command of advanced mathematics and came much cheaper than CS graduates (who were generally worse applicants anyway).

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#125

Post by icelancer »

Fargren wrote: post #67
rumblestrut wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, most people get a degree and leave school with unbelievable debt that can't be bankrupted, should hardship ever occur. I would have taken apprenticeship over college any day.

I wont argue that private college in the US isn't brokenly expensive for most mayors. I'm not even saying that college is a good idea for most of the population anywhere. What I am saying is that for some important fields of knowledge that it would be good to teach to some not small fraction of the population, college is a good solution; maybe the best that has been actually tested. Of course not going to college wou…

>I wont argue that private college in the US isn't brokenly expensive for most mayors.

The University of Washington is $13,000 per year for residents, who are preferentially screened and rejected because tuition for in-state residents is too cheap.

UW costs $30,000/year for out-of-state residents who are more likely to be admitted since it's more than twice the cost.

By the way, the University of Washington is a public school. Private schools in the area start at $45,000/year.

There is literally nothing you can study in undergraduate school that would be worth that price. Not even close.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#126

Post by icelancer »

seubert wrote: post #23
ender7 wrote: post #21

The OP was incredibly lucky to find a mentor like Jurgen. Being handed a thoroughly "proofread" review of your work is perhaps the best way to improve at almost anything. Unfortunately, creating such high quality feedback demands more time than most people are willing to spend, especially if it's above and beyond their normal duties.

I wonder if a company that stressed a role like this up the career ladder as an alternative to a high-level architect role would see much success.

We did that at my last company; we hired brilliant out-of-work mathematicians and physicists and turned them into developers and data scientists. We paid less for labor and got way better product out of our training program.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#127

Post by icelancer »

templaedhel wrote: post #5

I feel like confirmation bias is in play when you read about successful people who have dropped out of school, succeed, and then blogged about it. You have to keep in mind the hordes of people who have followeded a similar path only to archive not enough to blog about. Self education may appeal to many of us here, but it applies to less than it appeals to.

>I feel like confirmation bias is in play when you read about successful people who have dropped out of school, succeed, and then blogged about it.

And what of the people who graduate, get a job, and blog about it?

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#128

Post by icelancer »

blt wrote: post #18

I wish I could have a mentor like Juergen in the article. Ever since I started writing code, nobody has had enough time or dedication to go over my work line-by-line like that. I learn those lessons by trial and error when my code breaks. And they aren't lessons I could have learned in college. I've got a long way to go, but one day if I'm actually a good programmer I'll try hard to be a mentor like that to the new g…

> Ever since I started writing code, nobody has had enough time or dedication to go over my work line-by-line like that.

Commit big changes to open source projects. I bet you get a wide variety of reactions.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#129

Post by frozenport »

dxbydt wrote: post #38

I simply do not understand this anti-college anti-credentialling sentiment. I am featured in the latest Hacker Monthly ( print version of HN). So they asked me for a bio. I wrote something about how I learnt everything in college...am not a hacker...and that you should go to grad school if you want to get better at CS. So they edited out all of the pro-college stuff and just said this guy is data scientist. You don't…

Problem:

Get a 4 year college degree, do Qt for a living.

There is large category of jobs that don't require complex math or a good understanding of algorithms, yet we treat them like they are 4 year degrees. This is bad, because it wastes a lot of time and causes a lot of pain.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#130

Post by keithpeter »

walshemj wrote: post #63
keithpeter wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. In the UK we are trying to reconstruct the 'dual system' and we have things that are called apprenticeships but not quite as well organised as the ones they have in Germany. The OP is not a drop-out. He has followed an established path!

Ah you mean the Torry plan to bring back the 11 plus and ship off poor kids to dumbed down Modern Apprenticeships so they can stack shelves at safeway.

No, I mean the real apprenticeships with companies like Siemens and GKN that you need a minimum of 5 GCSEs to get onto, and that lead to BTEC National Diploma then HND qualifications with 1 year degree conversion.

I accept your point that the word 'apprenticeship' has been made meaningless by our Present Leaders but there is some good stuff out there as well.

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