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How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

billmei.net

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Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#161

Post by sauronlord »

seattle_spring wrote: post #153
sauronlord wrote: post #152

"Dream JOB" There is no such thing my friends. Unless you consider getting laid off or resigning within a few years your dream. You will never be long-term wealthy or happy with a job. You might get rich, but not wealthy. Mind your own business.

> Mind your own business. Speak for yourself, champ. Not everyone's dream is to become rich, or wealthy, or anything of the sort. Some people just want to work on cool problems, be around interesting people, and be paid relatively well to do so.

You're missing the point.

"Mind your own business" means structuring things simply and in such a way that you get paid more (ie: minimize tax expense... which IS your biggest expense).

Wealth = Time * Health

You basically proved my point with:

"Some people just want to work on cool problems, be around interesting people, and be paid relatively well to do so."

Those things are possible due to time and health.

A job takes the best, sunniest part of the day away from you (usually) and your autonomy (freedom to work on cool problems of Your choosing, being around interesting people of your choosing and when you want to) and then your biggest expense is your taxes.

Wealth as defined by time and health is something we all want. Health is our most precious asset (ie: puts money in our pockets due to intelligence, ability to work) and time is our most valuable resource (can never get more, once it is spent you cannot earn more).

Anyone that does not place Wealth as one of their highest aims is either a complete idiot at worst or grossly misinformed about what Wealth actually means at best.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#162

Post by Jtsummers »

analog31 wrote: post #72
YZF wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between having an instructor and learning things from a book or video lectures. An instructor can correct your mistakes and give you feedback. A book or a video can't do that. Some people presumably don't have a right kind of discipline to study on their own. This is why remote study programs can be a lot more difficult to complete vs. on-site programs. EDIT: There's a known effect, discussed…

Some people presumably don't have a right kind of discipline to study on their own. This is why remote study programs can be a lot more difficult to complete vs. on-site programs. I needed the structure and social interaction of the college environment. But oddly enough, it depended on what discipline I was studying. I would not have been able to learn math and physics on my own, and those were my majors. On the othe…

Programming and electronics have clearer outcomes and feedback mechanisms than physics and math. Unless you have a lab setup, you can't test out your physics knowledge to the same degree you can electronics and programming. Math is similar. You can try to recreate proofs of various things to demonstrate a capacity for proving or an understanding of the underlying system in which you're constructing proofs, but ultimately you're not creating anything novel for quite a while.

With programming and electronics, self-study offers the opportunity to make things, both novel and derivative, and immediately (or near enough) see whether or not the function. Similar to setting up an experiment in a physics lab, but again, who has a home physics lab? Programming can be done on a cheap (< $200) laptop. A large portion of electronics can be accessible with a similar investment in (mostly reusable) parts.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#163

Post by mralvar »

popdoit wrote: post #27
komali2 wrote: post #6

Damn, that guy busted his butt. I got a creative writing degree from a decent but relatively unheard of Texas state school, spent a month studying Javascript, got into a bootcamp, worked for the bootcamp as TA for 3 months, then got a ~120k/yr job in the bay area within a month of leaving the bootcamp. I had 3 projects on my resume and absolutely nothing technical to show for the time period prior to the bootcamp, ot…

May I politely say "fuck you" for getting a 120k job after completing a bootcamp. Starting salary of 120k/yr for someone with a 3-month vocational program and an unrelated undergrad degree? That is literally insane.

He lives in the Bay Area, 120k starting is standard because devs literally won't be able to live there otherwise.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#164

Post by amorphid »

YZF wrote: post #5
steven777400 wrote: post #2

The author's comment on access to a mediocre/unknown university instructor for a high fee vs free access to a very good set of lectures (Khan) is one of the doubts that led me to quit my job as a college instructor. I had kind of the existential "what are we doing here?" question -- why are students coming here and paying us money when better instruction is available for free online? Combined with a couple of educati…

There's a big difference between having an instructor and learning things from a book or video lectures. An instructor can correct your mistakes and give you feedback. A book or a video can't do that. Some people presumably don't have a right kind of discipline to study on their own. This is why remote study programs can be a lot more difficult to complete vs. on-site programs. EDIT: There's a known effect, discussed…

Having someone to talk to on a regular basis is kind of the idea behind teaching assistants, at least for many types of work. There is definitely room to innovate between paying the cost of a full blown degree and 100% self study. Effective or not, I think dev bootcamps became popular for this reason.

I attended Tealeaf Academy, now LaunchSchool, to kick-start my own self learning, and I thought it was an excellent investment. Their model is (or at least was) to provide a structured program, with email & chat support, and a few hours per week of live interaction. I also liked how they framed learning as the entry point to a path which required a lot of learning, and not a "be an employed developer in 90 days." It worked well for me.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#165

Post by pinot »

mralvar wrote: post #163
popdoit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I politely say "fuck you" for getting a 120k job after completing a bootcamp. Starting salary of 120k/yr for someone with a 3-month vocational program and an unrelated undergrad degree? That is literally insane.

He lives in the Bay Area, 120k starting is standard because devs literally won't be able to live there otherwise.

Plenty of non-devs manage to get by on <120k, especially right after college.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#166

Post by ryandrake »

pacaro wrote: post #66
ryandrake wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, how close are you and pacaro to 40? Congratulations on your success but you guys might find the smooth sailing become much less smooth the older you get.

I'm in my mid 40s, currently a Principal Engineer at Amazon. My experience is probably not typical for all sorts of reasons

Fair--everyone's situation is different and I was making a generalization. Congrats on your early good luck and sustained success!

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#167

Post by mralvar »

pinot wrote: post #165
mralvar wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He lives in the Bay Area, 120k starting is standard because devs literally won't be able to live there otherwise.

Plenty of non-devs manage to get by on <120k, especially right after college.

Living on their own or with several roommates in a piece of shit apartment

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#168

Post by mattmanser »

totalrobe wrote: post #123
Tomis02 wrote: post #120

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad OP is happy with where he is right now, but his story's ending is underwhelming. > Instead of emailing as many black holes as possible, I would spend a week deeply researching a company and the business problems it faced, then put together a working prototype that I would cold-email to the CEO as a product improvement. ... My strategy was working! Really? Interesting, let's see the outcom…

These were my exact thoughts almost word for word...also the thoughts below make zero sense back to back. "At the same time, my old clients started referring me to other clients and everything snowballed into a big, unstoppable avalanche of steady consulting work. I took this as a clear sign that I found my calling in life. Now that I was confident with the flow of consulting work, I began looking for a full-time job…

I'd guess he was charging peanuts and rather than raising his rates he figured a job paid more.

Then again, I think every programmer needs to work with people better than them for a few years.

Most of the worst code I've seen is from programmers who have always been one-man bands, or have been a one-man band for a very long time. It's often a case of not knowing what you don't know.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#169

Post by jhall1468 »

gravypod wrote: post #142
shultays wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some 'buillshit' classes in C.S. which are highly theoretical which and has nearly zero real world applications for an average programmer but data structures is not one of them. The schools don't teach data structure just so a graduate can answer related interview questions. I also don't think Software Engineering is as much of a "science" as it is a "trade" ... Most of the information that must be taught i…

> The schools don't teach data structure just so a graduate can answer related interview questions. At my university, "Data Strctures" is one course where you write no code, another corse that is just about discrete math, and then at your senior year you actually do a Data Structures class. I have no problem with Data Structures and I of course think they are important. I have a problem with what colleges think Data…

Why would writing code matter? Data structure aren't "code", they are a way of organizing data. Sure, in our jobs we use them practically, but the purpose of college is to explain them and (the really important part) when to use them.

There is a core difference between implementation and theory.

Re: How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree

#170

Post by komali2 »

qplex wrote: post #124
komali2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly wouldn't recommend it for all sorts of learning. It worked for me because I had literally gambled everything on it - if I dropped out or got kicked out, I'd be 17k in debt living in the most expensive city in america with almost no savings. Failure wasn't an option. Furthermore, my fallback options were shitty. 40k/year doing sales or recruitment, busting my ass to reach 6 figures, being stepped on the wh…

So I guess you should do something that makes you happy (good for you!), but please do consider that actions actually have other implications than money. The fact that you can make more money making webpages than teaching some poor kid english is mostly sad.

Well, I won't disparage those that are actually teaching poor kids, but in Taiwan I was teaching the top 25%, aka those that can afford to attend a cram school. I was making 2x the monthly salary working 20 hours a week that your average college educated Taiwanese grad was making working 60-70hrs a week.
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