51–60 of 189 posts
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…
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.
Hah, you may, it does seem pretty crazy, doesn't it? I would say that the reason it seems crazy isn't rational , however. If I was forced to break down the reasons that this worked, I would condense it to three: 1. I focused entirely upon a single skill that is highly desired right now (Javascript / Web Development in JS/HTML/CSS/JS Frameworks). I didn't "waste" any time learning other programming languages, systems…
Attitude and approach is far more important than knowledge. The latter can be gained in many ways. The former comes from childhood and, generally speaking, is hard to reprogram.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hah, you may, it does seem pretty crazy, doesn't it? I would say that the reason it seems crazy isn't rational , however. If I was forced to break down the reasons that this worked, I would condense it to three: 1. I focused entirely upon a single skill that is highly desired right now (Javascript / Web Development in JS/HTML/CSS/JS Frameworks). I didn't "waste" any time learning other programming languages, systems…
> being very good at turning a "no" into a "oh, ok, let's talk more." Honestly wish there was a 3 month bootcamp for this.
Best advice I can give is treat every "no" like a probe from the other side to learn more. They're not saying no, they're saying "I don't know enough about this to want it." Obviously use common sense to avoid harassing someone, and don't waste your time where no opportunity exists (Mark Cuban reacted to the infamous "sell me your pen question" with "Do you need a pen? No? Ok, have a nice day.")
So every "no" has a response -
1. "No, you don't have enough experience."
Response: "I understand that this role requires the right experience. I applied to the job because I'm confident I have the experience you need. What about my background makes you feel otherwise? Do you have a coding challenge I can complete to demonstrate my ability?"
2. "No, we've had issues with bootcamp grads in the past. "
Response: "Hm, I can understand why having an experience like that would make you wary about bootcamp graduates. Was there something specific about why that grad didn't deliver? (choose response based on further information gathered, then: ) Hm, that does sound challenging. I think that my x y or z demonstrates why that issue wouldn't arise with me / I would love to demonstrate via a code challenge why I wouldn't x y z / If you go to myproject.calebjay.com you can see that I have quite a bit of hands-on experience with x y or z, so I'm confident that a b c wouldn't be an issue.
I'm remembering now an old sales training "no" breakdown:
1. Acknowledge the concern. Make the client feel that their concerns are valid, do not challenge or attack them, but at the same time avoid perfectly validating their belief that this is a harbringer that all similar solutions warrant "nos." So: "Yea, it is quite frustrating when recruiters send candidates that aren't even close to a good fit. You should see some of the resumes we people send to us when we open a job!" === good. "Oh man recruiters are so annoying, yea I would definitely never use them" === bad (when you're a recruiter trying to sell your services. Also, "psh, recruiters never act that way, you must have done something to annoy them" === bad.
2. Information gather. Always good all the time anyway. Usually the first "no" gives very little information and you could make some bad assumptions. "We've had bad experience with recruiters in the past" tells you literally nothing. The answer they give you can lead you straight into one of the fifty sells your company has drilled into your head. "What happened with the previous agencies?" "Well, they were sending bad resumes." --> "Oh, we get some hilariously off resumes. We like to think of ourselves as a filter for our clients, so we get maybe fifty resumes for a posting which allows us to hand-pick the best 3 for our clients." "Well, they would have three or four recruiters constantly calling us." "That is frustrating, we decided two years ago to only allow a single recruiter point of contact for our company because of that exact feedback from our clients." Etc.
3. Close. Of course.
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…
Because the majority of people in this world, are not the type to proactively self learn things on their own. They require structure, teachers, and environments to force them into learning, and then being told what to do. Hacker News is a very small slice of proactive individuals, who are what I would consider the exact opposite. A lot of us are constantly trying new things, building new applications, doing whatever…
I was also shocked when I met somebody who was just happy to go to work...
This is why my kids will be homeschooled. School is more about daycare and prepping people to be good employees than real learning. There is a reason why Elon musk started a new, different school without grades for his kids
I'm surprised the author mentioned taking linear algebra in high school. My high school math was bottom-of-the-barrel shitty (we barely touched on calculus, and the teacher didn't even know what an integral was). I don't know a single person whose high school math curriculum contained more than one calculus class, let alone linear algebra.
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…
the value of attending college and completing a four-year degree at an accredited university comes from the environment you're ingrained in for that time. The people you meet, the conversations you have and experiences you expose yourself supersedes the raw material in the curriculum.
Don't get me wrong, the stuff in the textbox are important but I think you get your real value from the experiences and the relationships you make with your peers and instructors.
Is it worth going into debt? I'm not sure, I'm Canadian and was able to get a CS degree for 50K (Not that crippling of a debt). For me, it was worth the time and money.
Also very much related to another discussion where the top n% (the rich) are blamed for just about everything. Here's where I get pounded [1] for daring to say opportunity in the US is what you make of it and the top n% have nothing to do with it.
I am sure there are a thousand people who want to be Bill Mei. Yet few are willing to take the risk and invest the time and effort he did in order to rise well past the average. What's sad is when some choose to blame people like Bill for their own failings.
Want a formula to be rich by the time you retire at, say, 55 years of age?
Work your tail off so that by the time you are 20 you can start to put away $1,000 per month.
In other words, be Bill.
Be frugal.
Invest the money somewhere relatively safe where you can earn at least 7% per year on average. If you pay attention that is not difficult at all in the long term.
Marry well.
Be frugal.
Do this and you'll reach 55 years of age with around two million dollars in the bank.
Continue to do it until you are 65 and you'll have nearly four million.
Or, if you actually start drawing $25,000 a year from your investment at 56 years of age, you will reach nearly $3.4 million by age 65.
It's actually better than that because I compounded interest annually in my calculation.
With the opportunities available today in the US (and other places) almost anyone can work hard for a couple of years and get to the point where they can save $1,000 a month. This is particularly true for a couple. The key is not to burn cash on stupid shit, which can be hard. After a while you make it part of your normal process. I drive a car with over 200,000 miles. I can go out and pay cash for just about any new car in the market today. Waste of money.
Not that hard folks.
I wish they taught kids about finance and money in high school.
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…
The Open University in the UK has a dropout rate of 87% [1] I'd imagine that's even higher for online courses. I can only speak for myself but I would not have been self-disciplined enough to complete the courses that I did during my undergraduate CS degree. The added bonus was the degree allowed me to emigrate fairly easily. [1] - https://www.timeshighereducation.com/letters/the-open-univer...
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.
Hah, you may, it does seem pretty crazy, doesn't it? I would say that the reason it seems crazy isn't rational , however. If I was forced to break down the reasons that this worked, I would condense it to three: 1. I focused entirely upon a single skill that is highly desired right now (Javascript / Web Development in JS/HTML/CSS/JS Frameworks). I didn't "waste" any time learning other programming languages, systems…
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…
The Open University in the UK has a dropout rate of 87% [1] I'd imagine that's even higher for online courses. I can only speak for myself but I would not have been self-disciplined enough to complete the courses that I did during my undergraduate CS degree. The added bonus was the degree allowed me to emigrate fairly easily. [1] - https://www.timeshighereducation.com/letters/the-open-univer...