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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

#81

Post by bigger_cheese »

ryandrake wrote: post #47

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.

I was taught simple linear Algebra in year 11/12 in Australia during early 00's. Stuff like Matrix alegbra, vector multiplication and simple matrix transformations (rotations, shear etc). This was in the advanced math class at a public school.

At the time I thought it was pretty poorly taught and I didn't really understand it very well until we covered the same topics in first year of university.

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

#82

Post by ShawnCleverdon »

mikekchar wrote: post #20
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…

I spent 5 years teaching English as a foreign language in a Japanese high school. In Japan, the school system is keen to hire foreigners who are fluent in English because they recognise that their students lack fluency. They think the problem lies in the instructor. However, the teachers at the school I taught in were almost all very accomplished English speakers. Yes, they had an accent. Yes, they made mistakes. But…

Can you share some of those lessons? Such as, "How can I improve my pronunciation without paying someone to train me?"

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

#83

Post by flukus »

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…

> Some people presumably don't have a right kind of discipline to study on their own.

Won't these people just "drop out" early on in their careers anyway? Someone that can't do any self directed study will not last long in almost any IT role.

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

#84

Post by flukus »

rezashirazian wrote: post #56
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…

A college degree, in my opinion, has little to do with the degree or the technical material you learn. 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 i…

If that's all you get out of college then you should have joined a country club.

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

#85

Post by jboggan »

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…

Because the current post-secondary education system is for social filtering and conferring status, not teaching anything in particular.

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

#86

Post by rdiddly »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #52
komali2 wrote: post #34

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…

I'll take someone without a CS degree and an intense rabid desire to solve problems way beyond their current capabilities any day over a pedantic PhD who can't be bothered to even put together Ikea furniture. Yes, I know a couple. They are useless. 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 repr…

What you're describing is an engineering mindset, or engineering talent. That translates into value in many different domains of knowledge.

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

#89

Post by asitdhal »

It's a good story.

I know many people who studied life science subjects like Chemistry or Physics and got jobs in top cs companies. Most of them were self taught(physics dudes use some level of programming )

To be a programmer, you need to have a solid problem-solving skill. Pick up a language(invest money in books in any one programming language, DS and Algo, OOPS) and invest time in websites like hackerrank.

You can easily build anything on the above skills. No matter how well you studied basic database and os stuffs, you will always need a google search before using in real life.

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

#90

Post by HeavenBanned »

greenhouse_gas wrote: post #50
komali2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about structured, graded MOOCs like Harvard's CS50x? I'm also curious about how you feel things like /r/learnprogramming, stackoverflow, and stackoverflow IRC can act as surrogates for teachers.

Honestly, at this point I found reddit a much nicer place to go then stackoverflow for technical questions. SO users demand that your question be "correct". Note, I didn't mean that it should be clear what your problem is, it's just that if you ask a "noob question", for an explanation, or if five people think it can't be done, you'll get down voted and closed in a second. It's sad because other (smaller) SE sites ar…

I used to think like you do re: SO. I used to hate it actually, I felt like it detracted from the learning environment prioritizing form over substance. But now I approach it differently: I just create a new dummy account for every new question I have and ask a question following the strict guidelines. I tend to get a response within seconds. And its usually correct.

You may say I'm gaming the system, but SO is broken that way. I had a "permanent" account, but it said I had to wait SIX MONTHS before I could ask another question, because my questions were "bad."

Interestingly, I have one dead dummy account that had 50 points on it. I had an amazing question about time in C++. I can't transfer those points onto my permanent account, so it was a worthless exercise. But I don't really care. A new dummy account will solve all my problems. Why should I invest in getting better and asking better questions if SO won't reward me for doing so? It just rewards God-tier enterprise code-junkies looking to pad their resumes. I'm just a chum in the ocean looking for my meal. I have no qualms in being a dick to the system.

Stack Overflow is terrible because the gamification is terribly implemented. On the one hand you get instantaneous correct responses. On the other hand, if it doesn't have a cherry on top when you ask it, it gets downvoted to oblivion and closed because it's a duplicate (I mean...is it a duplicate if someone can't understand the duplicate?).

I don't even know what I think about it anymore. I think Stack Overflow sucks, but I can't live without it.

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