Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 215 posts

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#91

Post by SamvitJ »

foobiekr wrote: post #87
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person. Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with si…

The ML thing would not surprise me at all. ML is so hot that if you know the buzzwords and have done some hello world project, someone will give you a job. It is very much like "html coding" in 1999 and will probably have the same outcome.

Hard disagree. ML is hard to break into, even with strong credentials. (Source: ML engineer)

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#92

Post by skrtskrt »

SamvitJ wrote: post #91
foobiekr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ML thing would not surprise me at all. ML is so hot that if you know the buzzwords and have done some hello world project, someone will give you a job. It is very much like "html coding" in 1999 and will probably have the same outcome.

Hard disagree. ML is hard to break into, even with strong credentials. (Source: ML engineer)

I think they probably mean "ML engineering" as in training pre-existing models in jupyter notebooks, the new "data science".

The people that actually create/engineer anything new and useful in ML is <1% of people that "work in ML".

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#93

Post by jmcgough »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #25

I'm experiencing this now and it's taking some energy to not become disillusioned with the industry. Generalists, or people with a "wide T", are also a lot less valuable than specialists. For any given technology or stack right now, some company out there is doing something cool with it, and they only want to hire people who are already familiar with their particular configuration. The couple of tech interviews I've…

As a counterpoint, having a broad range of skills and experiences has been hugely important for me and my employer, and hasn't limited my career or compensation. I fill in the gaps where I'm needed, and it's up to me to create visibility and take on projects that look good on my resume. Naturally I tend to go deep wherever I end up at a startup (so I have specialized experienced that helps my career), and my breadth allows me understand the entirety of the stack and design systems better than someone who only knows one part of the stack.

At startups you really want someone who can jump into any part of the technical work and ship quickly.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#94

Post by [deleted] »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person. Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with si…

[deleted]

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#95

Post by ketzo »

moeris wrote: post #50
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person. Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with si…

> he cites a statistic that 50%... Not a statistic so much as an anecdote. He makes it pretty explicit, I thought.

Eh, even if it’s an anecdote, it comes off as actionable advice: “make sure you apply to Google/Amazon/Facebook as your safety jobs, since you’ve got a 50% chance of getting in there anyway.”

Which feels… optimistic.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#96

Post by zdragnar »

ghaff wrote: post #84
pedrosorio wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Walmart was mentioned I believe you mean Walgreens (in patio11's original thread).

You're right. I did incorrectly read Walmart. Although I think the same thing probably applies to Walmart Labs in a lot of circles.

Really? Purely from an outsiders perspective, the last I had heard was they used a healthy mix of java, clojure and nodejs- definitely not stuffy or stodgy at the time.

No ideas what they've been up to the past 5 or so years though.

Edit: granted, I have no idea if they'd any ML type services running, and doubted they were blazing any trails with K8s or the like at the time. Still, it didn't seem all that bad.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#97

Post by ghaff »

zdragnar wrote: post #96
ghaff wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. I did incorrectly read Walmart. Although I think the same thing probably applies to Walmart Labs in a lot of circles.

Really? Purely from an outsiders perspective, the last I had heard was they used a healthy mix of java, clojure and nodejs- definitely not stuffy or stodgy at the time. No ideas what they've been up to the past 5 or so years though. Edit: granted, I have no idea if they'd any ML type services running, and doubted they were blazing any trails with K8s or the like at the time. Still, it didn't seem all that bad.

The question is about outside perceptions about various companies. I agree that Walmart Labs has done some fairly cutting edge stuff.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#98

Post by hinkley »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person. Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with si…

Honestly, with no experience how would you even know what your dream job was? I had some clue how good I had it, but that was at a philosophical level ("I'm very fortunate to be here blah blah blah.") Once "it" was taken away, I started to understand at a more visceral level. And yet there are aspects that I only managed to unpack last year, which makes me wonder what I'll notice next year.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#99

Post by jt2190 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person. Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with si…

> Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks.

But the assertion here is that too many “pivoting up” jobs are a negative indicator. (An “upper class” programmer wouldn’t spend time in the “lower” classes.)

Not saying I agree or disagree with this, but the existence of a class system in tech jobs is the OP’s central point.

Edit: The OP says it clearly:

> In many ways, having no experience is better than having the wrong experience because people don't unfairly prejudge you for having the wrong experience.

https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551665467864977408?s=21&t...

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#100

Post by madrox »

ceras wrote: post #28
r3012 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How should they know where they want to go if they're entry-level? I think it’s totally reasonable to expect people to have a plan. It’s also totally reasonable, and expected really, for that plan to change over time. But working without a plan, which implies working without goals, is rarely a recipe for success.

This doesn't really match my experience for my own career or as a manager. Plenty of great engineers don't have a plan beyond "learn and get better," including those that have traditionally-successful careers (e.g. director+ at top tech company). I'd expect that to matter more if you're, say, trying to be a founder - I can see that benefitting from intentional planning. But for careers at big companies, "learn and ge…

"Learn and get better" is absolutely a plan and a great basis to build on, though it's nice to know if there's something in particular they'd like to learn. I've never encountered a candidate who will say they want to learn but not have an idea of what they want to learn...just candidates who have an idea what they want to learn but are afraid of saying the wrong thing in the interview.
Post reply on HN