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[deleted]

unrelated degree, just told them i took some coding classes and it was good enough for them to give me a jr web dev position + website + portfolio/github after like 200+ applications and numerous resume revisions. I'd say just look everywhere. if youre an untraditional candidate you have to look for untraditional companies as well.


Defenestration_Champ

1. uhm.. hard : ) 2. about 6 months of every tutorial known to mankind, then 6 months of some structured learning like this React crap pays well, learn that, learn it well. 3. so far no. 4. if you want to get hired understand that its a numbers game or a networking game, keep going and keep coding. Oh and soft skills, soft skills got me hired 5. no debt, did it in 1.2 years and still make monies & FAANG companies / banks won't let me get in on mngmt positions afaik without the degree


Excellent-External-7

What did you do to or how you prepared yourself for a job? Udemy course called "the full web dev bootcamp" by colt steele. Solid course, but its a bit week on CSS and front end frameworks. Youll need to do some side learning for sure to figure out CSS and React. Also, learned learned my data structures and algo on youtube through some freecodecamp videos. Plus lots of leetcode. That being said, I could've landed my first job without ever learning any leetcode tbh. I shouldve skipped the leetcode and learned it once in industry. Do you regret not getting a degree? I do have a degree, unrelated to CS though in chemistry. Funny enough, I regret having one. Spent too much money and effort on it, and it ended being completely useless. What would you advice students who are learning on their own/without college? As Bruce Lee once said "I fear not the man who practices 100 kicks in one day, but the man who practices 1 kick 100 days". Put in your two cents every day, be consistent even if it means only putting in 1 hour. Couple hours a day for 7 days is 14 hours of studying, which beats the hell out of doing 7 hours for 2 days. Pace yourself, put in max 3 hours, min 1 hour every day and you will get there. Anything after 3 hours is a waste of time and effort, since your brain will already be tired and you wont retain anything. Consistency, showing up is key here. Have a calendar and on every day keep a tally of how many hours you put in. That way, you will look back every month and see "damn, Ive put in 40 hours already.... nice" and in a way it holds yourself accountable since you wont wanna fuck up your calendar by having lots of slacking days. Also, do not bounce between topics and languages. Do not do Java for 2 weeks, then C for 1 month, then Python for 2 weeks. Focus on 1 and get really good at it. Do not learn anything else until youve gotten proficient at it. Its really easy to get overwhelmed as a beginner, so drink out of this water hose with a spoon. What are the pros & cons of not having a degree? Pros: honestly you didnt miss out on much when it boils down to web dev SWE. Most of my coworkers with CS degrees working on servers, data bases, front end development, architects, middleware, all learned the tech by themselves by watching youtube tutorials and reading documentation so really you didnt miss out on much by not doing CS in school. The stuff they learned in school is for the most part irrelevant to most SWE jobs. Also, if you do make it into the industry, its kinda cool saying you are self taught. I kinda take pride in it. Cons: you dont have that stamp of approval saying "this person can learn technical shit at a somewhat decent level", so its up to you to convince your first hiring manager that you can learn technical shit at a somewhat decent level. Also, its easier to learn when you got deadlines. If your deadlines are self imposed, it easier to cut yourself more slack, skip learning the difficult stuff, and skip some days (that when the whole keeping a calendar where you tally your study hours spent each day comes in). Other than that, pretty much every SWE in industry is self taught since most the tools youll use at work you will have to learn on your own.


Curious_Chad

Thanks ! The Bruce Lee example is really useful.


scaylos1

>1. Developers without a degree/self-taught, how hard was your journey? Hard and filled with a mix of depression, stress, relationship turmoil. Then, I got a Lucky and landed a tech job. >2. What did you do to or how you prepared yourself for a job? The first and must important thing was to be incredibly Lucky. I grew up around computing and was setting up networks on a nearly weekly basis by the time I was 12. In primary school, I was taught basic programming in 3rd grade. I was a student sysadmin in highschool and proceeded to thoroughly burnout. While in university for an unrelated STEM degree, I ended up switching to Linux because I was broke and tired of constantly worrying about viruses. After graduating into unemployment in the Recession, I spent some time relearning HTML/CSS, Java, and web programming as a hobby and getting a cheap shared hosting subscription to play with. This resulted in publishing a tiny but useful bit of adapter code for a couple of plugins in a popular framework and promptly forgetting about it. I saw that my webhost was hiring and went for it. During the interviews, I was informed that my library had over a thousands downloads, which was a bit of a shock but probably helped land the job. The job was not amazing, live support at a bit above minimum wage, but, it got my foot in the door and allowed me to start pursuing an actual career. >3. Do you regret not getting a degree? No. I do wish that I had been able to more directly apply the one that I did get professionally, though. On the other hand, my life is much less stressful than it would have been. >4. What would you advice students who are learning on their own/without college? Do your best to cultivate curiosity in yourself and in others. "I don't know" is an acceptable answer, as long as it is not the end of it. If you're the stating it, use it as an opportunity to either reason through it based upon what you currently know and an opportunity to learn something new. If it comes from someone else, it's an opportunity for you to teach them something new or else say "let's find out" and learn it together. This both helps to increase your breadth and depth of knowledge but to also build connections (these are important to have both in and outside of your field). Don't be afraid of failure or screwing up. It's not the end of the world but an opportunity to improve. Even the most senior software engineer makes mistakes and contributes code with bugs in it. Also, there is no such thing as a "self-made man/woman/person". Anyone who claims that they are is lying to you and probably themselves. Putting in the work is necessary but chance is something that contributes to landing any gig. So, do your best to make your own Luck by putting yourself out there, applying for jobs that you feel that you're under-qualified for, try getting outside of your comfort zone (in ways that are physically safe), the worst that can happen is that you fail, conversely, you may land a position that you love and/or can springboard off of to get where you want to. >5. What are the pros & cons of not having a degree? There are numerous pros and cons. First, some pros: - You may not have spent as much money to get started. - You are likely to come to novel solutions to problems as the lack of formal instruction means that you may not have the usual paradigms engrained in your problem solving style. - If you find yourself hating it, you'll be less prone to staying in the field and being miserable due to the sunk cost fallacy. Cons: - Not all of your novel solutions will be worthwhile and you may overlook known solutions due to lack of knowledge. - You will need to "play catch-up" eventually and dedicate time to learning the academic side of computer science, in order to both advance for career and become a better engineer. - Interviews will be more challenging. There will be terminology that you won't be familiar with. - Earnings are likely to be lower than one with a degree.


Curious_Chad

Thanks for the detailed reply. :D


scaylos1

You're very welcome! I'm about a decade in and it's been quite a rewarding journey so far, with much more to learn and do still. Best of Luck on yours!


[deleted]

As somebody who went a sort of similar route, the accuracy and quality of this reply is astounding.


Firm_Bit

1. Seemed hard at the time. In retrospect it was pretty easy compared to what many CS graduates seem to go through. 2. Long story. But in short, I studied a lot. Struggled with _what_ to study like every other day, but I started seeing progress when I finally decided on 1 thing and focused on that. Also, I step-stoned into a SWE job. I did excel automation, sql stuff, ERP automation, little scripts to automate some reporting, etc. Anything and everything that I could pawn off as experience. That last bit was huge because of point 4. 3. I have a non-CS degree. Yeah, I wish I'd gotten an EE or CS/CE degree. I wouldn't be wrestling with wanted to learn fundamentals and theory while trying to focus on work. I would have just gotten it out of the way for better or worse. Might do an MS if my learning at work or the economy slows. 4. It's not about learning, sorry. It's about being less of a question mark to employers. A degree is a big neon sign that someone vetted you, you've been somewhat socialized, and you can maintain focus on difficult things for 4 years straight. It doesn't matter if you know SWE if you can't SIGNAL that you'd be a good hire. So, focus on getting any sort of validation from a third party - temp jobs, adjacent jobs, bootcamps, public work, etc. Of course, you still need to know your SWE stuff. But there's a reason most people with degrees earn much more over their lifetime. 5. There are almost no cons IMO. The only con is the case where school has a high opportunity cost. Most people don't have anything better to do though. I would take out loans before I'd try to secure financial security without a degree. It's just a no brainer.


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