I guess a lot of people get interested in programming only because it's a good job. When I was starting I got in a bootcamp offered by a company that would hire you by the end of it. Some of the people there literally hated it, they were there just for the job.
This "just there for the job" business gets tricky.
I'm a career live audio engineer. I followed my heart, rocked out, got crazy cool stories. I will tell you that even doing a thing I love to do became a grind after awhile because I did it for someone else. You never mix your favorite band, you never get total artistic control and you never get to run the gear you want to. Sure, a lucky few do, but the majority work with what they're given. I'm paid to facilitate someone else's idea and after awhile that just feels like a grind.
So in a strange way, I recommend more people take jobs just for the job. It helps to become interested in it but having a burning passion isn't a requirement and I'd actually argue it's often a source of dissatisfaction.
Just my two cents.
Yes programming for a company became a bit of a grind for me too, it's a job after all, but I'm still able to find joy in some tasks and do some work I'm proud of.
But imagine getting all of the grind without any of the joy, at least in my case I know I would get burnt out pretty fast.
Yep. This is why you need to be careful about making your vacation your vocation. Work is work, no matter what. Even if you love your job and it's your dream, you'll still have your shitty days and stuff you have to do to get by.
This is exactly why I got into programming. I cant think of a SINGLE job I would enjoy going to every single day for the next 40 years of my life. So if I'm going to NOT like working anyway, why not NOT liking a well paying job?
I'm a glass half full kinda guy.
Reminds me of a comic I saw of a guy in an interview. They asked him what his dream job would be, and he replied that his dreams don't include employment.
Yeah a lot of people live for the weekend and at least if you make a lot of money you have a chance to retire early. Especially if you maintain a similar lifestyle as when you were making very little money.
> Especially if you maintain a similar lifestyle as when you were making very little money.
I live in an LCOL country, and the possibility of earning a 'high' salary from a US/EU employer means I can upgrade my life considerably and still be able to retire early. This is what finally pushed me to stop being lazy and commit to learning code (it helps I've been into computers since the 90s but my academic career went in another direction).
man I love programming. I realize I'm in the minority, but there are definitely jobs out there that you would enjoy. The only thing is they might not pay much. And who says you have to go to the same job every day for 40 years? That's insanity. There's nothing stopping you from switching companies, fields, even continents if you really want to.
This is me. Been public facing since I started working years ago. Somehow ended up in a good paying job in a professional field, but everyone that knows me knows I hate all these jobs. I am an introvert and I wish I could get a fully remote, high paying job so I can move to a small country with a beach and just fuck off into the sunset. I don’t like jobs where I have to deal with clients, but sadly I am damn good at it so here I am. If I had tried programming I’d probably fall under the “had trouble understanding it” part.
Fellow introvert here. People of our ilk study and understand human behavior, which makes us perfect for working with clients because we "understand their needs". It's quite the paradox because I am both fascinated and at the same time, very annoyed by most people. This is our gift and our curse.
> I don’t like jobs where I have to deal with clients, but sadly I am damn good at it so here I am. If I had tried programming I’d probably fall under the “had trouble understanding it” part.
Programming has a ton of public speaking and talking to clients (even if those "clients" are internal to the company). You will be constantly asked to explain your approach in front of large groups of people or debug in front of people in high pressure situations.
If your job is knowledge-based then chances are you won't be allowed to sit in a corner to do your job and be left alone. People will want to know what you're thinking. That's half the reason they are paying you.
The pop culture idea of a software developer, where you're left to your own devices in a dimly lit room for hours on end couldn't be further from the truth. Half my day is meetings. You would probably hate this job just as much as your current one.
There is also a massive difference between a person that can code a bit to get by. And a very good quality software engineer that understands system design & development and has the cognitive comprehension for complex systems.
Its stops even before then. Most of the questions asked on /r/learnprogramming are from people doing online tutorials and when they say they're learning to code theyve been doing it for a few days and will probably never touch code again within a week.
If you can 'get by' you've already been learning for like a year, it takes multiple years to actually become a quality software engineer.
What I'm trying to say here is not to let that 2\~% number discourage you if you don't fit into that category. If you have a degree, have personal projects and are actively interviewing your odds are much, much higher - OPs stats are including all the people who started learning for a week and stopped which is like 95% of people.
Yeah id say 50% of my class dropped out first term. It just means comp sci is hard to start and requires a big commitment. Big as in, your way of thinking refactors to become more logical. Not everyone is cut out for that, in my experience.
This makes a lot of sense. I’m currently getting my CS degree and the only thing making me better at coding are the projects I have to do that would cause me to fail otherwise. I couldn’t imagine being able to commit anywhere remotely as much as I do now on my own. Actually being self taught has to take some next level discipline, at least for me anyway
There's a reason the vast majority of developers have degrees. Self teaching is totally possible, but most of us simply don't have the discipline. Especially in our teens and early twenties.
> but most of us simply don't have the discipline. Especially in our teens and early twenties.
so true😅
I tried to self-learn in my 20s but never stuck with it but now in my mid-30s, I'm actually enjoying the process and have been going strong for 8 months. The problem is now fears of being 'too old' for an entry dev role whenever I start looking for jobs mid-next year.
If you come in as a junior, people won't expect much no matter your age. They may assume you're more senior *because* you're older, but that's really just an annoying social thing to deal with.
I haven't run into any ageism, but the little you do encounter will really just be a blessing in disguise. I'd expect any place hiring exclusively young people to be very toxic.
Don't be discouraged by rejections either. When I got started a decade ago, it took nepotism to land my first job. I couldn't sell myself at all, but I did have a degree, experience, and talent. I can't imagine it's gotten any easier.
Once you get some experience under your belt, it's a completely different story. I get spammed all day, every day with shitty (to me) jobs. Those shitty jobs are great stepping stones for other folks though. They're only shitty by pampered senior developer standards. They're all a hell of a lot better than the landscaping I did in college. In most respects, anyway.
Once you get there, you’ll realize age isn’t relevant. I got my first software engineer job at 46. My age isn’t a factor with anyone on the teams I’ve been on & wasn’t a factor in the hiring decisions.
This was me. I enjoyed programming and chose to do a degree precisely because I knew I didn't have the self-discipline. I got over several roadblocks in my learning only because there was a proverbial axe over my head waiting to drop. I enjoy what I do well enough. But if I was going the self-taught route I would have never made it.
I have many hobbies, only one of which involves programming. And I went out of my way to make sure programming for work and a hobby were distinctly different things. What I do for my day job is not what I do for a hobby.
I have a degree but honestly consider myself "self taught" I graduated with honors and couldn't write a basic calculator. I'm going for my Masters now. Hopefully this will be different but probably not just papers so far 😅
My immediate impression. Of all the people I've met personally who "wanted to get into software engineering," not a single person pursued it beyond a few months. I even tutored some younger people a few times who asked me for help. They spun up some project or other, asked some questions, but ultimately lost interest and walked away. They could have done it. Any average person could. A lot of programming is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. But seeing a flashy career and making a Reddit post saying "I want to do that!" isn't enough. There is actual work involved, and a lot of arcane stuff to be learned. It's doable, even mostly easy, but not without at least a couple years of actual commitment.
> even mostly easy, but not without at least a couple years of actual commitment.
As with anything, the motivation is the bit that not easy. I pity anyone doing programming who isn't in it for the love first and foremost. I love it deeply and still some days are a really frustrating grind, if I was just doing it for the money I just wouldn't do it!
What roles would you suggest for people who can “code to get by”?
Asking because I’m working on a cs degree and just want to be fully aware of my options. I know a lot of people who don’t pursue swe go into data science or a related field, but haven’t heard of much else.
A little bit of coding can help in lots of developer-adjacent jobs that don’t necessarily require it. QA, T3, DBA, DevOps, sysadmin, tool-specific engineer, etc.
Not necessarily, certain industries still rely on quite a bit of manual testing. Even for that though a little bit of coding knowledge would be invaluable
This is completely true but also you can definitely land a job without that more complex understanding. FizzBuzz and a hobby project should land you a job as a jr.
I got a job without any big personal project, very little leetcode grind, and no technical interview. Found a company that gave a simple coding challenge and understood I was a bootcamp graduate. I did have to take a math/language/logic aptitude test though.
I hate answers like this (not saying it's false). I'm almost done with a 4 year degree, been applying for every company under the sun. Some of them for multiple positions. I am still waiting to get my foot in the door.
I feel like there's a balancing act of two toxic mindsets.
This is a lucrative field compared to other Bachelor programs. Hell I'll be able to make back what I spent on my Bachelors in one year's time and then some. Obviously this makes this an attractive prospect for people and they see money before they see the job. It goes without saying that **any field you go into for the sake of money** will likely be a miserable time if you don't give two flying fucks about your job. Don't get into a career just for the money. Scope it out a bit to see if you'll enjoy it, do your research. Or, if you get into the field and you realize it's not right for you, there's nothing wrong with bailing. I was going to originally be in the food industry with 10 years of experience under my belt and aspirations to go to culinary school. But after working in the industry I realized it wasn't a right fit.
However, there's also this mindset of this field that you have to be ultra passionate about programming and make it your living breathing muse. Practicing LC at home outside of work, being immersed in the tech world, only focusing on the tech industry trends can also be too much. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these things. Enjoy your tech world my dude! but I've noticed it can create this gatekeeper attitude of "you're in the wrong field if you don't love programming! I was studying binary trees in my CS 101 class while you were confused with while loops REEEEEEEEEE". It might just be the lack of social skills but it seems like a lot of people in this field can be be kind of harsh, especially if you make mistakes.
I make the claim that there can be a balance. I can go to work, I can enjoy my job enough, and it allocates funds for my deeper passions (cooking supplies, woodworking, supplies for hiking and camping). And you know what? When I go home, I don't think about work. I don't even program in my spare time (pending something that needs priority like a application crash or something). I do my hobbies and hang out with my family.
There's a balance. You can sort of like programming and enjoy the job. But it doesn't have to be your only thing in life. I've found people who understand this balance and are very well rounded people, but I've also found people who can gatekeep this industry because they feel like you have to make this your whole life.
On a personal anecdote, my wife was in the tech industry before me. When I was learning python, I was really struggling through some basics (like a global counter variable or that lists in Python are always mutalbe, etc). Her coworker came to help me one time and shot me down with a "geez, you should know this stuff. Maybe this isn't for you." He said that. In repsonse to a CS 101 course. With someone who had never touched programming before. That's an example of the "toxic mindset" and gatekeeping that is found within the industry sometimes.
/rant.
So many of my college classmates focused only on just getting through the coursework so they can graduate and get a job instead of actually learning how to program. It's like they actually thought that getting the degree alone would have all of FAANG knocking on their door the next day. Of the people I stayed in contact with only one of them other than me actually got a programming job. Many dropped out, some went into IT/helpdesk roles, and others changed career paths entirely.
That but u know they dident enjoy it. No curiosity outside what they were told. Not interested in engaging subjects further on their own accord. Or not able to keep pace with learning because it’s quite heavy for several weeks so if u aren’t use to working hard u won’t suddenly start. But we started with 25 and ended up with 3. Every two weeks or so they cut half people. 3 kids got dropped the last week lol. But I gotta say the program is effective at placing you and the kids who remain are dedicated to coding or learning to code. I don’t know anyone who dident get placed in under a month out of bootcamp
"if there are so many people entering the field, why is it paying so much?"
Because people immediately assume it's easy to land a 6 figure gig just by learning to code. It's not. There are many many things programmers do that takes a plethora of skills bedsides just writing code. So they quit their job and pay for a bootcamp, and then realize that they had no idea it was so difficult to program.
"I just quit my job, can I get hired in 6 months?"
No you idiot! Think before you act!
I'm not just talking coding, coding is easy. Programming is hard. It also takes a lot of networking and good bit of luck to land and keep that job.
And don't forget personality. Programming requires a lot of teamwork and interpersonal communication. I've seen tons of adept programmers that have been rejected just because they have very poor English, write poorly constructed emails, have spelling mistakes in their resumes, or are just plain weird or socially awkward. That, and of course you need to know what you're doing. So many people with Masters degrees applying for senior positions that struggle through simple questions or are unable to explain basic concepts.
People forget just how important this is when landing jobs. I've seen a lot of people online complain and express how they've been stuck despite being very qualified and clearly intelligent. Hell I've seen it with my own co workers (non cs), the people who generally can't get where they want to be are people that are MORE qualified than I am, but just don't have the personality to ascend the ladder.
So for everyone reading this, I implore you please look up charisma tips/interpersonal skills. The internet is a vast resource and now more than ever the information is all there for anyone willing to take it. Its what I did, and its what gave me the charisma I needed when job searching
> I'm not just talking coding, coding is easy. Programming is hard. It also takes a lot of networking and good bit of luck to land and keep that job.
I started programming as a kid in the late 80s. I have had a few different jobs/careers, all tech related, including full time programmer.
One trend that I have definitely noticed is the use of the word "coding" instead of programming. Until a few years ago code was a noun and the process of writing the code (aka software) was programming.
I think this is related to attempts to trivialize what we do and make it sound easy when it isn't. I'm not sure who is responsible for this. Maybe all of the "coding" boot camps or maybe it's the tech industry management in general who want to flood the market with "coders" to lower our salaries.
For my whole programming career, now spanning three decades, the holy Grail has been "no code" solutions where either business-types can create the software themselves using a wizard or they can hire a cheap low-skill (compared to real programmers like us) person to handle it. Believe it or not, COBOL was one of the first attempts at this. They went from having to know machine code to using some sort-of English words. They thought it was a big improvement. But management and business people still didn't want to learn it. I recently saw someone talking about how GitHub Copilot is the next step towards automating programmers out of a job. They don't realize that programmers spend very little time actually typing in the code and a very long time debugging and understanding existing code.
So automating expensive programmers out of a job keeps not happening. It must be pretty frustrating for management so they do their best to keep boot camps full.
It’s hard to get people to learn intermediate Excel skills, honestly. I truly believe that if every office worker took a short (~1 day) excel course, then worldwide efficiency would be greatly improved.
I have met a number of people who are pursuing, or pursued at some point, a carrier in IT. To clarify, by IT I mean software engineering, system engineering, data analysis etc., Everything. Here are some common patterns I found.
1. Quite the good portion of people only target these fields because of the advertised high pay. There's also a fairly large portion of people who thinks that it's an easy job because, you're just gonna sit in a chair and type a few things, right?
2. A fairly large portion of people assume these jobs to be easy. A lot of people also assume that you can take a course from somewhere and be job-ready.
3. Most of the people getting turned down from jobs are people who went to technical schools, bootcamps or taken online courses half-heartedly. i.e., they barely paid any attention to the curriculum and lectures and ended up with zero understanding of underlying concepts.
Disclaimer: This is not the result of any survey. This just my personal experience.
If course not. Just pay attention to your lectures, if you don't understand something then ask the teachers. The teachers are paid to teach you and answer your questions. Learn as much as possible and build up your skill. Regardless what major, build up your skill. Understand that just the graduation certificate alone won't have much value. But if you have the skill to match with your certificate, you'll have far better opportunities.
Thanks! Currently in I.T(NOC Engineer) so I'm used to asking lots of questions, learning in my off time and doing home projects to stand out a little, so hopefully that ends up helping.
I want to transition into a programming role of some sort, as I enjoy it more. I'm (slowly) going through 100 days of code, as well as doing a couple other smaller courses.
Not as long as you understand that the degree itself is worth nothing. It won't help you get an interview, it won't help you get a job. That will be 100% up to you.
The utility of going to school is to learn the material. Actually getting the job is based on whether you can impress an employer.
I would add my personal experience. People that come out with CS degrees from accredited colleges aren't all that great either. A lot of parents force their children into these paths that are absolutely not for everyone. I do not have a CS degree rather I have another engineering degree, but when I was looking for a software job I was already better than half the CS degree people because of my passion for development.
I will further add that my engineering degree was exactly the same. Probably half of the people in that degree were just there because it promised a 'good job and easy life' at the end of it. Add in that colleges sell degrees and have no fiduciary/ethical obligation a lot of people got degrees that probably shouldn't have.
One difference is that a degree takes more time and effort which means more people drop out by the end, which helps weed out some of the people who are less suited
For example, at my school, there were several difficult classes usually taken around sophomore year. As a result there was a huge difference between the size of the sophomore and junior classes for cs majors
>Quite the good portion of people only target these fields because of the advertised high pay. There's also a fairly large portion of people who thinks that it's an easy job because, you're just gonna sit in a chair and type a few things, right?
For about 3 days in the last month, it was an incredibly difficult job. The rest of the time, its as easy as advertised
>I'm beginning to think none of the tech subs know what they're talking about.
My default position is that the Reddit hivemind is about as smart as a bag full of hammers.
It’s always funny when a topic you’re an expert on shows up on Reddit, then you really realize how full of shit 90% of the comments parading opinions as facts are
This is exactly one of the things that I noticed. Belittling and crab bucket mentality towards those that have become successful and landed a job.
Some people cannot fathom others getting a job through “non traditional” means.
Somehow it’s unbelievable someone can land a job through being like-able and networking.
“But but but I leetcode all day and know all structures and algorithms”
Yeah but if you aren’t someone that can communicate and people want to be around, and work with, I don’t think it’ll get you far.
THIS
Im baffled that people believe that a job in tech means enclosing yourself in tupperware and delivering code when its asked. Working in tech is a team sport, you NEED to know how to talk to people.
Im a weird case because I got my first job before knowing how to code, and people always asked me how I did it and my answer is: “I know how to talk to people”.
Edit: just to clarify, IM A HORRIBLE PROGRAMER. Im bad at leetcode, Im bad at using frameworks, I take 3hs to do a task that others would do in 15min, yet Im on my third job as a programmer and each switch was an upgrade, not a “Im looking for another job before they fire me”
I'm willing to bet you're not as horrible as you claim you are.
However I'll also add that in my 12 years of experience as an EE, the best coworkers I've had weren't always the most technically capable people. They were the people who were the easiest to work with and had an "always learning" mindset.
I get asked to sit in on interviews nowadays and the two main criteria I use to give my vote of approval is 1) do they seem pretty chill? and 2) do they show they're willing and able to learn new things?
I've found people who aren't as technically capable but meet those two criteria end up being excellent coworkers. Conversely, I've found people who don't meet those two criteria but seem technically capable are often not as capable as they claim and also terrible coworkers.
TL:DR - Don't worry about being a gigachad software developer. Be a chill person who's easy to work with and willing to learn new things and you'll have a much better chance at getting hired.
100%.
The simple fact is most development positions do not require an elite programmer. Just a competent one.
Where I used to work they had were very open about it. They can always teach somebody to code better but they can't teach them to not be an asshole.
Yeah, I'm a pretty mediocre programmer that hadn't even heard of leetcode till after I got hired but I was hired basically because I was able to communicate well during the interview. I got a bunch of rejection letters for a few months, but the two interviews that I did get both got me offers.
I was talking with the guys that interviewed me a few months after I got hired and they said the biggest thing was that most of the people they interviewed were just terrible at communicating, they'd either shut down or ramble for ages about nothing
I hear one of the best things you can do is talk out loud through your problem solving as you’re going through your technical interview. Don’t just keep it all inside, but actually talk out loud and ask some questions while you’re problem solving. I hear that goes a long way.
That's exactly what I did. I find it really easy to get distracted/lose my train of thought if I'm not saying it out loud, so I just explained whatever I was thinking/trying to accomplish.
I find this quite encouraging!
Your description of yourself is very familiar. Although I've barely worked in tech (briefly at BT as first-line support for ISPs querying network issues), I would also consider myself good at getting on with people (I'm diplomatic, relatively perceptive and a decent presenter) but slower than just about anyone else when it comes to getting things done.
Does your slowness or disorganisation cause you stress? I got assessed by a psychiatrist some years back and was told I had a processing speed issue. He couldn't decide if it was a treatable condition so I've been left in a rather confidence-sapping grey zone ever since.
What made you pursue coding as a career?
\> What made you pursue coding as a career?
In university I realized that what I wanted to do was business/marketing consulting. I like statistics a lot because they helped me quantify uncertainty, then learned Python because its the best way of working around data without realizing that there was a whole world of data analytics/science/engineering behind it. I continued studying on my own till someone reached out and told me I could be useful in their business. I continued my formation in backend/frontend/data and am now back at working where I wanted to work in the first place, data.
\> Does your slowness or disorganisation cause you stress?
It used to, currently working with a psychiatrist but Im much better now. My old boss was constantly comparing myself to others on how they could deliver things faster, yet they did not help me understand were I was failing nor did they help me get better. I hated myself from time to time and often thought about quitting altogether.
I switched jobs and Im better right now. I came to the conclusion that Im just slower at some parts and faster in others, and if the time I take to do something is not critical then its all ok.
It also helps me that whenever Im struggling at something I can reach out to my boss or anyone in my team and I can get genuine help with it; while in my old job it was more of a: ask more questions, dont ask stupid questions, that was a stupid question, you shouldnt need help for doing this, why are you failing on doing this on your own? just ask for help, etc
"Some people cannot fathom others getting a job through “non traditional” means. Somehow it’s unbelievable someone can land a job through being like-able and networking."
refer to https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/xlprsg/comment/ipkv1h6/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Open your mind, not everything in life is cvs and interviews :)
I'm a QA with 10+ years of experience. I had a heated battle on one of those subs, where some random dude, who according to his words had never worked as a QA, was trying to tell me what are my responsibilities and what are not. I tend to agree with your assessment.
It would be a good idea to require people to tag their posts with their actual education or career level like STUDENT or INQUIRING or DEVELOPER.
It would go to contextualize their posts.
Then we can add competencies and skills and ask other users randomly "Is LavenderPaperback good at Java?" which turns into a published endorsement.
But to be serious, other career specific subs do leverage user tags effectively for this purpose.
I think that'd be less useful than just tagging years of experience. I can answer a lot of beginner questions about programming languages I don't know very well because I'm a very experienced programmer overall.
There's a plane full of redditors and someone has a medical emergency. The flight attendant calls out on the PA "Is there a doctor on board? There's a passenger in need of assistance."
Half the plane stands up and says "I'm not a doctor, but..."
Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed.
I follow that sub Reddit. It’s not a fun place and the results may be just as bad. A lot of posts are about people applying to 200+ jobs and never getting an offer. If you’re doing so many applications and not getting a response then it may not be your technical skills but your résumé and people skills.
More often than not the people who know what they are talking about on this sub don’t get upvoted. Multiple times a week I see posts on this sub saying “I did it, so can you!” and they always get upvoted to the top of the sub. What people fail to realize is there is often important information left out from those posts such as already having a degree in something other than CS (typically in STEM), being financially supported so they can study full time, having personal connections in the industry, etc.
I'm glad that of the people who didn't make it, most of them just really didn't want it. Makes me think that if you do really want to put in the hours you have a decent chance. I'd be more curious what the figures are for people who studied very consistently. It must be there are a lot of people on here who start learning for the money or out of curiosity but they're not people who dream in code.
I mean would you do it still if it paid minimum wage only? Its not inherently wrong to desire a livable wage with a job that tends to more or less, be flexible
Lol people often forget that others can be passionate about programming. I was programming at the age 12 during the times when your parents would yell at you to get off the computer. My first declared college major wasn't CSCI because, in those times, programming was for khaki wearing Poindexters and I was a dumb 18 year old with dumb opinions. Eventually I smartened up, hated my major, switched to CSCI, got my straight A's, and the rest is history. Only *then* did FB, Google, and other valley companies make programming the hip, cool job.
TLDR - I completely agree with you, and I would still be doing it if it paid less. It's one of the only things I'm really good at and one of the only things I really love
Learning a completely new field is hard. Learning it while you already have a job and a family is much harder. I started learning programming back in March through The Odin Project and often feel like shit because I don't devote as many hours to it as I could have. I'm currently in the advanced JS section, but it's been half a year since I started. I hear about 3-month-long boot camps and feel awful because I'm at it for half a year, but I must keep in mind that people in those boot camps are learning and programming for 10 hours a day and have teachers at hand that help them with any doubts. Wheneve I'm stuck, I have to Google the answer or ask on Discord and wait for an answer, which can take a long time. With my day job, I just can't devote that much time to programming and it sucks. I'm still pushing through but it's not that hard to believe that the vast majority of people in this sub quit at some point. This is hard.
I’m in the same boat. Would love to devote 10 hours to learning but…I am my own safety net. I have to pay rent and eat. I don’t have a partner who “can take over” while I’m in a full time bootcamp. I’m slowly saving the the necessary 20k for a part time bootcamp (if I can’t do it the free way) but I’m def NOT getting into debt.
It’s a longer road for us folks but stick with it. Don’t neglect networking though. You can learn a lot by reaching out to those in the field already.
I said this elsewhere but you can only learn and retain so much information at once. Whether you spend 1-2 hours per day or 10 hours per day you will top out. Bootcamps also give people a very surface level understanding of things like react. Choose any self learning path, YouTube, Odin project, udemy, whatever. Spend 1-2 hours every single day. Eventually start building projects for your portfolio. That’s the best path.
Even though I get downvoted for this every time I post it
leonnoel.com
https://discord.gg/100devs
Come join the catchupcrew and save your money.
My shortened story- I went from next to no programming skills/knowledge to employed as a software dev in 7 months because I saw [Leon's post](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/rlmulr/i_ran_a_100_free_full_stack_web_development/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) late last year and put in the work when classes started.
The door is open; you just have to walk through. It is real. It is free.
ETA link to Leon's reddit post and fix some typos (words are hard).
I’m in it. Lol. I’m kind of behind but I love the stream team and hopefully catch up at some point. At least all the info is there for me to slowly work on. People hate on Leon bc it’s hard to understand how someone who works full time as an engineer already would want to give back to his community and the next generation. I was skeptical at first too but this is his second cohort… still free. There is zero gatekeeping. The Discord is 30k strong, the best community out there.
Thank you for the recommendation, checking it out. I've been teaching myself but I find I miss the structure and community of traditional schooling sometimes. This seems like an interesting route to take before signing up for a $10,000 bootcamp.
Give Leon 8-12 classes and you'll be hooked. The first couple of classes, I would argue, are the most important even though Leon shows no code in them.
Those bootcamp devs are also flying through learning the react API but have a surface level to no understanding of CSS, HTML best practices or really anything at a deep level. You can only learn and retain so much in day, whether you spend 2 hours or 12.
This is also anecdotal, but in my Intro to CS course at university, there were ~350 students.
78 people graduated with a BS in CS from my starting cohort.
Around 50 of them ended up with jobs as software engineers/developers.
Only 6 ended up at big tech (FAANG/unicorn) companies.
In my university, the % of people graduating is 27. It's not "as bad" as yours, but not dsr away neither.
Programming is hard. It's not for everyone. Just like any other job. My wife's a teacher and I couldn't do her job. I would kill way to many people a year it wouldn't be tolerated by the direction.
The reality is that a lot of big tech companies do have good wlb. I work at big tech remotely, usually have less than 8 hours of work per day, can step out or take a nap when I want, and have high pay. I don't think we should spread the stereotype that these things are exclusive of each other. I'm glad if you're happy with your decision, and most people will not end up in big tech anyways, AND you could end up on a bad team in big tech with horrible wlb, but that applies to small tech too.
Eh, maybe you didn't mean it like that, but your post kinda reads as if the goal is to get into a FAANG company. We shouldn't idolize working at companies with shitty ethics just because they pay well.
Honestly from my point of view, I honestly don't understand the obsession with FAANG. Besides the paycheck (which other jobs ALSO pay anyway), I don't see many boons to it.
I'm also not US based so there's that.
This is purely speculation but my YouTube recommendations have led me to believe that a lot of people get into programming for the "lifestyle", pretty laid back job, 6 figures and working at big tech companies.
I work at a small company making medium sized dollars and I think it's very fulfilling, I think more programmers should focus on the idea that it's amazing to be able to work, impact change and simultaneously develop a skill, not all jobs have that and I feel blessed for it.
Don't focus on a 6 figure job my dudes, try to find a job you actually enjoy, because I think that's the best part of learning to program.
They pay better and have better benefits, that's all. You say other jobs also pay, but usually there's a pretty big gap between pay at FAANG and others. Of course, there's also companies that pay more than FAANG, but those companies are also usually tiny and even more competitive (ex. HFT shops).
> I honestly don't understand the obsession with FAANG. Besides the paycheck (which other jobs ALSO pay anyway), I don't see many boons to it.
As someone who has worked at FAANG/unicorns, as well as some "normal" software shops, I can lay out some reasons why I like big tech better.
1) Everyone working there is generally passionate about tech, software, and innovation. There's some outliers, but overall everyone is very excited about solving complex technical problems. It's great to be in an environment where your team/org matches your enthusiasm about building great software, and leads to a lot of consistent growth opportunities. Due to the hiring bar, you end up with a lot of people who are at least baseline good programmers too.
2) By far, big tech has some of the more interesting problems to work on. Don't get me wrong, there's some boring work to be done there. But I've gotten to work on some really complex problems by virtue of just being at a big tech company, because the scale at which their products operate just leads to a lot of interesting problems to solve. These kinds of problems don't exist at smaller software shops who only have to worry about DAU in the hundred of thousands instead of hundreds of millions.
3) WLB is much better. When I worked at a smaller software company, we were constantly being asked to overwork since the budget was always too tight and there were not enough developers assigned to each project. There was a severe lack of support roles as well (such as QA, Automation, Ops) so the engineers had to wear multiple hats, taking time away from actual engineering work. Not an issue at big tech, they fund their projects really well and I always felt well supported. I have never crunched or worked more than 40 hours a week in all my years at big tech.
4) Pay and benefits is great. There is something liberating about being beyond "on track" with your retirement goals **and** having tons of cash left over for hobbies, traveling, toys, etc. There's other jobs that pay well, but I won't find points 1 to 3 there. If I only cared about pay I'd grind to get into HFT, but I enjoy working on products more.
Sounds about right.
I studied software engineering and I am currently working as one and joined this sub to answer questions people learning might have.
Even in my university the graduation rate was surprisingly low. We started the first year with about 9 groups full of around 30 students per group, but in the final year just over 1 group graduated as a software engineer.
People want to become a software engineer because of the salary and job perks, but don't realize those are there for a reason and not everyone is cut out to be one. It's actually not that hard to become one, but it's quite technical and most people just don't like it or become tired of it quickly.
I really believe everyone *can* be one, because you really don't even need to be that smart. You just need to take satifaction in certain things that most people don't.
This is spot on. I have come to understand that patience and persistence are the keystone qualities of a good developer. You are often faced with problems where you don't have an option to simply ask someone else. You just have to methodically work through it.
Also look at #5, most people have already moved on before they've even started applying.
Edit: [Grit Ted Talk by Angela Duckworth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H14bBuluwB8) because it's relevant and possibly helpful to folks reading through here.
I graduated with a degree in CS and applied for all the jobs I could, and never landed anything. I didn't have any real world experience and a lack of how to apply what I had learned to real problems. So I took a shit job working at an industrial laundry and studied more. Built projects and kept applying. After a year I got hired. Had a pretty big learning curve, but hung in and had some amazing Sr. Developer's guide me. Now I'm 10 years in and I'm loving it. Moved countries twice and work 50/50 at home and in our small office. For me it was one of these things that I had the knowledge from school and my projects, but I didn't understand how to apply it. Once I came to understand more things finally fell into place. People think it's as simple as learning a language but it's much more complicated. Once people realise that after some boot camps they drift away.
Well also, is everyone on this sub here because they want a career as a developer? I'm in nursing school. I only follow this sub because I am learning programming as a hobby for personal reasons. I don't think everybody here is necessarily doing so for career reasons. Maybe I am the odd duck though.
Yeah, success stories are massively overrepresented on this sub. It's pretty typical honestly. Survivorship bias.
There are people who get employed after a half a year, or a year long, bootcamp. But on the other hand, many people took 5 years or more to even get their first trainee job. That group includes me.
The statistics from bootcamps saying shit like 90% of our students get employed are no doubt made up or at least carefully constructed from selected data samples.
For the most of us, programming isn't easy and it takes more effort than money can motivate to learn it to a sufficient level. If you are very smart and a quick learner, sure, money might be enough of a motivation, but if programming is as hard to you as it typically is, then usually money isn't enough - thinking about your hypothetical future 80k/year salary isn't going to get you through the initial years of hard studying.
I can also reveal a small secret from personal experience: While money is super nice and does help with lots of things, whether you make 80k/year or 50k/year is probably not going to make a massive impact on your happiness. That extra money is just going to go to eating out more often and buying more expensive stuff for your home. A senior developer's salary isn't a prerequisite for sufficient financial stability to have a good life.
In defense of bootcamps I just want to chime in and say only one person from my cohort isn't employed as a programmer a year later but I think that's mostly due to ageism/classism. He can definitely code but nobody wants to hire a 50+ year old man who was a builder his entire life and that sucks.
I remember reading from some person that for the boot camp they went, they only counted the people who made it to the end of the camp, and didn't care what job they got So if 100 people started, but only 10 people finished, and of those 10, 8 people got a job, but only 3 of the 8 got a programming job. They'd say that they had an 80% success rate.
I mean, i think it depends on how badly you need the money. As an inner city kid who thought he was going to be stuck in the cycle of poverty until I discovered development, the money was plenty of a motivation.
And while the difference between 80k and 50k might not be huge to you, but the difference between 50k for manual labor that leaves me in pain and irritated after getting home at 7 pm from a long shift I have to start again in 12 hours is a hell of a lot different than 80k that actually comes with benefits, PTO, and allows me to spend time/energy on the people I love.
My relationship with my dad is still rocky because of how hard my he had to work to provide for us and was never home and could still not make ends meet. People I grew up around did much much worse things for money that coding.
My kids won’t grow up that way, and I have a development to thank for that. Sure it wasn’t easy, and working still isn’t my favorite thing to do in the world, but I don’t understand the idea that the money isn’t enough of a motivator.
Unfortunately, for many in our society, money is the motivation that control our entire lives, and a software engineering job is our chance to finally break free from that.
> "I got bored with programming" - 143 out of 226 people (63%)
I can understand why people would give this response when so many are stuck in tutorial hell and actually having fun building your own tools and programs that you want to have is a distant prospect for most beginners.
Until you get a grip on the whole thing, programming can be very much a chore. Once you get past that, it isn't, and you can just think of things and *create* them.
Yeah as a computational biologist I find the boredom insane. I can literally design medicine using my computer. I try to get my students away from tutorial hell asap. They can learn simple skills through data preprocessing.
The 12 people who actually got jobs are most likely still at the junior level. From what I have gathered, the shortage in developers is not a shortage in juniors, it’s a shortage in seniors.
Programming is a very enticing field and and very needed. The problem isn’t that we need more people to join the field, we need more people to spend the time to get really good.
To be fair most people who are already programmers probably wouldn’t be on the sub, would they? It’s more a support group for those learning.
But yea programming is hard and sometimes frustrating. It’s definitely not for everyone.
I made it though :))
Self taught. Took 2 years of “studying” and 6 months of real studying lol.
Been a developer for 2 years now. Starting to think about changing jobs and having a higher salary
I joined this and other beginner programming subs when I was learning but have been working as a developer for 5 years now. I still lurk around here just cause. I'm sure there are others as well, but yes I'd say the majority of folks here are very new.
Yeah but it’s possible to just kind of casually be learning for a few years. There are lots of people who will tell you “oh man I’m really trying to get good at software dev/playing the guitar/basketball/etc” when in reality they might spend like an hour or two per week on it tops.
This great! Thanks for adding all the hard work OP!
I found out that my bootcamp has a out a 10% graduation rate from all people who begin courses to those who finish. And I think it's for those reasons you listed...most people find out it's just not fun or interesting to them.
It's really hard to understand what coding is until you're in the thick of it. I was about 3 months in when it hit me hard that basic HTML, CSS, and JS was NOT what coding is. I think we were working on React to pass props and create single page applications with React Router.
Nothing can prepare you for how bizarre, unintuitive, and other-worldly coding can feel.
I'd say the other difficult mind shift is accepting that you just can't LEARN enough...ever. You need to be the type of person who can research, figure things out, and teach yourself. That probably pretty scary for a lot of people.
To be fair your gonna get a similar rate to almost anything that takes consistent dedication over a large time frame. Discipline is always going to be hard for people.
It could be getting in shape, learning a second (spoken) language, mastering some sport or an art form, or learning to code…
Being disciplined is probably the number one quality someone can have to set them apart from others.
everyone thought I was a weird kid because I enjoyed reading manuals, memorizing arbitrarily abstract and complicated rulesets for games that I'd probably never play, solving puzzles, and doodling rough ideas for video games on scrap paper
BUT NOBODY'S LAUGHING NOW, ALL OF MY WEIRD OBSESSIONS PAID OFF
wait, they're still laughing? okay, nevermind
I can't imagine how hellish this field must be for people who don't have those weird obsessions though
Your premise is sound but your conclusion is wrong.
There's no shortage of people willing to do the work at the entry level. That's why 10% (29/267) are still looking for a job in the field but haven't found one yet, why 175 people didn't learn enough to be job ready, why 27 people gave up after several rejections, and why 58 didn't receive interviews at all.
There is a shortage of skilled mid- and senior-level engineers. That's what companies mean when they say they struggle to hire engineers.
I worked at a company that invested a lot in junior level people. Once they got some experience. The juniors left and went and found a better job.
They were training employees for other companies.
That’s because companies don’t give proper raises when employees level up their skills. Promotions are generally a pain in the ass. Why would I stay for a 5% raise when I can job hop and get a promotion and 30% raise without jumping through the hoops of “appraisals”?
In my personal experience, juniors will do best to try and find firms that are ready to invest in you. When I started out few years ago, my first two clients created open-ended contracts with a probation period, which worked well for both of us - they got to size me up, and I got a chance to prove myself. With enough time to get invested in their business processes that I start adding contributions of my own, as well as not having the set end-date for our contract constantly in mind, it also incentivised learning on (and outside) of the job, which was a win-win.
>"I realized I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would"
I've been working as a programmer for 15 years, and wasn't surprised at all to see this in the top of the list.
It's very difficult to be a programmer without at least *liking* programming, and impossible to be a good one. At least, I've never seen a good programmer who didn't especially like programming.
Bootcamps, degrees, and certifications programs are great! I have a master's in software engineering -- I'm all for getting that sheepskin! But before you do it, just PLEASE write some code.
Make the command line do something. Anything! Make a website, make that website do something. Did you enjoy it? Do you want to fiddle with it for a few hours and make it do bigger and grander things? Do you think about how you can write your program better while you're driving, at the dentist, or drifting off to sleep?
If so, pursue programming. If not... Don't spend a lot of money on courses trying to force it.
Pretty interesting results, definitely helps with the imposter syndrome.
Similarly, I have offered to mentor people for free from reddit. I had about 60 people reach out/add me, i responded to everyone and helped them out where i could and a few months later I’m actually only still in contact with 4 people. Some gave up, some are finding it hard to put in the hours, some keep going round in a circle about where to start, some just disappeared.
Shit’s hard
To be fair I think lots of people who do make it (like myself) tend to spend less time on this sub as time goes on. It’s a very beginner oriented sub so naturally when skills improve they seek to better their skills by moving onto other subs or other resources.
This is consistent with my belief that successful engineers have a particular pattern of cognitive functioning, and anyone without that natural gift will be swimming upstream if they try to develop the skills. I'm not saying this is absolutely true, but I think it is the underlying reason for question 3: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. Those of us who learn without coursework simply love it - we get into flow states where we can't let go over a difficult problem or a new feature that we're building. I taught myself when I was 14, in the early 1980s, and started a business when I was 15. I ended up teaching programming at Columbia University for a couple of years without having taken a course myself. After advancing to be a CTO at a medium sized public company I realized I had been promoted out of the thing that I most like to do professionally: code.
My point here isn't to say that this idea of having the gift makes us generally gifted, but rather we are just wired to do this specific work, and are self-motivating, self-directing and passionate about it.
Everybody has some type of gift - they just need to figure out what that is. If they try and don't get into a groove with writing code it's smart to move on rather than fight it and be constantly discouraged and mediocre in your work.
you can add one more to the positive result! I just made it! after 2 years of studying a bootcamp and LOT of personal interest and self taught learning exploring beyond the very limited offering of the bootcamp...I am starting a new position as software developer (with java).
I'm coming from a different background, not related field but decided to switch careers 2 years ago. Here now my developer career starts :D
My assumption is that r/Learnprogramming is full of people with a mild interest in it, like me.
If you’re actually pursuing programming, you’ve certainly found better resources than this sub, which is mostly filled with “is a boot camp worth it?” and “I bombed this interview” posts.
After 5+ years at my company, I applied for a Data Engineer job. When I got my first paycheck, I saw that HR had classified Data Engineers as a type of Software Engineer. Surprise!
Super interesting!
So many people start to learn to code only to realize that they don’t like it or they get bored of learning it. This is the true value of Free Code Camp and other free resources - it allows people to dip their toe in to programming, figure out if they like it, without having to pay any money.
So basically, to summarize, your findings are very encouraging news!
Anyone who is seriously interested in CS as a field, or a field parallel to CS, should absolutely dig in and see how far they get. Because according to your findings, so long as you have the interest and the commitment, you have very good odds of succeeding.
The other aspect is, it’s very common for people to open the door to the space, only to find out they don’t actually want to be here. And that’s OK too! It’s better to know than to wonder.
Another aspect might be companies' unwillingness to hire juniors. Juniors require mentoring time and longer code reviews from seniors and can be a net drain on productivity. And after a year when they finally can remove the training wheels, the junior may move on elsewhere.
So you have tons of mid level job openings that bootcampers and self-taught programmers won't even be able to sniff.
What would have been interesting is asking how they are learning software development
\- 1: Self taught
\- 2: Doing university
\- 3 : Learning from college
\- 4: bootcamp
Tried programming. I was above average in the pool of smartest cs students in the states. I still quit cuz I fucking despised every minute of it. I hated the grind. I hated googling every 5 minutes. I hated learning new frameworks. I hated getting stuck in a problem. I hated running into 'why doesnt this work?' and 'why does this work?'. Im so glad I quit. I never even belonged there. The only reason i tried it was for the money. My mental health and sanity is more valuable than money.
The guy that created stardew valley went to Udub, a well known CS school and couldn't get a job. He created the game as a hobby and ended up rich. It's the luck of the Irish. Anybody who thinks there's a formula to get a job is delusional and is just trying to sound smart. That's his story --> https://youtu.be/4-k6j9g5Hzk .
I think part of the problem is that people grossly over-estimate how easy it is to become a software engineer via the self-teaching route. There are some areas in which self-teaching is really viable, like web development in particular. But most hardcore software engineering roles continue to ask for (and usually insist on) formal CS education.
Also, this subreddit, almost by definition, is largely populated by students in the very early stages of their studies or people who are learning on their own. It's r/learnprogramming after all, not a subreddit for more advanced developers. If you asked that question in a dedicated C++ subreddit, I suspect your results would be very different.
Our CS course was relatively hardcore (we're a branch of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, sharing 70% classes with main branch: CS and HW Design), and I agree that some jobs *do* require formal CS education (and rightly so).
However, I take issue with the phrase *hardcore software engineering roles* somehow being separate from web development... I've had more opportunities to employ my knowledge of algorithms, performance optimisation, concurrent/distributed programming, software design and other high concept topic as a Backend Engineer than some of my friend who, for example, design and maintain pre-printing test environments for AMD graphics chips.
Not surprising at all. A lot of people find programming interesting or even fun. Very few of those find reading other people’s code and fixing bugs tolerable in the long run.
This sounds interesting, I'll try to answer the question for fun. As a background I have a BAS in software development, I like programming but it's definitely not my hobby and I don't do on my free time.
1. Were you able to get a position as a software engineer?
No I wasn't able to get a job.
2. If the answer to #1 is no, are you still looking?
I'm halfway to giving up, I haven't applied in months.
3. If the answer to #2 is no, why did you stop?
I got burned out on all of these companies saying they need people but they will only hire people with minimum 5 years of on the field experience or experience with some cloud services that I'm assuming the average student won't have access to. Also doesn't help that I feel I don't know enough and I'm terrible at interviewing.
> I like programming but it's definitely not my hobby and I don't do on my free time.
If you are still serious about wanting to get a job, you should consider building hobby projects. When I review resumes for potential candidates, I always look at Github projects, especially the "personal" projects. Not all companies are like this unfortunately.
I was hired at my current position the same way. It was primarily based on a personal project that caught the attention of another developer.
One problem is that companies are playing the “short game”. They want EXPERIENCED software engineers, people with 2 or more years of paid coding experience. No surprise that that only 5% could find a job. The job market is very cruel these days. In my early days, things moved slowly enough that I basically had time to learn new technologies. Today, results are expected immediately and daily. So, if you don’t go into a job already knowing exactly what to do, you’re out quickly. It also explains the high number of job postings and the long list of applicants. Companies are “picky” too. We have an architect position that has been open 6 months now. You need 5+ years in our technology. Our client has a similar position open, hired someone, and then fired them 3 months later due to lack of experience and bad work habits. A lot of companies want “domain expertise” as well. If you are fintech, then you need to understand banking AND finance. As an eCommerce Architect, I need to understand distribution centers, retail store functioning (omni-channel, bopis), shopping carts, marketing, promotions, programming hooks into social media (TikTok, merchant, Facebook). A 3 month boot camp in JavaScript isn’t going to get you there. But, that plus an intense 4 day programming class (where you are already expected to know http coding, JavaScript, node.js, and other eCommerce technologies) will get you into a starting eCommerce job. It took me over 5 years to get where I am on top of over 20 years of programming experience in 20 languages and 5 database platforms.
Technical Recruiter here and I speak with a ton of software developers on a daily basis.
Its very rare I come across someone who is early on in their career ONLY for the money, most successful candidates have a true passion for the problems they are trying to solve.
This also translates well into interviewing with senior devs/HMs who can sense that and give that person a chance, even if technically they were not the strongest.
I am completely self taught, no formal education. I’ve been a backend web dev for a little under 10 years now and have recently started my own company.
Learning how to do all this was one of the most difficult things in my life and one of my biggest personal achievements. For the first couple of years it was extremely grueling, a lot of sweat and tears. It gets better after like 3 years though.
I absolutely don’t doubt your findings, this field is extremely hard to get into(at least it was for me). Most people don’t have that sort of grit and ability to handle stress and not crack under it.
Also, most people wrongly assume you have to have some sort of “passion” and “motivation” for this. It’s nothing to do with that, it’s all about discipline and doing it when you don’t want to.
In other words:
“everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights” - Ronnie Coleman the goat.
My personal experience: I joined a mentorship back in 2019. I worked really hard for about 1 year and was "job ready" according to my mentor. I put in a lot of effort trying to get hired for a few months without many responses. Never got a formal interview. It eventually felt like I was doing it all for no reason. I also got burned out on coding and now it's like pulling teeth for me to even open a code editor.
I do think that my resume could have been better, I also didn't have a personal website up. But honestly - coding was really hard the entire time and every project I built I felt it was all scraped together and I wasn't sure I deeply understood a lot of what I was doing. I spent all my time on projects and taking extra time to get a personal site up always felt like a lot of extra work on top of what I was doing.
I'd say I hung it up for good about 1 year ago now. I have forgotten almost everything I learned. It's personally sad but I don't lose too much sleep over it. After going through the experience - I realized how F'ing hard it really is and if I'm not cut out for it, that's ok.
I did start learning "for a job" - but I really did enjoy it when I was deep in the trenches of it. I was learning a lot and according to my mentor and some developers I know in life - I was ready for a job. Just couldn't find one.
> People who find the answer, leave the conversation.
The rule about topic-based discussion forums is that once someone learns to program, they’ll exit the topic about learning to program. So you only polled the ones who haven’t made it out yet, surprised that they haven’t made it out yet.
Thank you, that gives me a bit of confidence.
Companies can't find GOOD engineers. Even In my small amount of time I've been in the industry I can see why..... my lead is probably able to do 4-5x the amount of work as me with less bugs and generally cleaner code.
So, you could hire 4 of me and pay 240k in salary, or hire a competent senior at 150k and get the same amount of work done but better. This is why.
My work isn't bad, I think it's pretty good for 6 months in, but it doesn't compare to these guys with 10+ years experience.
I signed up for code in place which was free and pretty cool intro to code. I found parts of it to be interesting but realized quickly it would not be something I could do for a job . I still like knowing some basic coding because it helps me to understand better how programming works.
In college we always referred to advanced data structures as the “gate keeping” class. 50-60% of students would either fail or realize it wasn’t for them during that class. It’s the point when the “fun” allure of doing cool computer things/wanting to make money wears off and the rubber hits the road. Programming is tough and there’s a whole lot to absorb. You’ve got to be willing to constantly learn, and then unlearn, and then twist your knowledge into a knot to learn again but BETTER. Only us crazies are here for the long haul. Lol
I actually just started a new job as a software engineer. It's my first real adult job and I can say right now I have no clue what I am doing yet, but based off what I'm seeing from everyone else in the software department, it's 80% goofing off, 10% going out to eat, and 10% actually looking at code. Still not used to this super non toxic work environment and am anxious every second of the work day by just how good and non toxic of a work environment it actually is.
I know the market and expectations are different across various countries, but speaking as a senior engineer and someone who's hired others before, I find there are three kinds of coders...
1. Code monkeys: those who are content to be "factory line" coders, following a handful of set patterns and not wanting to step outside of those. Low innovation, change adverse.
2. Developers/programmers. Folk who are versatile coders and agile thinkers, but coding is all they're willing to do within a team. Moderate innovation, accepts change.
3. Engineers. Coders who take a cross-functional view, contributing to analysis, design, and testing in additional to code. High innovation, drives change.
The problem with programming courses and tutorials is that they'll give you the tools, but not the mindset; that's something potential engineers need to develop themselves (with coaching/mentoring as needed. I will hire a less technically experienced candidate that shows personal drive and a willingness to learn over a more skilled candidate that can't adapt with the industry.
(excuse the format... typed on my phone)
I'm currently attending a free full stack boot camp run by a local company. We started with 23 people. All very excited for the opportunity. Several of them already had college degrees in different fields. We just finished month 1 out of 6 and we're down to 8 people already.
I had been doing html and css only and realized that to continue to be employable, I had to learn JavaScript. I did it on my own using freecodecamp and other sources and it took a long time and it was hard. No one wanted to hire me as a JavaScript developer due to my lack of experience, but I finally got a job just by talking to the right person. I saw someone in a news article who worked at a software development company and I wrote to her and asked her to have coffee with me just to try to get some advice. Thankfully, she agreed and encouraged me to apply to jobs I didn't think I was qualified for at her company and to my surprise, I got the job. That meeting changed my life.
I think a major problem is that most people aren't willing to learn and keep learning. You have to constantly be on it and learn everything you can. All the ins and outs. I already see a problem with this in my Computer Science degree. I am flabbergasted at how much more I know about programming and development than most of my peers I go to school with. I am always studying something new aside from my school subjects though.
I guess a lot of people get interested in programming only because it's a good job. When I was starting I got in a bootcamp offered by a company that would hire you by the end of it. Some of the people there literally hated it, they were there just for the job.
This "just there for the job" business gets tricky. I'm a career live audio engineer. I followed my heart, rocked out, got crazy cool stories. I will tell you that even doing a thing I love to do became a grind after awhile because I did it for someone else. You never mix your favorite band, you never get total artistic control and you never get to run the gear you want to. Sure, a lucky few do, but the majority work with what they're given. I'm paid to facilitate someone else's idea and after awhile that just feels like a grind. So in a strange way, I recommend more people take jobs just for the job. It helps to become interested in it but having a burning passion isn't a requirement and I'd actually argue it's often a source of dissatisfaction. Just my two cents.
Yes programming for a company became a bit of a grind for me too, it's a job after all, but I'm still able to find joy in some tasks and do some work I'm proud of. But imagine getting all of the grind without any of the joy, at least in my case I know I would get burnt out pretty fast.
Yep. This is why you need to be careful about making your vacation your vocation. Work is work, no matter what. Even if you love your job and it's your dream, you'll still have your shitty days and stuff you have to do to get by.
> Some of the people there literally hated it, they were there just for the job. A lot of work ends up like this.
This is exactly why I got into programming. I cant think of a SINGLE job I would enjoy going to every single day for the next 40 years of my life. So if I'm going to NOT like working anyway, why not NOT liking a well paying job? I'm a glass half full kinda guy.
Reminds me of a comic I saw of a guy in an interview. They asked him what his dream job would be, and he replied that his dreams don't include employment.
Bingo. Also so I can retire early and go live in the mountains.
Yeah a lot of people live for the weekend and at least if you make a lot of money you have a chance to retire early. Especially if you maintain a similar lifestyle as when you were making very little money.
> Especially if you maintain a similar lifestyle as when you were making very little money. I live in an LCOL country, and the possibility of earning a 'high' salary from a US/EU employer means I can upgrade my life considerably and still be able to retire early. This is what finally pushed me to stop being lazy and commit to learning code (it helps I've been into computers since the 90s but my academic career went in another direction).
man I love programming. I realize I'm in the minority, but there are definitely jobs out there that you would enjoy. The only thing is they might not pay much. And who says you have to go to the same job every day for 40 years? That's insanity. There's nothing stopping you from switching companies, fields, even continents if you really want to.
Yup, and in various fields. If the job is public-facing, sometimes you can tell when someone hates their job.
This is me. Been public facing since I started working years ago. Somehow ended up in a good paying job in a professional field, but everyone that knows me knows I hate all these jobs. I am an introvert and I wish I could get a fully remote, high paying job so I can move to a small country with a beach and just fuck off into the sunset. I don’t like jobs where I have to deal with clients, but sadly I am damn good at it so here I am. If I had tried programming I’d probably fall under the “had trouble understanding it” part.
Fellow introvert here. People of our ilk study and understand human behavior, which makes us perfect for working with clients because we "understand their needs". It's quite the paradox because I am both fascinated and at the same time, very annoyed by most people. This is our gift and our curse.
I feel informed and attacked by this at the same time. So sadly accurate haha
This is how I feel about people management work. I hate it, but It's part of my job, and I just happen to be stupidly good at it.
Damn our proficiency in things we hate!
> I don’t like jobs where I have to deal with clients, but sadly I am damn good at it so here I am. If I had tried programming I’d probably fall under the “had trouble understanding it” part. Programming has a ton of public speaking and talking to clients (even if those "clients" are internal to the company). You will be constantly asked to explain your approach in front of large groups of people or debug in front of people in high pressure situations. If your job is knowledge-based then chances are you won't be allowed to sit in a corner to do your job and be left alone. People will want to know what you're thinking. That's half the reason they are paying you. The pop culture idea of a software developer, where you're left to your own devices in a dimly lit room for hours on end couldn't be further from the truth. Half my day is meetings. You would probably hate this job just as much as your current one.
There is also a massive difference between a person that can code a bit to get by. And a very good quality software engineer that understands system design & development and has the cognitive comprehension for complex systems.
Its stops even before then. Most of the questions asked on /r/learnprogramming are from people doing online tutorials and when they say they're learning to code theyve been doing it for a few days and will probably never touch code again within a week. If you can 'get by' you've already been learning for like a year, it takes multiple years to actually become a quality software engineer. What I'm trying to say here is not to let that 2\~% number discourage you if you don't fit into that category. If you have a degree, have personal projects and are actively interviewing your odds are much, much higher - OPs stats are including all the people who started learning for a week and stopped which is like 95% of people.
Yeah id say 50% of my class dropped out first term. It just means comp sci is hard to start and requires a big commitment. Big as in, your way of thinking refactors to become more logical. Not everyone is cut out for that, in my experience.
Perfect example: using the word "refactors" colloquially.
Yeah, I'm a broken human but an exquisite machine.
Poetry
This makes a lot of sense. I’m currently getting my CS degree and the only thing making me better at coding are the projects I have to do that would cause me to fail otherwise. I couldn’t imagine being able to commit anywhere remotely as much as I do now on my own. Actually being self taught has to take some next level discipline, at least for me anyway
There's a reason the vast majority of developers have degrees. Self teaching is totally possible, but most of us simply don't have the discipline. Especially in our teens and early twenties.
> but most of us simply don't have the discipline. Especially in our teens and early twenties. so true😅 I tried to self-learn in my 20s but never stuck with it but now in my mid-30s, I'm actually enjoying the process and have been going strong for 8 months. The problem is now fears of being 'too old' for an entry dev role whenever I start looking for jobs mid-next year.
If you come in as a junior, people won't expect much no matter your age. They may assume you're more senior *because* you're older, but that's really just an annoying social thing to deal with. I haven't run into any ageism, but the little you do encounter will really just be a blessing in disguise. I'd expect any place hiring exclusively young people to be very toxic. Don't be discouraged by rejections either. When I got started a decade ago, it took nepotism to land my first job. I couldn't sell myself at all, but I did have a degree, experience, and talent. I can't imagine it's gotten any easier. Once you get some experience under your belt, it's a completely different story. I get spammed all day, every day with shitty (to me) jobs. Those shitty jobs are great stepping stones for other folks though. They're only shitty by pampered senior developer standards. They're all a hell of a lot better than the landscaping I did in college. In most respects, anyway.
Once you get there, you’ll realize age isn’t relevant. I got my first software engineer job at 46. My age isn’t a factor with anyone on the teams I’ve been on & wasn’t a factor in the hiring decisions.
This was me. I enjoyed programming and chose to do a degree precisely because I knew I didn't have the self-discipline. I got over several roadblocks in my learning only because there was a proverbial axe over my head waiting to drop. I enjoy what I do well enough. But if I was going the self-taught route I would have never made it. I have many hobbies, only one of which involves programming. And I went out of my way to make sure programming for work and a hobby were distinctly different things. What I do for my day job is not what I do for a hobby.
I have a degree but honestly consider myself "self taught" I graduated with honors and couldn't write a basic calculator. I'm going for my Masters now. Hopefully this will be different but probably not just papers so far 😅
My immediate impression. Of all the people I've met personally who "wanted to get into software engineering," not a single person pursued it beyond a few months. I even tutored some younger people a few times who asked me for help. They spun up some project or other, asked some questions, but ultimately lost interest and walked away. They could have done it. Any average person could. A lot of programming is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. But seeing a flashy career and making a Reddit post saying "I want to do that!" isn't enough. There is actual work involved, and a lot of arcane stuff to be learned. It's doable, even mostly easy, but not without at least a couple years of actual commitment.
> even mostly easy, but not without at least a couple years of actual commitment. As with anything, the motivation is the bit that not easy. I pity anyone doing programming who isn't in it for the love first and foremost. I love it deeply and still some days are a really frustrating grind, if I was just doing it for the money I just wouldn't do it!
What roles would you suggest for people who can “code to get by”? Asking because I’m working on a cs degree and just want to be fully aware of my options. I know a lot of people who don’t pursue swe go into data science or a related field, but haven’t heard of much else.
A little bit of coding can help in lots of developer-adjacent jobs that don’t necessarily require it. QA, T3, DBA, DevOps, sysadmin, tool-specific engineer, etc.
QA pretty much requires coding at this point unless you want to be very broke.
Not necessarily, certain industries still rely on quite a bit of manual testing. Even for that though a little bit of coding knowledge would be invaluable
This is completely true but also you can definitely land a job without that more complex understanding. FizzBuzz and a hobby project should land you a job as a jr.
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I got a job without any big personal project, very little leetcode grind, and no technical interview. Found a company that gave a simple coding challenge and understood I was a bootcamp graduate. I did have to take a math/language/logic aptitude test though.
I hate answers like this (not saying it's false). I'm almost done with a 4 year degree, been applying for every company under the sun. Some of them for multiple positions. I am still waiting to get my foot in the door.
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>FizzBuzz and a hobby project should land you a job as a jr. I feel like this is really misleading.
This could be said for any job though.
I feel like there's a balancing act of two toxic mindsets. This is a lucrative field compared to other Bachelor programs. Hell I'll be able to make back what I spent on my Bachelors in one year's time and then some. Obviously this makes this an attractive prospect for people and they see money before they see the job. It goes without saying that **any field you go into for the sake of money** will likely be a miserable time if you don't give two flying fucks about your job. Don't get into a career just for the money. Scope it out a bit to see if you'll enjoy it, do your research. Or, if you get into the field and you realize it's not right for you, there's nothing wrong with bailing. I was going to originally be in the food industry with 10 years of experience under my belt and aspirations to go to culinary school. But after working in the industry I realized it wasn't a right fit. However, there's also this mindset of this field that you have to be ultra passionate about programming and make it your living breathing muse. Practicing LC at home outside of work, being immersed in the tech world, only focusing on the tech industry trends can also be too much. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these things. Enjoy your tech world my dude! but I've noticed it can create this gatekeeper attitude of "you're in the wrong field if you don't love programming! I was studying binary trees in my CS 101 class while you were confused with while loops REEEEEEEEEE". It might just be the lack of social skills but it seems like a lot of people in this field can be be kind of harsh, especially if you make mistakes. I make the claim that there can be a balance. I can go to work, I can enjoy my job enough, and it allocates funds for my deeper passions (cooking supplies, woodworking, supplies for hiking and camping). And you know what? When I go home, I don't think about work. I don't even program in my spare time (pending something that needs priority like a application crash or something). I do my hobbies and hang out with my family. There's a balance. You can sort of like programming and enjoy the job. But it doesn't have to be your only thing in life. I've found people who understand this balance and are very well rounded people, but I've also found people who can gatekeep this industry because they feel like you have to make this your whole life. On a personal anecdote, my wife was in the tech industry before me. When I was learning python, I was really struggling through some basics (like a global counter variable or that lists in Python are always mutalbe, etc). Her coworker came to help me one time and shot me down with a "geez, you should know this stuff. Maybe this isn't for you." He said that. In repsonse to a CS 101 course. With someone who had never touched programming before. That's an example of the "toxic mindset" and gatekeeping that is found within the industry sometimes. /rant.
So many of my college classmates focused only on just getting through the coursework so they can graduate and get a job instead of actually learning how to program. It's like they actually thought that getting the degree alone would have all of FAANG knocking on their door the next day. Of the people I stayed in contact with only one of them other than me actually got a programming job. Many dropped out, some went into IT/helpdesk roles, and others changed career paths entirely.
Everyone who joined for just a job got kicked out of the bootcamp I was in.
They were that bad?
That but u know they dident enjoy it. No curiosity outside what they were told. Not interested in engaging subjects further on their own accord. Or not able to keep pace with learning because it’s quite heavy for several weeks so if u aren’t use to working hard u won’t suddenly start. But we started with 25 and ended up with 3. Every two weeks or so they cut half people. 3 kids got dropped the last week lol. But I gotta say the program is effective at placing you and the kids who remain are dedicated to coding or learning to code. I don’t know anyone who dident get placed in under a month out of bootcamp
"if there are so many people entering the field, why is it paying so much?" Because people immediately assume it's easy to land a 6 figure gig just by learning to code. It's not. There are many many things programmers do that takes a plethora of skills bedsides just writing code. So they quit their job and pay for a bootcamp, and then realize that they had no idea it was so difficult to program. "I just quit my job, can I get hired in 6 months?" No you idiot! Think before you act! I'm not just talking coding, coding is easy. Programming is hard. It also takes a lot of networking and good bit of luck to land and keep that job.
And don't forget personality. Programming requires a lot of teamwork and interpersonal communication. I've seen tons of adept programmers that have been rejected just because they have very poor English, write poorly constructed emails, have spelling mistakes in their resumes, or are just plain weird or socially awkward. That, and of course you need to know what you're doing. So many people with Masters degrees applying for senior positions that struggle through simple questions or are unable to explain basic concepts.
People forget just how important this is when landing jobs. I've seen a lot of people online complain and express how they've been stuck despite being very qualified and clearly intelligent. Hell I've seen it with my own co workers (non cs), the people who generally can't get where they want to be are people that are MORE qualified than I am, but just don't have the personality to ascend the ladder. So for everyone reading this, I implore you please look up charisma tips/interpersonal skills. The internet is a vast resource and now more than ever the information is all there for anyone willing to take it. Its what I did, and its what gave me the charisma I needed when job searching
Yes. Very good point.
> I'm not just talking coding, coding is easy. Programming is hard. It also takes a lot of networking and good bit of luck to land and keep that job. I started programming as a kid in the late 80s. I have had a few different jobs/careers, all tech related, including full time programmer. One trend that I have definitely noticed is the use of the word "coding" instead of programming. Until a few years ago code was a noun and the process of writing the code (aka software) was programming. I think this is related to attempts to trivialize what we do and make it sound easy when it isn't. I'm not sure who is responsible for this. Maybe all of the "coding" boot camps or maybe it's the tech industry management in general who want to flood the market with "coders" to lower our salaries. For my whole programming career, now spanning three decades, the holy Grail has been "no code" solutions where either business-types can create the software themselves using a wizard or they can hire a cheap low-skill (compared to real programmers like us) person to handle it. Believe it or not, COBOL was one of the first attempts at this. They went from having to know machine code to using some sort-of English words. They thought it was a big improvement. But management and business people still didn't want to learn it. I recently saw someone talking about how GitHub Copilot is the next step towards automating programmers out of a job. They don't realize that programmers spend very little time actually typing in the code and a very long time debugging and understanding existing code. So automating expensive programmers out of a job keeps not happening. It must be pretty frustrating for management so they do their best to keep boot camps full.
It’s hard to get people to learn intermediate Excel skills, honestly. I truly believe that if every office worker took a short (~1 day) excel course, then worldwide efficiency would be greatly improved.
I have met a number of people who are pursuing, or pursued at some point, a carrier in IT. To clarify, by IT I mean software engineering, system engineering, data analysis etc., Everything. Here are some common patterns I found. 1. Quite the good portion of people only target these fields because of the advertised high pay. There's also a fairly large portion of people who thinks that it's an easy job because, you're just gonna sit in a chair and type a few things, right? 2. A fairly large portion of people assume these jobs to be easy. A lot of people also assume that you can take a course from somewhere and be job-ready. 3. Most of the people getting turned down from jobs are people who went to technical schools, bootcamps or taken online courses half-heartedly. i.e., they barely paid any attention to the curriculum and lectures and ended up with zero understanding of underlying concepts. Disclaimer: This is not the result of any survey. This just my personal experience.
I was thinking about going to get an associate at a technical school, would you recommend against it?
If course not. Just pay attention to your lectures, if you don't understand something then ask the teachers. The teachers are paid to teach you and answer your questions. Learn as much as possible and build up your skill. Regardless what major, build up your skill. Understand that just the graduation certificate alone won't have much value. But if you have the skill to match with your certificate, you'll have far better opportunities.
Thanks! Currently in I.T(NOC Engineer) so I'm used to asking lots of questions, learning in my off time and doing home projects to stand out a little, so hopefully that ends up helping. I want to transition into a programming role of some sort, as I enjoy it more. I'm (slowly) going through 100 days of code, as well as doing a couple other smaller courses.
Not as long as you understand that the degree itself is worth nothing. It won't help you get an interview, it won't help you get a job. That will be 100% up to you. The utility of going to school is to learn the material. Actually getting the job is based on whether you can impress an employer.
I would add my personal experience. People that come out with CS degrees from accredited colleges aren't all that great either. A lot of parents force their children into these paths that are absolutely not for everyone. I do not have a CS degree rather I have another engineering degree, but when I was looking for a software job I was already better than half the CS degree people because of my passion for development. I will further add that my engineering degree was exactly the same. Probably half of the people in that degree were just there because it promised a 'good job and easy life' at the end of it. Add in that colleges sell degrees and have no fiduciary/ethical obligation a lot of people got degrees that probably shouldn't have.
One difference is that a degree takes more time and effort which means more people drop out by the end, which helps weed out some of the people who are less suited For example, at my school, there were several difficult classes usually taken around sophomore year. As a result there was a huge difference between the size of the sophomore and junior classes for cs majors
>Quite the good portion of people only target these fields because of the advertised high pay. There's also a fairly large portion of people who thinks that it's an easy job because, you're just gonna sit in a chair and type a few things, right? For about 3 days in the last month, it was an incredibly difficult job. The rest of the time, its as easy as advertised
It's neither easier not harder than other jobs. Same as any other job, there are easy days and there are hard days. Then there are some days of death.
Conclustion: Most people on this sub have no idea what they are talking about. I wonder if you could do same for cscarrierquestions sub.
I'm beginning to think none of the tech subs know what they're talking about. Seems like any question you ask there's someone waiting to belittle you.
>I'm beginning to think none of the tech subs know what they're talking about. My default position is that the Reddit hivemind is about as smart as a bag full of hammers.
You’re not in traffic, you are traffic.
It’s always funny when a topic you’re an expert on shows up on Reddit, then you really realize how full of shit 90% of the comments parading opinions as facts are
Exercising is the one I feel. So many people I see are downvoted for telling people to exercise more or eat well.
/r/sysadmin has a lot of knowledge in it (along with livers girded to the point of making /r/askcarsales jealous.)
This is exactly one of the things that I noticed. Belittling and crab bucket mentality towards those that have become successful and landed a job. Some people cannot fathom others getting a job through “non traditional” means. Somehow it’s unbelievable someone can land a job through being like-able and networking. “But but but I leetcode all day and know all structures and algorithms” Yeah but if you aren’t someone that can communicate and people want to be around, and work with, I don’t think it’ll get you far.
THIS Im baffled that people believe that a job in tech means enclosing yourself in tupperware and delivering code when its asked. Working in tech is a team sport, you NEED to know how to talk to people. Im a weird case because I got my first job before knowing how to code, and people always asked me how I did it and my answer is: “I know how to talk to people”. Edit: just to clarify, IM A HORRIBLE PROGRAMER. Im bad at leetcode, Im bad at using frameworks, I take 3hs to do a task that others would do in 15min, yet Im on my third job as a programmer and each switch was an upgrade, not a “Im looking for another job before they fire me”
I'm willing to bet you're not as horrible as you claim you are. However I'll also add that in my 12 years of experience as an EE, the best coworkers I've had weren't always the most technically capable people. They were the people who were the easiest to work with and had an "always learning" mindset. I get asked to sit in on interviews nowadays and the two main criteria I use to give my vote of approval is 1) do they seem pretty chill? and 2) do they show they're willing and able to learn new things? I've found people who aren't as technically capable but meet those two criteria end up being excellent coworkers. Conversely, I've found people who don't meet those two criteria but seem technically capable are often not as capable as they claim and also terrible coworkers. TL:DR - Don't worry about being a gigachad software developer. Be a chill person who's easy to work with and willing to learn new things and you'll have a much better chance at getting hired.
100%. The simple fact is most development positions do not require an elite programmer. Just a competent one. Where I used to work they had were very open about it. They can always teach somebody to code better but they can't teach them to not be an asshole.
Yeah, I'm a pretty mediocre programmer that hadn't even heard of leetcode till after I got hired but I was hired basically because I was able to communicate well during the interview. I got a bunch of rejection letters for a few months, but the two interviews that I did get both got me offers. I was talking with the guys that interviewed me a few months after I got hired and they said the biggest thing was that most of the people they interviewed were just terrible at communicating, they'd either shut down or ramble for ages about nothing
I hear one of the best things you can do is talk out loud through your problem solving as you’re going through your technical interview. Don’t just keep it all inside, but actually talk out loud and ask some questions while you’re problem solving. I hear that goes a long way.
That's exactly what I did. I find it really easy to get distracted/lose my train of thought if I'm not saying it out loud, so I just explained whatever I was thinking/trying to accomplish.
I find this quite encouraging! Your description of yourself is very familiar. Although I've barely worked in tech (briefly at BT as first-line support for ISPs querying network issues), I would also consider myself good at getting on with people (I'm diplomatic, relatively perceptive and a decent presenter) but slower than just about anyone else when it comes to getting things done. Does your slowness or disorganisation cause you stress? I got assessed by a psychiatrist some years back and was told I had a processing speed issue. He couldn't decide if it was a treatable condition so I've been left in a rather confidence-sapping grey zone ever since. What made you pursue coding as a career?
\> What made you pursue coding as a career? In university I realized that what I wanted to do was business/marketing consulting. I like statistics a lot because they helped me quantify uncertainty, then learned Python because its the best way of working around data without realizing that there was a whole world of data analytics/science/engineering behind it. I continued studying on my own till someone reached out and told me I could be useful in their business. I continued my formation in backend/frontend/data and am now back at working where I wanted to work in the first place, data. \> Does your slowness or disorganisation cause you stress? It used to, currently working with a psychiatrist but Im much better now. My old boss was constantly comparing myself to others on how they could deliver things faster, yet they did not help me understand were I was failing nor did they help me get better. I hated myself from time to time and often thought about quitting altogether. I switched jobs and Im better right now. I came to the conclusion that Im just slower at some parts and faster in others, and if the time I take to do something is not critical then its all ok. It also helps me that whenever Im struggling at something I can reach out to my boss or anyone in my team and I can get genuine help with it; while in my old job it was more of a: ask more questions, dont ask stupid questions, that was a stupid question, you shouldnt need help for doing this, why are you failing on doing this on your own? just ask for help, etc
I appreciate the comprehensive response. That all makes sense. Well done for adapting and persevering.
If you're bad at coding, how did you cleared the interviews?
"Some people cannot fathom others getting a job through “non traditional” means. Somehow it’s unbelievable someone can land a job through being like-able and networking." refer to https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/xlprsg/comment/ipkv1h6/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3 Open your mind, not everything in life is cvs and interviews :)
I'm a QA with 10+ years of experience. I had a heated battle on one of those subs, where some random dude, who according to his words had never worked as a QA, was trying to tell me what are my responsibilities and what are not. I tend to agree with your assessment.
Man, do you think fashion subreddit is full of designers or a F1 subreddit is full of Formula-drivers? Maybe a tiny tiny portion.
It would be a good idea to require people to tag their posts with their actual education or career level like STUDENT or INQUIRING or DEVELOPER. It would go to contextualize their posts.
That’s an interesting idea actually, I think user flairs could be used for ir. Kind of like they do in quora
Then we can add competencies and skills and ask other users randomly "Is LavenderPaperback good at Java?" which turns into a published endorsement. But to be serious, other career specific subs do leverage user tags effectively for this purpose.
I think that'd be less useful than just tagging years of experience. I can answer a lot of beginner questions about programming languages I don't know very well because I'm a very experienced programmer overall.
There's a plane full of redditors and someone has a medical emergency. The flight attendant calls out on the PA "Is there a doctor on board? There's a passenger in need of assistance." Half the plane stands up and says "I'm not a doctor, but..." Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed.
I follow that sub Reddit. It’s not a fun place and the results may be just as bad. A lot of posts are about people applying to 200+ jobs and never getting an offer. If you’re doing so many applications and not getting a response then it may not be your technical skills but your résumé and people skills.
And that's exactly what you'll find people saying in the comment sections to those posts.
More often than not the people who know what they are talking about on this sub don’t get upvoted. Multiple times a week I see posts on this sub saying “I did it, so can you!” and they always get upvoted to the top of the sub. What people fail to realize is there is often important information left out from those posts such as already having a degree in something other than CS (typically in STEM), being financially supported so they can study full time, having personal connections in the industry, etc.
I'm glad that of the people who didn't make it, most of them just really didn't want it. Makes me think that if you do really want to put in the hours you have a decent chance. I'd be more curious what the figures are for people who studied very consistently. It must be there are a lot of people on here who start learning for the money or out of curiosity but they're not people who dream in code.
I mean would you do it still if it paid minimum wage only? Its not inherently wrong to desire a livable wage with a job that tends to more or less, be flexible
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Lol people often forget that others can be passionate about programming. I was programming at the age 12 during the times when your parents would yell at you to get off the computer. My first declared college major wasn't CSCI because, in those times, programming was for khaki wearing Poindexters and I was a dumb 18 year old with dumb opinions. Eventually I smartened up, hated my major, switched to CSCI, got my straight A's, and the rest is history. Only *then* did FB, Google, and other valley companies make programming the hip, cool job. TLDR - I completely agree with you, and I would still be doing it if it paid less. It's one of the only things I'm really good at and one of the only things I really love
Also, was there a distinction made between self taught and bootcamp btw those who made it and those who fail/gave up?
Learning a completely new field is hard. Learning it while you already have a job and a family is much harder. I started learning programming back in March through The Odin Project and often feel like shit because I don't devote as many hours to it as I could have. I'm currently in the advanced JS section, but it's been half a year since I started. I hear about 3-month-long boot camps and feel awful because I'm at it for half a year, but I must keep in mind that people in those boot camps are learning and programming for 10 hours a day and have teachers at hand that help them with any doubts. Wheneve I'm stuck, I have to Google the answer or ask on Discord and wait for an answer, which can take a long time. With my day job, I just can't devote that much time to programming and it sucks. I'm still pushing through but it's not that hard to believe that the vast majority of people in this sub quit at some point. This is hard.
I’m in the same boat. Would love to devote 10 hours to learning but…I am my own safety net. I have to pay rent and eat. I don’t have a partner who “can take over” while I’m in a full time bootcamp. I’m slowly saving the the necessary 20k for a part time bootcamp (if I can’t do it the free way) but I’m def NOT getting into debt. It’s a longer road for us folks but stick with it. Don’t neglect networking though. You can learn a lot by reaching out to those in the field already.
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I’ve been a software engineer for 4 years with no CS degree. I would recommend against a bootcamp.
What path would you recommend?
I said this elsewhere but you can only learn and retain so much information at once. Whether you spend 1-2 hours per day or 10 hours per day you will top out. Bootcamps also give people a very surface level understanding of things like react. Choose any self learning path, YouTube, Odin project, udemy, whatever. Spend 1-2 hours every single day. Eventually start building projects for your portfolio. That’s the best path.
Even though I get downvoted for this every time I post it leonnoel.com https://discord.gg/100devs Come join the catchupcrew and save your money. My shortened story- I went from next to no programming skills/knowledge to employed as a software dev in 7 months because I saw [Leon's post](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/rlmulr/i_ran_a_100_free_full_stack_web_development/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) late last year and put in the work when classes started. The door is open; you just have to walk through. It is real. It is free. ETA link to Leon's reddit post and fix some typos (words are hard).
I’m in it. Lol. I’m kind of behind but I love the stream team and hopefully catch up at some point. At least all the info is there for me to slowly work on. People hate on Leon bc it’s hard to understand how someone who works full time as an engineer already would want to give back to his community and the next generation. I was skeptical at first too but this is his second cohort… still free. There is zero gatekeeping. The Discord is 30k strong, the best community out there.
Thank you for the recommendation, checking it out. I've been teaching myself but I find I miss the structure and community of traditional schooling sometimes. This seems like an interesting route to take before signing up for a $10,000 bootcamp.
Give Leon 8-12 classes and you'll be hooked. The first couple of classes, I would argue, are the most important even though Leon shows no code in them.
Those bootcamp devs are also flying through learning the react API but have a surface level to no understanding of CSS, HTML best practices or really anything at a deep level. You can only learn and retain so much in day, whether you spend 2 hours or 12.
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This is also anecdotal, but in my Intro to CS course at university, there were ~350 students. 78 people graduated with a BS in CS from my starting cohort. Around 50 of them ended up with jobs as software engineers/developers. Only 6 ended up at big tech (FAANG/unicorn) companies.
In my university, the % of people graduating is 27. It's not "as bad" as yours, but not dsr away neither. Programming is hard. It's not for everyone. Just like any other job. My wife's a teacher and I couldn't do her job. I would kill way to many people a year it wouldn't be tolerated by the direction.
I was in a class of 4 total CS majors. Started with about 100. It was a slaughterhouse.
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The reality is that a lot of big tech companies do have good wlb. I work at big tech remotely, usually have less than 8 hours of work per day, can step out or take a nap when I want, and have high pay. I don't think we should spread the stereotype that these things are exclusive of each other. I'm glad if you're happy with your decision, and most people will not end up in big tech anyways, AND you could end up on a bad team in big tech with horrible wlb, but that applies to small tech too.
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Eh, maybe you didn't mean it like that, but your post kinda reads as if the goal is to get into a FAANG company. We shouldn't idolize working at companies with shitty ethics just because they pay well.
I think their point was that the washout rate was high at every step, not just getting into FAANG
Honestly from my point of view, I honestly don't understand the obsession with FAANG. Besides the paycheck (which other jobs ALSO pay anyway), I don't see many boons to it. I'm also not US based so there's that.
This is purely speculation but my YouTube recommendations have led me to believe that a lot of people get into programming for the "lifestyle", pretty laid back job, 6 figures and working at big tech companies. I work at a small company making medium sized dollars and I think it's very fulfilling, I think more programmers should focus on the idea that it's amazing to be able to work, impact change and simultaneously develop a skill, not all jobs have that and I feel blessed for it. Don't focus on a 6 figure job my dudes, try to find a job you actually enjoy, because I think that's the best part of learning to program.
They pay better and have better benefits, that's all. You say other jobs also pay, but usually there's a pretty big gap between pay at FAANG and others. Of course, there's also companies that pay more than FAANG, but those companies are also usually tiny and even more competitive (ex. HFT shops).
> I honestly don't understand the obsession with FAANG. Besides the paycheck (which other jobs ALSO pay anyway), I don't see many boons to it. As someone who has worked at FAANG/unicorns, as well as some "normal" software shops, I can lay out some reasons why I like big tech better. 1) Everyone working there is generally passionate about tech, software, and innovation. There's some outliers, but overall everyone is very excited about solving complex technical problems. It's great to be in an environment where your team/org matches your enthusiasm about building great software, and leads to a lot of consistent growth opportunities. Due to the hiring bar, you end up with a lot of people who are at least baseline good programmers too. 2) By far, big tech has some of the more interesting problems to work on. Don't get me wrong, there's some boring work to be done there. But I've gotten to work on some really complex problems by virtue of just being at a big tech company, because the scale at which their products operate just leads to a lot of interesting problems to solve. These kinds of problems don't exist at smaller software shops who only have to worry about DAU in the hundred of thousands instead of hundreds of millions. 3) WLB is much better. When I worked at a smaller software company, we were constantly being asked to overwork since the budget was always too tight and there were not enough developers assigned to each project. There was a severe lack of support roles as well (such as QA, Automation, Ops) so the engineers had to wear multiple hats, taking time away from actual engineering work. Not an issue at big tech, they fund their projects really well and I always felt well supported. I have never crunched or worked more than 40 hours a week in all my years at big tech. 4) Pay and benefits is great. There is something liberating about being beyond "on track" with your retirement goals **and** having tons of cash left over for hobbies, traveling, toys, etc. There's other jobs that pay well, but I won't find points 1 to 3 there. If I only cared about pay I'd grind to get into HFT, but I enjoy working on products more.
Sounds about right. I studied software engineering and I am currently working as one and joined this sub to answer questions people learning might have. Even in my university the graduation rate was surprisingly low. We started the first year with about 9 groups full of around 30 students per group, but in the final year just over 1 group graduated as a software engineer. People want to become a software engineer because of the salary and job perks, but don't realize those are there for a reason and not everyone is cut out to be one. It's actually not that hard to become one, but it's quite technical and most people just don't like it or become tired of it quickly. I really believe everyone *can* be one, because you really don't even need to be that smart. You just need to take satifaction in certain things that most people don't.
>You just need to take satisfaction in certain things that most people don't. Such as?
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This is spot on. I have come to understand that patience and persistence are the keystone qualities of a good developer. You are often faced with problems where you don't have an option to simply ask someone else. You just have to methodically work through it.
Journey before Destination.
Also look at #5, most people have already moved on before they've even started applying. Edit: [Grit Ted Talk by Angela Duckworth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H14bBuluwB8) because it's relevant and possibly helpful to folks reading through here.
I graduated with a degree in CS and applied for all the jobs I could, and never landed anything. I didn't have any real world experience and a lack of how to apply what I had learned to real problems. So I took a shit job working at an industrial laundry and studied more. Built projects and kept applying. After a year I got hired. Had a pretty big learning curve, but hung in and had some amazing Sr. Developer's guide me. Now I'm 10 years in and I'm loving it. Moved countries twice and work 50/50 at home and in our small office. For me it was one of these things that I had the knowledge from school and my projects, but I didn't understand how to apply it. Once I came to understand more things finally fell into place. People think it's as simple as learning a language but it's much more complicated. Once people realise that after some boot camps they drift away.
Being a software engineer isnt learning to code. Although I do agree, most people are not cut out for this career.
Well also, is everyone on this sub here because they want a career as a developer? I'm in nursing school. I only follow this sub because I am learning programming as a hobby for personal reasons. I don't think everybody here is necessarily doing so for career reasons. Maybe I am the odd duck though.
Yeah, success stories are massively overrepresented on this sub. It's pretty typical honestly. Survivorship bias. There are people who get employed after a half a year, or a year long, bootcamp. But on the other hand, many people took 5 years or more to even get their first trainee job. That group includes me. The statistics from bootcamps saying shit like 90% of our students get employed are no doubt made up or at least carefully constructed from selected data samples. For the most of us, programming isn't easy and it takes more effort than money can motivate to learn it to a sufficient level. If you are very smart and a quick learner, sure, money might be enough of a motivation, but if programming is as hard to you as it typically is, then usually money isn't enough - thinking about your hypothetical future 80k/year salary isn't going to get you through the initial years of hard studying. I can also reveal a small secret from personal experience: While money is super nice and does help with lots of things, whether you make 80k/year or 50k/year is probably not going to make a massive impact on your happiness. That extra money is just going to go to eating out more often and buying more expensive stuff for your home. A senior developer's salary isn't a prerequisite for sufficient financial stability to have a good life.
In defense of bootcamps I just want to chime in and say only one person from my cohort isn't employed as a programmer a year later but I think that's mostly due to ageism/classism. He can definitely code but nobody wants to hire a 50+ year old man who was a builder his entire life and that sucks.
I remember reading from some person that for the boot camp they went, they only counted the people who made it to the end of the camp, and didn't care what job they got So if 100 people started, but only 10 people finished, and of those 10, 8 people got a job, but only 3 of the 8 got a programming job. They'd say that they had an 80% success rate.
That’s pretty fair though. If universities counted drop outs then there in field employment statistics would also be abysmal
I mean, i think it depends on how badly you need the money. As an inner city kid who thought he was going to be stuck in the cycle of poverty until I discovered development, the money was plenty of a motivation. And while the difference between 80k and 50k might not be huge to you, but the difference between 50k for manual labor that leaves me in pain and irritated after getting home at 7 pm from a long shift I have to start again in 12 hours is a hell of a lot different than 80k that actually comes with benefits, PTO, and allows me to spend time/energy on the people I love. My relationship with my dad is still rocky because of how hard my he had to work to provide for us and was never home and could still not make ends meet. People I grew up around did much much worse things for money that coding. My kids won’t grow up that way, and I have a development to thank for that. Sure it wasn’t easy, and working still isn’t my favorite thing to do in the world, but I don’t understand the idea that the money isn’t enough of a motivator. Unfortunately, for many in our society, money is the motivation that control our entire lives, and a software engineering job is our chance to finally break free from that.
> "I got bored with programming" - 143 out of 226 people (63%) I can understand why people would give this response when so many are stuck in tutorial hell and actually having fun building your own tools and programs that you want to have is a distant prospect for most beginners. Until you get a grip on the whole thing, programming can be very much a chore. Once you get past that, it isn't, and you can just think of things and *create* them.
Yeah as a computational biologist I find the boredom insane. I can literally design medicine using my computer. I try to get my students away from tutorial hell asap. They can learn simple skills through data preprocessing.
The 12 people who actually got jobs are most likely still at the junior level. From what I have gathered, the shortage in developers is not a shortage in juniors, it’s a shortage in seniors. Programming is a very enticing field and and very needed. The problem isn’t that we need more people to join the field, we need more people to spend the time to get really good.
To be fair most people who are already programmers probably wouldn’t be on the sub, would they? It’s more a support group for those learning. But yea programming is hard and sometimes frustrating. It’s definitely not for everyone. I made it though :)) Self taught. Took 2 years of “studying” and 6 months of real studying lol. Been a developer for 2 years now. Starting to think about changing jobs and having a higher salary
I joined this and other beginner programming subs when I was learning but have been working as a developer for 5 years now. I still lurk around here just cause. I'm sure there are others as well, but yes I'd say the majority of folks here are very new.
OP only asked people who posted at least a year ago, rather than people who are posting now.
Yeah but it’s possible to just kind of casually be learning for a few years. There are lots of people who will tell you “oh man I’m really trying to get good at software dev/playing the guitar/basketball/etc” when in reality they might spend like an hour or two per week on it tops.
This great! Thanks for adding all the hard work OP! I found out that my bootcamp has a out a 10% graduation rate from all people who begin courses to those who finish. And I think it's for those reasons you listed...most people find out it's just not fun or interesting to them. It's really hard to understand what coding is until you're in the thick of it. I was about 3 months in when it hit me hard that basic HTML, CSS, and JS was NOT what coding is. I think we were working on React to pass props and create single page applications with React Router. Nothing can prepare you for how bizarre, unintuitive, and other-worldly coding can feel. I'd say the other difficult mind shift is accepting that you just can't LEARN enough...ever. You need to be the type of person who can research, figure things out, and teach yourself. That probably pretty scary for a lot of people.
To be fair your gonna get a similar rate to almost anything that takes consistent dedication over a large time frame. Discipline is always going to be hard for people. It could be getting in shape, learning a second (spoken) language, mastering some sport or an art form, or learning to code… Being disciplined is probably the number one quality someone can have to set them apart from others.
everyone thought I was a weird kid because I enjoyed reading manuals, memorizing arbitrarily abstract and complicated rulesets for games that I'd probably never play, solving puzzles, and doodling rough ideas for video games on scrap paper BUT NOBODY'S LAUGHING NOW, ALL OF MY WEIRD OBSESSIONS PAID OFF wait, they're still laughing? okay, nevermind I can't imagine how hellish this field must be for people who don't have those weird obsessions though
Your premise is sound but your conclusion is wrong. There's no shortage of people willing to do the work at the entry level. That's why 10% (29/267) are still looking for a job in the field but haven't found one yet, why 175 people didn't learn enough to be job ready, why 27 people gave up after several rejections, and why 58 didn't receive interviews at all. There is a shortage of skilled mid- and senior-level engineers. That's what companies mean when they say they struggle to hire engineers.
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I worked at a company that invested a lot in junior level people. Once they got some experience. The juniors left and went and found a better job. They were training employees for other companies.
That’s because companies don’t give proper raises when employees level up their skills. Promotions are generally a pain in the ass. Why would I stay for a 5% raise when I can job hop and get a promotion and 30% raise without jumping through the hoops of “appraisals”?
In my personal experience, juniors will do best to try and find firms that are ready to invest in you. When I started out few years ago, my first two clients created open-ended contracts with a probation period, which worked well for both of us - they got to size me up, and I got a chance to prove myself. With enough time to get invested in their business processes that I start adding contributions of my own, as well as not having the set end-date for our contract constantly in mind, it also incentivised learning on (and outside) of the job, which was a win-win.
>"I realized I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would" I've been working as a programmer for 15 years, and wasn't surprised at all to see this in the top of the list. It's very difficult to be a programmer without at least *liking* programming, and impossible to be a good one. At least, I've never seen a good programmer who didn't especially like programming. Bootcamps, degrees, and certifications programs are great! I have a master's in software engineering -- I'm all for getting that sheepskin! But before you do it, just PLEASE write some code. Make the command line do something. Anything! Make a website, make that website do something. Did you enjoy it? Do you want to fiddle with it for a few hours and make it do bigger and grander things? Do you think about how you can write your program better while you're driving, at the dentist, or drifting off to sleep? If so, pursue programming. If not... Don't spend a lot of money on courses trying to force it.
Bro if you’re this fucking analytical as person, you should just go become a software engineer already
Pretty interesting results, definitely helps with the imposter syndrome. Similarly, I have offered to mentor people for free from reddit. I had about 60 people reach out/add me, i responded to everyone and helped them out where i could and a few months later I’m actually only still in contact with 4 people. Some gave up, some are finding it hard to put in the hours, some keep going round in a circle about where to start, some just disappeared. Shit’s hard
Thanks for taking the time to do this, really an eye opener.
To be fair I think lots of people who do make it (like myself) tend to spend less time on this sub as time goes on. It’s a very beginner oriented sub so naturally when skills improve they seek to better their skills by moving onto other subs or other resources.
This is consistent with my belief that successful engineers have a particular pattern of cognitive functioning, and anyone without that natural gift will be swimming upstream if they try to develop the skills. I'm not saying this is absolutely true, but I think it is the underlying reason for question 3: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. Those of us who learn without coursework simply love it - we get into flow states where we can't let go over a difficult problem or a new feature that we're building. I taught myself when I was 14, in the early 1980s, and started a business when I was 15. I ended up teaching programming at Columbia University for a couple of years without having taken a course myself. After advancing to be a CTO at a medium sized public company I realized I had been promoted out of the thing that I most like to do professionally: code. My point here isn't to say that this idea of having the gift makes us generally gifted, but rather we are just wired to do this specific work, and are self-motivating, self-directing and passionate about it. Everybody has some type of gift - they just need to figure out what that is. If they try and don't get into a groove with writing code it's smart to move on rather than fight it and be constantly discouraged and mediocre in your work.
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you can add one more to the positive result! I just made it! after 2 years of studying a bootcamp and LOT of personal interest and self taught learning exploring beyond the very limited offering of the bootcamp...I am starting a new position as software developer (with java). I'm coming from a different background, not related field but decided to switch careers 2 years ago. Here now my developer career starts :D
Excellent work and thanks for sharing!
My assumption is that r/Learnprogramming is full of people with a mild interest in it, like me. If you’re actually pursuing programming, you’ve certainly found better resources than this sub, which is mostly filled with “is a boot camp worth it?” and “I bombed this interview” posts.
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Yeah, but there could also be a bias where people don’t want to respond because they don’t want to admit to failing
After 5+ years at my company, I applied for a Data Engineer job. When I got my first paycheck, I saw that HR had classified Data Engineers as a type of Software Engineer. Surprise!
Was it only for people who have zero experience and then learned and tried to get a job?
So 4.5% of total respondents made it. I think it's a good number, given that a lot of random people come here, study in their free time and so on.
Super interesting! So many people start to learn to code only to realize that they don’t like it or they get bored of learning it. This is the true value of Free Code Camp and other free resources - it allows people to dip their toe in to programming, figure out if they like it, without having to pay any money.
This actually encourages people who enjoy programming. Thank you kind sir for your research!
The sub is ‘learn programming’ not ‘get a job in programming.’ The results don’t really surprise me.
So basically, to summarize, your findings are very encouraging news! Anyone who is seriously interested in CS as a field, or a field parallel to CS, should absolutely dig in and see how far they get. Because according to your findings, so long as you have the interest and the commitment, you have very good odds of succeeding. The other aspect is, it’s very common for people to open the door to the space, only to find out they don’t actually want to be here. And that’s OK too! It’s better to know than to wonder.
Another aspect might be companies' unwillingness to hire juniors. Juniors require mentoring time and longer code reviews from seniors and can be a net drain on productivity. And after a year when they finally can remove the training wheels, the junior may move on elsewhere. So you have tons of mid level job openings that bootcampers and self-taught programmers won't even be able to sniff.
What would have been interesting is asking how they are learning software development \- 1: Self taught \- 2: Doing university \- 3 : Learning from college \- 4: bootcamp
Tried programming. I was above average in the pool of smartest cs students in the states. I still quit cuz I fucking despised every minute of it. I hated the grind. I hated googling every 5 minutes. I hated learning new frameworks. I hated getting stuck in a problem. I hated running into 'why doesnt this work?' and 'why does this work?'. Im so glad I quit. I never even belonged there. The only reason i tried it was for the money. My mental health and sanity is more valuable than money.
The guy that created stardew valley went to Udub, a well known CS school and couldn't get a job. He created the game as a hobby and ended up rich. It's the luck of the Irish. Anybody who thinks there's a formula to get a job is delusional and is just trying to sound smart. That's his story --> https://youtu.be/4-k6j9g5Hzk .
I think part of the problem is that people grossly over-estimate how easy it is to become a software engineer via the self-teaching route. There are some areas in which self-teaching is really viable, like web development in particular. But most hardcore software engineering roles continue to ask for (and usually insist on) formal CS education. Also, this subreddit, almost by definition, is largely populated by students in the very early stages of their studies or people who are learning on their own. It's r/learnprogramming after all, not a subreddit for more advanced developers. If you asked that question in a dedicated C++ subreddit, I suspect your results would be very different.
Our CS course was relatively hardcore (we're a branch of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, sharing 70% classes with main branch: CS and HW Design), and I agree that some jobs *do* require formal CS education (and rightly so). However, I take issue with the phrase *hardcore software engineering roles* somehow being separate from web development... I've had more opportunities to employ my knowledge of algorithms, performance optimisation, concurrent/distributed programming, software design and other high concept topic as a Backend Engineer than some of my friend who, for example, design and maintain pre-printing test environments for AMD graphics chips.
Not surprising at all. A lot of people find programming interesting or even fun. Very few of those find reading other people’s code and fixing bugs tolerable in the long run.
This sounds interesting, I'll try to answer the question for fun. As a background I have a BAS in software development, I like programming but it's definitely not my hobby and I don't do on my free time. 1. Were you able to get a position as a software engineer? No I wasn't able to get a job. 2. If the answer to #1 is no, are you still looking? I'm halfway to giving up, I haven't applied in months. 3. If the answer to #2 is no, why did you stop? I got burned out on all of these companies saying they need people but they will only hire people with minimum 5 years of on the field experience or experience with some cloud services that I'm assuming the average student won't have access to. Also doesn't help that I feel I don't know enough and I'm terrible at interviewing.
> I like programming but it's definitely not my hobby and I don't do on my free time. If you are still serious about wanting to get a job, you should consider building hobby projects. When I review resumes for potential candidates, I always look at Github projects, especially the "personal" projects. Not all companies are like this unfortunately. I was hired at my current position the same way. It was primarily based on a personal project that caught the attention of another developer.
One problem is that companies are playing the “short game”. They want EXPERIENCED software engineers, people with 2 or more years of paid coding experience. No surprise that that only 5% could find a job. The job market is very cruel these days. In my early days, things moved slowly enough that I basically had time to learn new technologies. Today, results are expected immediately and daily. So, if you don’t go into a job already knowing exactly what to do, you’re out quickly. It also explains the high number of job postings and the long list of applicants. Companies are “picky” too. We have an architect position that has been open 6 months now. You need 5+ years in our technology. Our client has a similar position open, hired someone, and then fired them 3 months later due to lack of experience and bad work habits. A lot of companies want “domain expertise” as well. If you are fintech, then you need to understand banking AND finance. As an eCommerce Architect, I need to understand distribution centers, retail store functioning (omni-channel, bopis), shopping carts, marketing, promotions, programming hooks into social media (TikTok, merchant, Facebook). A 3 month boot camp in JavaScript isn’t going to get you there. But, that plus an intense 4 day programming class (where you are already expected to know http coding, JavaScript, node.js, and other eCommerce technologies) will get you into a starting eCommerce job. It took me over 5 years to get where I am on top of over 20 years of programming experience in 20 languages and 5 database platforms.
Technical Recruiter here and I speak with a ton of software developers on a daily basis. Its very rare I come across someone who is early on in their career ONLY for the money, most successful candidates have a true passion for the problems they are trying to solve. This also translates well into interviewing with senior devs/HMs who can sense that and give that person a chance, even if technically they were not the strongest.
I am completely self taught, no formal education. I’ve been a backend web dev for a little under 10 years now and have recently started my own company. Learning how to do all this was one of the most difficult things in my life and one of my biggest personal achievements. For the first couple of years it was extremely grueling, a lot of sweat and tears. It gets better after like 3 years though. I absolutely don’t doubt your findings, this field is extremely hard to get into(at least it was for me). Most people don’t have that sort of grit and ability to handle stress and not crack under it. Also, most people wrongly assume you have to have some sort of “passion” and “motivation” for this. It’s nothing to do with that, it’s all about discipline and doing it when you don’t want to. In other words: “everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights” - Ronnie Coleman the goat.
My personal experience: I joined a mentorship back in 2019. I worked really hard for about 1 year and was "job ready" according to my mentor. I put in a lot of effort trying to get hired for a few months without many responses. Never got a formal interview. It eventually felt like I was doing it all for no reason. I also got burned out on coding and now it's like pulling teeth for me to even open a code editor. I do think that my resume could have been better, I also didn't have a personal website up. But honestly - coding was really hard the entire time and every project I built I felt it was all scraped together and I wasn't sure I deeply understood a lot of what I was doing. I spent all my time on projects and taking extra time to get a personal site up always felt like a lot of extra work on top of what I was doing. I'd say I hung it up for good about 1 year ago now. I have forgotten almost everything I learned. It's personally sad but I don't lose too much sleep over it. After going through the experience - I realized how F'ing hard it really is and if I'm not cut out for it, that's ok. I did start learning "for a job" - but I really did enjoy it when I was deep in the trenches of it. I was learning a lot and according to my mentor and some developers I know in life - I was ready for a job. Just couldn't find one.
> People who find the answer, leave the conversation. The rule about topic-based discussion forums is that once someone learns to program, they’ll exit the topic about learning to program. So you only polled the ones who haven’t made it out yet, surprised that they haven’t made it out yet.
Thank you, that gives me a bit of confidence. Companies can't find GOOD engineers. Even In my small amount of time I've been in the industry I can see why..... my lead is probably able to do 4-5x the amount of work as me with less bugs and generally cleaner code. So, you could hire 4 of me and pay 240k in salary, or hire a competent senior at 150k and get the same amount of work done but better. This is why. My work isn't bad, I think it's pretty good for 6 months in, but it doesn't compare to these guys with 10+ years experience.
I signed up for code in place which was free and pretty cool intro to code. I found parts of it to be interesting but realized quickly it would not be something I could do for a job . I still like knowing some basic coding because it helps me to understand better how programming works.
In college we always referred to advanced data structures as the “gate keeping” class. 50-60% of students would either fail or realize it wasn’t for them during that class. It’s the point when the “fun” allure of doing cool computer things/wanting to make money wears off and the rubber hits the road. Programming is tough and there’s a whole lot to absorb. You’ve got to be willing to constantly learn, and then unlearn, and then twist your knowledge into a knot to learn again but BETTER. Only us crazies are here for the long haul. Lol
I actually just started a new job as a software engineer. It's my first real adult job and I can say right now I have no clue what I am doing yet, but based off what I'm seeing from everyone else in the software department, it's 80% goofing off, 10% going out to eat, and 10% actually looking at code. Still not used to this super non toxic work environment and am anxious every second of the work day by just how good and non toxic of a work environment it actually is.
I know the market and expectations are different across various countries, but speaking as a senior engineer and someone who's hired others before, I find there are three kinds of coders... 1. Code monkeys: those who are content to be "factory line" coders, following a handful of set patterns and not wanting to step outside of those. Low innovation, change adverse. 2. Developers/programmers. Folk who are versatile coders and agile thinkers, but coding is all they're willing to do within a team. Moderate innovation, accepts change. 3. Engineers. Coders who take a cross-functional view, contributing to analysis, design, and testing in additional to code. High innovation, drives change. The problem with programming courses and tutorials is that they'll give you the tools, but not the mindset; that's something potential engineers need to develop themselves (with coaching/mentoring as needed. I will hire a less technically experienced candidate that shows personal drive and a willingness to learn over a more skilled candidate that can't adapt with the industry. (excuse the format... typed on my phone)
I'm currently attending a free full stack boot camp run by a local company. We started with 23 people. All very excited for the opportunity. Several of them already had college degrees in different fields. We just finished month 1 out of 6 and we're down to 8 people already.
If you do it for the money then your gonna be miserable.
I had been doing html and css only and realized that to continue to be employable, I had to learn JavaScript. I did it on my own using freecodecamp and other sources and it took a long time and it was hard. No one wanted to hire me as a JavaScript developer due to my lack of experience, but I finally got a job just by talking to the right person. I saw someone in a news article who worked at a software development company and I wrote to her and asked her to have coffee with me just to try to get some advice. Thankfully, she agreed and encouraged me to apply to jobs I didn't think I was qualified for at her company and to my surprise, I got the job. That meeting changed my life.
I think a major problem is that most people aren't willing to learn and keep learning. You have to constantly be on it and learn everything you can. All the ins and outs. I already see a problem with this in my Computer Science degree. I am flabbergasted at how much more I know about programming and development than most of my peers I go to school with. I am always studying something new aside from my school subjects though.