career-advice

[vapid jay]

Its from advices ive heard from seniors. Anyway somewhere well structured that has a history of employing interns and stuff should be better

[sleek geode]

That lovely to hear that someone switch hospitality job for coding. So back to my question, what I could do before applying? Make a free job for references, complete big project and publish it on GitHub (grab all starts) or maybe meet some good people on big IT events, which will offer me some job?

[peak halo]

well, yes. a company that's established enough to hire (and pay) interns is generally going to be more desirable than a company that can't. but those companies are also more likely to pre-filter applicants for relevant degrees.

[gilded valley]

What is your level of experience?

[peak halo]

Well, like I said, I got a CS degree. I can't give you informed advice about how to start your career without getting one. I can give you advice about how to get a CS degree as a worker.

[summer roost]

I was about to say something similar to this. I agree, startups often need people to wear many different hats, which makes them a poor place to aim for if you're just trying to break into the industry.

[vapid jay]

If you do not have a relevant degree i wouldnt advise going into the field. Thats just me tho and i personally prefer degrees. Youll need more advice from other bootcampers who didnt have one and i believe there are few here.

[gilded valley]

What is your level of experience? How long have you been working in the field?

[vapid jay]

The startup comment was things I heard from a junior and other seniors who responded to them. Are you a startup ceo?

[gilded valley]

You are giving very unqualified advice, to properly place it in context, it would be useful to know your level of experience (as per the guidance in this message: #career-advice message)

[summer roost]

We do like people who post in this channel to be transparent about what their experiences is.

[vapid jay]

I have said before that I did an internship and starting this year

[peak halo]

Be sure to read the Edict of Self-Qualification.

[near ocean]

My startup experience was great, had all the tools and people i needed available to learn and grow, they didnt treat me like a senior at all (which was part of the reason I left), they understood it was my first job

[gilded valley]

Starting? Have you just graduated and are starting your first permanent role?

[summer roost]

Yep, I know, but the person you're giving advice to today doesn't.

[vapid jay]

How do you assess i am giving unqualified advice. I believe you are doing so. Heard others warn about startups. If you are not a top student who has previos exp with diff technologies its not advised literally anywhere

[summer roost]

How many engineers did your startup have?

[gilded valley]

unqualified was meant in the sense that you are making sweeping statements without qualifications. Not that you are unqualified to give said advice

[peak halo]

"qualified", in this case, means that you've stated what your experience is. it's not a measure of whether or not your statements are valid.

[sleek geode]

Thanks for your time. May be after I will fail couple of interviews or will not get any after year of search, I will invest money to get CS degree. Now I just search faster way to get my first coding job.

[summer roost]

What country are you in?

[near ocean]

Around 10 in total, I worked very closely with 2 test engineers and they helped make it a fun experience towards the end

[gilded valley]

I know someone who went from 0 experience -> bootcamp -> startup for ~2y -> Microsoft now. He talks very highly of his time at the startup

[vapid jay]

Ive heard many seniors warn against it. Its also not your personal experience but rather someone elses

[summer roost]

Sure. But so is what you heard from seniors.

[vapid jay]

That is exactly what I am saying. His reason to believe so is also unqualified.

[true harness]

that's not what qualifies means in this context

[summer roost]

Unqualified meant without qualifiers.

[gilded valley]

You seem to be misunderstanding what I meant by un/qualified. I tried to provide as much context about my friend as possible. I'm just providing an anecdote that seems to line up with Mariosis's experience

[summer roost]

In any event, mariosis is the only person who has weighed in so far with first hand experience working as a junior at a startup

[flat kestrel]

Hello everyone, (for context I am in the mid-west USA)

I just completed my Associates in CS and was planning on attending a top 30 (CS ranking) school for a BS in CS. I ended up getting a full time back-end software developer offer that was about 10k below average compensation where I live but much better than most jobs still. The issue is it uses a proprietary stack (old healthcare systems). I ended up accepting just because I wanted to avoid going into debt and they offer tuition assistance so I can go to school part time and finish up my bachelors from here. I have about 45 credits remaining (15 credits a semester, 2 semesters a year). At this position I will be working on tooling/infrastructure so stuff like creating/maintaining internal APIs, fixing errors or adding features to internal tooling, so on.

I now have a few competing priorities.

1. Finish my BS CS
2. Build up a portfolio in a better stack i.e. MERN
3. Get good at interviewing (behavioral/leetcode)
4. Do well at my actual job.

It seems like staying in this position long term would not be ideal for my career, so my current plan is to build up a decent portfolio in MERN, continue working on interviewing, and do well enough at my actual job before hopping in a year. I am not sure if finishing my BS would really benefit me short term since I'll have a year of software development experience, even if in the proprietary stack. I also met a few people with no degree at all who are getting FAANG interviews but I'm not sure if that's normal.

Any advice for which things to prioritize from here? I'd like to stay in full stack or back-end web development but I'm open to learning about stuff like k8s, aws, so on.

[digital fjord]

Oh, I actually had a discussion about this^^ with my unis student business advisor kinda guy. As I understood it, hiring a senior for a startup means that:

• you are likely poaching them from their existing job, which means they are expensive and will take quite a bit of time to decide
• your hiring pool is smaller
• they can't work the long hours a startup needs worked to survive, since they likely have a family
  which can often be undesirable.

[vapid jay]

I love how detestable their view of them having a family is. "We do not want workers we cannot exploit, oh yeah we dont want to pay them a fair pay as well"

[gilded valley]

I don't think it's super-common to be getting FAANG interviews in that situation, but it's perfectly possible. Finishing your degree if a company is paying for it seems like the obvious choice. From that point onwards, you're in a pretty solid place to take your career in whatever direction you want. Just focus on working and getting the Bachelors

[flat kestrel]

So you'd suggest just focus on finishing up the degree part time with tuition asssistance?

[digital fjord]

At least here, people who graduate and go to startups do so with the expectation that they will just be doing that for at least a couple months with more or less no free time. Whether that's morally okay is one question, but it does make not going bankrupt much easier, so it will be happening.

[gilded valley]

That seems like a pretty solid choice to me. It takes you a year longer, but you get paid for that time, right?

[honest pivot]

As perhaps can be expected, it can be difficult for a startup to get off the ground. You really need some people with experience who can get everything set up from scratch and who know how to design things well. At the same time, those kinds of people are very expensive. If you can't afford them, then you end up getting more junior people. But if they are not equipped to grow into their effectively-senior role quickly, then you've got a recipe for failure. I was just in such a startup the last two years, I think I am one of those people who could learn what was needed quickly, anyway I'm leaving it to get paid a lot better. I do think it was a valuable experience.

[flat kestrel]

My job is 80-90% remote. I do not get paid to work on my degree. I get tuition assistance which covers tuition and I'd be making money from my day job. Full time it'd take 1.5 years to finish my bachelors but part time it'd probably 3-4 depending how fast I go.

But I am saving/investing like $2500/mo while doing this so it's not bad.

[gilded valley]

I just meant that you'd be getting paid to work as a software engineer alongside doing the degree - which is pretty great. Three-to-four years is longer than I'd guessed given that you're starting with an associates, but I don't think it changes much

[flat kestrel]

Right, I don't intend to go back to being a full time student but I do intend to finish my BS eventually. The thing is I'm earning like 70k/y base here and Amazon in my area pays $130k/y base and $180k/y TC. So I'm not sure if my goal should just be to get into a place like Amazon ASAP or how realistic that is.
70k/y starting is still very good for most jobs where I live, just a bit below average for devs which average at like 75k/y starting for those with a BS CS.

[vapid jay]

I would guess you could do 2 and 3 little by little everyday. Ive been working on a project in my vacaion with a total of an hour doing fullstack, with the help of guides and tutorials, so do a good research before starting and you can watch/understand/implement 2 blind 75 questions a day. Which in total can take you two hours. If you assume this phase will pass it may be worth grinding a little. Make sure you sleep 8 hours and dont drink as well.

[flat kestrel]

Yeah honestly I can do most of those at the same time. I only spend like 4 hours a day on hobbies and exercise which leaves a lot of time and like I said I'm mostly remote. I think you're correct I should just grind blind in my free time and work on the portfolio stuff slowly. Would probably only take like a month or less of portfolio grind to get a junior gig somewhere else when I decide to hop.

[gilded valley]

(for reference, I graduated a year ago in the UK and work for a UK based finance corp, so I'm by no means claiming to be an expert). It seems like the things you need to consider are:

• Chance of landing a FAANG type job immediately after finishing your bachelors should you decide to do it full time
• The value of the experience you're gaining, and how that will help you when it comes to landing a FAANG type job
• Cost of tuition were you to the degree full-time

The cost-benefit on those first two seems to be very difficult to weigh up, and depends on many factors very specific to you

[sleek geode]

BTW with all respect to people who got or on the way to get CS degree, I would love to hear stories about people who got their first programming job without CS degree. Some real stories (not like newspaper stories). It will really motivate me and maybe others in the channel.

[gilded valley]

here's a hackernews post with quite a few of those stories, as with anything on the internet, some of the discussion sounds a bit bullshitty. But the actual article and many of the commenters seem to be pretty sincere to me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31229504

leesec

My experience getting a tech job with no degree or relevant work experience

Hacker News · May 1, 2022, 10:50 PM

[near ocean]

Theres also a pin here about a member that got a python job with just selfstudying

[sleek geode]

Thank you. 😄 Just a lil bit upset with discussions about startups and CS degree. But I'm not gonna give up.

[delicate bane]

4 years later I grinded leetcode and got a job at a FANG and essentially 6x'd my income from 4 years earlier before I could code. I eventually left that job because I was miserable but thats a whole other story.

ahhh makes me want to bet which one it was

[lapis wind]

I was generally quite lucky because im based in the UK, so it was equally reasonable to no get a degree and go in via an apprenticeship.

[vapid jay]

My buddies boyfriend did the same and theyre paying his school tuition to get a degree now.

[flat kestrel]

Honestly it's a lot easier to get a job than people say. Most places don't even do leetcode, but they pay less or are undesirable in other aspects.
I know a few people making about average for my university (75k starting or so) who only got questions about stuff like SOLID or static vs private vs public etc...

But leetcode really isn't that bad.

[lapis wind]

My general thing went:

• Did A levels, covid happened, decided to not really focus on grades and instead just get really good at programming. Not something i'd 100% recommend but meh.
• Went in via an apprenticeship, the experience I had already from doing stuff over the summer and in my free time meant that i progress pretty quickly
• Started learning rust back with A level times but didn't really have enough to be professional.
• Eventually my open source work with some Rust stuff lead me to being friendly with a Rust startup, and ended up doing some Tech convention talks with them.
• Ended up joining them fairly recently.

[vapid jay]

I got half a leetcode and half theory for a normal place, a slightly better compensation was rudimentary algos and only very big companies ask proper leetcode/hackerrank. You will notice the smaller it is, more basics focused they are.

I would suggest blind 75 for leetcode but if you want a faang job it might be a whole different case which will include brand new questions they came up with

[flat kestrel]

Pretty much this. My advice to him as a self taught is to focus on getting interviews before he worries about leetcode at all.

[lapis wind]

Absolutely don't regret not getting a CS degree, but there definitely was an element of I was fairly lucky with my first employer being incredibly good and fair with both pay and progression rather than holding me to my contract by tooth and nail.

Some companies can be very tight with that sort stuff so you probably wont progress as quickly

[gritty rivet]

My path was slow but relatively easy. I got a CompTIA A+ and started working in desktop support / help desk. While doing that and working on other relevant certs, I kept dabbling in Python. Eventually did the Nucamp Backend bootcamp and that led quickly to my current job in SWE. The previous experience in IT support wasn't essential, but I do think it made things easier. Biggest drawback to my route was that help desk pays way less then SWE

[sleek geode]

Wow, I am from UK too. Did you pay them after they trained you? Did you signed contract to work for them 2 years after they provided to you training or course?

[sleek geode]

Leetcode is my next step. A lot of YouTube videos from seniors said it's good thing.

[flat kestrel]

Get the interviews and online assessments then worry about leetcode. It's something you can learn in a month or two.

[near ocean]

I would suggest you steer clear of such programs, like M3 and the likes, but i dont exactly have anything else to suggest

[lapis wind]

Most apprenticeships Don't make you pay, tbf I don't think they're allowed to do that and be classed as one but idk.

Contract length depends on what kind of thing you're getting out of it / what level apprenticeship it is.

Mine was 2 years but that's more of a guaranteed fixed term contract.

Normally what happens is you do the 2 years, then they choose whether they want to offer you a permanent role or not. Normally they will because they've just spent alot of money training you. But either way you come out of it with 2 years experience.

Most contracts I've seen are not mandatory though, so they don't normally charge you for the cost of paying for training if you leave early.

By mandatory I mean you cannot opt out of the contract without reprecussions i.e financial

[prisma canyon]

is this job worth

[sleek geode]

Thanks. I think, Bootcamps its good idea too if you have some cash and want to have fun before jump into real job.

[lapis wind]

What?

[prisma canyon]

meow

is programming a good choice

[near ocean]

Yes, if you want more details you should ask more specific questions

[flat kestrel]

I should add I was paid to get my associates, whereas I would've had to pay for a bootcamp. That is my scholarships/grants outnumbered my costs and I kept the difference.

[prisma canyon]

how much did you guys pay to study for this

[near ocean]

That depends on the country you study in and your status in that country

[sleek geode]

Very informative. Thank you. 😀 I think you was lucky to not fall in some strange contract with toxic environment and unfair fees. Some stories on-line make really worried about it.

[prisma canyon]

for you

[near ocean]

For me it was around 9.25k GBP per year, 4 years total tuition fees and probably double that in living expenses

[graceful mason]

^ which is in loans

[prisma canyon]

what's the total plus the other expenses

[near ocean]

Its a lot of money, i dont have the numbers right now, but yes theyre all loans and im paying for them with my mom's help

[lapis wind]

Idk, I'd say stores like that are very much outliers.

I have a couple friends who also went into apprenticeships in software and non of them have any bad contracts or fees.

[prisma canyon]

try to estimate

[vapid jay]

Youre lucky you got in thru eu.

[near ocean]

Why? This isnt career related, you can get a job without going to college, it'll be harder tho
Besides, when i did my studies inflation wasnt record high

[lapis wind]

tbf your costs aren't that far off what it is now in the UK 😅

[near ocean]

Unless youre a citizen, tuition has more than doubled

[lapis wind]

Imperial Collage London accommodation will set you back about £7000 per year alone, more if you're anywhere within 30 minute walking distance

[vapid jay]

There are cheaper options for around 12 to 15 but very good unis are 24+. Its good now that the eu nationals are treated fairly as they do with internationals.

[near ocean]

Im not lucky anyway, this is the normal route
My girlfriend is debt free and she schooled in the US

[lapis wind]

I swear the US has a worse education debt issue than most EU countries?

[sleek geode]

Thanks for yours advices. I have a better understanding how to get a first job in programming now and what should I try. Have a great productive day. ☀️

[flat kestrel]

(in the USA) I'm debt free at the moment, I was paid to attend for my associates. If I were to continue my BS without tuition assistance I would've paid $15k/y in tuition for two years however I would've been getting around $10k/y in financial aid (Pell + state grants). I would've gotten around 5-6k/y in scholarships and I did not look too hard for them.
The cost of attendance for in-state schools if you commute is generally a bit overrated.

For me I would say going to school probably took about the same amount of time as self-teaching would have and I was paid to do so while accruing credentials. If you don't live near a decent school it's probably less appealing.

[prisma canyon]

one simple question can you guys give me the total that you spent in your whole course

[vapid jay]

3 - 5 years depending on the country

[lapis wind]

I think they mean cost?

[prisma canyon]

money*

[lapis wind]

Technically £0 but I didn't do Uni so

[vapid jay]

Free to 250k dollars, depending on the country, ivy league will be 300k min

[gilded valley]

3 year bachelors, ~15k of uk "loans" each year, ridiculous interest rate of I think 7% pa at the moment

[vapid jay]

I assume that is 9,250 + 6,000 each year along with accom. Im lucky I have investments that pay for mine. As I am international as well. I would advise buying property and use the rent to pay for it

[lapis wind]

Probably going to go up as well next year like it did this year (or was it 2021?).

[vapid jay]

They want to raise it to 24k if Im not wrong. I dont get how it is for unis that are like 15k for internationals anyway.

[lapis wind]

Im not sure your 'advise' is hugely feasible 🤣 I think most students can't afford to buy a house to begin with.

[dense mesa]

If you had investments which could pay for uni, while being at uni age, you probably don't have to work in the first place

[gilded valley]

Interest rates are capped at 7.3% because they're normally tied to RPI so the government capped them to reduce the headline interest rate. If you're talking about how fees change, the structure is changing in in complex ways for the 2023 cohort - but they're not necessarily going up

[vapid jay]

How else am I gonna get more money to invest? Software jobs pay fairly decent

[dense mesa]

This message contradicts basically everything you've previously said about uni

[vapid jay]

I fail to understand. About going to cheaper unis? I like money and invest smartly if I can.

[lapis wind]

I can't remember tbf, I think it was something to do with the plan income thresholds changed, which essentially bumped everyone up a plan. Could be completely wrong though

[flat kestrel]

That's crazy, people say the US is bad but I think our interest rates are like 4-5% and they don't kick in until graduation for most of them

[lapis wind]

Yes, but what you're suggesting is that people going to Uni should pay an upfront host of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to then cover the cost of the tuition?

[prisma canyon]

how did you guys overcome all the costs

[gilded valley]

This summarises the changes
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/02/student-finance-loans-changes-education/

[ivory sluice]

most people take loans, work part time jobs, etc.

there is also financial aid available, based on merit or otherwise. both private and from the government

[smoky quest]

Also look at it as an investment. Starting salary for a new entry level engineer is 100k+

[flat kestrel]

I heavily advise against this. Part time jobs are more likely to make you drop out and the amount you make is insignificant in most cases. I am happy I took out more loans (and of course, they're getting forgiven so I got off well there).

[ivory sluice]

are you in the US? pretty much everyone i know had part time jobs during school

[lapis wind]

It's pretty common in the UK too, mostly so people can earn some spending money

[gilded valley]

Anecdotally, the people who had part-time jobs vs the people who "studied" full time, the people who worked ended up as more rounded people and got much better graduate jobs

[flat kestrel]

I'm in the US but lived with my folks and had an overage of grants/scholarships so I was being paid to attend. However if I had worked part time jobs I don't think I would've devoted the time I needed to the skills required to get a job.
I did take 2-3 gap years where I worked prior, but I never worked during school.

[ivory sluice]

and what about your peers, what did they do?

[dense mesa]

Just because it wouldn't work for you doesn't mean it wouldn't work for anyone else. I worked part time all 3 years of uni and trained regularly, still got a first

[lapis wind]

Tbf I think working a part time job teaches you some fairly important general lessons especially with things like interacting with others.

[flat kestrel]

Almost all of my peers worked. The majority of them dropped out or swapped majors. I was the first one to get a development position.

[prisma canyon]

ok ty:)

[dense mesa]

It's incredibly privileged to attend university in a western country without having to take a loan and/or work in addition to it

[vapid jay]

I would second this but I am basing it on my own reasoning

[ivory sluice]

you sound pretty smart if you had so many grants that you were paid to study
wouldn't you attribute your success to that rather than the lack of your part time work experience?

[flat kestrel]

I respect that it's a position of privilege to not work during university but I do not think it's optimal to spend time on retail or food service or the like if you do not have to.
You could say that sure, but ultimately it was more about me having the free time and stress free lifestyle to pursue stuff in my free time. I had a full time job where I automated things with python/pandas that was not technical. They liked this during the interview but it is NOT comparable to the retail or food service jobs most of my peers held, and I did it prior to going to school.

[prisma canyon]

well I dint mean to start this chill

[smoky quest]

It depends what you do with that time. If you work on a part time job or invest it in projects or screwing around

[ivory sluice]

my part-time work was a teaching assistant job, and not all part-time work is retail?

[prisma canyon]

what are other jobs

[flat kestrel]

I would happily go 20-30k further in debt and get a job 1 year earlier rather than have worked part time. For me I didn't have to make that choice, but if I did, I would've done it.

[ivory sluice]

i would agree that of course more relevant work is better than work not relevant to your studies or career

[dense mesa]

There are many part time jobs that aren't retail or food lol

[flat kestrel]

Right, I was also a CS tutor but I don't consider that work so much as an extracurricular activity. It only contributed around $400/month to my budget and I only did it to build my resume, not for the money because it would've been easier to take more loans if I wanted that.

[prisma canyon]

ummmm which ones are good

[ivory sluice]

by all means if you don't have the capacity to work and study at the same time, you shouldn't do both
but this was a question from someone asking how one covers tuition costs. working part time is probably one of the most prevalent options

[lapis wind]

Im struggling to see where this additional 1 year comes from? Generally speaking most people don't take a year off strictly to just work. Although some do, I don't think the majority extend their time there for another year just to work 😅

[prisma canyon]

ummm anyone got an answer yet

[flat kestrel]

Well the majority of people don't graduate in 4 years. It stands to reason they might have graduated earlier if they just focused on their school work instead. If there's a risk that working could extend your graduate by even 6 months or 1 year it's unlikely the amount you made in those jobs is worth that.

[lapis wind]

At least in the UK, you're only actually in university for what? 2/3rds of the year or so? If that? And a lot of people just do part time jobs in the remaining 1/3rd , generally I don't think most people tend to work part time going "Yes I shall attempt to pay off this large amount of money with my insignificant amount of time"

[ivory sluice]

are you currently in uni? high school? unclear what you are asking. something practical for right now? or for your future as a uni student?

[prisma canyon]

well am not near studying in uni yet lmao

[smoky quest]

answer to?

[prisma canyon]

loook at what started the war

[ivory sluice]

there's no war lol. and if we're asking for clarification it's because you've not made yourself clear in your previous existing messages

[lapis wind]

That might just be a US thing perhaphs, but most degrees in the UK at between 3-4 years. If you do a masters it's likely another 12 months. Some are 2 years.

In Apprenticeships they can be a bit longer, so degree is normally about 4-5 years. Masters is about 7yrs.

[ivory sluice]

i would agree delaying your graduation by 1 or 2 semesters to work a part time job (is that what you're describing?) is not worth it
most people i know delayed their graduation or took semesters off because they had mental health issues, so they took breaks and recuperated before resuming

[prisma canyon]

which jobs are the best for making the money

[lapis wind]

Underwater welding on a oilrig / saturation diving

[peak halo]

I agree. I got an associates and worked through school because I had to. And even if that means I spent less on my education and had more money available during it, it's nothing compared to how much one could be making during a CS career.

[peak halo]

what's the intended scope here? programming jobs, or all possible jobs?

[prisma canyon]

any

[ivory sluice]

movie star

[peak halo]

being the CEO of the most profitable company in the world. Or being the inventor of the perpetual motion machine.

[lapis wind]

Often in western countries its the most dangerous jobs that pay the most in terms of possible routes.

[honest pivot]

Being born into it is probably the most lucrative

[peak halo]

well, life circumstances are not jobs

[peak halo]

Do you understand why this was an obtuse question? What is it that you really want to know?

[prisma canyon]

nvm that how much time did you guys get to work

[peak halo]

Like, how many hours a week? 40, I guess.

[prisma canyon]

ok

ty for everything its been good talking to you I should not be stressing myself on this is still got a long way ahead of me. Have a blessed day

[smoky quest]

In terms of CS, aim for a college degree, make sure you have the grades to get into it and have fun and build stuff like robots, mobile apps, websites, etc.
That's the option that will get you the most opportunity

[random pagoda]

Excellent advise for newbies, as a self-taught guy I know how hard it can get for you without a degree. and you will be paid less than a average degree holder developer because of trust factor.

[pseudo helm]

I don't think that necessarily true. I'm entirely self taught and I've hired way more non-CS devs than those with CS degrees.

CS is great for creating more computer science academics. But I need to hire problem solvers, not people who read about some problems and oh can do a bubble sort algo from memory.

It's why more often than not I'd rather hire from people who went through bootcamps and/or have self-taught themselves and have a portfolio. Can talk to me about how they'd solve things. How they learn. Things like that. That's what I look for as a hirer.

Given two candidates with completely equal knowledge, the CS degree to me is worth the thickness if the paper it is printed on. But if someone has more experience than a CS holder? Yeah .. I'll probably hire on experience instead.

[peak halo]

What do you hire them to do?

[pseudo helm]

Mobile devs, web devs, cloud ops, dev ops, innovation teams. I've run those all.

[smoky quest]

That's not what CS degrees do or produce though.
Reducing a CS degree to writing bubble sort or some paper is rather simplistic

[peak halo]

What would someone fresh out of highschool need to do for you to consider them for the most generic software development position for which you hire?

[pseudo helm]

I know that's not what they produce. LOL. And as I said, for hiring software devs, a CS degree does nothing for me as a hirer for the most part.

[buoyant seal]

Considering how small amount of software engineering education it can be having while mainly having only fifty shades of math, I can understand his point of view 👇

[pseudo helm]

CS degrees prep you for CS academia imho.

[smoky quest]

Yeah, it's a common misunderstanding. A CS degree isn't meant to produce code monkeys. It's meant to produce software engineers that can evolve and manage more complex projects and problems.
If you have the fundamentals, anyone can pick up a language or git or a tooling in a very short time. They don't need school for that.

That's why bootcamps are so popular for lower level skilled jobs that are cheap

[pseudo helm]

I don't hire code monkeys. I hire software engineers. CS degrees do NOT produce software engineers imho.

[smoky quest]

What makes you think so?

[pseudo helm]

Because I've interviewed hundreds of candidates, hired dozens and dozens, and have been doing so for 20+ years. As I've been saying, imho and my experience.

[smoky quest]

so trust me bro? That is not conducing to a great discussion.
I am happy to expand on the arguments for an interesting discussion, but arguments of authority would prevent that.

[pseudo helm]

No. I'm not trying to convince anyone. I'm offering my experience as part of the discussion.

[peak halo]

No one is disputing what you've said about yourself. We're inviting you to explain what your opinions are and why you hold them. I would be interested to know.

[smoky quest]

Sure and that would end the discussion.
But be aware there are also professionals on this channel with different opinions.

[pseudo helm]

I would assume so. I never stated this was the be all end all and my side is right. Weird turn of the discussion. And with a timer of a minute or more, I'll refrain from further discussion.

[gilded valley]

I see a lot of people arguing that CS degrees are necessary, and it seems like a sensible path just because there's so many opportunities for students to start their careers (internships, placement year programs, graduate programs, companies going to university career fairs etc), but I am less convinced of the underlying value of the degree itself.

I can 100% agree that there's plenty of very mediocre people coming out of mediocre CS programs, but I'm curious in general what you think the key differences are that make it so you tend to prefer non-degree people (fwiw, I usually find myself disagreeing with people like recursive_error who are much more bullish on CS degrees than I am)

[buoyant seal]

I think there is some sort of misunderstanding between us.

Under CS degree we understand having learnt fifty shades of math, and some data structures and algos basically.

Under software engineering I understand:
Data structures and algos
Clean code / OOP / Solid/ design patterns / Code architecture / refactoring / testing in different strategies / system analysis and design / finding fitting solution to solve current business/development/maintainance problem / in terms of web development, having abilities to build scalable microservice oriented architecture with good fault tolerance and observability. Choosing right technology to fit set goals in functional requirements to accommodate necessary workload. Considering multiple types(more than ten) of completely different noSQL type databases to fit different cases, kind of long time to pick up all of it. Oh right, and using systems like Git, with understanding its best practices and correlation to testing and preferably building development workflows with it, with fast CI and CD

The second thing requires long learning beyond bootcamps too, and for some reason completely not present in CS degree. Under second thing I understand being software engineer

[peak halo]

It would take at least a minute to formulate a thoughtful response to these questions, would it not? I hope that you'll answer my earlier question about how one can prepare themselves for one of your positions.

[gilded valley]

Coming to a chat channel and having the entire experience be different to a typical chat channel is very frustrating. I didn't see their message, fair enough for bowing out, kinda sad that someone who seems to be experienced is being pushed away from the discussion

[smoky quest]

I am not sure to follow the second part.

But I mean in general, it comes down to the abstract reasoning and fundamentals.
Being able to know that some domain exist and pulling from them (which bootcamp will teach compilation theory or logic programming?), being able and willing to read papers when needed, being able to go back to a more abstract/system reasoning.
So while you won't have to write proofs after you graduate, it will have helped you frame problems in a more abstracted and useful way

[buoyant seal]

Anyway, I would like to point that ability writing long term maintainable and scalable (in code size and performance) code readable by other devs is something beyond bootcamps can ever prepare, beyond of being code monkey

And that is something universities fail to teach or even pointing direction to it

[smoky quest]

ah totally agree!
It also require a lot of experience that neither a degree holder nor a self taught person have

[digital fjord]

Most Unis AFAIK do have a course related to writing maintainable software et al. Sure, they tend to be somewhat dated, but the idea is there, even if the actual execution is quite poor.

[lapis wind]

I have a somewhat controversial opinion of a CS degree doesn't really teach you anything you can learn yourself either as you work or by doing things in your free time, just most people don't have that incentive to actively explore those areas that a degree teaches you. And personally I don't think it should hold as much weight as people like to give it.

Especially a lot of the 'core' principles, I'd argue that the only places where a degree in terms of learning and understand within the industry is Data science and AI related fields where having a degree in something like Maths, is useful not so much for software related stuff, but more so for understanding the principles behind the AI itself / doing the maths for it.

Like, I think it's a great incentive for people to learn things which makes them a good programmer, but I think that's all that it really is.
Outside of AI and Data science, i've yet to run into a situation where an intern or new grad has done something which you could reasonable learn yourself by doing a little bit of prior research prior to trying to solve the issue.

Like the above, I'd argue the hardest part of being a good programmer are the bits that just come with time in the industry. I.e maintaining a large code base, dealing with legacy code, working with existing code bases.

[honest pivot]

Pretty sure no degree teaches you anything you can't learn yourself. You can always just go buy the books, or maybe find free resources, or whatever. So great. But how are you gonna know which things you should learn, and in what order? How long will it take? Who will you ask when you have questions? etc., etc.

[peak halo]

If you like talking about the value of formal education, remember to head over to #pedagogy

[buoyant seal]

Kind of surprising to me that at least my uni did not teach me anything from writing maintainable code, despite actually being possible to have just a chain of books to read and practical exercises to have to fill those gaps.

Common! Internal resources in companies have clear internal courses how to even fill the blanks in knowledge in this regard

My complain is in university teaching materials too far out of things applicable in real world in regarding to software engineering. Academics stuff teached there != What industry needs, despite all this material mostly stable stuff of being at least 20 years old in most cases. Really small overlap

[lapis wind]

I think that largely depends on the course you're doing vs the job you're going into

[gilded valley]

Didn't a mod just redirect this to #pedagogy

[lapis wind]

like, if you're doing an AI focused course and then do some CRUD based C# app. I don't expect a huge amount of overlap.

But I agree that when people start out, they probably wont use a chunk of what their course has taught them in terms of a 1:1 thing. I don't anyone is ever going to go "Wow thank god my degree taught me how to write a compiler in ocaml because im using it in my job!"

And yeah, we should probably move

[smoky quest]

I was actually happy that happened when I had to deal with some DSLs or a lot of textual parsing or had to deal with some of the complex domain specific logic.
But indeed, it speaks for the kind of jobs people optimize for. If you optimize for jobs where the fundamentals aren't required, that will be what you will be drawn into. And to go back to the original question from a high schooler, at that stage, you don't want to limit yourself, your career or growth.

[buoyant seal]

Yes, but I complain because a lot of generic software engineering material is highly reusable and chances it being at some point encountered as needed nearly 100%. I wish that learnt. I wish to be not finding directions learning it on my own in self education. I wished university prepared me for that, as it is generic most often reusable concepts. I wish university learning plan regarding software engineering influenced by people who are clearly experts with dozens of years commercial experience to solve real world problems. I wish having feedback loop from professionals(former graduates at least?) who reached success back to university programs for their update (at least being within 10-20 years range up to date)

[peak halo]

nope, just plugging it.

[buoyant seal]

Ergh. Instead of having added core needed to learn stuff, I remember being asked by educational plan department in university if we had in our program VR stuff. Which is clearly not reusable domain in my opinion. Especially considering our origin country from third world

[near ocean]

I dont understand this whole "CS degrees dont teach you anything you cant learn yourself so theyre worthless" sentiment. Software Eng is the only kind of "industry" (broadly speaking) where i've heard this argument.
Do you think a law degree prepares you for court? Do you think an accountancy degree prepares you to be an auditor? Has anyone ever complained about a medical degree being useless because "technically you can study all that at home"? Where is this all coming from? And why are anti-degree proponents so hesitant in sharing their background and experience?

[keen halo]

Hello if there's anyone from Czech Republic🇨🇿 or Slovakia🇸🇰 please dm me because I have a question for you

[ivory sluice]

in those other fields like law, medicine, and accounting there are official industry board exams you have to pass. i don't know if you can legally sit for such exams without the accompanying degrees

the exams also never end in these fields

[lapis wind]

They're incredibly concrete fields. And generally fields which you can't really learn on the job.

Medicine isn't going to let you practice playing doctor, and these do actually have a use for getting a degree in, because the universities and what not can provide you with tooling and training systems that you as a regular person A) wouldn't be able to afford and B) probably wouldn't even be able to aquire.

In CS, it is very much a "Laterally anyone with a computer can do this" sort of thing. And it does lend itself to being able to learn as you go and learn from mistakes etc...

Medicine or Law dont have that same quality, well. Not unless you wan't to end up in a bad place 😅

[near ocean]

You dont need a degree to do ACA and you can take the Bar exam with any degree in the UK, in the US its up to states to decide
There's an endless supply of other examples to pick from to make this point

Medical residency is quite literally 4 years of learning on the job

[lapis wind]

You don't need to, but they're fields in which the universities actually provide additional resources that you typically cannot acquire.

[shadow moss]

Also programming rarely has consequences if you screw it up compared to law/medicine

[lapis wind]

One cannot simply go out and rent a MRI machine like you can go to AWS and rent a massive computer for a few hours for a few dollars.

[summer roost]

To add another voice: I'd prioritize getting the degree and doing well in your current position. Especially with tuition assistance, the degree will pay off

[shadow moss]

just note, at many companies, tuition assistance requires working for X amount of time or you have to repay the tuition assistance

[ivory sluice]

medical residency requires MDs or equivalents, fyi.

[summer roost]

And I'll add that everyone I've known personally who accepted a job at Amazon hated that job. It's not a huge sample size, but it is around 5 to 10 people.

[vapid jay]

given how prevalent and deeply reliant society is on technology i feel this is a grievous and unfortunate underestimate of just what consequences the programming field can have

[shadow moss]

it's rarely critical outside some select fields. Telecom/Medicine. If Discord goes down, people are annoyed but it's not big deal. If Email goes down, it's not that critical either. Some money being lost is not massive consequence.

[near ocean]

If a nasa rover goes down its a cool 100mil

[lapis wind]

Honestly after working on some projects, Im convinced it will never be to the same scale as what is required on a regular basis in medicine.

Like sure, there are extreme cases, but most of the time, it isn't the end of the world

[smoky quest]

that's like how many minutes of downtime for amazon?

[gilded valley]

There are people with regulatory responsibilities in tech, but it's not like accounting where your dayjob is oriented around meeting regulatory responsibilities

[vapid jay]

short-sighted at the least in the role of these platforms entwined within the business machine that uses them.

[shadow moss]

You have me confused with someone who cares about rich assholes not making as much money as they "could". Esp since rich assholes make the decision that cause downtime most of the time.

[near ocean]

Not entirely true, there are regulations you have to follow and standards you must meet, pretty much any product that handles confidential information has to satisfy ISO27001 which comes with yearly audits
Fun fact: i've had to sit through one, it was 16 hours of torture and torment

[smoky quest]

also add to that gdpr, soc2 or fedramp

[shadow moss]

Must not be American, if you are a private company, there is no requirement around any data security beyond what government contract may require

[vapid jay]

i do not think i thought you rich. i think too many assume if they were not impacted by a slight outage that it is rare and not critical. without thought to the rolling waves of impact through the very economic engine that powers our lives

[gilded valley]

I understand that, and every developer in Europe needs to understand GDPR. But it's not too the same extent as preparing corporate accounts to IFRS standards or whatever

[smoky quest]

public companies will need to have soc2 last I recall.
And from a b2b pov, you need soc2 for most of the opportunities

[shadow moss]

I didn't say I was rich. I said I don't give two shit about Rich Assholes not making money.

[near ocean]

UK fintech startup, the founder (a languages graduate btw) handled all the compliance and contract writing from GDPR, POPIA and other regions' equivalents

[vapid jay]

then my mistake was that you had a point. will not happen again u.u

[ivory sluice]

alright

[shadow moss]

My point is, most programmers work in fields that downtime doesn't matter beyond some money lost. 😭 I don't care.

[lapis wind]

I've seen some companies who will obviously not be named, casually toss away hundreds of millions of dollars for the dumbest of reasons or put money into things based on what is in reality, a pure guess. I swear half of the world's financial system is just managed on a whim.

[shadow moss]

I've done FedRAMP/CMMC compliance. I'm dealing with SOX compliance now. I hate it, because it's just box checking and creative lying while true infosec problems like public out of date software that has already been exploited is left on internet but hidden behind a WAF so it's "secure"

[shadow moss]

at this point, Money is just numbers created in a computer that doesn't really matter at large scale

[lapis wind]

Pretty much

[smoky quest]

In general, these aren't guarantees of best results. They are about ensuring the minimum bar and that processes are in places, including for continuous improvement. But yeah the checkbox dread...

[vapid jay]

the topic was not money, the topic was arouind if the technology field was concrete in the training or if it was not. it is not and that is a very poor choice that is repeated each year. there are more and more sweeping issues stemming from programming choices and we all treat the role as if it were a hobby shop pastime. it is not money it is impact. yes money is there it will always be there.
a doctor can not operate without years of training and certifications and experience. they might kill one person. y can a programmer push code that could rattle the financial security of thousands without some level of concrete governance
y is the career paths of something that is more pwerful and sweeping than we have had before in our lives so... whatever

[smoky quest]

Another example would be in electric/electronic side.
The person designing circuit boards or working with high voltages nowadays will most likely have a degree
(I would attribute the whole discussion to the power a single laptop can give to anyone)

[lapis wind]

Its not so much the programmers at fault for this, so much as the higher ups wanting to build a system like that 😅
I'm not really going to elaborate any more about this though. However, the system is already built on things like this, not because of bad code, or bad programmers, but because of bad businesses having too much money than sense and wanting things that realistically don't work.

[vapid jay]

u r either responsible for ur actions or u give it to someone else.... but this put me in bad place so i go help others instead.

[lapis wind]

apologies for the software that I have previously created

[shadow moss]

because it doesn't matter. it normally doesn't rattle the financial security of anything

[lapis wind]

Things like Wars, and the queen dying tend to have a bigger affect

[shadow moss]

like Amazon claims they lose X amount per hour of DownTime. What they don't say is most of time, they recover most of that money later.

[vapid jay]

i feel like u try to bait me with this... this as close as it gets

[digital fjord]

There are proprietary guidelines for critical software and they work well enough-ish. At no point should a single programmers actions actually affect things at that scope. Yes, you should be aware that your software has real impact (maybe creating a decentralized tool which allows for trivial money laundering is a bad idea, idk), but I would argue "corporation makes slightly less money" is not something worth thinking about. Maybe if your boss tells you to read emails before they are submitted or has you write malware, you should consider changing jobs on moral grounds.
If you start considering programming things that cause severe financial losses immoral, a lot of open source gets very questionable.

[shadow moss]

you seem to think that downtime at most business actually matters, news flash, it doesn't. I've taken down companies before, nothing bad ultimately happened. And if it actually did matter, businesses would hire better programmers but they don't signaling it doesn't matter either.

[ivory sluice]

that all sounds highly subjective. at this point let's maybe bring it back to career discussion
this spawned from mariosis posing a question of why people in the swe field or adjacent to it have a higher %age of people that snub at degrees

and i think that's fairly explainable by the fact that there is a much bigger bootstrap element in the tech world, is there not?

[near ocean]

This started off by comparing the career paths of accountants (just an example) to software devs
Not about how much damage (not much apparently) can a software dev cause...

[ivory sluice]

i think there's a fairly simple explanation, and it's that swe jobs are not jobs that require an official license or certificate such as an MD, JD, or CPA

[delicate bane]

im trying but failing to think of another profession that is similar to swe

[ivory sluice]

so i'm not at all surprised by a large amount of people looking very critically at CS degrees or degrees in general and investigating whether that's what they should do to get to their goal

[shadow moss]

and my follow on was because at the end of the day, SWE isn't that critical and companies are realizing that. It sucks but just like secretary, our individual contributions rarely change companies fortunes.

[ivory sluice]

eh i don't know what point you're trying to make? there are lawyers that do "insignificant" work and people in tech that do extremely important work.. so... ?_?

[shadow moss]

Also, esp in America where college debt must be factored in. That discussion changes compared to other countries where debt load is much lower.

[delicate bane]

i would caveat that their importance also depends on industry and/or company

[smoky quest]

nuclear engineer, electronic engineer, teacher (depends on state/country) -> they don't require a license

[delicate bane]

all these require licenses no? even teaching

edit: ah i see

[vapid jay]

We need to licensify software engineering then

[delicate bane]

why? what problem would that solve

[smoky quest]

You already have something akin to that. Bs/Ms are certified by boards and schools are required to meet specific criteria. It's just not an industry built around certs

[graceful mason]

an hour of amazon downtime doesn't just lose them money... they're a logistics company, thousands of packages get delayed
also

 An outage in Amazon Web Services (AWS)—the cloud computing unit of Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)—caused a raft of backlogs at the e-commerce giant's warehouses Tuesday, Dec. 7, and took down popular websites and apps, including Google, Disney Plus, Venmo, DoorDash, Inc. (DASH), Spotify Technology S.A. (SPOT), Slack, and app-based trading firm Robinhood Markets, Inc. (HOOD).

Frequently visited government websites, such as My Social Security—a portal for online accounts accessing the U..S Social Security Administration—also reported disruptions that started around 10:45 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST). Home smart devices weren't spared either. AWS customers reported issues with internet of things (IoT) connected services and devices, such as Alexa, Ring security cameras, and iRobot vacuum cleaners. 

[shadow moss]

Depending on the Country, most of those positions require licensing or they have industry certifications with teeth

[smoky quest]

Same with software engineer btw. In some countries you can't call yourself a software engineer freely

[shadow moss]

Again, there might be critical packages in there but all those companies are just lost some money. BooHoo, it doesn't matter. Also, article reference AWS outage took out Google? Say what?

[gilded valley]

France and Canada are the only countries that I know which protect the title engineer, and even then there's no restriction on the work a software developer can do afaik

[near ocean]

Most, if not all, professional certifications and licenses do not require the person taking them to have a degree in that field. But you wouldnt recommend not going for an accountancy degree to someone trying to be an auditor, or a teaching degree to someone trying to be a teacher, etc, etc

So why are people recommending aspiring software devs not to take on CS degrees? This was the original question

[shadow moss]

yea, some countries protect the term Engineer. But my SWE meaning bog generic Software Developer

[shadow moss]

Because if you are American, there is decent risk that college debt severely handicaps you.

[buoyant seal]

Despite degree not teaching everything i desired, it is still teaches multiple software development basics.
Ergh... And if student survived fifty shades of math -> he kind of proved to survive... Environment to learn different shit quickly to pass exams, or being sheaky enough to pass them xD

Anyway, regardless, graduated person has better chances to become software developer than any other option, because we kind of learn to learn during university. Main acquired soft skill.

I complained just about having too much of math I did not get it if I will ever need to apply, and lack of learning more about software development core subjects instead of yet another shade of math

[smoky quest]

True. And the scope is specific and validated for a school to be able to deliver these titles.
None of there change the original point

[near ocean]

Creating professional certifications a la ACA or CFA for software devs will only hurt accessibility and that's not something we want is it?

[delicate bane]

i think the cons outweigh the pros

[shadow moss]

I would but primary skill for Software Developers that I see lacking is problem solving. That's very hard to test for and easily gamed so I wouldn't support licensing for software developers. My change would be to H-1B visa in US but that's unique US problem.

[gilded valley]

The CFA doesn't test the skills a financial analyst needs. The thing it tests is your ability to put hours into studying, I'm guessing it's the same with many certifications

[delicate bane]

that is a very unique US problem, indeed

[vapid jay]

What exactly is problem solving? Which problems particularly?

[smoky quest]

It's in general part of computational thinking

[delicate bane]

there are some certifications that also require some years of exp in a certain type of job, and i cant help but feel those are kinda gatekeep-y; like, what even is the point of that cert in the first place if you need those years of exp

[shadow moss]

Anything in general. So many developers I deal with see some random error and freeze up. SOCKET_ERROR_IO::TIMEOUT Developer brains just blanks out

[vapid jay]

Thats absurd. Have they not had a bug before, at all? Are these professionals?

[gilded valley]

CFA charter also requires some years of experience to get, but at that point it's a kind of pointless circular dependency

[delicate bane]

yeah what is up with that?

[vapid jay]

I am not fond of self taught sphere within software. It implies the unis are completely useless. And if they are why are they still there?

[lapis wind]

It's slightly due to the problem of theses systems do so much for you, without you having to thing about it. Means that if that thing breaks, people often don't actually understand what's going on behind the scenes to understand why it broke.

[gilded valley]

CFA specifically is just exams that boomers were made to pass that they now like to make juniors under them pass, it really is mostly gatekeeping

Of course some gates are worth paying the fee to get through...

[vapid jay]

Isnt everything gatekeeping at some level, like interviews?

[lapis wind]

A pretty common issue with scale are things like distributed databases, and developers generally speaking not understanding that things generally, don't happen instantly, and things tend to be eventually consistent at best.

[smoky quest]

interviews are about validating a demonstrated set of skills

[delicate bane]

distributed systems is tough stuff.

[shadow moss]

This so much. Why do you think Log4J vulnerability happened? Waves of mediocre Java developers couldn't handle logging so someone with bright idea decided to be able to be able to embed objects to get around those awful developers.

[vapid jay]

Which is gatekeeping against people who arent skilled enough?

[lapis wind]

Distributed systems are awesome, once you understand the core principles it goes off and the trade offs that happen. And you eventually learn that sets are the single greatest thing in the world

[smoky quest]

gatekeeping has a connotation of preventing people from coming in without a valid reason.
The reason here is valid since it validates they can perform their job

[delicate bane]

no, it is awesome. highly underrated skill set.

[gilded valley]

Tbf, I can think of some people in this very channel who are studying for degrees right now who I wouldn't want to work with in a million years...

[vapid jay]

Isnt the reason of not having school education valid as well?

[shadow moss]

Sure but it's still pretty obscure for most people. They don't need to do it so they don't get any experience.

[smoky quest]

If school education was providing as much value as not having it, then yeah.

[delicate bane]

this is my understanding of gatekeeping as well

[shadow moss]

For the record as non University degree holder, I think Universities are mostly worth it outside the US for most part and can make better programmers. They were in US until financial cost of them went to hell.

[vapid jay]

So why attend unis at all? Lets close all of them

[smoky quest]

Given they are still open and being recommended, it does imply that they do provide a lot more value than the alternative of not going through it.

[shadow moss]

Even if they were useless, which I don't think they are. Change is slow and people take a long time to realize something isn't working and have willpower to change it.

[lapis wind]

Tbf I'd say the same except for the UK. There are so many good apprenticeships going around and a lot give you the same accreditation anyway, there is very little reason not to at least try to get one before going for a Uni.

[delicate bane]

i think apprenticeships are a good model

[vapid jay]

That is a valid response

[smoky quest]

apprenticeship have their place, but I would not prioritize them over university.

[vapid jay]

I have heard many places that toss cvs that dont have degrees on it.

[shadow moss]

And again, I know UK is having this issue and US does, the argument against Universities isn't their education is bad most of the time, it's that cost:benefit analysis doesn't match up

[smoky quest]

yeah, some jobs do require that much knowledge. It doesn't mean it should be generalized to all the jobs.

[vapid jay]

Paying less than 20k a year is a decent deal. More than that is very expensive, especially if you are poor

[lapis wind]

For reference in the UK alot of apprenticeships give you the education. So often there are Level N apprenticeships with provide the same qualifications.

So an example are degree apprenticeships which partner with a university. The only difference is that your employer pays the cost for you, and also pays you for your work. The agreement is generally that the employer has certain guidelines they need to follow which is governed the board, so the things you do as part of your work contribute to your final qualification.

[shadow moss]

Depending on requirements, the business type and so forth, some do. Esp at Jr Level since Jr Devs are dime a bootcamp dozen

[smoky quest]

yeah, that may be different in the UK. The ones I have seen weren't that productive and the students were spending half their time there doing not much. So half of the time wasted on things they can easily pick up on their first job.

[vapid jay]

Apprenticeships are very rare as well, more so than internships. There is no point in limiting yourself to such a small pool

[lapis wind]

Hence why i said, at least try to get one before going for a Uni. Im not saying do one or ditch it all.

[gilded valley]

One thing that the UK has is degree apprenticeships. They're rare, but you work for 4y and receive a bachelors at the end of it. This seems to be the best possible value proposition for an average person to me

[smoky quest]

sounds interesting

[lapis wind]

There are definitely some bad apprenticeships, but that shouldn't generally make people not at least to apply to the good ones 😅

Especially when you get work experience + no student debt by the end of it + pay

[gilded valley]

Apprenticeships are not remotely rare.

[lapis wind]

Other than government Apprenticeships, never go for those. I have heard only bad things from places like GCHQ and the likes 😅

[delicate bane]

that sounds very interesting but also probably competitive as well

[lapis wind]

They are, but not beyond reason. I'm tempted to say they're something along the lines of as competitive as getting a good entry level job? But I don't think I have enough data to really say that aha.

The company that's doing it tends to be a fairly big factor as well as the qualification you get out of it.

[vapid jay]

I would say a bit more since there are plenty of, or maybe not that much graduage jobs. I second what you say about government jobs.

[lapis wind]

Well that was my point, but not all graduate entry level jobs are good, although I guess that comes down to what you define as good.

If you really really love legacy C# then you'll find most entry level jobs good in the UK 🤣

[vapid jay]

I got scammed 9 times

[vapid jay]

Id do C# but not legacy, dont forget the buttloads of old java projects as well

[lapis wind]

In the UK is genuinely seems like there is just more C# than anything else.

If you're in the UK as a software dev, and you haven't ran into IIS Express and it's nonsense before, you're missing out 🤣 or MSSQL

[shadow moss]

As DevOps who deals with C#, I feel attacked.

[summer roost]

By Microsoft?

[lapis wind]

Show us on this docker container what IIS made you do

[near ocean]

Plenty of legacy to go around, even for non-C# roles
I have to look at py2 code for example

[summer roost]

Yep. My org has both Python 3.11 code and Python 2.7 code.

The 2.7 is dying off, but not fast enough...

[lapis wind]

Knowing your org that makes sense, Thicc code base

[summer roost]

Indeed. We also have a structure where individual teams wield a lot of power over prioritization and their choice of tech stack. Which can enable a lot of agility and rapid development, but also allows pushing off tech debt in favor of feature development for a very long time

[lapis wind]

Do you have a lot of 2.7 code being actively used continuously, or is it mostly just things that get ran intermittently

[summer roost]

Both.

[dense mesa]

There's companies who don't use that stuff ever

[summer roost]

The services are harder to migrate, for the most part.

And 2.7 to 3 isn't a very easy migration to begin with.

[lapis wind]

Yeah, a lot of semantic differences like rounding which I imagine causes issues

[summer roost]

And we made some choices that make the migration harder than it needs to be, in an effort to have better first party libraries for 3 than we had for 2.

[summer roost]

str changing from bytes to Unicode was a huge, expensive change. And the Python 2 world predates type checking, which means most of those Python 2 projects have little to no static type checking

[shadow moss]

FROM microsoft/windowsservercore:ltsc2019

[lapis wind]

Lol

[shadow moss]

it's probably 5GB container as well

[lapis wind]

oh ofc it's locked behind auth 🙃

[shadow moss]

docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/framework/aspnet:4.8 I used old docker file from when I tested Windows Containers and went "NOPPPPPPEEEEEE" (though work may force me to do Windows Containers)

[delicate bane]

thats the size of my lambda container...but i have an ML model on mine

anyway, is it sad that im spending my weekend trying to learn stuff for work. bc i am kinda sad

[near ocean]

Have you considered "quiet quitting"? /s

[vapid jay]

This but unironically.

[delicate bane]

isnt that a gen z thing? also i think the issue comes down to motivation and keeping that motivation up to learn even while working (which can be tough)

[vapid jay]

Learn on company time. I do not understand how you can justify using your free time on this? Software engineering is a really toxic field for forcing you to do stuff on your supposed free time

[near ocean]

Learning is enjoyable, not like he's answering emails on the weekend

[gilded valley]

Answer is simple. Ambition, a motivation to succeed. A fairly common attribute, widely accepted to be conducive to a successful career

[near ocean]

Rex is also probably (definitely) not being forced to do anything on weekends

[glad prawn]

Hi

How to rename a file if the file name contains spaces?
os.rename

[ivory sluice]

you're looking for #python-discussion or #❓｜how-to-get-help

[summer roost]

The term is too poorly defined to be useful career advice. If what you mean by it is "don't work extra hours for free", I mostly agree. If you mean "do the bare minimum requirements of the job", I disagree strongly.

[vapid jay]

Do what you are paid for, which is 40 hours of work that is somewhat clearly defined.

[near ocean]

If you accept what comes with that then sure, you shouldnt offer it as general advice

[vapid jay]

What comes with that exactly? A decent work life balance? When you are on your deathbed you wont say Oh i wish i was studying that tech on my free time. There are significantly more important things in life than a mere profession.

[summer roost]

I don't agree that if you finish your assigned tasks, you should waste time instead of doing something productive. That's worse for the company that's paying for your time, and worse for your career - and likely more boring for you

[near ocean]

You think so, others might not
Why is it so hard to offer fully qualified advice?

What if someone doesnt care about family and want to dive straight into work and make 💰?

[vapid jay]

I wouldnt wish that life on my worst enemy.

[near ocean]

If you cant offer pros and cons of a piece of advice then you shouldn't be offering advice in the first place

[vapid jay]

Cons of chasing purely money and not family is that you get to die alone, with no children and a lot of money in the bank you cannot take into the grave.

Pros is that you will be able to afford very luxurious stuff

[smoky quest]

Caring about your family and having a successful career aren't antinomic.
Some folks like to put 200% in what they do. It's a bit cliche, but something like work hard, play hard (and seems to be used in very different contexts)

[near ocean]

Not sure where to go from here, you seem incapable of understanding an opposing world view

[vapid jay]

You can alternatively do elon musking which means youll work on your free time, full time, and try to have some sort of a family on the side

[smoky quest]

That's not really what happens in real life though.
Going above the minimum will mean you are more likely to be trusted and not required supervision. Which means that you can arrange your time and energy however you see fit as long as stuff gets done.

[summer roost]

It's also not a binary choice. You can put extra effort into work when you're younger, giving rewards in terms of compensation that persist through all future jobs, and that give a better quality of life for your family once you have one, at which point you more rigidly stick to the required hours

[vapid jay]

This seems to be the most realistic approach. Work until you have your foot in the door and then have a family.

[smoky quest]

indeed! And benefit from more flexible time

[summer roost]

It's a very common approach, too. Lots more people go above and beyond in their 20s than in their 40s, from what I've seen personally.

[vapid jay]

There are kids who are overtly ambitious who cause burnouts or try to prove themselves, often due to insecurities. I just mean dont let them exploit you due to this. Be reasonable in your study

[flat kestrel]

After getting my first job I kind of realized I didn't build up enough non-professional experiences and I'm still a bit unhappy. I think I'll be fine if I get like 4 hours a day of free time excluding commuting and getting up.

[summer roost]

Advice to avoid burnout, save time for friends and family and hobbies, and to not focus single mindedly on work seems reasonable to me, but I don't think that nuance comes through when you say "quiet quitting"

[smoky quest]

There is no nuance when the proposed approach is the minimum amount of work

[summer roost]

There's a lot of space in between "doing free work" and "doing exactly what the job description says"

[flat kestrel]

Quiet quitting seems to be a weird term, I'm not sure what you'd call just showing up and working for 8 hours.

[leaden knot]

This is also not what happens in real life.

[smoky quest]

so what would happen in your real life?

[leaden knot]

Ask minimum wage workers.

[summer roost]

I expect most of our advice here isn't tailored to minimum wage workers

[smoky quest]

How does that relate to this discussion?

[leaden knot]

Sure, I can accept that. But just because CS workers make more wage than minimum wage doesn't mean going above and beyond definitively advances your career, or makes your boss not-stupid.

[summer roost]

Noticing a problem that another team is having and solving it for them during down time in your work hours is likely great for your career, great for the company, great for the other team, and satisfying for you. If "quiet quitting" means not to do that, I think it's bad. But if "quiet quitting" means not to work 50 hours when you're paid the same amount to work 40, I broadly agree with that.

[near ocean]

If you just show up and phone it in you wont be noticed by your superiors, you wont be up for promotions as quickly, you wont get raises, you wont be given more freedom and responsibilities

All of these might not be bad things, if you plan on job hopping every year you probably dont care about these, but if you are then you shouldnt be "quiet quitting"

[vapid jay]

I have heard doing more than necessary often gets you pat on the back. And thats it.

[leaden knot]

What I find problematic about the discussion is that there is a false equivalence of more productive = more raise. This is certainly good if it happens, but has no guarantee. Anyone who's saying there is a guarantee is selling snake oil

To go further and provide advice: clearly the answer is to quit and move on. But it is not always easy to figure out if your effort pays off in your current company

[summer roost]

I don't think anyone said "guarantee", but it certainly ups your chances, at least in most companies

[smoky quest]

it's correlation vs causation.
We don't need to get into ach'tually type of conversation because obviously there are bad companies, bad managers and even bad employees going at it the wrong way. Mentioning all these asterisks is just splitting hairs

[leaden knot]

It's not splitting hairs because ignoring these possibilities is very dangerous

[smoky quest]

Sure but the answer to that comes down to: make sure your efforts aren't wasted. Which is obvious

[leaden knot]

It's actually not at all obvious as to how to determine if your boss will reward you for your work.

[lapis wind]

I don't think godly is suggesting devoting doing an additional 10 hours a week. Rather a help out where you can and if something needs to be done and it takes a little longer then help do it, rather than going "it's 5pm guys I'm out"

[smoky quest]

that can be a great discussion on its own!

But saying that going above and beyond is pointless because there exist some non-optimal conditions in the universe is just throwing the baby with the bathwater

[flat kestrel]

My managers told me during the interview that they don't do that and they want employees that won't do more than 8-5, so there are workplaces where at least ostensibly this is true

[lapis wind]

I mean at 8-5 you're already doing 9 hour days, but i think their intention there was more work life balance than "we shall not let you pass"

[flat kestrel]

Sort of but but it's more like 8:30 to 5 and then the 30 other than the 9 to 5 is just the unpaid break.

[near ocean]

My contract explicitly states that I should strictly adhere to the work hours stated and that overtime pay is not available

[smoky quest]

People seem to conflate above and beyond with doing many extra hours. But that's not what managers mean or expect when they say that (at least the ones I know).
It means that if there is an outage or a problem, people don't just disappear (and if there are extra time, it can be made up), or that making sure the engineer doesn't just focus on a tiny corner and answers "not my problem" but instead care from end to end.

[flat kestrel]

Yeah staying an extra 3 hours one day then coming in late 3 hours another day or just taking it off if you bank more hours is cool, that's what my employer does for non-compensated holidays.

[short fable]

Hey so I'm new to this and I was wondering if someone could show me what the error is here

[near ocean]

Can people not read the name of this channel?

[leaden knot]

The 'good' thing about company crises is that you can tell if the company will reward your loyalty, so hey there's that

[delicate bane]

@vapid jay @short fable hi, you are looking for #❓｜how-to-get-help as this channel is for #career-advice

[graceful mason]

they literally have to scroll past #python-discussion #❓｜how-to-get-help and available help channels to get here

[delicate bane]

some very interesting discussion going on atm btw

[smoky quest]

let's say it makes it more obvious.
But you can also check on it during 1-1s, or see how they go about your career plans and how they want to act on it. If you don't have weekly 1-1s, that already says a lot about it.

[near ocean]

I see more and more of the "core hours" concept, working your 40h per week is becoming increasingly blurry

[delicate bane]

wait whats this "core hours" concept

[leaden knot]

In the first place in a job like coding (or any SWE job) which is not really linear-output based (LOC is a terrible measure), the 40h workweek is less justified.

[near ocean]

Your company or team has "core hours" in the sense that these are hours you must be available
Beyond that you work whenever you want to do your tasks
Most commonly its 10-4

[smoky quest]

Core hours are also useful in distributed companies to make time for meetings

[delicate bane]

ah thats true. we have an office in Australia

[ivory sluice]

isn't there practically no overlap between ET and australia?

er maybe you're CT but still

[summer roost]

I have immediate team members in Madrid and San Francisco. The time difference between those alone is 9 hours. Fortunately the SF guy is a morning person 😅

[delicate bane]

oh the oz peeps have to get up at ungodly hours to do late afternoon meetings. could never be me

[signal hemlock]

How do you guys find the energy to learn new stuff after work hours? I have been working (as a backend python engineer) for 11 months (6 months intern + 2 months part time + 3 months full time ) in same org but I feel like I haven't learned all that much, initially I told myself that i'll learn on the job but looking back, if i think about how much I'm adding to my resume, its not a lot of quantitative stuff.
that being said, I do put my full effort in my job, e.g
-> I review almost all of the backend (python) code because I am really big on writing clean code
-> I have and regularly continue to fix critical production bugs that have direct impact on company GMV

But I ask myself, doesnt literally every other candidate have the same lines in their resume anyway?
Aside from writing rest APIs, a bit of db admin stuff, log monitoring, and basic system designing (not working at scale yet),
There is nothing unique to add to my resume, so all this time feels wasted.

I attribute the reason for not improving much is that I dont look too much at CS stuff outside of the work, aside from some casual linkedin blogs or fireship videos, I dont really pursue much knowledge in the after hours as I am feeling tired already, and just want to kick back and relax.

Anyone else in the same boat?

[peak halo]

I don't know what your job is, but can you ask for things to do that will help you learn? You shouldn't need to do any learning that benefits your employer on your own time.

That said, I usually do that kind of work on weekend mornings.

[signal hemlock]

Sorry yeah, added my role in the desc.

Do you mean i should look into stuff that is outside my role? Eg devops/frontend, I have thought about it but i don't take up those tasks as i have always thought what if i slow down the team in those domains, i guess that's not a healthy mindset to have.

As for the weekend thing, yeah i have taken up a small side project this weekend, agreed with that definitely

[summer roost]

in the grand scheme of things, 11 months, only 3 of them as a full time junior, is really not a ton of time. You'll continue to learn more things on the job over time, I'm sure.

i don't take up those tasks as i have always thought what if i slow down the team in those domains
As a junior developer, you should expect that one of the more senior members of the team could do virtually anything that you do faster than you can. The point of having junior developers is to train them up, and to be able to tackle more things in parallel than the seniors would be able to accomplish alone.

It's totally normal and expected that giving a task to you instead of someone senior would make it take longer to complete. That's not, in general, a reason to avoid giving that task to you, unless there's some immediate deadline for that task forcing the team to allocate its best developers to it.

[smoky quest]

Most of the time, it amounts to doing something fun or interesting to you.
Be it trying to build a ML model for the stock market or making your own home automation setup or building a remote controlled RC model or toying with some language or framework. Pursuing these fun and interesting projects will force you to read on topics and dive deeper in them along the way.

[gilded valley]

What country are you in?

[near ocean]

Does anyone happen to have a list of uk tech companies that would help a friend with sponsoring his visa? He's an econ graduate with a Data Science masters from the UK but he only finished his studies this year and he's not eligible for presettled or settled status.
He's looking for any kind of Data Science work ideally

[honest pivot]

Most major tech companies probably can, but you can also check out the full list of sponsors: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/register-of-licensed-sponsors-workers

List will be massive, of course. I'm not sure if the data is stored in a way that is filterable. But in any case, it's public.

[fiery notch]

Guys i hv been learning python on my own , how do I build my resume and which projects , to get a job , should i learn django which again sounds like the tutorial loop or make projects , help would b appreciated. Mentor would b life saver

[brave matrix]

who wants mentor to me

[honest pivot]

@near ocean Looks like someone has already done the hard work of making a website where you can search by location and industry (although I guess your data scientist friend would have no trouble doing that with the CSV): https://uktiersponsors.co.uk/

[near ocean]

The server doesnt do mentorship programmes, if you want advice you should ask targeted questions with as many details as possible @brave matrix @fiery notch

[near ocean]

This is awesome, thanks!

[brave matrix]

just asking if there is any individual that is willing to pass hes knowledge to a younger guy

[near ocean]

Mentoring isnt the only way to pass knowledge down to others

[brave matrix]

I didnt say that, but I would like someone with more experience to guide me in right path

[honest pivot]

You should ask your specific question so that anyone who knows something can point you in the right direction, rather than trying to find an individual person

[brave matrix]

speaking of which, do you guys recommend spending time to write a cover letter when appllying for a job ?
or is it a waste of time? because usually if they want to hire you its because of your skills and projects, or at least I think so

until now I only filled in the required fields: name, email, adress, etc. and the CV ofc, nothing else

[near ocean]

I've never written one because to me its simply an HR power trip and nothing else but this probably not good advice
My GF has a template cover letter that she uses, she swaps out a few details here and there and sends it

[honest pivot]

Don't bother sending a template cover letter like that, it's very obvious, and it doesn't really communicate anything that couldn't be seen from your CV.

[near ocean]

Sometimes you're required to send one, so its either you dont apply to that role or you sit down and write one properly
If you've got tons of roles to apply for thats not really sustainable

[honest pivot]

In general, only bother writing a cover letter when you have in mind something you actually want to say about your fit into that specific company. This will typically be in unusual circumstances where it's not necessarily obvious from your CV why you should be considered (such as changing careers, etc.).

[brave matrix]

I'm curios, are you guys currently employed (in a programmer job) and if so how many jobs have you applied to find the current role

[honest pivot]

If a company is requiring one, then go ahead and send a form letter, I guess. I guarantee you they aren't actually reading them, and checked the requirement box by mistake.

[brave matrix]

right, like maybe if there is a particular skill in the job description that youre really good at, then you can expand on that

[near ocean]

I've had two jobs, 1 year experience total
Getting the first one was hell, got it in July 2021 mid pandemic, the second one just happened "organically" through linkedin and me casually applying to places that looked fun

[brave matrix]

where can I get some form templates that I can copy / modify?

[honest pivot]

I got my current job early in the pandemic as well, took about 80 applications and most did not even invite me to interview. I'm starting a new job in about two months, and for that I applied to about 18 roles, got loads of interviews, and 2 offers.

[brave matrix]

to how many jobs did you send your resume for your first role, approximately?

[honest pivot]

Don't do this. Write your own. It needs to be in your own words, even if you're copying and pasting it to many roles.

[brave matrix]

18 and two offers ?! damn thats a good ratio from what I hear

[near ocean]

Well it was an average of 5 applications a day lets say from summer 2020 all the way to july 2021 when i got this offer
I only got one interview and it was the one that gave me the offer
Gotta admit i struggled way more than i thought i would

[honest pivot]

I have a PhD and I'm at a relatively senior level, this makes a difference.

[honest pivot]

That's amazing, I would not have the energy to submit 5 applications a day. I think my record was maybe 2-3 a day for a few days in a row, then taking a break.

[near ocean]

My CV was definitely hard to read and relatively empty for most of that period
From about june 2020 till october i was still a student so wouldnt really count that either

[brave matrix]

Shouldnt take more than 3-5 min per application, or I'm I doing something wrong

[near ocean]

I took breaks as well but then I also had days where I would throw out like 30 quick ones through linkedin
Also I was stuck in some hole in the wall in Cambridge of all places being a full time stay at home house boyfriend

Not having anything to do messed with me a bit lol
I feel like I understood why retirees get antsy and want to go back to work

[brave matrix]

do you guys have GitHub?

[near ocean]

Yea, its kind of dead nowadays though

[honest pivot]

I stopped making new commits to my GitHub the moment I started doing interviews, lol

[brave matrix]

Would love to have a look at it tho

[near ocean]

You can see the exact moment I started working on my github timeline, its kind of sad really, sapped the energy right out of me

[honest pivot]

Yeah, I put a huge effort into mine over about 8 months before I started applying to jobs. Started to feel like it was a second job, which is why I just completely stopped once I started landing interviews. I did at least finish my project.

[near ocean]

I have identifying information on my github so I'm not sure I want to share it here

[brave matrix]

I'd love to get youre thoughts on my github, specifically on my skills, if theyre enough to get an entry level position, or do I need to go back to tutorial hell
https://github.com/shner-elmo

[near ocean]

But its got the standard array of crud apps, cli tools, my personal site, other smaller stuff

[brave matrix]

so what kind of work you do at your job ? app development/

[near ocean]

I work on backend and frontend web apps now
Used to work on automation and assorted scripting in my previous job

[wet berry]

hello there i am learning python cause school, i dont know anything about it

[brave matrix]

keep on learning, practice, make projects. rinse and repeat

[wet berry]

thanks i only know a basic while loop

[graceful mason]

Ocado technology has a lot of data positions and offers visa sponsorship, some fully remote roles, and a 30 day work from anywhere policy so it's pretty solid for foreign workers https://careers.ocadogroup.com/search?areaIds=Data&sort=relevance

[fair ermine]

hey everyone , so i wanted to learn C# to make games using unity but it was pretty hard to understand so i learned python to make it easier , so today i have learned begineer's python very well and im not sure if i should learn advanced python or just go to C# right now
can you guys help me decide a little bit

[gilded valley]

Try asking in #python-discussion

[split knot]

for game dev c# imo

[fair ermine]

i put it in #python-discussion but i thought this channel was better but , ill put it there again

[near ocean]

Thanks, I also passed this along.
Ocado would have a decently hard tech interview thought wouldnt it?

[graceful mason]

Can't really speak for the data team interview process but this page suggests there's some extra steps https://careers.ocadogroup.com/what-you-can-do/technology/data-science#Application form-0

[vapid jay]

Hello everyone. I have a quick question.

Are all Python libraries on the official Python website?

[gritty rivet]

Wrong channel, try #python-discussion

[vapid jay]

Hello, I need some advice for a career in web-dev and Python. So far, I've decided to do HTML (done), CSS (halfway-through already), JS (soon) and Python (been doing for a year but don't know where I'm).

The thing is, I'm wondering if it would be better for me to gain experience instead of getting a degree from a college. Your ideas?l

[near ocean]

How would you gain experience without a degree or similar qualifications?

[vapid jay]

I'm doing free online courses, projects and helping others at the same time. Currently I'm only 15 so I suppose it isn't that bad. Beside that, I code regularly for 1 hour approx.

[ivory sluice]

you're really young, and while it's fine that you're focusing on webdev right now, i wouldn't limit your future opportunities in programming as a whole by skipping a university degree. not having a bachelor's in the US will be a blocker if you ever want to cross the line from web dev to non-web dev

but continually working on your skillset via those projects you're describing should, i believe, serve you well on future résumés.

(do people put coding projects on their uni application résumés?)

[shadow moss]

Non University people can be more then just web dev. However, it will make getting first 2-3 jobs much harder.

[woeful spruce]

What is assorted scripting?

[zinc cliff]

👍

[near ocean]

One-off scripts or other things i had done for our Operations team, usually concerning excel, in either python or VBA

[humble grove]

who wants to come to my discord server

[peak halo]

!warn 764214801982685185 This server is not a place to advertise your server.

[inner wren]

:incoming_envelope: :ok_hand: applied warning to @humble grove.

[prime drift]

I have a passion for tech and I can't decide to go for web development or data analysis jobs. I personally have experience in both. But right now I need a job soon. So which one should I focus on more/more in demand?

[peak halo]

have you looked at job listings? you're less likely to be able to get an analyst job without formal credentials related to that.

[mortal hollow]

Hello Iam from commerce background student but I am skilled in programming and also did some Web development jobs in fiber along with some and some projects and also did have some online certifications related to tech field and so I wants to make career in it but as I am in commerce field (Bachelor of Business Adminstration)Can i really get job into tech companies or I should just focus on finding jobs on other field

[prime drift]

Well I have found jobs that don't need degree's but I haven't looked at web development jobs. So you are suggesting web development?

[peak halo]

if you don't have a degree, web development is probably the domain where you're most likely to have success. I would cross-check that with the stated requirements on various listings.

[prime drift]

Noted, thank you for your time. Also, you have a really nice pfp good pic on your part. 😁

[dull hill]

yes

[brave matrix]

Would you say the same thing about Data Engineering ?

[vapid jay]

Webdev is a large field its just that he needs a degree. There are posts about it in cscq at the moment and how hard it is to find a job without a degree versus frequent interviews.

[brave matrix]

I'd like to think that you only need to know Data-structs to implement a good Data pipeline, but you dont need all the Math stuff like Stats, probability, etc.
But I'm neither of those, so I have no idea

[peak halo]

I'm not really sure. I don't think any of my coworkers are officially considered "data engineers".

[balmy mural]

I would say yes to data engineering as well. Majority of the job postings I've seen (as I've been applying recently) for it either require a Masters degree or have that checked as a nice to have

[near ocean]

I think its safe to assume that any kind of data job, besides data entry, would require a degree or two

[gilded valley]

From the listings I've seen, it feels like Data Engineering is on par with software engineering in terms of degree requirements

[shadow moss]

Would you consider yourself data engineer or scientist?

[peak halo]

neither, really. the most generic version of my job title is "AI developer".

[near ocean]

Do we have anyone that is either of that role here to explain what they do daily and how its different from the other? Are they interchangeable terms?

[peak halo]

I don't know anyone who is a data engineer, but at least in theory, it's where you're in charge of data consolidation and cleaning, and/or designing the whole data pipeline. it doesn't involve any analysis of that data.

where data needs to be consolidated or cleaned at my company, anyone on that project might be assigned to do it. and there's no data pipelineing. (I mean there is, but not as infrastructure.)

A data scientist is an analyst who knows Python.

[gilded valley]

The term data scientist has seen insane scope creep in recent years, very hard to pin down to specifics. Definitely not interchangeable terms though, data engineers are building out infrastructure and pipelines which the scientists will then consume

[peak halo]

I've seen quora people say that fewer openings are being listed as "data scientist" and more are being listed as "data engineer" or "AI engineer", etc. and that would make sense as a response to the scope creep that Charlie ( ☕ ) mentioned.

[cunning condor]

can a data scientist get into healthcare industry? im a 3rd year student studying data science in university right now

[peak halo]

there are a lot of healthcare applications for AI (I published on one, and I'm aware of people doing related work in industry), so yes. see if you can get an internship related to it.

[cunning condor]

great, may i get to know more about your published journal if you dont mind, sir?

[open ivy]

For medical research is there more demand for "gloves-on time" (experimental work) or for computer coding work?

[delicate bane]

dont forget ML Engineers as you see more and more positions opening up for dedicated individuals to deploy trained models from DS

sometimes DS deploy the models themselves but it really depends on the company/expectations/individual/etc.

[peak halo]

I don't know that you'll get an answer to that here.

[delicate bane]

last thing i will add is that Data Engineers are almost always expected to have skills and/or experience with the cloud

[delicate bane]

i guess im technically in the healthcare industry so yes (we do more software used by healthcare institutions)

i think pretty much any industry involving data could use DS

[graceful mason]

honestly any kind of data scientist should probably have experience with the cloud too

[brave matrix]

I have solid Python skills, somy Linux-bash/CLI and AWS, qulified or not?

[delicate bane]

you would think so. they really should learn some services from at least one of the major providers

[delicate bane]

it depends. how much database experience do you have (Aurora, DynamoDB, RDS, etc.)? SQL? ETL experience?

[brave matrix]

Forgot to mention, decent SQL mainly with Postgress and SQLIte

[delicate bane]

at the bare minimum, i recommend DS to learn something like SageMaker (Vertex AI, Azure ML) since they should be familiar with notebooks (sorry Stel ) — just dont forget to turn off those instances if you dont need them since those ML instances are a 20-30% markup from regular EC2 instances

[delicate bane]

you can try but it wont be easy to compete with traditional software engineers who want to transition to data engineers.

[open ivy]

If we don't have the experience, which task is harder? Getting the job in the first place, or being unable to get up to speed on the job?

[peak halo]

getting the job in the first place. if they don't think you know how to do the job, or they don't think you'll get up to speed fast enough, they either won't interview or won't hire you.

[open ivy]

@peak halo: Even if you have a web-scraping tool to apply to 1024 jobs?

[peak halo]

have you confirmed that that tool actually works? but even if it does, that only gets you as far as the interview at best.

[brave matrix]

bro I'm just applying to entry-level positions, I've only started to learn how to code 9 months ago

[open ivy]

It isn't fully auto. I still have to manually submit apps. But it does make finding positions and filling out the forms about 6 times faster. At that speed, 1024 is a feasible target. I can't really taylor my resume/cover letter since my academic work wasn't really focused.

Hmmm, if I ever have a company maybe I should focus on hiring bright motivated people rather than seasoned devs that expect high pay and may be less interested in the actual mission of said company? If it isn't that hard to learn AWS or any "standard" skill.

[peak halo]

You might look into what successful startups have used that approach and how they did it. I have no idea.

[shadow moss]

On the same website?

[open ivy]

In biotech the software positions are about 87.5% senior, which is hard for my first industry position.

[peak halo]

I'm not sure how this statement is related to your prior statements.

[open ivy]

I first scrape the Biospace website to find companies that exist (website can be reached or it gives 403, avout 1/3 of companies on the list). Then I run a second tool where I can Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V each company's URL and Ctrl+C any career links. And rate on a scale of 0-9. Finally, I skim off this list the better matches and shotgun my resume and cover letter (again with tools which make most of the work Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V instead of manually entering every piece of information).

This whole process is only 1/3 of my job search. I also have side-projects and am trying to network.

[delicate bane]

i think you should still try for it. just wanted you to be aware is all

[summer roost]

that sounds like a pretty reasonable amount, right? 1 out of 10 positions being suitable for someone with little to no prior experience, and the other 9 out of 10 positions being suitable for someone with a few years of experience, seems like a pretty reasonable ratio considering most people work for around 45 years.

[brave matrix]

45 years of experience probably not in tech

[summer roost]

I'm not sure what you mean by that - that people in tech are more likely to retire early than in other industries?

that the field is expanding, so there are more total employees working in tech now than 45 years ago?

or are you trying to say that there's a glut of junior engineers and an insufficient supply of seniors?

[brave matrix]

@summer roost your first two points hit the spot, and also tech hasnt even been around for that long (modern tech), especially in the field of DS, all the major tools didnt exist more than years ago; Pandas, ML etc.

[open ivy]

Trouble is, only about 12.5% of the companies use Python, C++, Java, R, etc as the programming language. Most positions are scientist positions where English, Spanish, Chinese, etc is the programming language. The scripts (lab protocols) contain for loops which are ran manually with gloved-hands. This is very tedious to do full-time.

So you are looking at about 1/64 of companies not 1/8.

[shadow moss]

from dealing with hiring, mostly this in United States

[open ivy]

The consensus is that many juniors can learn senior skills on the job, if only they were allowed to work in the first place.

If so maybe companies can hire from this glut even if there is a mismatch? Does anyone know of examples here?

[shadow moss]

Generally companies are hiring senior because they don't have time to train. Like we were considering hiring Kubernetes person but they need to be senior. Jr Person wouldn't help, my existing team can learn Kubernetes on our own, kthxbye.

[brave matrix]

Make small/medim sized projects using new libraries and then do OOP

[open ivy]

So the shortage of seniors isn't that severe? There are enough, even if you have to try a few times.

[shadow moss]

Long story but in United States, I'd say there is. COVID killed alot of Jr Hiring because mentoring Jr is hard remote to start.

[summer roost]

all the major tools didnt exist more than years ago; Pandas, ML etc.
pandas was initially released 14 years ago, tensorflow 7 years ago, pytorch 6 years ago, torch 19 years ago...

I'd accept that tech workers are more likely to retire early - but how early? Even if they work for 20 years before retiring and it takes 5 years to level up to senior, you'd expect 75% of workers to be senior, give or take, which means you'd expect around 75% of positions to be senior. And I think most tech workers take significantly more than 20 years to retire.

The field is expanding, but there's pretty much a strict upper bound on the number of juniors: a company essentially can't have more than 50% juniors, because mentoring a junior takes up so much of a senior's time that they can't reasonably be expected to mentor more than 1 junior at a time

[shadow moss]

Not all Developers become Senior. Just like all football players don't play in NFL.

[open ivy]

Programming is also a mindset of choosing when to automate and how much to automate, when to optimize, etc. These aren't easy to learn but they apply to any major language. It is also about making code readable to other humans.

[summer roost]

I don't think that's a great analogy. Not all developers become senior, but it's expected that most eventually will. "Senior" isn't some elite group that only the best of the best can aspire to. The developers who never become trusted to manage their own projects are maybe the bottom quartile

[open ivy]

Agree. The NFL is extermly elite. All the poor souls who's dream of sports is shattered by the numbers game... could have happened to me and my athletic body had I not been in a very academic childhood.

Senior is most positions and most people.

[shadow moss]

True, but there is other places for Developers to go besides Sr Dev. Management and supporting jobs. Also some people drop out.

[summer roost]

true enough, but those are the exceptions. An average developer is much more likely to go on to technical leadership positions than people management or a career change.

[open ivy]

Management positions? Founding a startup? I wonder what other off-ramps would be.

[shadow moss]

Scrum Master/Project Manager/Product Owner

[smoky quest]

The two main tracks are either on the technical side (ex: architect) or management.

Note that it's fine to plateau as a senior engineer. But if an engineer can't reach that with coaching, they will eventually be coached out

[shadow moss]

There is also supporting roles like Scrum Master/Project Manager/Product Owner. They are management but not really since technically, no one reports to them.

[smoky quest]

These are more like different roles than a continuation.
Many people would go into these without even reaching senior

[open ivy]

So it seems that someone who loves coding can get to senior in most cases. But there are options for people who don't like it as much.

[shadow moss]

Sure but thinking about my career, I'd say good 15-25% of Developers and like offramp into non keyboard roles. Most of time because they realized they couldn't make it.

[smoky quest]

yeah. To note that scrum master and project manager aren't seen in a great light and are frequently looked down

[shadow moss]

Having some money and being able to eat > Having no money and not being able to eat

[smoky quest]

That's a different context and discussion though. I thought the discussion was framed around career opportunities beyond senior (scrum master or a project manager would earn less)

[open ivy]

Having energy left over after the job and/or enjoying the job is just as important. What matters is total time living not total time biologically alive or not-homeless, etc. But this is getting seriously off topic....

[shadow moss]

My point is, I think about 40-50% of Jr. developers have skills to become truly senior. Though if you hang around at company long enough, they might chuck Senior title at you anyways. Senior Developers are generally good problem solvers and that's difficult skill to teach. So my point is, yes, companies sometime need Senior/Architects right now and can't wait to train up a Jr Person. If they did, they would likely do it. In US from my hiring view point, amount of Sr. Positions that need to be filled vastly outweighs the supply. We do have larger glut at Jr though because COVID. EDIT: I don't hire for a living, I just interview people when they want to join my team and occasionally sit in on other interviews when Teams are trying to hire Dev who has some Ops experience.

[summer roost]

you're absolutely right that hiring juniors onto remote teams is really, really, really hard.

[smoky quest]

and the lack of senior folks means you don't have the capacity to hire more junior engineers

[shadow moss]

My team has learned how to do it but it was rough for first couple of months. Now that we are hiring Remote, we have also gotten more aggressive about Home Setups.

[gilded valley]

My point is, I think about 40-50% of Jr. developers have skills to become truly senior
The "truly" there is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I would be willing to bet that 75% of people who have at some point had a job title akin to "Junior Software Engineer" end up with a job title akin to "Senior Software Engineer" at some point in their careers

[open ivy]

If that is true then quite a few companies will fill senior positions with juniors and hope for the best. Out of desperation. So juniors could have a chance applying for senior positions?

[gilded valley]

(also, the "senior" title is increasingly being given out in ways that are pure bullshit, so I imagine that number is only going to go up)

[shadow moss]

Maybe, it depends on the companies requirements. Apparently Senior DevOps is really hard to hire for according to my LinkedIn Mailbox. If a company needs a problem solver, you cannot let a Jr Person make an attempt, you will end up 10x worse than you already are.

[open ivy]

If we know what companies tend to do so, us juniors could go for those. Obviously not the big-name companies as they are well-known and thus magnets for people. But smaller companies can't pull in the best talent the way FAANG can.

[summer roost]

junior and senior engineer are quite different roles, and it's unlikely that someone without several years of industry experience could successfully fill a senior role. At best, the company might decide to settle for a junior and delay hiring a senior until some other time when more talent is available

[shadow moss]

Nope. That's like saying best FIFA video game player could coach a Premier League Soccer team. There is stuff that Jr people either miss or don't realize is happening and since Senior People make decisions that have long term effects, Jr person making a go at it will make life worse, not better. For example, deciding to use MongoDB instead of relational database.

[smoky quest]

Smaller companies can pull the best talent form FAANG by providing a good enough package, tough problems and agency.
FAANG are seen frequently as retirement homes once you reach senior

[shadow moss]

Generally it's a reverse. FAANG you go to fill out your resume, some random enterprise corp to coast and collect paycheck.

[smoky quest]

That's why juniors care about FAANG so they have the name. Past senior, it doesn't matter and no startup/small company can compete on the compensation with a FAANG (assuming most cases since most startups don't end up unicorns)

[summer roost]

I'd say both happen quite frequently.

[shadow moss]

Most Senior people I know prefer Startups vs FAANG. FAANG is awesome, they have smart people and solving huge problems. They also have a ton of Tech Debt and it's really really hard to change stuff. Startups you get to shape it YOUR way.

[near ocean]

Super junior in a remote team here: why would you say it's difficult to be in this situation?

[honest pivot]

I would say it's about the communication barriers that come with being remote. It's hard to learn and teach, especially spontaneously.

[shadow moss]

Because you are screwing stuff up and I can't look over your shoulder to stop you.

[near ocean]

I don't think that argument holds lol
When has proximity ever helped prevent a mistake? If i have doubts i ring my teammates, i share screens, i show them

[shadow moss]

That being said, I don't want to go into office either so I'm not blaming you, it's just the way of the world.

[open ivy]

How is the average FAANG job, in 2022, giving us something that will really help society? Social media did not make us less lonely. Search engines still suffer from popularity-contests (page-rank) and other biases they did 10 years ago.

In contrast, medical companies usually tackle an obvious need. Emerald cloud lab is building an IDE for biology. This means you write code, an experiment is ran (Turk-API basically), and you have all the data in a database (down to "the room was 24C at 19:35 when the gel was set to 137V"). This allows much better reproducibility (a BIG problem) and speeds medical research.

Maybe FAANG is working on "big problems" behind the scenes that I don't know about?

[shadow moss]

Because Jr Developers are like toddlers, they don't always realize that MongoDB is electrical socket they shouldn't stick their fork in. When you are in person, most people are more likely to ask for help then remote IME.

[gilded valley]

I really wonder if this is just a generational thing. Since I was a teenager and started coding I've been sharing screens to give and receive help, doing it in the workplace feels perfectly natural to me

[shadow moss]

I wouldn't say it's generational. It depends on how they learned. Our Jr DevOps person is like a puppy and he's Gen Z but this is his first remote job.

[vapid jay]

u are correct this doesn't hold. nothing about being remote stops review of actions.

[honest pivot]

Nothing wrong with sharing screens, and I think that the Zoom era has opened up all sorts of useful new ways to communicate. But there are certain things that I feel are best done on a whiteboard. 🙂

[near ocean]

In the office though people usually have some headphone-spotify thing going on which makes others think theyre bothering you just as much as being a call away, i've literally seen this in my previous job, people would try to catch someone's attention and then stop after the other person didnt hear them first couple times

[gilded valley]

When I'm in the office, the etiquette is still to always send a Teams message before starting a conversation

[near ocean]

tfw new team just rings me up with no warning, makes the mornings extra spicy

[shadow moss]

Being in an office doesn't mean it should be that shit office design known as Open Office. However, just Jr Dev walking into my office like "Hey, I want to install Arch, any clue how I should get started?" instead of getting down the road with "I have this Arch problem, let me know how to fix". Arch not even once.

[gilded valley]

Iunno. Walking into the office Vs sending a Teams message seems to be near identical in that scenario

The main value I see from being in the office is literal overhearing

[shadow moss]

Or sometimes, in the office, you can see into meeting room whiteboard and see something written on it that's like "NO NO NO". Yep, overhearing.

[gilded valley]

But I don't think that's a big enough advantage that onboarding juniors should be super difficult w/o it

[shadow moss]

Lack of whiteboarding is most difficult thing for the most part. Microsoft really needs to build Surface Hub that is affordable. That's my startup idea. Cheap enough smartboard that you could put in Remote workers homes

[gilded valley]

May I introduce you to my friend screenshare+PowerPoint? (/s)

[vapid jay]

i have done remote operations for a long while now. failure in the communication chain is almost always stemming from the teams in the office. they forget someone is not there. they forget to add someone to a call. they forget to talk about spontaneous decisions at syncs and recaps. they do this to people who are out sick too but always to the remotes.
rarely i have had someone that can not put the effort in to be productively remote. but almost always it is those that are not remote failing to put the effort forward u.u

[shadow moss]

:get out: So worth the 60 second delay

[shadow moss]

We use Microsoft Whiteboard at work all the time. It's just hard without markers, the mouse isn't the same.

[vapid jay]

buy tablet... worth it

[gilded valley]

Editing messages is hard

[shadow moss]

I've been using this more and more: https://diagrams.mingrammer.com/ since you can write out your idea and quickly change it and generate

[summer roost]

There's a much higher barrier to entry on learning new stuff. At the office, I'd hear a junior say "what the hell?" to themselves when looking at something, and I'd turn to them and say "what did you find?". There's a much, much lower barrier to asking for someone's attention when all it involves is swiveling your head and speaking than asking for someone's attention when it requires either asking for someone to jump on a zoom call or expressing your confusion in a way that can be conveyed over Slack. And because of that, remote juniors ask fewer questions, and so they learn slower.

[frigid wagon]

I'm probably what you would call a data engineer.

I build pipelines, data models and validate the data and the logic

[shadow moss]

BTW, you can meet in a Teams channel. So people can see that meeting is happen. At my job, we have a dedicated Channel for this.

[gilded valley]

I refuse to believe writing essentially GUI code in Python is anything other than irritating.

Give it to me in Electron or I'm out

[summer roost]

I think it's about the mental barrier required to admit that you need help. It's much easier to turn to someone next to you and say "hey, can you look at my screen for a second" than it is to text someone remote and say "hey, can you jump on a call so I can look at my screen for a second".

[shadow moss]

It's diagramming in Code, it's best option I have ok? LET ME SUFFER IN PEACE while Microsoft pitches 5000 dollar TV to management for remote workers.

[summer roost]

FWIW, I love open plan offices. They're not perfect, but they're much less bad than any other type of office I've worked in, and I've worked in everything from lab style benches to private offices to shared (2 to 3 people offices) to cube farms.

[true harness]

at least for me, a person who had 2+ years of school online, it definitely feels natural for me to communicate online. especially growing up with things like discord, skype. maybe things will shift in a few years

[shadow moss]

Fight Me! Offices or people in large offices. Open Offices are the worst when I'm trying to actually do work.

[open ivy]

"Electrical socket". Programming is one of the safest places to mess things up and see what goes wrong. Let them get "shocked" and learn from their mistakes. It is a great way to crush egos.

[gilded valley]

I don't like open offices at all. I don't want to wear earbuds, I also don't want to listen to other people's small talk

[shadow moss]

not when they knock out power to the building and force me to do paperwork about why I didn't teach Jr Developer not to stick forks in electrical sockets /s

[summer roost]

depends on the kind of work. You're right that open plan offices can make it hard to get into the "flow", but there's a huge, massive benefit in overhearing and being able to jump into conversations that, for me, drastically outweighs the inconvenience of needing to throw on headphones when I need deep concentration.

[shadow moss]

My ADHD loses it. Study after Study shows they drop productivity: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/science-just-proved-that-open-plan-offices-destroy-productivity.html

[gilded valley]

I totally buy into the idea that open plan offices are a money saving scam being pushed as revolutionary

[open ivy]

They shouldn't build it to be that fragile. There should be enough backups, etc to restore thins.

[honest pivot]

I can't really stand open plan offices, but that's where I'm headed, so I guess I'll have to figure it out. I also absolutely cannot work while listening to music, so I don't plan to wear headphones.

[summer roost]

maybe, but I'll say that I've been working with a junior who is gen Z, and he seems much more likely to save questions up to ask them at the next daily than to interrupt someone and ask for help, compared to other juniors I've worked with previously in the office.

[true harness]

yeah, i have no actual experience, so just guessing

[summer roost]

well, all I can offer is my anecdata: I find them so much better for team building and knowledge sharing than any other type of office that it drastically outweighs their advantages for me.

[shadow moss]

Doesn't matter, I'm might be spending hours cleaning up the mess instead where I could stop them.

[open ivy]

I have the opposite problem. People react to my quirks and get stressed/angry in my presence. I don't mind other people talking, but it can feel sad when they exclude me (has happened where they know english well but speak chinese to exclude me despite me talking to them).

[summer roost]

That's interesting. You could try noise cancelling headphones without music playing. I've also heard people say they use ambient music, or music in foreign languages that they don't know the words to, or music with a beat but no words. One of those might work for you.

[gilded valley]

There's a good chance it's dependant on personality type. IMO hotdesking at a minimum should go the way of the dinosaur, at least let me have my desk

[honest pivot]

I have noise cancelling headphones, and they are literally painful to wear for any extended length of time

[summer roost]

I do agree with you on hotdesking. That's weird for me.

[digital fjord]

as an intern, an open space office has been quite convenient, since I can just turn around and ask my coworker for help, rather than having to use slack et al. The small talk and noise was obnoxious, but I submitted procurement documents for some really expensive active noise cancelling headphones and listen to music while I work, and problem solved.

[shadow moss]

Translation: because we are too cheap to give you an office, you must deal.

[summer roost]

ear buds? bone conducting headphones? I find this headphone design to be extremely comfortable for extended wear:

[summer roost]

I've named a whole bunch of things that I find advantageous about open plan offices, and none of them were related to cost. I expect they're only very, very slightly cheaper than cube farms.

[honest pivot]

This headphone design cannot possibly block noise, since it does not cover your ears. Since I wear glasses, proper over-ear headphones are inherently uncomfortable anyway, but the weird pressure sensation from active noise cancellation becomes literally painful after about 30 minutes, and it doesn't block voices that effectively anyway. Earbuds fall right out of my ears, yes I've tried different shapes.

[summer roost]

you're gen Z, right?

[digital fjord]

2002, so I believe yes

[shadow moss]

they are massively cheaper than cube farms.

[summer roost]

yeah, that headphone design doesn't block noise, so it would only be helpful if you could find something to play over them that doesn't irritate you.

[honest pivot]

The notion that I have to be responsible for my own quiet working environment just doesn't work. Playing any music at all is distracting, it's not about words in the music.

[digital fjord]

as I understand it, the original open space office proposal used a ton of space, and a lot of workplaces just cram way more workspaces than makes sense into a space and call it open space. But that was one article I barely remember I read a year ago, so who knows.

[shadow moss]

Yes, it wasn't designed to used like it is today but here we are.

[hollow garnet]

Guys ok I need help

[summer roost]

I can't see why that ought to be the case. In both cube farms I've worked in and open plan offices I've worked in, the size of your "private" space is basically just the size of your desk.

[hollow garnet]

So I wanna start coding idk how or what coding language
Anyone have tips plz

[summer roost]

ask in #python-discussion - this channel is for discussion about work and careers. (But you're on a Python server, so you should expect the answer to be "Python")

[digital fjord]

I am pretty sure my employer is doing open space offices "right", my desk is enormous. I could fit 3 ultrawide monitors side-by-side and still have space for on either side. There is also plenty of space between desks and natural lighting.

[shadow moss]

It's about the amount of SqFt per employee and open offices is least generally. So less Sqft means less rent.

[honest pivot]

The actual cube walls can be surprisingly expensive, too.

[summer roost]

right, but I'd expect both cube farms and open offices to be around 20 sq ft per employee

[gilded valley]

https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices

Many common assumptions about office architecture and collaboration are outdated or wrong. Although the open-office design is intended to encourage us to interact face-to-face, it gives us permission not to. The “accidental collisions” facilitated by open offices and free spaces can be counterproductive. In many instances, “copresence” via an open office or a digital channel does not result in productive collaboration.

[shadow moss]

Except they are not, the walls take up space as well more then little piece of plywood. Also, due to airflow, more space is generally required.

[honest pivot]

I think the ideal layout is to have both private spaces and collaborative spaces (in common areas, somewhat noise-insulated from the private spaces). This is probably the most expensive layout, though.

[shadow moss]

if you do offices, you generally don't need as much collaborative space because offices can be collaborative for small teams.

[gilded valley]

If you're going to go for an open plan, then you want tonnes of things like plants to absorb sound

[delicate bane]

oh thats a nifty idea.

[honest pivot]

Well, maybe you can put two people in an office, in which case you shouldn't make it a collaborative space, as you'll annoy your office mate. I've been at several academic institutions laid out this way; offices for working quietly, and some central areas with blackboards for discussion.

[shadow moss]

Most collaboration in tech is generally small scale. 2-3 people max.

[honest pivot]

Yeah, I think the max number of people who can effectively collaborate in a live setting is 4

[shadow moss]

If you put two people in the office, hopefully they are working on same thing. General compromise I'm starting to see from companies is larger offices where everyone in the office is working on same thing so discussions are generally about something everyone cares about. Hopefully if I'm forced to find a new job, it will be hybrid at worse.

[honest pivot]

2-3 people in an office working on completely different things is ok, if those people understand that the office isn't for discussions. But then of course you need a place that is for discussions

[graceful mason]

my office is fully open plan (with each team in different sections) and has these weird shaped walls between sections to block some sound
then there's meeting rooms with whiteboards for daily meetings and focus rooms for 1 person to just sit in for a while

[summer roost]

have you worked in other types of offices in the past? If so, which plan do you prefer?

[graceful mason]

i've only really worked in open plan offices (although some smaller than others) but I like it
saying that I am always wearing headphones so I don't mind having ambient noise

this isn't actually what it looks like (I think these are renders or the office across the road?) but it's the same sort of vibe
https://www.officelovin.com/2021/09/inside-ocado-technologys-welwyn-garden-city-office/

[brave matrix]

ngl, it looks like a sick place to work at

[honest pivot]

It looks like it has loud echos. No sound-absorbing ceiling tiles.

[graceful mason]

yeah our actual office has ceiling tiles (i think?)

[summer roost]

Some newer open plan offices play white mouse in the background at low volume

[honest pivot]

Adding white noise is not really gonna reduce echoes. If it's not really subtle, it will just force people to raise their voices. Nothing beats actual sound absorbing panels. 😛

[dense mesa]

Office is open plan with some privacy separators, as well as private rooms to book

[urban galleon]

Hello guys new in python and i was curious what is the best way to learn how to code

[gritty rivet]

This channel is for career discussion, try #python-discussion

[wispy jungle]

Hello, I finished my high school like 6 months ago and took a gap year in order to figure out what to study, in these 6 months I've picked up programming(we also had some in school) to give it a try, but I'm a bit confused at what direction do I look, like python is used for web-development, data science and machine learning. And I kinda don't know what to go for, like I know if I take a CS bachelor it's probably pretty universal, but I'm not sure what CS programs have python as a main and most of the CS programs are orientated towards something. So my question is: "What should I look for in programs, if I am not sure which direction I want to go?"

[smoky quest]

Hi!

Python is a tool used to express ideas. It's useful in many areas but it's just a tool.
Furthermore things may change over the course of your whole career, which will probably span 40 years. So while python will remain popular for the years to come, it's still not great to focus on a specific tool.
That's why I would recommend to focus on a BS in cs. That will teach you the fundamentals and equip you to adapt throughout your career. There are also many areas you haven't even been made aware yet. So I would encourage you to explore beyond webded, ds and ml

[graceful mason]

No CS programs (other than data science/ML, assuming that it's entirely data science and not CS w/ data science) will have python as their main language

[summer roost]

I wouldn't be so sure that's true, but at the same time, it doesn't really matter what they have as their "main" language. Lots of programs don't even mandate that you use any particular language, and say that you can complete the assignment in any of a few different languages, from what I've seen.

[peak halo]

Fwiw, my program made us do everything for the main courses in Java (except for the classes about low level stuff, ergo C), but then all the AI courses used Python.

[leaden jasper]

My alma mater switched a bunch of their core intro classes (intro to oop, dsa, etc) to use Python instead of java/c++

[open ivy]

What is easy in C++ but hard in Python?

High performance code: Numpy. Or Numba. Or Tensorflow (for AI), etc. When are these not enough?
Memory manipulation: Write the core in C/C++ and the UI in Python using PyDLL.
Embedded systems: Drones are too big. But maybe rice-grain size?

[delicate bane]

my understanding is that many of the popular python libraries have efficient C implementations that are wrapped in python bindings; libraries like Numpy for example

but alas, going too far on this is kind of off-topic for this channel

[summer roost]

High performance code: Numpy. Or Numba. Or Tensorflow (for AI), etc. When are these not enough?

When you're writing something other than numeric code or machine learning. Those tools are great when you can use them, but that's not always an option. You're able to use Python for this high performance stuff because the Numpy and Numba and Tensorflow maintainers use C and C++.

Embedded systems

There's a much better ecosystem for writing C++ code for microcontrollers than Python. I've written both, and many things are much easier to do in C++ than Python.

engineers are expected to be able to choose the best language for any given job. Sometimes - often, even - Python is the best language, but there's plenty of times when I would choose something lower level.

It would be pretty severely limiting yourself to assume that Python is the only language you'd ever need to build a project in.

[smoky quest]

Also note that there are plenty of other languages besides python and c++

[open ivy]

It would be nice to know specific examples that would be much harder in Python. If so building a library to make Python more capable is an option. (Kindof off-topic for careers, but keep in mind language choice is part of a job).

[smoky quest]

It's beyond having a library. Sometimes it's part of the language (ex: useful for compilers or expert systems or distributed systems) or tooling (ex: how useful java is to build high throughput backend at scale with large code base, or the portability of C/C++) or the platform (ex: python is not expected to run on the browser).

To add also running code on a GPU

Plus there is a huge factor of preferences and historical context. For instance the company you joined has standardized their code on C#. That means you would have to use C#.
And that preference translates into the ecosystem and library. For instance python is popular for ML because people wrote useful libraries in python that you can't necessarily find in other languages. Obviously, they choose python because it's also nice to write in python

[peak halo]

Oddly enough, basically nothing about Python lends itself especially well to ML other than that it was apparently easy enough for people to write libraries for it in C. (and maybe operator overloading?) The reason virtually every ML/Python person uses numpy, pandas, pytorch, etc. is that the language itself lacks most of the abstractions that ML people need.

[smoky quest]

indeed. I am also curious to see if Julia is going to take some of that share

[shrewd iris]

Can someone explain the difference between the types of majors in computer programming and which one is is good to have for a degree? Tyty

[summer roost]

are there particular majors that you're debating between?

[shrewd iris]

Im in my last year of highschool and just picked up coding, i cant twll the difference between software engineering and comouter science, plus there are so many other ones like computer information and data analytics. Basically i cant decide on a major 😅

…i just want to know a degree that will be useful/meaningful to have for a job

[open ivy]

I generally think a passion is most important. Good grades in major. Coding side-projects. Blogs if you are a good writer. Special bonus: contributing to relatively well-known Github projects. This all shows a genuine interest and is very difficult to fake. If I am a recruiter, what can I learn about you besides the tiny amount of info in your resume?

[shrewd iris]

I do wish to take part in projects but my school doesn’t offer any computer programming clubs or events to participate in, what I’m trying to do now is get certifications online so I can put them into my extracurriculars for college. I thought coding was difficult at first but it’s quite fun to learn and get into and I would like to get a job for that thumbs up

[summer roost]

both computer science and software engineering degrees will prepare you well for jobs as any type of software developer. Software Engineering degrees tend to be a bit more focused on practical application of tools and getting you ready for building large systems in the real world, and Computer Science degrees tend to be a bit more focused on giving you a good theoretical grounding, both there's a ton of overlap between the two.

[shrewd iris]

Which one would be better for a degree, like in terms of flexibility which one would most likely land you a job? And thanks for the info 👍

[summer roost]

both are practically interchangeable in terms of flexibility for getting jobs, at least in my country (US)

[mortal hollow]

Hello I am commerce college student(bachelor on business administration 1st year) and want to make career as a Web developer. I started learning python as first programming language in end of August.
So my question is can I really apply for web-developer job in Tech companies without having any of Tech related degree in future or should I focus on finding something else

[smoky quest]

Asking the obvious question: why not switching degree to a CS degree? Having one would certainly open many more doors and makes it easier for you

[mortal hollow]

@smoky quest I know but in my country we as a commerce student can't get into CS The only Tech degree we can get is BCA

[smoky quest]

Which country is it?

[mortal hollow]

India

[smoky quest]

I can't speak specifically to India, but in general:

• Webdev is easier to get in without a degree than other areas of CS
• You will still have tons of competition from other folks with a degree and without a degree. So be ready for it.
• You haven't explored the whole field of CS. There are many other areas that could be interesting to you. They would most likely prefer someone with a degree

[mortal hollow]

You're right i know there are companies who will prefer Tech degree student over me as a non tech even If am slightly better than him that's why I was asking it

[smoky quest]

It's less about preferring tech degrees over others. It's about correlation versus causation.
It's very likely that someone who has studying CS for 3-5 years full time is indeed good at it. But it depends a lot on how much energy they put into it

[vapid jay]

Techlead is a horrible person and its very demotivating that we have narcisstic psychopathic seniors/leads in the field like him.

[smoky quest]

It's the same everywhere.
There are toxic people in every fields. It's great to be able to be aware of them and to flag them

[brave matrix]

there are alot of people how get hired that dont have a tech degree, even in the data field, so you should be fine. but ofc you're expected to have more hands down knowledge and more/better projects than people who do have a CS degree

[restive sky]

Is it safe to use my full name as github and twitter username? if so would it still be safe to link github and twitter on my discord profile? 🤔

[gilded valley]

Safe depends on what you post. If you're posting edgy memes or developing discord token grabbers, then probably not. But if you're just tweeting about sports and how C# sucks and developing standard projects, then I think using your real name would only be a positive thing

I use my real name on Github, but don't link it to my Discord because there's so many teenagers/kids/weirdos on the platform, and I don't really want to make it trivially easy for one of them to mess with my real life because they took umbrage at me saying "Leetcode isn't that bad"/"JavaScript is a decent language"/"<political thing>"

[restive sky]

ah thanks. do you think I should change my github then if I intend on posting repositories and stuff on discord?

im not going to uni till like this time next year so I don't think I'd be looking for a job for like ~4 years anyway, could always change the github username back to my real name at that point?

[gilded valley]

I think if you're already active with it on Discord, then what makes the most sense is to just keep it as "Slimvoid" or whatever your current GH name is. I don't think it makes that much difference when applying for jobs if it's /JohnSmith vs /Slimvoid, it's just that having it under your real name seems to me to show that you're taking things seriously enough that you want your work closely associated with you

[restive sky]

alr thanks. right now my github is my full name so I guess I'll leave it like that for now. :)

[vapid jay]

Whats wrong with js? its arguibly better than python, assuming web, with ui, is the fore front of everything. I post my repos on here and i dont really care about my real name? what are they gonna do?

Altough i have had a guy called anz try to dox me but he is probably disturbed and anyone can dox you on the internet.

altough thanks for reminding me to remove my github repo

[gilded valley]

Whats wrong with js?
If you're asking this in response to what I said, then you seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding what I was saying

what are they gonna do?
Most likely nothing, but it's a small risk with no apparent reward - vs using your real name on Github which is lower risk and has some small reward.

[prime drift]

I have a passion for technology in general. Currently I need to get some type of job relatively soon. Any suggestions?

[cunning condor]

what cloud software should i learn? ibm/google cloud/oracle/aws/azure/saas?

[gilded valley]

Any of the big three - GCP, AWS, or Azure. For more traditional infrastructure, GCP is the smaller of the three, but when it comes to data engineering things like Big Query are very popular, so it feels to me like it evens out.

[vapid jay]

I don't understand why is a university degree so important anyway. They teach stuff, which I learn online 🤷 should be better if I could use that learning, build new sites/projects and put it in my portfolio, shouldn't it be? That way, not only my money is saved, my time and the other things like, not going to college i.e., saved automobiles' fuel (saves money again), and do things at my own pace. Nor would I have to give exams!

[vapid jay]

(do people put coding projects on their uni application résumés?)

Does it not? 😔

[near ocean]

You're free to not go to university and try to get a job without a degree. Please let us know how that works out for you!

[near ocean]

I didnt know how to code when I applied to uni, let alone have a repository of projects
It turns out 90% of my cohort for my CS BSc didnt know how to code either when they joined but if i had a github back then you bet i'd plaster it all over the application

[gritty rivet]

One piece here is that it's an easy way for employers to filter through a stack of resumes. There are many jobs you simply will never be considered for without a degree. Call it unfair, the fact remains, and statistically it's likely to have a long term impact on your earnings

[sudden yacht]

A University degree isn't just about the bit of paper you get at the end. At University you're expected to be responsible for your own learning much more than in school. You have to have discipline, expected to do your own research, and you have to learn quickly. Having a degree is favourable as it shows employers that you had/gained the skills to complete the course.

You don't need a degree, and plenty of people get good jobs without it. But at the same time, having a degree is going to be a point in your favour if you're compared to someone without a degree. Most interview processes aren't long enough, or in-depth enough to work out what you know. Hell, if there's a lot of candidates for a role, you may find your CV/Resume filed into the paper recycling before it got anywhere near the hiring manager if you don't have a degree.

[brave matrix]

What should I do to improve my chances if I dont have a degree

[peak halo]

for what kind of position?

[vapid jay]

I see. So unfair after all for a person like me but necessary to do.

[peak halo]

Unfair in what way?

[sudden yacht]

It can be considered unfair, but a degree is a certificate to say you have spent 3+ years learning a topic, and all the skills around that. It would be unfair if that meant nothing.

[vapid jay]

#career-advice message

[peak halo]

this doesn't explain why it's unfair. Is there some reason outside of your control that you can't pursue a degree? You don't have to answer, but unless that's true, it's not really unfair.

[vapid jay]

Well, I'd be having learnt for more than 5 years if we speak of time, except that, all online. And yeah, I forgot to mention I'd be doing a few internships for some training

[gilded valley]

You're 15, the best course of action is to make sure you get good grades for the next year or so until you actually need to start applying to university and re-evaluate. There's a ton of advantages to university/college, and you learn things that you probably wouldn't ever learn of your own volition. Either way, keep doing what you're doing and you'll be in a reasonable position - definitely don't mentally lock yourself out of university if you're only 15

[vapid jay]

You're right

I'd focus on studies and go on with learning a little python and web-dev now and then

With that, I plan on having another discussion on this .. around 3 years later :)

[brave matrix]

I honestly dont know yet, at the beginning I started learning Python so I can automate and backtest different trading strategies, and I also have a friend that is studying Data Science (in uni) so I learnt Python and just a few months ago I enrolled in a Data Science boot camp.
but when we started learning Probability I'm not sure I want to purse a career in DS, since I like building programs and stuff, not really staring at data and calculating all the boring metrics.

so honestly I've been thinking of doing Data engineering, since you program a lot and you don't really need to analyze the data per se, but yesterday a few guys have been suggesting that if you dont have a degree it will be easier to purse a career in web-dev than in data.
so idk, just having a look at Flask and Django right now since they interest me regardless, I think I will just end up learning some web-dev skills and some data engineering tools and hopefully I will be able to find a job that I like

edit: and forgot to mention I want to get hired asap, so I'm trying to learn other highly requested skills so I can add them to my resume asap

[near ocean]

And university is out of the question for you? Why?

[balmy mural]

Just want to point out as I mentioned yesterday, Data Engineering also really puts a heavy focus on having a degree (majority looking for Master degrees), although it might be different for where you're applying. I'd advise you to look at job descriptions for where you're from and deciding if it's a viable option to pursue without a degree. As an example, here's a few screenshots of job postings that are in English for Junior Data Engineers in the Netherlands:

It's a field I'm applying for without a Masters, but I do have a degree, and I've had rejection after rejection for not meeting minimum requirements with my first interview only happening this week

[native narwhal]

I have a different question for those that are self taught and got hired in less then 6 months from picking up Python:
what did your project portfolio consist of/looked like - that got you hired into any data role? 🙂

[brave matrix]

A friend of mine suggested that to me just before enrolling in the boot-camp but 4 years is just too much for me to wait, I want to get a job asap.
tbh I'm not concerned about not getting hired at all, because I only pay my bootcamp once I find a job, so by the time I will finish it (3-4 months) I should find a job but I want one rn

[near ocean]

you say you want to get a job, but do you need to? I also want a lot of things but thats not how life works
is there something blocking you from going to uni?

[brave matrix]

whats your ratio of respones per 100 applications, give or take

[brave matrix]

At this point its out of the question, I'm already in the boot camp. The only question is what's the fastest route to get hired in my situation ?

[balmy mural]

As I said, first interview this week with approx 40 applications sent out while having a bachelors and currently working on my honours (basically a step between BSc and MSc in South Africa. Can't do an MSc without it). Had to take a break from sending out applications due to exams though and will keep sending out end of this week.
Also important to keep in mind that some rejections for me are likely due to companies not having the ability to hire internationally

[near ocean]

probably to finish the bootcamp and get any job out of it

[brave matrix]

So you're saying I have no chance to get hired before the end, or thats the safest route

[near ocean]

yes,i dont think you have much of a chance realistically to get into a junior position with only a couple months of python and half a bootcamp

[brave matrix]

Appreciate the honesty, will have to think about that

[near ocean]

keep applying to stuff and finish the bootcamp i would say, and then possibly think about going to university for a degree or getting an apprenticeship

[gritty rivet]

If you're already in a bootcamp currently, I'd say your objective should be to get as much out of it as you possibly can. Then as soon as you have a couple of projects to put in your resume, start applying for jobs. Find people who did well coming out of the same bootcamp and find out what they did. Talk to your current classmates about what they're doing too

[brave matrix]

for the record I'm perfectly fine with an apprenticeship, as long as they pay...

[ivory sluice]

i think in your situation and age i would have thought the same way as you. what you're missing from the equation is the opportunity and value of university degrees, and only considering the cost (which i understand, is a significant amount!) scrolling up i think you got a few explanations of the value of uni

[near ocean]

you're chasing early money instead of going the proper way, why?
devs with degrees pretty much always outearn devs without degrees

[vapid jay]

Guess so 😄

[brave matrix]

Youre exaggerating, even If I went to uni right now, by the time I'm finished yes, I will find a job easier, and they might even pay 10-20% more, but thats it. and now you have 40 to 200k in debth that you need to pay back, so whats the advantage ?
I cant talk from experience, but I'm pretty sure that once you have a few jobs and you have a good track record nobody is even gonna give a shit about your degree, unless your working at a quant fund or maybe for data related jobs it might be an issue, but for the rest who gives a shit if a senior dev has a degree or not ?

[near ocean]

you asked about data related positions, didnt you? do you think that not only you can find a data-related job without a degree but that you'll somehow be within 15% in salary to someone with multiple advanced degrees?

[balmy mural]

The difference of earnings between those with a degree and those without will shrink over time as you rack up more experience, but it's not an exaggeration to say that those with a degree will generally outearn those without a degree.
Example: https://www.offerzen.com/blog/developer-salaries-by-education
It might not carry over to where you're from, but earning 35% less without a degree for the first two years is a significant amount of money, and it'll take a few years to close the gap. That won't happen in just 3 years

[near ocean]

to me uni sounds like an easy choice
you get to meet and talk to a bunch of smart people for 3-4 years, learn a ton of cool shit and by the end of it you could pretty much go work wherever you want, assuming you put in the work for the grades
it doesnt even have to be a CS degree, lots of people I know and in this server are doing STEM degrees and could get a job as software devs in literally any company they pick

[vapid jay]

you make it sound like a degree is guaranteed job, is it really?

[near ocean]

assuming you put in the work for the grades
There's nothing guaranteed in this life except maybe that it'll some day end

[vapid jay]

i do not follow because i do not know what grades have to do with a degree getting you a job in this regard

[ivory sluice]

if your grades are not high enough you don't get a degree

[gilded valley]

death and taxes

[ivory sluice]

and no, a degree doesn't guarantee anything, except for the degree itself

[near ocean]

Degrees come with grades, its not a simple pass/fail
A first class degree from a good university pretty much guarantees you a job if you're willing to search for one

[ivory sluice]

what is a "first class degree"

[near ocean]

In the UK first class is an overall grade of 70% or above

[vapid jay]

well ye, i assumed degree was obtained meaning you passed. how is degree not pass or fail? you either get it or you do not.

seems to me that a degree is helpful but should not eclipse taking opportunity when it is there

[near ocean]

Degrees are not made equal lol, someone scraping by a low tier uni doesnt have the same degree as a first class russel group graduate

[gilded valley]

It's getting to the point in the UK where even first class degrees don't mean much - you just have to put "XYZ%" overall to stand out because first-class degrees are increasingly given out for mediocrity

[ivory sluice]

so is it like graduating summa cum laude?

so on your resume do you list the class of degree you get?

CV* for UK

[gilded valley]

The different classifications are: First Class (70%+), 2:1 (60%-70%), 2:2 (50%-60%), third (40%-50%). I list First Class, if I got a higher % I'd put the actual percentage

[near ocean]

Maybe, i thought summa cum laude meant top of your class
I used to, now my education section is getting increasingly smaller and more irrelevant

mfw i got 72% milking that First Class MS™

2:1 is 60-69
2:2 is 50-59

[gilded valley]

same here near enough

[ivory sluice]

this is very new to me as an american

[gilded valley]

To make it even more confusing, Oxford and Cambridge go further and have a "double first" which means first class in two subjects I think

[ivory sluice]

do they really shorthand it as 2:1 and 2:2? those just look like ratios

[leaden knot]

no one else relevant except spoon and wranglers

[ivory sluice]

i think here in the US your rank or cohort is really not that important. they'll look at your GPA and that's about it.

[near ocean]

Anything to stand out i guess

But anyway, a good grade from a good university puts you miles ahead of others without degrees, at that point you could say its "guaranteed" to get a job, i have friends that were scooped right out of uni, signed contracts before they even graduated

[ivory sluice]

wait, well when you list these %ages these are actually just a measure of your GPA, and not relative to other students?

[gilded valley]

Yeah - just your weighted average grade across different units/years

[ivory sluice]

do you guys also do the 4.0 GPA system?

[gilded valley]

Nope - usually either classification or just your overall mark as a %

[gilded valley]

Yeah, I know people who were offered very good jobs during their studies at e.g Edinburgh university

[ivory sluice]

mk, so not too different then. although i'm surprised third class gets you a degree at all, if it's basically an average score of 40-50%

[honest pivot]

A first in the UK is like having a high GPA in the US.

[jade pike]

I feel like I could contribute more if I had a part time job working as a Python Django/Flask developer for a company. Can I get a referral?

[vapid jay]

less than 60 percent in the us is failing is it not?

[near ocean]

Contribute more where lol, here? Dont think its ok with the rules to ask for work

[jade pike]

More like asking if anyone knows a company hiring remote part-timers

[near ocean]

Thats not what a referral is last i checked, but you can try linkedin, indeed, glassdoor, totaljobs, etc

[honest pivot]

You should ignore the percentages, grades are curved in all sorts of ways. In the UK your entire grade usually depends on some massive exams at the end of the semester.

[vapid jay]

i mostly ignore school at all... i was asking bc i could not remember what my roommate had said

[near ocean]

Thats definitely a bad idea to ignore school

[vapid jay]

i was not suggesting anyone do it

[near ocean]

Im suggesting you not do it either

[ivory sluice]

sure, grades are curved. but a curved grade of 60% is likely failing in most schools.
memory is kind of hazy on how grades out of 100% scale to the 4.0 scale, but in many schools if you fall below a certain GPA (my school was ~2.0) you get put on probation and eventually kicked out if you can't improve on them

[vapid jay]

this is what i remember too.... the scale is less forgiving when compared to other countries

[ivory sluice]

i'd be curious to see what a 2.0 GPA equates to as a %age for UK student

[near ocean]

Around 40% for BS or 50% for MS
Those were the cut offs for my school, if you drop below them you get put on probation as well and then kicked out

[vapid jay]

well thank you for the suggestion... i am doing just fine ^.^

[ivory sluice]

google says

[honest pivot]

You're just talking about a meaningless numerical scale, it makes no sense to pick out a particular number and say you think it should mean failing. Do you have an idea how standardized tests like the SAT or GRE get curved? In principle an "ideal" test should place most students near 50%.

[ivory sluice]

conversation took this route bc we were talking about "classes" for UK degrees which i'm not familiar with.

and it's not about what i think should mean failing, at least here below 65% is literally a failing grade

[honest pivot]

Sure, but then you doubted that a score of 70% was considered extremely good.

[ivory sluice]

i did not

[gilded valley]

For most universities the overall class and grade is a weighted average of different units. For my university, it was 40% of the average grade I got in second year + 60% of the average grade I got in the third* year. Overall percentage is the thing that determines what class you got, and some jobs will ask for something like "A high first"

[honest pivot]

In any case, if a test places most students near 50%, then a 50% is what Americans would call a B-minus.

[near ocean]

Wait till you hear about the Dean's list

[honest pivot]

I took an exam once (in the US) that was so awful, the average score was 17%, lol

[gilded valley]

38% of students in the UK get a first which is pretty ridiculous given that it used to be relatively exclusive https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/news-blog-and-events/press-and-media/universities-must-not-allow-a-decade-of-grade-inflation-to-be-baked-into-the-system/

[ivory sluice]

you might have a typo there. you mentioned second year twice?

[gilded valley]

ah yeah - meant to say third year second time round.

[ivory sluice]

this site equates a US 2.0 GPA to 50% mark from UK. interestingly below a 2.0, most unis in the US don't award degrees https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/conversion-table-for-us-gpa-to-uk-class-degrees/

so i think this may play a part in my reading of the room right now that grades or "class" matters in the UK more than the US, because below a 2.0 in the US you just won't get a degree, whereas in the UK you'll get a third class (lower value) one

that being said, a 2.0 GPA on your resume won't impress anyone

[gilded valley]

I think at that point you just list the university and not the GPA or anything

[vapid jay]

Unless its a first just uni is fine

[delicate bane]

its also obvious but maybe worth mentioning whether you have an undergraduate degree vs graduate degree ("grad vs. post-grad" in other places)

[ivory sluice]

yeah i wouldn't draw attention to it. some tech roles i know here also have a minimum GPA requirement of 3.0, for which they sometimes make exceptions but it's a hurdle

[near ocean]

A third class degree is basically unusable so it doesnt matter, could be from cambridge and it'd still be just a piece of paper

[honest pivot]

Today is the first time I've heard of third class degrees

[gilded valley]

same requirement here fairly often. My offer was technically contingent on me getting a 2:1

[true harness]

these are full time junior roles, not internships?

[ivory sluice]

mhm, entry level of course

[vapid jay]

1, 2.1, 2.2 and 3 but 3s are better than nothinf

[gilded valley]

getting a third class degree is quite difficult. Consistently hitting 40% and not failing takes some skill given that you have to pass every unit

[delicate bane]

less than 3.0 really means you werent really focused on your studies imo

[near ocean]

An efficient pass, some would say, no more no less

[gilded valley]

2:2 is what the people who are just scraping by usually end up with

[gilded valley]

it's not a "1" it's a First/1st, if you say "I got a 1 degree" people will think you're a lunatic. Also the standard notation is 2**:2, not 2.**2.

[vapid jay]

literally 1984

[near ocean]

pardon?

[rain sorrel]

do any of you guys know PHP?

[vapid jay]

in the discussion of degrees and grade and careers i am curious. i hear much about a degree helps get a job because it is something you put on the resume. this means, to me, that it is just a filter to the hiring company right? quick initial filter, those that have and those that have not.

but does school teach or prepare for the rest of the process? the interview, how to even build a resume that speaks to the job opening you are after, how to speak about yourself, and how to communicate in the interview?

so far from reading in this channel it seems that common advice is get degree, then get job. what about applying for that job? this question removing the scouted offers that can happen to a few, getting job before school is over.

[true harness]

almost all schools have some sort of "career development center", where students get help from advisors about careers, help with resumes, interview prep. not only that, university puts you together with a bunch of people that are going into the same field as you; it's really good for networking.

[vapid jay]

mmm, networking is always good ye. but "career development center" suggest this is somewhat extra? not part of the classes or the degree?

[true harness]

right, it won't be specific to any one course, it's just something a school would provide

[shadow moss]

Degrees are just such a big filter for many companies at Jr positions and sometimes up.

[vapid jay]

this is american thing yes?

[true harness]

yeah, though I would hope it's true other places as well

[vapid jay]

I believe degrees are a must have

seems weird... the idea that school would have extra service for helping with process. like, to me, that should be one of main reasons to offset cost of time in school

[digital fjord]

Here in the czech republic, we also have such a center, though it is less prevalent, since here specifically getting a job in IT is quite easy.

[gritty rivet]

Classes are focused on course material required for the degree itself, but the institution has an interest in your success after graduation... Hence career centers are the norm.

[vapid jay]

so it is some disconnect between the companies that hires and the schools that teach? this may explain why so many different experiences of interviews happen in this channel? that if the schools were to define how to gauge the applicant and the companies were to listen to the schools who did the teaching that there would be more uniform process... maybe... it is late

[shadow moss]

It’s very industry and country specific. My answer is American POV.

[vapid jay]

I am speaking for europe, and mid east. Degree will make you the man, almost always.

[shadow moss]

It’s still probably country specific.

[vapid jay]

awkward use of gendered comment but i think i understand you mean your areas have a strong desire to see degree?

[gritty rivet]

Part of the disconnect there is that universities are trying to prepare you for your whole career, not just one job. Career centers will definitely help you with interview prep, but I think a lot of people are lazy and turn to discord instead

[vapid jay]

Well man is gender neutral. I have heard they toss out cvs without a degree. You can still land a job but at least 300 or 400 applications in USA for example

[digital fjord]

I have a lot of classmates who drop out midway to just work full-time, but that isnt really what people mean when they talk about getting jobs without degrees

[vapid jay]

Tech with tim lands a job at microsoft leaves school, other entrepeneurs aswell. They are exceptions and cannot be seen as people who are not competent enough to get a degree.

[vapid jay]

i am curious about this too!! is it hard to take job opportunity if in school presently? i imagine for america it can be painful with cost

[shadow moss]

It depends in US. I know plenty of people without degrees who didn’t have to send out 400 applications. Each country or even part of country can be varied.

[gilded valley]

I am not speaking for Europe. But it seems ot me that once you've landed decent experience, no one cares in the slightest about your degree. They're definitely the easiest path to getting that first job though

[digital fjord]

oh no, these classmates are dropping out because they fail the degree catastrophically. It is way harder than a programming job.

[vapid jay]

Oh that is interesting. I assume usa?

[digital fjord]

Czech republic.

[vapid jay]

Well in order to get experience you need a decent degree. Otherwise you need to freelance or smth, certainly doable but bunch of companies are biased against it.

[digital fjord]

but Uni is more or less free here, so it is probably different in countries where this isnt the case.

[gilded valley]

Need? No. Does it make it easier, yes, as I said in my message.

[vapid jay]

this seems like a very good incentive to just be in school until job happens u.u

[digital fjord]

yeah, thats the idea. If you arent good enough to get a degree, you do still get a pretty good job.

[vapid jay]

so interesting...

oh, these career center places... are they student only or can anyone use them with or without fee?

many questions... can not sleep ^^;

[digital fjord]

the Uni is a public space, so you can probably just walk in, but they are probably meant for students.

[vapid jay]

I can advise going to north, mid europe to study in english. Which is like 1500 euroes a year

[balmy mural]

Interestingly, most of my friends who started working while studying or landed a job for directly after studying, the job was contingent on still passing university and getting the degree. Flunk out and they were without a job

[vapid jay]

Norway, sweden, germany have all applied sciences unis with software programmes in english. Youll get cultured as well. They are often three years programmes. Only accom is expensive.

[digital fjord]

huh, wonder how that makes business sense. Maybe they were hiring stricter, so most passed. Feels weird to teach an intern for 1-2 years and then just... let them be.

[vapid jay]

They often have finish above 60/100 rule as well. So if you graduate with 55 youre done

[true harness]

at my school, it's student only. presumably it's the same for other places as well

[vapid jay]

is that normal? if someplace offers the job they must see what they want in person. why make it condition? they want both student and employee i guess?

[balmy mural]

I'm not sure how it makes business sense, and my "most" is just my anecdotal case for two people. I know one of them made a deal to take a pretty big pay cut for the first 6 months while working part time and then full pay as soon as his degree and he could work full time. By that time he was also fully caught up. I wonder if they might have just started him on a lower pay once moving to full time instead of completely dropping him if he flunked out though

[balmy mural]

For both this was towards the last 6-8 months of their degree, so I don't think they really cared about wanting both. Could also be that marks up until that point indicated that there was almost no chance of really flunking though

[vapid jay]

very interesting... thanks!~

[smoky quest]

If you hire someone while they are still at school, it's because you are buying the promise of a great employee and want to invest in them. If they don't graduate, it means that promise did not realize and did not have such potential after all. The interview for the time at which they are students would not be the same interview once they graduate.
Note: it's also a way to incentivize them to pay attention and not just drop out

[vapid jay]

it is interesting practice to me. being student that can get grades does not make good employee all the time. good employee does not mean someone who can pass standard tests all the time. feels like a practice that assumes much and hides a different motive

though i do not know that much about it, just onlooker curious of opinions

[smoky quest]

Tests and grades are mean to an end, not the end itself. The end is the accumulation of knowledge and experience of someone having a specific degree and the tests and grades are used to validate that.
Similarly, degrees' purpose is not to have a piece of paper but to demonstrate that the person has been through an education that includes specific and well defined pieces of knowledge and experience.

[vapid jay]

so it matters which degree too? feels like silly question but i see all the time others talk about level a degree and rarely what field degree is in.

ye, test and grade are means not end. i only find it curious that good student is equated here as good employee. so much that company is willing to put it as condition on the employment.

[near remnant]

would you guys be "picky" for your first dev job if you are a self-taught guy? let's say, you get an offer, good salary, good team, opportunity to learn new stuff at the company, but the technology is really old like the company is using web2py for example. would you go for it, learn as much as you can and maybe switch after a year? or maybe wait for a new python project with new stack?

[smoky quest]

It's a cost function. The closer to the ideal degree for the role, the lesser the cost and the stronger case you can make about yourself.

[vapid jay]

this make sense to me. cost of onboarding against perceived knowledge of employee. this is where many without degrees hit challenge ye? the lack of knowledge on how to present their cost offset to the employer even though they may even be the better purchase

[delicate bane]

it only takes an employer one time to hire a bad apple before they resort to taking the approach of filtering those with degrees...

[smoky quest]

A bad analogy would be hiring a chef for a fancy restaurant.
There are many home cooks who can cook delicious food. But they aren't trained in the ways and manner of a professional cook. They may fail some of the tests and may not even know some of the topics they need to know.

It's not too different for software engineering. Most self taught will focus on 3-6 months and make some websites. But they won't know what else they need to learn and may not have the right expectations.
Furthermore, when a company puts out a job ad, they get hundreds of applicants, with the vast majority with the right degrees, projects and experience. So why going out of their way?

[vapid jay]

employer hires bad apple all the time though, that is one constant in the system... u will always have miss

[smoky quest]

it's correlation vs causation.
Having a degree does not guarantee anything. But it strongly correlates.

[vapid jay]

ye ye! this is where it becomes challenge to the applicant to present their value and the system, or the perception of the current system, is not in favor of their position. i do understand that, the lack of college degree

[delicate bane]

no one is saying it cant be done. you can try to get a job in tech without a degree; it will just be harder to convince employers so you will have to put in that extra effort to convince (however that may be).

[smoky quest]

They also tend to perform worse on abstracted tasks and deep knowledge

[vapid jay]

also... i not consider a 3-6 month self study the same as a 3-6 year student. obviously there is gap in knowledge and the self study of that little time will have tiny amount of leverage to put on resume or cv.

but self-study of years with plenty of experience, they still face the filter and then the challenge of selling their value where company might blindly take degree as more weight

[near remnant]

can anyone help me with this?

[vapid jay]

this to me is very interesting from the other perspective. that such value is overlooked by nature is so indicative of broken system to begin with

not sure my point in all this though but you all give me much to think about which is cool

[delicate bane]

they might. but at the same time your experience and skill level should show in your projects on your resume

[smoky quest]

Which part is being overlooked?
Someone without a degree would just be competing with people less senior than them.
But correlation vs causation strikes again. Even if they spend a few more years writing code, that code won't be about more abstracted topics or knowledge they haven't learned. The ones who do would fare better.

[vapid jay]

should very strong word here. my resume, if i tried, would not turn heads if they start with degrees listed... they would find none on mine! haha

i just started thinking about the advice repeated here time and time... "degree make it easier" is the tldr of it. i ask myself, but why?

so far i learn many things but i think i begin to see that degree make it easier because it forces other to put in the time. there is no shortcut to raw experience and while boot camp might sell you "learn to code in 9 months" that is weak experience.

ye, degree make it easier because the time is there. but to say all someones without degree are less than fresh faced students with degree? this seems like a tradeoff of the filter in the field.

[delicate bane]

what recursive said earlier applies. you also have to realize it depends on your local job market too; some companies are more willing to take a chance on those with no degrees but thats harder to find when theres a downturn in the economy (less likely to take risks)

[vapid jay]

i disagree that blanket statement applies here. frequently maybe, but not blanket statement that those with degrees are senior to those without. that is very much blind to the scale of experience the world offers imo

[smoky quest]

That's what happens for lots of people though.
They have to make up the degree with experience. That means they have to work a few years to aim for spots people with degrees were aiming for earlier in their career.
It's not uncommon for people without a degree to be managed and coached by people with a degree that are younger as they climbed the ladder faster/sooner

[delicate bane]

on a more practical note, you can always try to apply for entry-level positions and see if you receive any calls back. if not, you can reassess from there

[vapid jay]

is good advice... not for me but for others ye! i am onlooker... poking my nose in, not much else

[delicate bane]

again, its not completely impossible — the world is not black and white. we have a pinned message of a success story of someone breaking into tech without a degree. dont want to dissuade you, just want to inform you.

[smoky quest]

to note also that it leads to different career paths.
It's going to be a lot less plausible to work in very advanced niches of tech without a degree

[delicate bane]

thats true.

[idle osprey]

from where i should learn django?

[summer roost]

i just started thinking about the advice repeated here time and time... "degree make it easier" is the tldr of it. i ask myself, but why?

There's a ton of different reasons. Off the top of my head:

From the point of view of a business hiring juniors:

• Degrees from accredited institution serve as guarantees from a 3rd party that you've learned a common curriculum up to some acceptable minimum standard.
• Because CS degrees from any institution teach basically the same stuff, a company hiring juniors knows exactly what stuff they don't need to teach the new junior themselves.
• A degree signifies that your interest isn't just a passing whim, and that you're able to devote significant time and effort over time towards your goals. When someone young is trying to apply for a job as a software developer without having gotten a degree, at least some employers will take that as a signal that they were looking for a shortcut.

From the point of view of benefits to the student:

• Degrees expose you to opportunities for internships, teaching assistant positions, research positions, and other things that help expose you to new areas that might interest you, and help you to break into the world of work.
• Your classmates from your degree program will form your first professional network, giving you people who you can compare notes against about what different companies are like, who pays well, who's hiring, and so on.
• Degrees give you time to learn the material, and a peer group to learn it with, and access to resources (TAs, professors) to help you learn it. Trying to learn data structures and algorithms on your own in your free time after working a 40 hour week sounds much tougher than trying to complete it during university.

[vapid jay]

these are all very good answers and i appreciate them much~ hopefully others do too

[summer roost]

Other things that have occurred to me:

• There's value in the structure and curation of the curriculum. Many people struggle to learn on their own without someone to guide them.
• Uni gives kids a chance to grow up a bit before entering the workforce. 18 year olds who've never lived alone before and who have never needed to set their own schedules or cope with unlimited freedom tend to make some really poor decisions, and it's a whole lot nicer to figure out who you are and how to cope with responsibility amongst a group of people your own age who are going through the same experience, rather than amongst a group of older workers in industry. Not to mention that people who haven't yet gone to uni tend to drastically underestimate how much more learning and growing up those who have gone were able to pack into those 4 years.

[vapid jay]

but you also can't just deny the loads self-taught programs on the internet, these wouldn't exist if there wasn't some acceptable level of success to them right?

[summer roost]

What makes you convinced that they wouldn't exist if students who graduate from them weren't successful? There's a ton of self-help seminars, too.

The course is successful if people pay to take it, regardless of whether the people who pay to take it benefit from it or not.

[near ocean]

Nepotism has also been successful but I wouldnt exactly rely on my family to get me a job instead of going to uni

[vapid jay]

it is shame that uni can not be open option for everyone from what i learn here of different countries. those that i have lived with come from areas that life did not make that path very easy at all. 40 hour work weeks just to put food on the table and a burning fire to be in a better place while they should sleep

from their words, they start "climbing the ladder" and are surprised that they move faster, longer, and with less downtime than others. their years of experience in the work force is called unskilled... but they enter the "skilled" field and shock their employer with the level of work that is normal for them. sure, they still learning programming or data or office management or whatever... but they learn it so fast because that is how they survived

it is really very difficult to encapsulate what some other "should" do because all paths are walked differently. it is very difficult to answer these questions without a or b choices and this channel has done great humoring my endless stream of sleep deprived curiosity.

thank you~~ time for me to give up sleep and get to work.

[gilded valley]

There are loads of astrology programs, loads of how to get rich easily courses, plenty of pickup artists selling bullshit - but somehow, the existence of demand for a thing doesn't really tell you all that much

[vapid jay]

okay I guess I could of worded that better, but the fact remains at least from my perspective, from all the youtubers I've seen that have been in their career for a long time that say uni is useless. Am I being fed a lie, should I just stop my self-taught journey because no matter how hard I try, companies will always prioritize people with degrees? I'll never be able to afford uni

[summer roost]

To be clear, the advice that we try to give here is that getting a degree is the easiest route to breaking into the field, and that going the self-taught route is higher risk and isn't necessarily a shortcut. Your anecdote about people who don't have the opportunity to go to uni and are forced to hustle to survive and shock their employers with the amount of work that is normal for them helps to underline that point, I think: successful self-taught people often put in tremendous amounts of work.

You're certainly right that it's possible to be self-taught and successful, it's just not as easy as people naively hope for.

[smoky quest]

You should definitely trust someone who gets paid on views or trying to sell you something

[vapid jay]

i have never known more powerful people than those that find a reason to succeed. ^.^

[smoky quest]

Note that it doesn't mean you should stop your self learning journey. But the paths aren't equivalent. As you mentioned, people don't skip university by choice

[gilded valley]

I don't know what this sentence means

[summer roost]

I'll never be able to afford uni
Even with tuition assistance and financial aid? Even considering community colleges and associates degrees? If you really do not have the option for getting a degree, a boot camp may be your second best option. Just understand that you will be entering the job market at a disadvantage relative to those with degrees, and that you will need to put in more effort than them to break into the industry.

[vapid jay]

im neck deep in medical bill debts, and I just don't see the point wasting money on uni when I'm already learning well on my own, I might try a boot-camp at some point

[vapid jay]

i feel that if i had words to describe this better than i would have words to explain what keeps a particular roommate going when others would have stopped. 12 hour work days, two jobs, still shares the load of chores from cooking to caring for little ones while sleeping barely 3 hours and only if we force them too. what powers them? i do not know but it is glorious and they will succeed

[true harness]

at least in the US, it's possible to get a "full-ride", i.e. have all school bills paid based on merit, or something else

[summer roost]

hm, medical bill debts - does that mean that you're an adult looking for a career change? If so, the degree becomes less important than it would be for someone with no work experience - you may find yourself able to leverage whatever your previous experience was to a pivot in the software development side of the same industry.

[near ocean]

This is called survivorship bias, you see the few that have succeeded but not the thousands that have tried and lost, they dont survive long enough to let anyone know

[vapid jay]

yeah im old :3

[short valve]

Hi, I am looking for some career advice. Here is a bit about me and what I am looking for. even if you can't answer fully would love anyone's input even if someone already replied !🙂

Currently I already graduated with an undergrad degree in business and am working full time but am interested in shifting a career into computer science. I really enjoy learning code and problem solving. I am still new but spend a decent amount of time every day learning myself and am also currently taking a local intro community college class in CS. I would ideally like to get into a computer science masters program or some form of higher level education that can help me look credible to employers when i apply to jobs.

I do understand it is possible to get a job without a degree but I would prefer to get some type of higher level education in C.S. for some type of degree in it as well. in regards to this i have a few questions I would love to get your input on

1. what is the easiest route to navigate my current education background into a higher level education in C.S should i keep continuing taking courses at my local community college or can i be seen as credible once i complete this class or a few more to apply for a masters program or any other program you would recommend
2. I know this question is a basic one with no right or wrong answer but what is the best way to start learning. currently ive been trying to put a lot of my time towards learning c++ and a little python mainly due to the class i am taking but if i do have more free time is their any other way i should be spending my time to learn more quicker. or is it best to focus on one language / subject at a time.

I apologize in advance for any broken sentences and thanks for any input /advice. even if you can't answer fully would love anyone's input even if someone already replied !🙂

[summer roost]

well, then, it's OK to take our "go to college, kids" advice with a grain of salt. Career transitions are never easy, but there's less of an expectation that someone transitioning careers will have gone back to school for a new degree.

[peak halo]

@short valve

should i keep continuing taking courses at my local community college or can i be seen as credible once i complete this class or a few more to apply for a masters program or any other program you would recommend
I'm in the process of applying to grad school for CS currently, though my undergrad was also in CS. The program to which I'm applying requires applicants who didn't do their undergrad in CS to take certain foundational, undergraduate-level courses, before they can start working on masters-level courses. The intro to CS course that you're currently taking would probably count as one of those. So, I would look at MS in CS programs that you might want to attend, and make sure that the courses you're taking are what the admissions officers want you to take.

[vapid jay]

yeah that's essentially the way I feel, im not going to go to uni/school when I'm already trying to make ends meet by having to keep a job, in debt medical bills debt, coping with my medical condition and in my opinion I feel like im learning on my own at a steady pace, all in all I'm to my best ability the best responsible adult I can be, I already have real life work experience even though that work has zero connection to coding, but still im not just young kid coming out of uni

[short valve]

thanks for the advice!

[open ivy]

Are you a "likable person" who is fun to be around while on your current job? If so you will have an edge for getting a programming job.

[native narwhal]

what are the easiest jobs with data
in your opinion
please don't say data entry cuz that's what I do now 😄

[ivory talon]

probably data analyst? or something more on the administrative side but that deals with a bunch of data.
as far as I know the only other common 'data' jobs would be data engineer, data scientist and perhaps 'data specialist', all of which can be somewhat more complex
edit; the one on 'administrative side' I was thinking about is probably "Business Intelligence"

[peak halo]

I don't think there's any one "data job" that's so much easier to obtain than the rest, that it's worth pursuing it at the expense of the others purely because it would be "easy". They'll all probably require a few years of studying.

[vale orbit]

Hello, I wanted to ask does anyone know some good addresses that one would find actual job offers and not fake wasting time need bachelor degree to transcript cases?
For data-entry and python entry level jobs
I would transcript do yt thumbnails and also do Virtual assistance work but I am struggling to find the right spot to find where I should begin with.

[smoky quest]

indeed and linkedin are greatly popular for job searches

[plucky kestrel]

how do i paste code into discord? Do i literally just copy and paste my code?

[summer roost]

This channel is for discussion about jobs and careers

[plucky kestrel]

oh sorry, i asked in the wrong chat

[woeful spruce]

Any 'low Code' job would be easiest. Which, like someone mentioned above, would probably be a data analyst. Might require some decent to strong math skills though.

[surreal crane]

Guys can u help me

What is the meaning of this??

[native narwhal]

wrong channel.

[inland snow]

Heyy,
I needed some advice regarding courses which I should take in college.
I've got options to learn AI & Data Science in good colleges or I could go for computer science engineering in a lower college.
I'm not sure if studying AI & Data Science has good prospects for me in the future.

[summer roost]

what country are you in?

also, what are you interested in?

[vale orbit]

Mostly cases there are with unrealistic expectations or alot of passing around to get an interview

[inland snow]

India

[brazen epoch]

Just choose what you're interested in the most

[summer roost]

I don't really understand India's system - it seems very different from most western countries, so I don't feel qualified to offer much in the way of advice.

[inland snow]

Okayyy

[smoky quest]

These are the most popular though.
Each company may have a different process, but most of them will be pretty standard. Not sure what you mean by unrealistic expectations, assuming your resume reflects accurately yourself.
If you are looking for freelance, upwork and fiverr are popular

[unreal willow]

Was anyone of you ever on a HackerX-event?
I just saw it being soon around my town, but I'm not sure whether it is also something for people without specific job experience.

[near ocean]

Sounds very exclusive for no reason, never heard of it before

[real venture]

yo guys

[mellow escarp]

@vast shoal