career-advice

[buoyant seal]

Terrific numbers (For non US)

[dreamy shadow]

I think that's a little delusional. I guess 87% are counted as bottom of the pile then.

[peak halo]

160k in debt? I don't know anyone who had that much debt from getting an undergraduate degree. and I made more than my degree cost after tax in my first year of work.

[dreamy shadow]

I don't think any credit card company's going to let you get 100k in debt.

[smoky quest]

You do whatever you want with the numbers. But calling folks delusional is a bit too far to keep the discussion courteous.

I hire people, have access to market numbers and data and we would certainly not pay that much if we didn't need to.

[dreamy shadow]

Having access to your company's data & which ever city doesn't equate to what's the national average.

[smoky quest]

That's not how it works.
There are 3rd party services which provide market data and that is the data used to establish the bands

[dreamy shadow]

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Computer-Science-Fresh-Graduate-Salary Again, I'm using national numbers. If you have data, feel free to let me know.

[summer roost]

oh, you sweet summer child.

[dreamy shadow]

Credit card debt, not debt in general. Ofc not including compounding debt.

[peak halo]

how do you know that a "9-5" job would make you depressed? And regardless, developer jobs are more about getting things done at a reasonable pace, not having your butt in a chair between two specific day parts.

[smoky quest]

I have data but can't share it publicly.

That said, as a counter point, there is https://www.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries which lists 113k as average for entry level

[spark cobalt]

Wrong.

[dreamy shadow]

On your indeed website literally says 86k with <1 year.

Which new grad would have <1 year.

[peak halo]

a lot more than 80k.

[spark cobalt]

Andrew Tate made his initial money from kick boxing. Then he was able to make smart business decisions with the amount of money he got from that. That's like saying you want to live like Shaq. Just because he doesn't work 9-5 now, doesn't discount the fact that he was a basketball superstar and used that money to make smart business decisions.

[smoky quest]

I like mine better

[dreamy shadow]

Lmao, wtf?

That's clicking the link you provided.

[smoky quest]

yeah that's weird.

Either way, the numbers I shared are based off 3rd party data providers used by tech companies.
Note also there is a difference in salaries between tech companies and non-tech companies and that would skew the numbers

And to make it worse, these numbers are just the base comp. and would not include bonuses and equity

[dreamy shadow]

Wdym that's weird. HOLD UP JUST A SECOND.

[spark cobalt]

So basically you want to work more than 40 hours a week.

[dreamy shadow]

[spark cobalt]

Gl

[near ocean]

Can you stop with the trolling please, people are trying to have a conversation here

[summer roost]

sounds like you've got quite a while before you need to worry about picking a university.

[white relic]

this goes a way toward explaining the stereotypes I've heard about MIT undergrads

[dreamy shadow]

Also, I was saying national average. Specifically, average salary of new grads. Not a specific industry nor location. If I did that, tech in CA is easily above 150k.
I exclude TC as that's depends on how you consider TC. So my point still stands.

[spark cobalt]

This level of irony is funny

[dreamy shadow]

And I'm glad I don't have student loans.

[smoky quest]

CA would be ~130k.
If camping on specific points of a statistics make sense to you, then go for it!

[dreamy shadow]

Yes, because it supports my original statement.
"Out of college, maybe 60k-70k starting salary?"

Which makes 1400 a month just on student loans not reasonable.

[smoky quest]

I feel like we are going in circles, but any fresh grad can get a 100k starting salary across the USA by passing an interview at a tech company

[summer roost]

sure - but that's exactly my point. You would need to pay that much to stay afloat on the hypothetical credit card debt, with its much higher interest rate. You can pay much less than that and still successfully pay off student loans.

[dreamy shadow]

Ok, here's my points:

1. Yes, fresh grad can get 100k salary across the USA, but this is not common. Individuals of all ages that make above 100k are 13% nation wide to begin with. So saying 87% of people, (w/e percent of fresh college students) are "just not trying hard enough" is a bit disingenuous.
2. Given 1, the average college salary is actually 46k (from zip recruiter). 52k puts you at 75th percentile. If you are looking at specifically CS majors, then sure, 83k avg.
3. Both numbers put the 1400 a month at a fairly high monthly rate for student loans. Given that rent alone in the US is 1.3k. Maxing 401k comes out to be 1.8k monthly.

[smoky quest]

100k is the market and common for tech companies.
The problem with all these averages and numbers is they don't account for the various distortions (ex: non-tech companies). These numbers can be technically correct while remaining useless. Student loans won't have the same returns based on subject and degree you get. But for the purpose of CS, they are totally worth it.

[summer roost]

yes, the $1400/month wasn't chosen as a realistic monthly payment for student loans, but rather as the minimum round number that would allow the hypothetical credit card debt to ever be paid off, despite only being in half as much credit card debt as student loan debt in the hypothetical scenario.

[dreamy shadow]

Again, I'm asking for numbers to back this claim.

And there are histograms providing the distributions.

[summer roost]

glassdoor says $99,161 is the median - https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/entry-level-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_KO0,29.htm

[smoky quest]

I can't take a screenshot of the data provider. That would probably break some contract.
Happy to get into more details on the why and how companies establish pay bands, but I can't directly link to my employer's data provider. Just be aware that is common for HR to rely on these

Also be mindful that companies will base their pay bands off percentiles, not average. Some companies will use the median while others will use different percentile

[dreamy shadow]

Which drops to median of 84k when you filter by experience. with a range of 68k-105k

[true harness]

also 46k sounds too low for all college grads

[dreamy shadow]

Might stem from not all college students getting a professional job right out of college. Not sure though.

[true harness]

right but isn't the median income for all people higher than that

[summer roost]

ah, so it does. That's weird though, as it has options for "15+ years" in that dropdown, and clearly there are not entry level software engineers with 15 years of experience as entry level software engineers, or they would not be entry level

[dreamy shadow]

https://www.thinkimpact.com/average-college-graduate-salaries/ I think this might be a better reference.

[dreamy shadow]

Yes, partly why I take zip recruiter and glass door salaries with a grain of salt.

Not to mention self reporting salaries biased to be higher than average*.

[summer roost]

it's also pretty meaningless to compare total compensation without considering cost of living.

[dreamy shadow]

Total comp is another beast I don't want to dive into at the moment.

[true harness]

BLS will have the best data in the US.
https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2022/data-on-display/education-pays.htm.
says people with bachelor's are earning >65000, not taking into account any major

[dreamy shadow]

1334 * 52 weeks, so ~69.3k

I assume they don't differentiate YoE.

[summer roost]

comparing salary without considering other aspects of comp is also flawed, obviously. But it shouldn't be surprising that someone living in Kansas gets paid less than someone living in California - $70k in Kansas can buy more than $100k in San Francisco. So comparing median across the country isn't super useful.

[dreamy shadow]

Nor is a blanket statement saying "fresh graduate should easily early 100k or they aren't trying hard enough."

[smoky quest]

jobs are there, jobs are remote, there is nothing stopping them

[white relic]

BLS is pretty good for a general idea but they lump a lot of stuff together.
They don't recognize "software engineer" as an occupation, for instance, so those probably get filed under software developers, computer programmers or systems analysts etc.

[true harness]

they did do software developer iirc. i'm looking for it rn

[dreamy shadow]

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/field-of-degree/computer-and-information/computer-and-information-technology-field-of-degree.htm has software developers

[true harness]

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm#nat. the median is 120ish, but it doesn't take into account experience

[dreamy shadow]

What's the home page for this tabled dataset.

[true harness]

what do you mean "home page"

[dreamy shadow]

nvm, found it.

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm list of jobs was what I meant.

[white relic]

I wonder what BLS categorizes my job as

[dreamy shadow]

Job title?

Also, MLOps would fall under CS/SWE right?

[summer roost]

if ops roles get bundled in, that would certainly drag the median down.

[white relic]

my title is just "researcher" so who knows

[dreamy shadow]

Wait, I wonder if zip recruiter pulls the old "take gov data, repackage and sells you it"

[white relic]

ziprecruiter seems to scrape (presumably) publicly available listings. They have (the illusion of) finer grained data than BLS

[dreamy shadow]

I think you might fall under scientists, depending on the specific industry.

[white relic]

likely. In my last job I was doing the same kind of work and I probably would have been considered an electronics engineer.

[dreamy shadow]

In other news, lol

[smoky quest]

and qa and other areas.

It's also bimodal in the sense that good engineers are more likely to get multiple offers and get a better deal, while the not so good will have to work harder to get an offer.

[delicate bane]

update: struggled all day with the onnx library for my model. maybe i am also not meant for mlops

[dreamy shadow]

lmao, companies see open standards and run the other way. (After warping it in their own UI and selling it back to you, cough datarobot cough)

[buoyant seal]

🤣 i thought only 60+ are allowed to such job positions

[dreamy shadow]

Apparently I live in dino land.

That feels like a job where you pigeon hole yourself into extinction.

[delicate bane]

lmao yeah. onnx has a lot of sharp edges. man wish more companies contributed back to open source

[true harness]

also, as an anecdote, I see many internships advertising 70+k. with at least a few over 120 (and one at 230, lmao)

[dreamy shadow]

I've seen high paying internships too, but mostly CA ones.

CA, where 130k is basically 60k everywhere else because we are CA ™️

[delicate bane]

how many have you applied to already? or are you just looking

[true harness]

130ish

[summer roost]

hm. California is only the 3rd worst state by cost of living, per https://meric.mo.gov/data/cost-living-data-series

[smoky quest]

any replies or interviews?

[true harness]

2 interviews

[dreamy shadow]

Interesting. Hawaii, I can 100% believe that. The stuff there is expensive. Didn't really expect OR or DC to be on that list.

[summer roost]

I wouldn't have expected MA to be above NY

[smoky quest]

yeah it's quite competitive and with the end of year that will be even less active

[dreamy shadow]

Oh, didn't see MA, VT, NH and CT lmao For some reason, those states just don't exist in my head.

[peak halo]

DC is just one city with lots of high-paying jobs that don't exist elsewhere in the country, so it stands that it would have a high cost of living.

[dreamy shadow]

Like clearance/gov jobs?

[true harness]

yeah 😔. the few companies that have said a reason they denied is that i'm too young/not graduating soon enough. so if i cope maximally, that's generally the reason why i'm not being accepted. either that or my resume is bad 😔

[smoky quest]

have you posted your resume here?

[true harness]

yeah, i've gotten reviews here

[summer roost]

you are a bit young, too 😄

[dreamy shadow]

The market's bad rn too, so increase the difficulty. Friend of mine got 3/4 interviews outta 100ish applications (2 offers).

[peak halo]

what year of university are you, again?

[summer roost]

that's with a degree? That is quite low...

[true harness]

i'm a freshman, <30 credits completed

[smoky quest]

lots of applicants. We got 3/4 digits applicants for each of the internship posted

[dreamy shadow]

With a UC Berkley and basically 4.0 gpa

[summer roost]

wow.

[true harness]

2 offers out of 3/4 interviews is pretty good though

[dreamy shadow]

Job market is super competitive. Even worse given now

[smoky quest]

That said, lots of applications are trash. I have rejected ~60% just on the first pass

[peak halo]

I suspect you'll have no trouble getting internships for your second summer and onwards.

[dreamy shadow]

Oh, freshman. wtf, that's way too early to worry.

[true harness]

i hope 😔

[peak halo]

I believe in you (and if I didn't, I just wouldn't say so.)

[dreamy shadow]

That emoji is kinda low key creepy for some reason.

[spark cobalt]

You're ahead of your class that's for sure.

[peak halo]

your face is kinda low key creepy. and the reason is known.

[dreamy shadow]

Thanks mom

[spark cobalt]

Looking at resumes of other freshmen, most don't have nearly as much things done as you have.

[buoyant seal]

One encouraging song is coming up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twh3jscQrOc

[spark cobalt]

[buoyant seal]

Well. Previous times it worked

[true harness]

tbh i should (have) applied to move freshman oriented things. probably would have gotten better responses

[delicate bane]

that is good. be proud of yourself

[true harness]

oh, that's not me, lmao

[smoky quest]

also leverage your network to get in interviews

[spark cobalt]

^

[true harness]

recursive will you hire me? 🥺

[spark cobalt]

If you're in silicon valley, lots of local dev meetups and conferences going on

Went to enough that I had a solid period of time where I was able to get my resume directly in hands of a hiring manager/HR person for like a dozen+ companies.

[smoky quest]

That's the thing. The relationship would make it such that I may not hire you on the spot but I can make sure you are considered and jumping the line.

I got one of my internship through IRC and another through an alumni

[delicate bane]

oh well still good for a freshman

[spark cobalt]

Only issue with random connections is that a lot of times they won't have positions opened that's specifically for a junior developer etc. So yeah networking through your school is definitely better for the short term.

[dreamy shadow]

Referrals def is good way to bypass the ATS and get an interview at least.

[true harness]

ya i've been going to networking things that companies have at my school and also the job fair they hosted. the ones that had internships all had a strict like juniors/seniors thing. actually one company i was talking to at one these things let me do their programming exam they give to interns and they said i did ok but they just got acquired and they don't have an internship program lol

[smoky quest]

that's when you push the envelope a bit and ask if they would know someone who would be looking for an intern like you

And add them as connection on linkedin

[vapid jay]

Before applying for a job, when I am competent in Python, would it be a good idea to build a website in Python? I could attach it to my resume, with project work, or anything I have created.

[peak halo]

having a portfolio on github is a plus, but wouldn't be enough by itself.

[smoky quest]

Like a portfolio?
The main thing is for you to have a resume that includes your education, projects and experience. No one is going to check an external link in the first stages of the interview. That said if you don't have a degree, the projects become more important and having access to some repository on github/gitlab would be a plus

Note also that any link to the source code of your project would imply that will be the quality of your work if you were to be hired. So make sure they are of good quality

[vapid jay]

Thank you 🙂

[delicate bane]

woah i think someone mentioned this previously but i just heard CA companies will be forced to publish salary info if >15 employees

sometime after jan 1st

guess they are joining that growing list of places

[spark cobalt]

Data

[dreamy shadow]

Not just CA, I think NY too

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/salary-ranges-are-coming-to-nyc-job-ads-on-nov-1heres-what-to-know.html

[smoky quest]

!rule 6

[inner wren]

Rules

6. Do not post unapproved advertising.

[warped ice]

what do i need to learn so that i can join north korea’s hacker group?

[near ocean]

inb4 salary ranges of 20k - 300k

[zealous crow]

anyone know how to create a bot like that

https://t.me/Arabic_TeleAdds_bot?start=01489258310

[white relic]

this channel is for career discussion, see #❓｜how-to-get-help
also, when you post in an appropriate channel, try to describe what you want without expecting people to click a random sketchy link

[zealous crow]

oh sorry about that

[sick trail]

i am new

From where should I start?

[indigo hornet]

pls help in line 18

[vivid bane]

this channel is not for python

[indigo hornet]

then which?

[vivid bane]

it's for #career-advice . #python-discussion is for general help

[indigo hornet]

how can i put image there

[vivid bane]

you don't need to post images. code is just a text send them in a code block

[indigo hornet]

ok

[delicate bane]

yeah i knew about that one but not the CA one

[delicate bane]

bruh tell me about it

[cerulean spade]

guys what the diferrence between a junior and a senior?

[vapid jay]

junior is starter newbie and senior is professional

[cerulean spade]

but in matters of knowledge, what is the main difference, writing better code?

[summer roost]

Mostly the scale of the stuff that they are expected to be able to design and build on their own. Part of a senior's job is talking with stakeholders, refining requirements, designing solutions that meet all the requirements. A junior might be trusted to go off and build something for a few days or a week. Seniors might build things that take weeks or months, composed of many smaller deliverables. Juniors follow schedules, seniors set schedules, with a feedback loop into product management about how long features will take to deliver.

In a nutshell, juniors contribute to projects, seniors run projects.

Juniors might make design decisions about the boundaries and responsibilities of a handful of classes, seniors make design decisions about the boundaries and responsibilities of systems composed out of many components, often separate applications

[calm knot]

you forgot that juniors are supposed to delete the main branch

[near ocean]

If youre getting paid to write code youre already a professional

[summer roost]

@cerulean spade Did my answer adequately cover your question?

[cerulean spade]

yes, but in question tecnical have a lot diferrence?

[summer roost]

most of those extra responsibilities that a senior has are technical. Seniors have more experience, and so they're able to build bigger things without them falling over under their own weight or failing under load.

[cerulean spade]

uhum, interesting

i can talk with you on private?

[summer roost]

no, I keep conversations on the server.

both system design and object oriented design are hard to teach. There's patterns for good designs, but you don't really pick up an intuition for what's a good design and what's a bad one until you've read a lot of code, and seen projects that were well designed and poorly designed, and can internalize why a particular design is good or bad for a certain type of application

[cerulean spade]

right, so i am lost, in question what i need study for advanced in python

with your experience what i need focus, for build any aplication?

[summer roost]

the more advanced stuff to learn is object oriented design patterns and system design patterns. And broadly, reading a lot of code written by other people, both from good projects and bad (but especially good)

[cerulean spade]

so i need review code for see how things works is important?

because in my mind have things that i dont have how things are created

[summer roost]

yes, you need to read code and understand what patterns tend to emerge in well-designed and maintainable code

[cerulean spade]

understand

in question do you recommend books or course?

[summer roost]

for improving design skills? Books, probably.

[cerulean spade]

right

[summer roost]

Head First Design Patterns might be a good book to start with.

[vagrant cradle]

what are the libraries used mainly in different jobs?

[true harness]

any specific jobs? every library has a use case

[hearty island]

i finally found the role i got an interview for

[true harness]

you got the role?

[shell tinsel]

i had the same problem and i just updated pip then "pip3 install pyqt5" and it worked

and make sure ure python version is 3.4=< because pyqt5 only supports python version 3.4 or above

[hearty island]

no, i just found the job description. i keep deleting emails so i had no clue what internship they were talking about

[true harness]

🤔

[near ocean]

time to set some inbox rules then

[hearty island]

probably, yes

this is the description of the role

[vagrant cradle]

highly paid jobs 😂

or there will be more jobs that use that library

[near ocean]

all software roles are high paying, you'll need to be a bit more specific than that

[white relic]

jobs that pay above average often require more specific knowledge about some field in particular

[near ocean]

Getting into a career for money only does not end well 100% of the times

[vagrant cradle]

like what type? selenium?

[white relic]

I don't know what selenium is

[hearty island]

selenium is a webscraping library

[white relic]

I mean, aside from a metalloid

anyway, I could give examples from my own field, but the point is that people in my company who are highly paid don't get paid that because they know the libraries

[true harness]

it's more for web automation

[white relic]

they get good pay because they know the physics and how to run the simulation tools and fix stuff when the lab is broken or whatever

[covert geyser]

^^ This. We use it at my company for mocking user inputs for tests

[sleek egret]

it takes more than just reading a library's docs

[white relic]

then the libraries they use to do that are pretty mundane, matplotlib, numpy, websocket, whatever

[sleek egret]

what trentj said. the same sort of libs are used in finance. but the domain knowledge is very different.

turns out that math is useful in lots of different areas! who knew?

[cerulean spade]

thanks for you help my friend

[strong slate]

Hello there. I'm new to both the server and coding. Just wanted to know if anyone can explain the python back-end roadmap for me detailed plz.

[sleek egret]

generally speaking, the roadmap is to make python faster and better

[true harness]

i think they meant web dev backend

[summer roost]

Have you seen https://roadmap.sh/backend ?

[sleek egret]

That seems a bit odd. Some of the items are very narrow in scope, others extremely wide.

It looks like someone without a lot of context just tossed in lots of random stuff they heard about into that diagram.

[summer roost]

It's the best resource I'm aware of for common/important backend technologies. Have you got another you could link to?

[cerulean spade]

do you guess that this roadmap are complete?

[sleek egret]

lol

[summer roost]

what do you mean by "complete"?

[cerulean spade]

covers all necessary topics

[summer roost]

what do you mean by "necessary"?

[sleek egret]

that "roadmap" puts things like git on par would take multi-semester classes to master. it puts abstract concepts at the same level as unused legacy data formats.

[cerulean spade]

necessary for be a developer backend

[sleek egret]

it puts languages at the same level of service categories

[summer roost]

have you seen a better one, @sleek egret?

[sleek egret]

it's a hodgepodge of randomness

godlygeek: I've never seen one

[summer roost]

backend is a huge, gigantic area. Jobs will require things that are not on that road map, I'm sure. Things on that road map are all things that will help you land certain backend jobs, though.

[cerulean spade]

right

[sleek egret]

You need to know foundational concepts about how computers work (internally and as part of a network). How to use various OS level facilities (memory, files, etc). How programs operate. And a programming language or two. After that, you can pick up other concepts as needed on the job.

you can go a life time without needing to use SQL. Or it may be core to your first job. everyone's path is different.

Software development is not split into "front end" and "back end". I suspect that is just how people who focus on mundane website dev looks a things. And that's a rather narrow lens through which to view the world.

[strong slate]

I've checked it makes me feel im lost

[sleek egret]

That's because the diagram is a random mish-mash

[strong slate]

So how bout getting better in python itself ?

[sleek egret]

it's always good to get better at using your tools

[strong slate]

somebody told me to do some basic projects

[sleek egret]

I would agree that doing is the best way to learn how to program

Let me use an analogy. reading about how to program is akin to trying to learn how to play guitar by reading about it

knowing the theory is good. but eventually you have to actually DO IT

[summer roost]

This is the career discussion channel.

[olive mason]

i read it its some kind of career thing

[summer roost]

this channel is for discussions about jobs and careers, and that question doesn't seem related to jobs or careers.

[summer roost]

I think "random mish-mash" is overstating it. I'll agree that it's not well structured as a "road map" - learn this then learn that then learn something else. But it's the best list I know of for just things in the backend sphere that it would behoove a backend dev to know about, and it does make some attempts at grouping things together into related areas.

[sleek egret]

Lol, I was trying to be kind. my actual opinion includes a stream of invective about it being misleading.

[summer roost]

what's misleading, in your opinion? Do you think the entire premise of "here's important backend technologies" is flawed?

[sleek egret]

yes

importance depends on context

and "backend" is about as contextual as "computer stuff"

[summer roost]

so when someone asks what things backend devs should know, or what to learn if they want to be a backend dev - how would you answer that question?

[dense mesa]

@sleek egret I think they're open to edit suggestions 🙂

[sleek egret]

I would say that there's no such thing as "backend devs"

[summer roost]

I think that's a really unhelpful answer given the average experience level of the people asking career questions in this channel.

we regularly see people who ask whether they should go into mobile, game, or web dev, who are them extremely surprised when you point out to them that there are other huge swaths of the developer ecosystem - all of backend dev, and all of embedded dev

[sleek egret]

Front end/back end is a juvenile distinction that, at best. In reality, what matters is your understanding of different types of technologies (e.g. databases, concurrency, distributed systems, etc.) or problem domains (finance, biochem, manufacturing, marketing, etc).

embedded programming has about as much to do with quant finance as farming has to do with being a sculptor

just because what you write doesn't focus on the UI is nearly meaningless

[summer roost]

re: problem domains, absolutely. But I don't think it's juvenile to distinguish types of development based on whether the code runs on an end user device, a server, or a microcontroller. DIfferent tools are used in those domains, different debugging and telemetry solutions are needed, different languages are used, and in general different skills are required.

[sleek egret]

I've hired many interns and a dozen kids fresh out of university for writing software in the financial space

[summer roost]

that's my domain too, though I've mostly done senior hiring 🙂

[sleek egret]

I've seen kids say "I'm full a stack developer!" when interviewing. That sort of shit is a red flag because it hints that they think they know more than they do

no one expects newbies out of university to know a lot. you know this.

what matters is knowing what you know and what you don't. and being willing to learn what you need to as you need it.

[true harness]

how does that connect to whether or not "backend" is a valid term

[sleek egret]

the problem is that "backend" is 98% of programming. everything from statistical modeling to embedded systems. from databases to OS implementation. from machine learning to distributed task management.

and much much more

[summer roost]

a red flag because it hints that they think they know more than they do
I agree that it's a red flag, but not for that reason. I think it's a sign they've focused entirely on web dev, because no one says "full stack" in any other context. People who describe themselves as "full stack" have usually only done some superficial amount of backend work - maybe they've used one or two web frameworks and a database or two, maybe redis. People who use those terms to describe themselves are telling you something about their world view and perspective, I think.

[true harness]

the website focuses on web backends, though

[summer roost]

this channel is for conversation about jobs and careers.

[sleek egret]

Yeah, your characterization is better than mine

[sleek egret]

I don't know, maybe "backend" is just triggering to me. lol 🙂

[summer roost]

I mean, I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but in terms of this channel, people who ask questions here are often genuinely surprised to learn that "backend" exists, let alone that it's the overwhelming majority of all coding

[sleek egret]

fair enough

[summer roost]

and I do think it's helpful to be able to point them to something that can tell them what sorts of things are involved in backend development - even if it's not an ordered list, even if it is just a mish-mash of different technologies that they might want to learn about to figure out if it interests them.

[sleek egret]

well, I think the fact that the diagram puts entire fields of knowledge ("threads and concurrency") at the same level as a vendor tool ("bitbucket") really annoys me

[summer roost]

that's quite fair. 🙂

[strong slate]

Ay yo how bout AI and machine learning ?

[sleek egret]

It's a hot field. 2 out of 3 of our intern candidates focus on ML

[strong slate]

Is that so ?

[summer roost]

I'm of the opinion that machine learning is most likely a fad. Not that it will ever go away entirely, but that its current popularity means that people are trying to apply it everywhere, even places where it doesn't make any particular sense. I'm guessing that people in 2040 will look back at 2020's hype around machine learning in the same way as people today look back at 2000's hype around XML.

[peak halo]

What about it?

[sleek egret]

that's what people said about AI (now called ML) in the 1990's 🙂

[peak halo]

ML is a subset of AI. "AI" as a vocabulary item hadn't been superceded

[summer roost]

And I mean - it was true, right? it took 20 years from the 1990s for ML to actually become useful for anything.

the amount of hype was out of proportion to the utility.

[sleek egret]

Definately true

[strong slate]

Just wanna know that if i'm gonna start learning python correctly what area should i work in you know and wondered what exactly is machine learning or even any of areas of python jobs ?

[sleek egret]

but still, ML is gonna have huge impact

[gilded valley]

A) XML has pretty much made a comeback in the form of yaml
B) Models you can go and use right now are already meeting human level performance for some tasks, there is no way that at a bare minimum building apps around LLMs isn't a pattern that's here to stay

[sleek egret]

um, no offense, but YAML has zero to do with XML

[summer roost]

A) XML has pretty much made a comeback in the form of yaml
Wat? What does YAML have to do with XML? It's an entirely different markup language that's used for entirely different things.

[gilded valley]

They are both barely structured text formats that people bully into behaving like DSLs

[white relic]

too many MLs

[summer roost]

huge, yes, I agree. Huge enough to justify 2/3rds of your interns focusing on it, though, probably not.

[sleek egret]

as a side note, I hate XML (and XPath and XQuery and XSchema etc etc)

[summer roost]

what's the YAML equivalent of XSD?

[sleek egret]

Gotta agree with you there too. I just think it's funny.

[peak halo]

if you want to work in AI/ML, you need to look at it from the perspective that you're learning AI/ML, and that programming is just a means to that end. And that means learning a lot of theoretical math and getting an AI-related degree.

[sleek egret]

in fairness, most of our intern candidates are getting masters/phd's

[peak halo]

I think that machine learning as a marketing gimmick is a fad, but maybe that was your point.

[gilded valley]

JSON schema has extensions that support yaml. Most applications end up writing human readable schemas for yaml

[dense mesa]

How does your company advertise roles if backend can't be used? Genuinely curious

[sleek egret]

Many firms have "data science" and "machine learning" initiatives without clear objectives. They're essentially wasting time and money.

We've seen things like this before. "data warehousing", "process re-engineering", etc, etc

[strong slate]

So you mean there are not coding in AI/ML ?

[gilded valley]

I'm not really sure why data warehousing is in this list, Snowflake and BigQuery dominate in analytics

[summer roost]

I've literally never seen a system that uses YAML as a serialization format between two applications brokered by a machine-readable schema. Which is the entire thing that XML is useful for.

[summer roost]

I think it will stop being a buzzword and just become one useful technology among many for achieving business goals. And I'm sure that the number of jobs that require it will be far fewer than the number of people studying it today.

[peak halo]

there is coding, but if you don't understand the theoretical math, you won't really know what to code and you won't get a job.

[peak halo]

my perception might be warped because I work for a government-funded lab

[sleek egret]

To paraphrase: "We have internship and entry level positions available in quantitative financial analysis and securities trading. A strong foundational knowledge of mathematics and statistics is required. Knowledge of financial markets is a big plus. All tasks will be done by writing software so basic programming skills are a requirement."

[summer roost]

JSON has eaten XML's lunch to a large degree. YAML absolutely hasn't.

[sleek egret]

Something like that, Anz

[gilded valley]

Programmatically generating things like Ansible playbooks isn't an unheard of pattern and does that

[summer roost]

that's just a config file, though - that's not serialization

[sleek egret]

I hate it when people use YAML for config files

[dense mesa]

Are these research positions, trading positions, development or software? I don't see the necessity of having a trader or QR intern require programming skills

[sleek egret]

Yes

[sleek egret]

All financial analysis and trading these days is done by writing software

[dense mesa]

Like how is an entry level person gonna do any meaningful quant analysis, unless they're just there to be a standard financial/ibd/m&a analyst

[sleek egret]

The days of rooms of traders making seat of the pants decisions has been over for a decade now

[dense mesa]

I work in the industry as well 🙂

[gilded valley]

https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/automation/what-is-yaml

[dense mesa]

Discretionary is definitely making a comeback, along with quantamental and similar styles.

[gilded valley]

Red Hat uses the word serialisation to describe it

[sleek egret]

Anz: if you say so 🙂

[summer roost]

seems like a bad word to describe it to me. There are plenty of services with JSON APIs and XML APIs. I've never heard of a service with a YAML API.

[sleek egret]

I tried to escape the financial industry 20 years ago but failed.... gonna try to escape again soon!

[gilded valley]

I also work in the industry. My company manages hundreds of billions, the vast majority of investment decisions are not made by software. 0 trades are started by exclusively by software

[sleek egret]

Anz: wish me luck!

[dense mesa]

For stuff like private markets, or some really exotic OTC derivatives, you need a few humans in the process

[sleek egret]

You know your firm would fire them ASAP if they could 🙂

why are there so many finance guys here anyway? I got on discord to escape finance, lol

[dense mesa]

Interesting problems and money 💰

[sleek egret]

I will admit that I like money

[gilded valley]

Sure, it's not being used for web APIs, but there's plenty of systems using YAML as the common representation for a huge swathe of things in DevOps land. The line between config and serialisation is not clear to me

[dense mesa]

Yeah, for me I just wanna semi-retire early and do something like art collection part time instead

[gilded valley]

It's being produced and consumed by two applications in a human readable intermediate format

[summer roost]

that still sounds entirely different than the use case for XML to me. 🤷‍♂️

[mortal wedge]

Ugh. I was once told by sales/marketing to make sure we have machine learning in our analytics. And I was like "But we don't?" and he just winked at me.

[summer roost]

ew.

[mortal wedge]

I wound up including some minor machine learning to make them happy

[graceful mason]

YAML generally isn't used for serialisation (especially in APIs) because it's:

• complicated to decode
• open to any data format, so open to vulnerabilities
• not very human-readable when serialised

[mortal wedge]

Pardon my ignorance, but don't most APIs work with json?

[summer roost]

JSON is the most common RPC data interchange format today, yeah.

[mortal wedge]

Okay. Not sure I've worked with anything else.

[summer roost]

In the finance space specifically, FIX would count.

XML is still used reasonably heavily in older systems.

There's some others that are used less commonly.

[mortal wedge]

Huh, TIL

[summer roost]

You may also hear about SOAP occasionally. Just a different flavor of XML.

[balmy mural]

Some regression on a metric that doesn't carry much importance? xD

[mortal wedge]

Some minor data cleaning on a heartbeat channel when our primary focus is on brain data. It's really stupid.

[gilded valley]

Yaml is the goto serialisation format for things like infrastructure or tasks, both of which it is common to generate programmatically. This was a pattern that used to be common in XML with things like maven

Yaml has most of the issues that XML had, but is being used because it's slightly less ugly

[grave ridge]

Hello! I hope this is the right place to ask about this.
I'm a high schooler in mathematics and informatics specialization and I have to do this student project that proves my skills in informatics (programming) by the end of this school year.
I'm currently using C++ at school to solve different problems (they are usually math problems and we need to elaborate algorithms in order to get the right answer). However I wanted to use python for a machine learning project. I saw a video from a campain about how AI algorithms are based on highschool math, calculus (it hinted to some limits, which I enjoy doing) and that caught my interest because I've always liked math and I didn't know how exactly I'm supposed to apply that in my future career. Then I tought about it for a while and came to the conclusion that this is the way I should take as a former programmer.
In order to get close to making the project I started some python lessons for machine learning and I don't really find python (as language) that hard (for now) because I've been learning simple and basic stuff. I'm very close to starting the mechine learning lessons and I've gotten overwhelmed. I've read and looked a little over some information, books, videos and found out a lot of terms that I don't know, a lot of math things I didn't learn yet and started to doubt that such a project is doable by me. What I've been thinking of doing is an AI which tells how many fingers are raised up via camera. It was an idea given by a youtube short and it seemed interesting. Although this project isn't supposed to be complicated, I really wanted to make it AI based because it seems like it's the right field for me. Do you think it's reachable or should I stick to an easier project, or that I shouldn't worry because I can learn everything at the right time?
Thank you for reading this 🫠.

[spark cobalt]

You can technically do your "machine learning project" in the sense you can use a package that kind of abstracts all the math and other theory related stuff away and you just use those packages. But personally, I don't see the fruitfulness of doing a machine learning project without understanding machine learning first. And I would forsee most of the project being trying to follow someone else who actually understands the underlying ML and DS doing their own rendition of it, which defeats the whole purpose of doing a project imo.

At least for machine learning, you'll typically find linear algebra, multivariate calculus, and probability theory in pretty much every ML algorithm. I personally recommend Probablistic Machine Learning by Kevin Murphy, you can find more info here: https://probml.github.io/pml-book/book1.html. It'll run through the math assuming you have the knowledge you already have.

You may have to deal with a lot of unclean data. In which, probability theory and other data science things you would need to know would come into play.

If you're interested in AI/ML, then I'd first focus on building up your math foundation. If you just want to be an SWE in the future, I'd maybe look at a more programming oriented project and something that doesn't have so much non-programming theory outside of it.

[mortal wedge]

There's someone on my team I've had a LOT of contention with due to them using machine learning without a formal background. They just don't understand it.

That's sort of my criticism with Python as well. It's great that anybody can use it. It's terrible because anybody can use it

[grave ridge]

What does SWE stand for?

[spark cobalt]

Software Engineer

[mortal wedge]

or software engineering

[white relic]

careful with acronyms, I still always think of the society of women engineers

[grave ridge]

In other words, I can try doing it but it won't be as beneficial?

[spark cobalt]

Well do you want to work in AI/ML in the future?

[grave ridge]

Yeah it seems like it suits me.

[spark cobalt]

Do realize that in your stage, doing projects is a method to grow. However, projects aren't the only way to grow.

I would just start learning the underlying math and theories first then.

[grave ridge]

I can try that but I have to be aware that my time is kinda limited. We will talk more about this with our teacher but as of now I know that I need this project done this school year.
Also it wouldn't hurt to read those courses I already have. They have some explained programs and stuff there. I peeked a little just to see and I must say I don't know what was going on 🫠. The course says "for high-schoolers" and especially my year.

[spark cobalt]

What year specifically? What is the highest level of math you've done so far? And I assume this project thing is for a class, if so, when's the due date?

I mean you can technically get a ML project down without knowing the math. But the issue is just if you run into a roadblock that's related to the algorithm used, you will have 0 clue and 0 intuition on how to improve your parameters or input or etc.

[grave ridge]

1. The 11th year of school here. There are a total of 12 classes then university starts.
2. Right now we've finished matrices and determinants for algebra. And limits of sequences (not fonctions) for calculus. I started calculus this year.
3. It's a project that will give me a diploma which will state that I'm an informatician. I don't know the due date but let's assume early june 2023.

I must mention, how to calculate determinants we haven't done system equations or determinants in geometry. (I know my explanations are poor but it's the best I can translate). We'll do those later this year.

[spark cobalt]

I would recommend looking at 3Blue1Brown videos for intuition into linear algebra related stuff. Linear Algebra is moreso a tool to work with n-dimensional tasks (also its operations are computationally fast) than just some box of numbers you do operations on. Having a good intuition on what what all these matrices do, both algebraically and geometrically, will go a long way.

The the book I recommended above is a good book. I also read Mathematics for Machine Learning by Marc Peter Deisenroth (and others) which was a pretty decent book but definitely at your level in terms of how they teach the math (as they start with very basic algebra.)

Unsure of other ML books out there. But those two are the ones I've personally read.

[true harness]

3b1b's videos are ok for gaining intuition, but are not suitable for actual learning

[grave ridge]

So I'll have to learn the math first then how to do python algorithms 🫠

[spark cobalt]

Yep agreed

[spark cobalt]

The Python part is the easiest part. You can likely knock it out within like 2 months starting from absolutely 0 in programming.

[grave ridge]

And how much would the math part take?

[spark cobalt]

Depends on the person I guess.

Took like 3-4 months for me, granted I was doing this for many hours per day, under the guidance of my dad who was a physics professor.

[grave ridge]

I'd have to do this all alone and maybe with the help of my teacher but she won't always be there. My time is very limited and I'm that type of person who procrastinates a lot.

[spark cobalt]

It might be shorter for you considering my dad wanted me to learn it kinda the hard way.

You can definitely learn some more basic regressions in like a few weeks and use those for your projects. I'm unsure what technologies are involved to make a finger counter thing you were talking about.

[grave ridge]

That means a lot 💀 If you're unsure then I be parallel.

[spark cobalt]

Well there's a lot to what you're trying to do.

[grave ridge]

What other easier ideas would you recommend?

[grave ridge]

I don't think I can handle 855 pages

[balmy mural]

I love watching a 3b1b video on a new topic to get a nice overview of things. If you want to actually learn stuff in a bit more detail, statquest is great

He focusses a lot more on traditional statistics and assumes some basic knowledge though

[grave ridge]

There are plenty of "ML for highschoolers" videos on youtube but I don't know how effective they are.

[mortal wedge]

What would you recommend for actual learning?

[mortal wedge]

Probably effective at getting you enough familiarity to use but not to understand?

[true harness]

textbooks

[mortal wedge]

I have a book on machine learning in python somewhere that seemed pretty in depth, but I lost it when moving 😦

[grave ridge]

.

Otherwise I'd have to change plans and stuff like that and honestly I liked this ML idea. I better ask here than search the internet for project ideas.

[dense mesa]

What are you interested in, out of everything you've seen so far?

[grave ridge]

I've mentioned earlier that math is one of my interests and I found out how ML and AI are highly connected with said "highschool math" so I took interest in ML and wanted to make a project for my school based on that. I chose python as programming language because I've been offered free lessons in this language.

[mortal wedge]

Honestly you don't need a math background to get started on machine learning projects using python.

A junior on my team can attest to this, lol

[grave ridge]

Then could you think of what can i work on? Surely I'll still learn about math and stuff in the meantime. As I saw the only ML related lessons are about numpy, regression, clasification and clustering. If I get to understand these 4 concepts what can I take for a project?

[dense mesa]

Haven't been following the conversation, as mentioned you can do ML projects without understanding anything behind it. Following YouTube instructions is simple enough, and then you can get more in-depth and figure out pieces as you go

[dense mesa]

Is this in the context of your future career?

[grave ridge]

That would be fantastic.
And yes I was thinking of being an ai programmer later on.

[smoky quest]

I wouldn't overthink it at your stage in high school.
Make sure you have the grades to get into college and have fun in the meantime.

These books are also pretty nice on the ml side and quite approachable:

• https://www.manning.com/books/deep-learning-with-python-second-edition?query=keras
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BHCFNY9Q/

If you want a more math heavy related to stats, there is https://otexts.com/fpp3/

[grave ridge]

Thank you!!! 😄

[vapid jay]

im not an idiot 😢

[buoyant seal]

<@&831776746206265384> It breaks some rule. (probably)

[sour tartan]

@vapid jay here is a good place to talk about the path to a career

@harsh river How did you get where you are?

[harsh river]

i started out by wanting to program things to related to a field i liked

i started learning the language and writing code and taking comissioned requests

[sour tartan]

nice

[harsh river]

that lasted about 1 year or so before a friend hired me in his company, after that i worked with him for 3 years or so

i got bored of the lifestyle and came to college because i wanted more

[sour tartan]

job before college, interesting

@vapid jay how did your choice of majors affect your path?

[vapid jay]

CS degree best academic decision in my life

Its a practical skill I can learn right away and use

[harsh river]

i don't regret it, it was 4 years of working and traveling the world for my job, enjoyed my 18-22 years by working and just traveling and having fun

[sour tartan]

sounds great

[vapid jay]

I used to be a Biology major, but I couldn't practically USE any of the info. It's like being a caveman with no knowledge of fire, finding a cooking pan in the middle of the woods

A biology major is a cooking pan, there is no point to using it without any fire (aka a Cs degree)

[harsh river]

i was making good money and enjoying my life, but i guess i just wanted more so i came to college, this is my first semester, i applied to SWEN but my math is horrendous so they put me in a different program while i get my math up, while here at university i came upon a different major called human-centered computing, it combines computing and psychology and sociology among others things into a single degree

i'll start that major next semester but overall combines more than two things i really enjoy which is computing and then psychology, so it's really a major that really fits what i came to college for

[sour tartan]

that sounds like a good inter-disciplinary program

[harsh river]

yeah!, instead of taking some of the classes i'll be taking as electives under swen i will be taking them as full credits (not a minor or electives) and have them apply to my degree

i think i'll take up a minor on some field like cybersecurity or even swen but that's for later on

[harsh river]

so if you had gone into CS right away it would've only taken 4 years correct?

therefore your statement that it takes 5.5 years is inaccurate, i wonder what else doesn't track as well

[vapid jay]

Maybe 4.5 years to 5 years

[harsh river]

why 4.5 to 5?

[vapid jay]

Because dropping classes is common, the hardest CS class is theory of computation in my opinion

[harsh river]

most people complete their degrees in 4 years even with dropping classes

[vapid jay]

Dropping classes, and taking too many cs classes in a semester is super risky

CS is a really hard degree, I feel fortunate to have graduated with a 2.4 GPA and still graduate and get a job

I'm not a bad programmer and I'm proficient at my math, but the cs degree grading schemes and topics is brutal

Sometimes the only grades come from tests which is 30 percent of the entire grade

[harsh river]

well all the CS majors that are in their 3rd and 4th years i know are on track to graduating in 4 years, so it seems to me that this is more of you particularly struggling in your studies, which isn't the case for everyone

[vapid jay]

Maybe the final is 60% of the entire grade, it was like that. I failed my second semester CS class because I havn't developed algorithm reasoning. I knew the language, but didn't have strong algorithmic problem solving yet

[vapid jay]

I learned programming IN COLLEGE

[summer roost]

Lots of people do.

[harsh river]

most of the people in my university drop out of CS / SWEN during their first semester, because it's hard, but after that, the ones that pass the first and second semester end up finishing within 4 years

[vapid jay]

Most CS degree students give up and change majors to something else

[harsh river]

yes, and they do so within their first or second semester

[vapid jay]

The ones that do had a good amount of programming before college

From my experience it was those kind of people, they weren't bogged down by other things and were prepped for the degree

[harsh river]

that's funny, because maybe 3 out of 10 CS majors i know did any programming before college

[vapid jay]

I knew zero

[harsh river]

you're generalizing your experience with everyone's else

[vapid jay]

Cheating in a cs degree is common

[harsh river]

if cheating was so prevalent in your college then i wonder what else was going on in your college

[vapid jay]

My guess a good percentage of students cheat

[harsh river]

maybe you should make an anonymous poll and share it in the server and ask how many people cheated in college

[vapid jay]

Not all, maybe 3/10 cheat, 3/10 fail, 2/10 pass within 4 years 2/10 longer than 4

[harsh river]

people who cheat don't tend to hold up very well in final exams or the later years of college

[summer roost]

I was a TA back in college. Cheating was relatively common on first year assignments, but fairly rare after the first year.

[harsh river]

3 / 10 is not most students is it?, that's a minority unless i misremember my fractions

[vapid jay]

Its practically 25% of the students

Students in my software engineering course somehow couldnt program

I met someone who got in there senior year and wanted me to help them with C programming but it was a Compilers course

[harsh river]

that's still a minority, 75% of students did not cheat which means the majority of students didnt cheat

[vapid jay]

That isn't a programming course anymore, one has to cheat there way to the later years to get that far

[vapid jay]

All I can say is it took me 5.5 years

And hardest class is "theory of computation" for me, the math of computation

Basically building mathematical models of computers called automatons

[harsh river]

yes, it took you 5.5 years, that's atypical, most complete it in 4

[summer roost]

or don't complete it at all.

[harsh river]

if it was typical for CS to complete a CS degree to complete it in 5 years, then the typical CS degree would take 5 years

[summer roost]

That class was tough for me too. Whole lot of abstract math thrown into one course.

[vapid jay]

I failed it twice, I was forced to self study discrete math: propositional logic, predicate logic, proofs, set theory, functions, relations, regular expressions before retaking it to finally get a B in it

One should be a MATHEMATICIAN when they take theory of computation

Its not like algebra or calculus, it's high level very abstract math, it's different

[summer roost]

that really shouldn't be necessary. It sounds like your university may have done a poor job of organizing and presenting the material.

[vapid jay]

They failed to explain to build automatons one needs to use an algorithm

[harsh river]

well, CS is more theoretical than SWEN. CS is theoretical and requires quite more math than SWEN which is applied

[summer roost]

was your degree in CS?

[vapid jay]

And my naive self tried to eyeball the solution (I was too busy with other courses to stay on track with the class)

[summer roost]

I mean, it is a tough course, and I do know people who failed it. I don't know any who needed to do any independent study to pass it other than re-taking the course and doing a better job of paying attention and keeping on top of the material that was being taught.

[harsh river]

which by his own admission, he didn't quite do for a reason or another

[vapid jay]

I know for a fact lack of independent study leads to low retention of the material

Especially after the course, but I remember all my self study discrete math

[harsh river]

well, that's why they tell you an hour of class equals an hour of study outside the class, but not a lot of people do that

[vapid jay]

how to master a math topic

0. Be exposed to it (this usually mean one fails the class)
1. Take the class and just get by in it for grades
(Passes class with a C)
2. Go back, relearn it and finally understand and grasp topics (passes the class with an B/A)
3. Relearn it and develop a deeper understanding of the topic (A/A+)
(Can teach the topic,make new mathematical ideas from the topic, and can tutor the topic)

[harsh river]

this has not been my experience at all

[summer roost]

I agree, that's not most people's experience.

[vapid jay]

Its mine

I think about my own thinking, usually this is the process of improvement if one takes this approach

[harsh river]

okay so ```how I Noir master a math topic

0. Be exposed to it (this usually mean one fails the class)
1. Take the class and just get by in it for grades
   (Passes class with a C)
2. Go back, relearn it and finally understand and grasp topics (passes the class with an B/A)
3. Relearn it and develop a deeper understanding of the topic (A/A+)
   (Can teach the topic,make new mathematical ideas from the topic, and can tutor the topic)

[vapid jay]

If one was learning it at their own pace usually step 3 happens right away

The most important skill for math is imagination

Learning math without time and imagination, is like trying only doing push-ups to prep for a bench press

[harsh river]

0. Be exposed to it in class
1. study after class
2. if i struggle with the content in class then i go to my professor study hour for extra help
OPTIONAL:
3. weekly study group on the content
4: tutoring, maybe a different teacher will help me understand the content much easier than my professor

[vapid jay]

5 push-ups can't prep for a bench press, not even 100. The number of reps is the time. However if one increases the load by starting small bench presses (aka deep imagination) one can prep for hard problems

[vapid jay]

The professor cant learn for the student

[harsh river]

what?

[vapid jay]

No one can turn me into an athlete, I have to go out of my way to make myself that fit

[harsh river]

thats not what i said at all

[vapid jay]

Usually the only thing we need to pass is time and patience, but classes are too fast paced

[harsh river]

where did i say the professor learns for the student?, or where did i imply it

[vapid jay]

I'm just saying it might not always work

I had a student who was taking a webdev course and goes to his professor for help when the professor can't do anything at that point

Once topics get too complicated there might be little one can do to help

[harsh river]

of course not, but the professor can re explain concepts or how one get's to that concept

[vapid jay]

I used to be really bad at math

[harsh river]

if that still doesnt work then the professor needs to change his delivery method or format, if its still an issue then you find outside resources such as tutoring

[vapid jay]

Math isn't about right answers, it's the study of reasoning and the prerequisite to reasoning is Imagination

I thought philosophical stuff for 1 year before college and made my own ideas

Then I learned informal logic

Usually those two are enough to get one really far, that helped me a lot

[harsh river]

in that case why did you go to college at all? why not just self study all the way

[vapid jay]

Certification and social reasons

Getting a job is a lot easier with a degree, especially during a recession. In addition, one is gonna have relationships, having a degree is a plus and brings extra security

Self study (no college) after 18 years is super risky (which is why I recommended self study at an early age, like at 13)

[harsh river]

yet the first part is what i did

[vapid jay]

Self study is the best choice and is better than college

The only problem to that is the time we are doing it, after 18 is risky and one needs to recognize that to prepare for the consequences of choices

[harsh river]

i came to college because i want to, anyways it seems like you did a lot of thing which could've been done better, and at the end of the day it was your and your own experience only, you shouldnt generalize your experience into everyone's else, that's not how things work

[vapid jay]

I wish I did that

[smoky quest]

It's complementary. But self study is far from being a substitute

[summer roost]

in terms of outcomes, that's definitely not the case.

[true harness]

wait, why do you need to self study those? wouldn't those be taught in the class?

[vapid jay]

Education wise, Self study is better. The only pluses of college are the social life, the degree, the connections, the labs, the commodities (dorm/cafeteria)

But I met professors/lecturers that can't teach and don't know the topic themselves

[smoky quest]

I disagree.
There are many subjects you wouldn't know they exist without going through college. There is a supportive environment you can use to learn from and improve yourself.

[vapid jay]

Most math classes gloss of predicate and propositional logic

[true harness]

the class designed to teach those would not gloss over them, though

[smoky quest]

I am sorry to hear some of your teachers weren't that great, but that is not a reason to throw the baby with the bath water

[vapid jay]

And its literally the most important math one can learn, literally

[vapid jay]

No I taught myself, I can teach better than them and am more qualified than them to teach math hands down

[smoky quest]

That sounds like bragging and overestimating yourself

[vapid jay]

At least discrete math and intro programming

[vapid jay]

I'm a tutor I teach online, it's not bragging it's me speaking g about experience

[true harness]

in my first year discrete math class, that was the first thing we did

[vapid jay]

Then they don't show why it matters, it's literally the math of proofs

[smoky quest]

Claiming it in such absolute terms does make it appear as such

[true harness]

that wasn't my experience. when it was taught to me, proofs were the entire point of learning it

[vapid jay]

Then they did a good job

Most of the students I teach, their professors didn't show them jack

[vapid jay]

Saitama Ok

[true harness]

but you say your experience is true for everyone, which is not the case

[vapid jay]

The point is that it's true for lots of students

[true harness]

but how do you know that. you say the students you tutor aren't learning from their professors, but would students that are learning from their professors be looking for tutoring?

[vapid jay]

By analogy, 100k people died in ukraine, sure it's a fraction of the human population but I wouldn't call it a small number

[smoky quest]

I already don't believe that one student can know the subject and master them and master them that they can teach them better than all the professors and teachers combine.
So claiming that this is common as well is rather unrealistic and not grounded

[vapid jay]

It definitely matters, just like the students that fail math cause of bad teaching

[true harness]

i don't think anyone has said we should marginalize or ignore people that fail math

[vapid jay]

You see it all the time in youtube video comments "you explained better than my professor lol"

For example Ben Eater, he isn't even a professor but he sure teaches computer architecture topics better than most

[smoky quest]

And you also see tons of students thanking their teachers. That doesn't prove anything other than there are some good teachers and bad teachers.

[vapid jay]

At least intro computer architecture, I'm not saying if one can teach it better means they are smarter than the professor

I'm just saying I teach better than a professor at topics, I'm not saying I'm smarter than them

[smoky quest]

That does reduce the scope of the discussion quite a bit since the original premises are about whether or not self study are sufficient

[summer roost]

I don't agree that self-study is better education wise - at least, not across the board. I've seen a lot of people fail at self-study for either lack of discipline, or lack of understanding what material is most important and what order to study things in. And you missed the biggest advantages of the degree: the ease of landing a job, the increased earnings potential, the extra jobs available to you, the access to internships, the opportunity to grow up before entering the work force, the common ground with co-workers that makes it easier to form relationships and network once you have a job...

[smoky quest]

Going from a full cs degree to "that one easy intro class I enjoy" is quite different

[vapid jay]

You do know professors self study right?

That's like ... what research is ...

Now I'm there are too many layers to the conversation, basically a lot of professors don't learn to teach they learn to research

[true harness]

i don't it's reasonable to say that research and self studying are the same. self studying is learning something that already exists, and there are resources designed to help you learn. research has none of that

[vapid jay]

One has to read papers to get ideas, we are building off from previous work anyway

[true harness]

sure, but there is a fundamental difference between learning material that has already been fleshed out and producing something entirely new

[smoky quest]

this is mixing completely unrelated topics.
A teacher/professor already have the fundamentals and the basis to build on top of that. Something a high school student coming in does not have. In some country there is also a strong distinction in style of scholling between pre-college and college.

We could also mention how any professional would require to continue learning, but that is also a very different topic.

[true harness]

this analogy doesn't work. 100k deaths is significant because usually there is no war happening. the number of deaths due to war in normal times is much less, so it's a comparatively larger number. it would fit better if there was some phenomenon causing a dramatically higher rate of failing students in your school vs other schools

[harsh river]

i did it!, the baby bounced back~

[spark cobalt]

You can technically self learn everything as a lot of college resources are online and you can likely walk in many college classes and learn the same stuff a college student is learning. Same with utilizing the same textbooks, doing the same homework, etc.

Mostly the issue is just one is accredited with a college diploma and the other isn't. Which everyone seems to be in common agreement at least.

I think the question comes, @vapid jay are you working as a SWE self taught?

While what you say can be true, it doesn't make it generally true. Sure, if you're better learning at your own pace self taught, with your own methods that's cool. If you've found a way to learn without the need to go to college, that's cool (after all, learning after college is still a thing, and most people don't repetitively go back to college to learn.)

Not enough data to show that your case can be generalized to the general population. Survivorship bias and all that.

[harsh river]

he's working under a BS CS degree

[spark cobalt]

Bruh

[vapid jay]

Practically yes, I read out of a textbook, the lectures only covered a fraction of the class

[spark cobalt]

I think to say the only way to learn things is to enroll in college is pretty wrong. There are many other resources you can utilize to be easily up to par. I have friends in lots of colleges that I can just ask for what textbooks they use, I can ask for their homework, etc.

If you add in lectures, like MIT and Harvard and likely many other colleges have their lectures online. You can ask people to Zoom meeting during their lectures with you, etc.

[vapid jay]

I already said self study is better than college but college is STRONGlY recommended

HR uses that as criteria for hiring and then they make sure by doing a background check process

[spark cobalt]

I don't see how this can be true as enrolling in college gives you additional resources that are typically not attainable by being self taught. How is additional resources (that being a direct contact to a professor) worse than not having it?

[harsh river]

it seems to me that the way he went about college was wrong, he overextended himself with classes which took his focus from the more difficult classes causing him to have to retake them again, and seems like instead of going to professors study hours or tutoring he decided to self study

[vapid jay]

They ask for a degree and everything

[spark cobalt]

[vapid jay]

A professor can’t learn for the student, in the end of I have to think on my own

I can’t depend on others all the time, especially for problem solving

[spark cobalt]

But they're there to enable a student to learn effectively. They do this for a living

[vapid jay]

Not really?

[harsh river]

then what's the point of proffesors?

[vapid jay]

A professor isn’t gonna help a student to build a class component in react

[harsh river]

they will if you ask them for help or go to their study hours

[spark cobalt]

This sounds like bad use of the resources you had around you.

[vapid jay]

They not gonna help a student to make a todo list with a front end and backend

[true harness]

i haven't taken them, but there are web dev classes at my school. i assume they would cover these types of things

[harsh river]

you seem to be moving the goalpost every time

[vapid jay]

I’m just saying at some point it becomes babysitting

[spark cobalt]

Why not? Furthermore, the whole point of college is so you can have the foundation to do projects yourselves.

[vapid jay]

If one goes to the professor for help, one one is literate enough in programming there is some level of independence expected for that course

[spark cobalt]

Only if you let it become babysitting. Just how YouTube can be a good resource, until you start copying line by line mindlessly.

[smoky quest]

That's going back to giving a fish vs teaching to fish

[harsh river]

they will teach you the tools needed for you to do things on your own

[vapid jay]

It’s baby sitting because to actually understand the content takes HOURS and DAYs and mastering of prerequisites

[spark cobalt]

The CS field is so wide that it likely isn't worth for them to go super deep into a specific "genre" of CS in a general CS course. But what they can do is give you the tools you need to pick up whatever you want to do.

[true harness]

the prerequisites are covered in the prerequisite courses though

[vapid jay]

One meeting with a professor usually wont fix it if the issue is really big

[harsh river]

that means you werent paying attention when they were teaching the content when you're supposed to be learning during class hurs

[vapid jay]

Which some students barely understand (like programming)

[spark cobalt]

Are you going to like a community college or something?

[vapid jay]

No to understand something one needs to make new ideas from it and think about it for days

[spark cobalt]

What new ideas have you made

[true harness]

then why didn't they go to the professor for help then?

[spark cobalt]

Are you somehow confusing with R&D

[vapid jay]

One can treat problems as mathematical objects, given a problem x one can break it down into sub problems

[true harness]

huh? he's not saying something revolutionary here, this is a generally accepted way to understand understanding

[vapid jay]

Some problems have to be broken down in specific ways: breakpoint (part one doesnt understand (break point)

[spark cobalt]

So like a derivation of the idea?

[vapid jay]

I’m just saying problems themselves can be it’s own field of mathematics

[true harness]

you say people have issues because they don't understand the prerequisites, but why didn't they ask the professor for help then? if it's too big of an issue now, why was it too big of an issue while taking prereq courses?

[spark cobalt]

I think to say to quite literally make new ideas is kind of genius level shit, considering 99.99999% ideas aren't new. But oh well, I think I know what you guys are trying to get at.

[vapid jay]

Because they only wanted to pass the course not understand it

[vapid jay]

Not new in general, just new to yourself

[spark cobalt]

Ah I see. So something like, learning basic fundamentals, and using it to build up instead of having the build up be told to you?

[true harness]

you're missing the point. the idea is that once you can take a concept and use it to solve a new kind of problem to you, then you've understood the original concept to some degree. it doesn't matter if the problem is "solved" in general, only that you haven't solved it yet

[vapid jay]

For example our senses, when one learns programming and build robots one learns a little bit about consciousness

We are like robots, we have reflexes, responses with no conscious process

[true harness]

but this isn't the fault of the professor or college in general

[spark cobalt]

This sounds like a whole mathematicians lament rant incoming but whatever, back to the original topic

[harsh river]

that what i keep telling him

and also, there's a reason that classes have pre requisites, so that those classes dont have to teach the pre requisites and instead of focus on the class

if you didn't focus or pay attention during the pre requisite classes that's not the fault of the colleges nor the professors

[spark cobalt]

Sure. Some people are only there to get a degree and get a job and fuck with the knowledge. But that's not what college is intended for. College is to expand your knowledge, getting a job is a byproduct.

[harsh river]

i dont agree with this neccesarily

[vapid jay]

Pick a topic

[spark cobalt]

There's definitely a clash on societal perspective on college, and college's intention I think.

[vapid jay]

And I’ll give an idea of my own

[spark cobalt]

Sure, any CS topic then I guess.

[harsh river]

that's what college was intended for sure, but it's taken the role of vocational schools, where the result of vocational / technical schools is to get a job, but college has replaced that concept due to the lack of them

[spark cobalt]

This is pretty off-topic though, send your idea and ping me in like #ot0-psvm’s-eternal-disapproval

[spark cobalt]

Failed spoiler . Immediate argument revoked.

[vapid jay]

With just mastery of 1 chapter of python one can make “dynamic notes”

Notes that can process its own information, rather than just writing notes about stuff in your class, investigate properties by using programs

Programs allow investigating certain points of work and do things that normal writing wouldn’t usually let us do

[spark cobalt]

I think colleges at least still try to be the root of expanding knowledge. Some of my friends at UCSB are required to take humanities classes that are unrelated to CS for example. It's not really that they'll ever need Art History for a job, it's moreso to broaden their knowledge on culture, etc.

[vapid jay]

Basically your computer becomes an external brain

Is coding like an all encompassing thing or are their sectors/specialities (not just within the specified program but also within the specific coding you do) Like for example, I dont like coding 'x' thing for whatever reason but I like coding 'y' thing is there jobs where I just do 'y' thing or would I have to do both?

[vapid jay]

There are software engineers called manual testers, they hardly do any coding

But they technically write pseudo code, like steps on how to navigate a website but not actual code

[spark cobalt]

Testing roles do quite a bit of coding considering most are moving to automation.

[vapid jay]

Automation?

[spark cobalt]

QA and Testing Engineers are different things.

[vapid jay]

My training said they are the same thing

[harsh river]

i think you're thinking of like google's 80 / 20 concept

@vapid jay basically at google 80% of your work has to be google stuff with the remaining 20% you can devote to your own projects, is that what you mean?

[spark cobalt]

It depends on the x and y thing imo. Do you mind elaborating?

Like if y is just programming as a whole, then Houston we have a problem

[vapid jay]

No like for example think of psychiatry...psychiatry has specialties you can be a forensic psychiatrist if you like the law or a child psychiatry if you like kids. You don't have to do both. Same concept but like with coding or is that not a thing?

[harsh river]

there are sectors like cryptography, audio, visuals, graphics, games etc

however the general concepts of programming apply to all of them

[vapid jay]

Well I haven't done much with coding but for example let's say I like coding things like bots but not things that involve math...if that makes sense (not actually just an example)

[spark cobalt]

The concept is definitely there in the industry, it just kind of depends on what the x and y is. For example, if you're interested in doing AI/ML, you most likely won't be doing UI/UX. However, on the other hand, if you're interested in AI/ML, you would likely be doing a lot of DS as well.

[vapid jay]

There will be algorithmic thinking though in any branch

[delicate bane]

i would say that works for the most part. if im a backend developer — my specialty could be in certain types of databases or distributed systems, etc.

[vapid jay]

And geometric thinking with front end development

Ah I see,, not really sure what those abbreviations mean unfortunately but I'll definitely look into it.

[vapid jay]

Artificial intelligence and machine learning, user interface user experience

[smoky quest]

I wouldn't let math stop you.
They look more scary than they actually are. Furthermore they do get a lot more interesting in college and real applications because they get more tangible

[vapid jay]

DS would be data science

Ah I see

Thank you everyone for the input. I'm not really sure yet if coding is something I want to do but I do know I enjoy it so I will look into the prospects of it perhaps being something I go into 🙂

[spark cobalt]

Math will make a lot of programming things you learn go round.

[vapid jay]

Coding is a literacy, the job will not make one code

They wiLl ask to build a tool/edit some work, and coding is just the literacy for doing that

[vapid jay]

It’s not about what you want to do but what you want to have

Yea, but since I'm not sure exactlyel what aspect I like or what exact part I'd want to go into...I just know I like writting rhe codes for some things

If want money, benefits, financial security, work from home then a software engineer role will bring that

[vapid jay]

When your an adult y don’t think about the things you like, you’ll think about the things you want to have, like a house or a car

[spark cobalt]

[vapid jay]

Or food on the fridge, or whether you can pay your bills, one only worries about what they want to be AFTER they have sufficient savings

[harsh river]

work from home is a relatively new concept for SWE

[spark cobalt]

And more companies are trying to go back in person or at least hybrid again.

[vapid jay]

I’m entry level and I work from home

[harsh river]

but you're new to the field

[vapid jay]

Hybrid is the healthiest option

[spark cobalt]

Generally you get paid enough that bills isn't a problem.

[vapid jay]

u do not think that as an adult u will consider what u want to do or learn?

While I do agree with that concept, it's more than just about what I want. I don't want a job that offers stability - rather I need a job that offers stability.

However, a job that offers stability that I find no enjoyment in would be a waste of my life. It's also important to find a job where your interests are.

[vapid jay]

Being remote is more productive, no one can just solve problems within 8 consecutive hours

Usually it’s two hours rest for 2 hours thinking come back and work some more

[spark cobalt]

You learn more doing things in person imo. My company lets me do full remote but I choose to go in person everyday.

[harsh river]

you keep generalizing your experiences with everyone else's, the real world doesnt work quite like that

[vapid jay]

And repeat

[vapid jay]

But I am the real world, I’m a swe

[harsh river]

you're only one person.

[spark cobalt]

So am I? And many other people in this channel that happen to disagree with you?

[vapid jay]

Going in person is smarter since you don’t have to work beyond the working hours even if you don’t have any ideas at work

[harsh river]

oh wait it's the channel

[spark cobalt]

I think it works for any Nitro users.

[smoky quest]

that's not how it necessarily works 😉

[vapid jay]

Yeah but I’m human, we all think, and ,programming is hard

[summer roost]

I hate frontend development, and I've written maybe 100 lines of Javascript in the last 10 years. So yes, you can find jobs that focus on the things you enjoy, and that don't use the things you don't enjoy.

[delicate bane]

life is too short to be doing something you hate, yes.

[vapid jay]

Yes it does I don’t just magically build a UI in with custom features I barely know in one day

[vapid jay]

i presently have two full time remotes living here, they only work over hours when they choose too

[smoky quest]

If you have a deadline or are on call, you may work once you get back home or over the week end

[vapid jay]

Usually there is mental planning involved and that takes like an hour to digest

[harsh river]

frontend devs do that so you can focus on your backend

[spark cobalt]

I don't just leave at 5 PM and come in at 9 AM on the dot. I generally leave at 7 cuz I go to the gym at like 2 and I come into work at like 10. Personally I'm not super worried about all the superficial things you say all adults care about, I just want to learn and make the most out of everyday and learn as much as I can.

[vapid jay]

I’m current doing a full stack task

[spark cobalt]

Not everyone has the same mindset as you

[delicate bane]

same here. my skill set is mostly in DS yet i dont want to be in the business of building an authentication service for my ML prototype so im asking another engineer to do so.

[spark cobalt]

@harsh river

[harsh river]

and again, not everyone is you, not everyone does full stack, some people do only frontend, others only backend

[vapid jay]

Full stack is both

I guess my biggest worry is that I'll be asked to do something I don't know how. Like if I spent my whole ti.e learning how to code a website but then I'm told to code x thing ( x being not a website) I think this 'fear' is rather irrational but still when I think about comp sci it is a worry I have

[harsh river]

sure, but you keep generalizing your experiences with everyone else's, the real world doesnt work quite like that

[vapid jay]

Go fix your car there is a flat tire, you have a leaky pipe, you made a mistake on your taxes

[spark cobalt]

With the foundations provided by a college CS program, you'll be able to easily pick up something new. You shouldn't really worry about this.

[vapid jay]

There will ALWAYS be a task we don’t know how to do

[vapid jay]

That’s why one has to learn it, and that’s why swe are paid a lot because learning those topics take a lot of time

But it’s worth it, you’ll be a better dad because yoou can finically support, dating will be easier, you’ll have more free time than in person job

Yea, I do realize it's an irrational worry

[harsh river]

that doesn't transate into every job though

[vapid jay]

What do you mean?

[harsh river]

swe doesn't simply pay a lot just because the topics take a long time to learn

[harsh river]

with that logic doctors would be paid more than SWE's because it takes them longer to learn their topics and fields

[vapid jay]

Every job is hard, and every major is hard work, in then end youll have to pick your poison, so pick the poison with the most benefits: electrical engineering, software engineer, computer engineering, computer science

[summer roost]

if you have to do a thing that you don't know how to do, you'll be given time to research and figure out how to do it.

[vapid jay]

Life is hard, worrying about what you want to be is the last of your worries

Because life isn’t about you, the people you care about make your life matter

[spark cobalt]

You have a pretty opposite outlook on life. At least to me.

[delicate bane]

thats very opinionated.

[vapid jay]

I never understand why people are obsessed with career and prestige

[delicate bane]

and just like software, theres multiple ways to build something aka live a life worth living.

[spark cobalt]

I never said I was obsessed with it.

[vapid jay]

I just want an easy life with money and I want my family to be happy

[spark cobalt]

If I was obsessed with it, then I would've went to college

[vapid jay]

But a lot are not privileged to choose that path in life

In fact it would be the worst decision, like getting a biology degree to become doctor is a bad choice if you come from a poor family

[spark cobalt]

Good for you. I'm striving for a path of understanding the world and exploring expression through music.

[harsh river]

you keep projecting your experiences into other people and expect it to apply, you keep generalizing your experiences with everyone else's, the real world doesnt work quite like that

[vapid jay]

I want to understand the world too and I do express music too?

How did you know you wanted to be in comp sci?? Like out of all the other things u enjoyed that could've been a career why this one?

[spark cobalt]

You say "I never understand why people are obsessed with career and prestige" but at the same time you sound very obsessed with money. In fact it sounds like you are doing CS for the money, which isn't wrong or anything, but like it seems contradictory.

[smoky quest]

It's fun, challenging and rewarding.
You can also have a larger impact than any in other job

[harsh river]

that's subjective

[delicate bane]

that may be true but life isnt just binary. theres a lot of grey area.

[vapid jay]

I’ll answer that I never wanted comp sci, I chose comp sci because I met my first love in college. I wanted to support her, and the best decision was a CS degree. The skills you get from a cs degree are instaneous, they pay a lot, and it’s remote, and you can get a job before you graduate

[summer roost]

personally? I tried coding some small stuff in high school, found it equal parts fun and frustrating, saw that jobs that use programming paid well, and decided to try CS.

[smoky quest]

They asked how you, not how everyone should feel. Let's not get too dramatic

[harsh river]

and then you answered with you 👀

[vapid jay]

The thing is sometimes we have to LEARN to like things

[spark cobalt]

I got into programming by building a Discord bot for a competitive community I was in. Fell in love with the whole aspect of being able to build things other people can enjoy, and I felt like compsci matched with what I'm already good at to achieve those ends.

[smoky quest]

In english, you can use sentences in that way too. It can be used to explain how things could happen

[vapid jay]

seemed fun and interesting at the time. few years later turned out there were other things i enjoy more so i moved on. u can do that, change ur mind

[vapid jay]

Sure some food may look gross until you actually try it , even better you realize it’s one of the best things you can eat and it will make you stronger

[summer roost]

to some degree, sure - but we all have things that we have natural talent at, or that we're predisposed to enjoy or not enjoy.

forcing yourself to like something just because it pays well is a bad strategy - what if it doesn't work, and you wind up stuck in a job you hate?

[vapid jay]

Programming is a literacy, you literally become smarter than the average person by 100000x after you learn programming

That's in interesting input from everyone...ig when it comes to choosing a major my biggest issue (irrational once again), is that I'll be bad at it. I'll do it because I enjoy it but what if I'm not good at it...but that can be said with any career

[harsh river]

english is not real

[spark cobalt]

This just sounds like elitism

[delicate bane]

i switched careers. for me, im much more happier and enjoy the work i do.

[harsh river]

anyways this person seems to be quite stuck in his mindset and doesnt seem too likely to change it even with many people giving different viewpoints, keeps generalizing his experience with everyone's else and expect it to stick, im gonna go back to my gaming baiii

[vapid jay]

Natural talent is a toxic excuse

[smoky quest]

that's also why AI has had so much troubles for so long to interpret context

[vapid jay]

Wouldn't it be hard to switch a career especially if you had a major in another?

[harsh river]

wait what?

[vapid jay]

There is something called human condition: body training, body-mind training, and mind training

[summer roost]

no? Professional football player was never a job I was gonna land. Fiction author either.

[vapid jay]

We have to learn with the same logic we would apply to physical exercise, some peo0e are fatter than others some people are skinner

Those different dispositions give the illusion of talent, when really you are starting at a different starting point

[delicate bane]

people switch careers all the time. dont feel like you are necessarily locked into one career for the rest of your life if you choose incorrectly in college.

[vapid jay]

But you WIlL get there with. Hard work, the most important thing is to never give up

Either become an athlete e, or in the case of studying, a genius

[delicate bane]

now is it easy? it really depends on where you are and where you are going and what you do to get there.

[spark cobalt]

Sure. It's said that 1% of a person's success is talent, and 99% is hard work. But just because you put in the hard work doesn't mean that 1% suddenly doesn't exist. It can help you a lot in the process of the 99%.

[summer roost]

that's actually a really good analogy - genes pay a huge factor in body shape. Two people can eat the same thing and do the same exercise and still wind up radically different weights and body shapes thanks to genes (and gut microbiome, and stress levels, etc, etc)

[spark cobalt]

From your life outlook, it doesn't seem like you're trying to be an athelete or a genius.

[vapid jay]

The hardwork gifts you talent

Everyone is born talented, some born with it from the beginning, but you. An obtain talent with hardwork

I'm just stuck between doing something I hate but I'm good at or doing something I like but I'm sub par at. I think I could get better at the thing I like but I'd be behind from those who are naturally good at it

[vapid jay]

Not for personal social status

But to help others and because I’m natural curious and bored, I work out and study cause I’m bored

[harsh river]

welp

[spark cobalt]

[vapid jay]

You wont hate it, you will love security , Benefits, money, etc. all jobs suck, trust me won’t hate it

[spark cobalt]

I love my job what the fuck

[summer roost]

it's a whole lot harder to change your preferences than it is to build skills.

[vapid jay]

In the end it’s a decision of what financial road you want

[vapid jay]

If there is no reward of course you are going to hate it

[summer roost]

you've never met anyone with a CS degree who hates their job?

[vapid jay]

Both are financially good...one I can guarantee I'll do better in bc I'm good at and the other is a gamble of if ill ever be good enough

But the rewards in CS are big and outweigh the cons

[spark cobalt]

Wait I just realized he said all jobs sucks, and then says you'll love your job.

[vapid jay]

I met them, and they cheated through college and are struggling because they didn’t learn anything

[vapid jay]

I belive he is saying u will love your job due to the benefits not the actual job

[summer roost]

maybe they cheated through college because they didn't enjoy the material?

[true harness]

i don't technically have a career in cs/swe yet, but it's fun and interesting

[vapid jay]

English is a terrible programming language ok

[spark cobalt]

Why can't you love both?

[vapid jay]

Bruh no one likes to work

[summer roost]

if the con is "2000 hours a year spent doing a job you hate", that's quite a lot to overcome with compensation.

[vapid jay]

well...

[spark cobalt]

[summer roost]

I like to work...

[vapid jay]

Idk ;-; but I've always been told that once a make something u enjoy your job you will hate it

No one, there are zero people who truly love there job. Those who do are slave weirdos

[summer roost]

It really seems like you've picked a job you don't enjoy and are trying to justify it to yourself.

[spark cobalt]

Not always true.

[summer roost]

I made something I enjoy my job, still enjoy it.

[vapid jay]

you know you are chatting with people you have just called slave weirdos, right?

[summer roost]

but rarely do it in my free time anymore - OSS contributions dropped right off once I had a full time programming job.

[vapid jay]

Why would people enjoy doing work that doesn’t benefit themselves other than just providing their living needs

[vapid jay]

bc they are living

[vapid jay]

Benefits others?

[spark cobalt]

Work doesn't necessarily mean it's a job. I love working, but that can be building stuff, reading things, studying, and whatever work is provided by the company itself.

You like working out and studying. And shit, you do that for free. You are able to collaborate, make changes in the world, work on products that benefit hundreds of millions of people, and you get compensated for it.

[summer roost]

because they enjoy the work?

[vapid jay]

I like work that builds me and makes me smarter and improves my skills

[true harness]

why?

[delicate bane]

i like certain parts of my work and i dont like other parts.

[spark cobalt]

Are you saying that work isn't doing that for you?

[summer roost]

solving puzzles is fun for me, and learning is fun for me. I like my job because it lets me solve puzzles and learn things all day.

[vapid jay]

So far traditional work inhibits that, it doesn’t give one time to improve efficiently

[vapid jay]

according to what you have said prior, u like a paycheck

[summer roost]

I mean, I won't say I'm happy with my job 100% of the time, but I'm generally more-or-less enjoying myself probably 90% of the time.

[true harness]

part of work, especially in software development, is learning new skills though

[spark cobalt]

Work gives you a different type of learning than reading a textbook. Just because you read in and out of a swimming textbook, doesn't mean you suddenly are a master of swimming if you haven't touched the water yet.

[vapid jay]

If one is working on some ui system all the time of course not

[summer roost]

dunno. Lost the motivation and the interest.

[spark cobalt]

Then that's an issue with your job. Not every job that every SWE has.

[vapid jay]

But again we have different values

[vapid jay]

this is to be expected though is it not? i am not happy with life 100% of the time. replacing the water heater today was not enjoyable. the hot shower after was certainly :3

I don’t like work, I like rewards I work for the rewards. I don’t work for the work.

[harsh river]

keeps generalizing his experience with everyone's else and expect it to apply to everyone

[vapid jay]

I think, my issue, maybe I'm not to sure. Is that I don't really enjoy the coding process (don't hate it either just neutral) but I enjoy when it works. Idk if that makes sense

[summer roost]

sure. I think it's quite a reasonable enjoy-to-not-enjoy ratio.

[spark cobalt]

[summer roost]

I'm sure there are people who never have a bad day at work, but I've met people who never have a good day at work.

you can absolutely wind up in a job that you hate, and it's terrible for your mental and physical health if you do.

[spark cobalt]

What if you could get paid to do what you love? Would you suddenly hate it?

[vapid jay]

Why are y’all so into career, why is it your aspirations?

[spark cobalt]

Because I love coding?

[vapid jay]

What are your fears associated with not achieving that dream?

[summer roost]

you're conflating two things. Enjoying your work isn't the same thing as being "into career"

[spark cobalt]

Who said I had those fears?

[vapid jay]

The only reason why I like coding because I get benefits from it, knowledge etc, not because I can tap my fingers in a fancy way

[smoky quest]

#career-advice message

[true harness]

that's unfortunate. i hope i can keep programming for fun as much as i do now 😔

[spark cobalt]

This conversation is just fruitless. This guy has no willingness to learn of other people's opinions. I'm out.

[vapid jay]

i follow my passions as they are both my motivation and goal. career? sure, u would call it that. i might just call it using my time alive

[vapid jay]

If benefits, money, all of the things that made you chose CS where guaranteed to you in whatever job it is you chose...what would you chose?

[vapid jay]

The problem is I feel very few companies honestly give real impact

[delicate bane]

the people that dont enjoy it as much probably arent in a python discord server chatting in the #career-advice channel on a weekend night (here at least)

[vapid jay]

The only companies I feel like provide impact are those started by Elon musk

[summer roost]

some people do, many don't. But habits play a huge factor there. If you continue to make time for it, you'll continue to do it. If priorities shift, that will have been a conscious decision on your part, to spend more time doing something more different from work in order to feel more mentally refreshed.

[vapid jay]

That's a good point

[summer roost]

It's important to me that my not-work time doesn't feel too much like my work-time.

[spark cobalt]

You use hundreds of companies technologies everyday.

[smoky quest]

You only need to find one

[summer roost]

it's really easy to burn out if you're paid to do something for 8 hours a day and then you go home and do it for fun for another 6.

[vapid jay]

Noir can u answer this? I'm generally curious as to what your answer would be

[true harness]

yeah, that's the thing i'd have to contend with. if i find a job i like doing it probably means it coincides with what i like to program for fun

[vapid jay]

I would choose to become a doctor, but that career path doesn’t have the same benefits

[summer roost]

possibly. But I know people who've kept OSS development up by just working on different sorts of things in their free time.

[vapid jay]

It would be 16 year long process to become one which is why I abandoned that for now

[vapid jay]

I want to become a doctor because I want to help people, if I can learn medicine the same way I can learn CS , I would be a surgeon

[delicate bane]

you could possibly find a company that lets you work on OSS during actual work

[vapid jay]

But obviously it’s not the same, now I understand what you guys mean but work

[summer roost]

I have one - technically, I do work on OSS during actual work!

[vapid jay]

That's sad.... 😦 I'm sure some doctors have great benefits

I guess I would enjoy saving people, enjoying the work huh, but life isn’t that simple

[harsh river]

but but you said hard work is everything? why dont you work hard to become a doctor?

[vapid jay]

200k debt isn’t nice and is incredible stressful to the point some doctors jump out of windows

[spark cobalt]

You just said all work is bad.

[smoky quest]

There is also OSS and OSS. Having to deal with a community is very different from pushing out your code you did for fun (and potentially a resume)

[delicate bane]

thats awesome — i wish more companies did this tbh.

[vapid jay]

True....

[summer roost]

true, that's definitely a factor as well.

[vapid jay]

In the end, what you want to have matters more than what you want to be, my child mind thought becoming a doctor would be the best choice but it’s not

[vapid jay]

Your worries as an adult will no longer be about what you want to work, y will be facing problems you will facing every single day that are not about your job

[summer roost]

I work on both stuff-we-open-sourced and occasionally submitting fixes and features to open-source-stuff-we-use. I do more of the former, personally, but other people in the company do far more of the latter.

[vapid jay]

i look forward to u rediscovering the side of urself that u have closed away

[summer roost]

people who hate their jobs have all those same worries, plus worse physical and mental health because they have to do something they hate 8 hours a day.

[vapid jay]

When you choose a career worry about the finances, so far cs degree gives the best benefits in the USA

[harsh river]

@vapid jay how long have you been employed btw?

[vapid jay]

It useful for yourself and for finding a job, it’s a practical skill like carpentry/metal working

[vapid jay]

That's true, I guess it's a more bitter reality than I had expected. So assumingly,, a job that offers stability is better than one that doesn't and you can do what you hate and use that earned money to do what you love in your free time

[spark cobalt]

And when did you graduate? If you haven't already? @vapid jay

Kind of interested in how far you are into your career to be making such rash generalizations.

[vapid jay]

I’m a philosopher, I always knew who I was

[summer roost]

I very, very strongly recommend against taking a job that you hate.

[vapid jay]

Because they work in person, I work remote which is healthier for the employee because they can heal themselves

[true harness]

though at the end of the day you need to eat food. if you can't avoid it, obviously you should take the job

[smoky quest]

I would take that take away with a pinch of salt. It's far from being the consensus on this channel

[summer roost]

people who work remote and hate their job still hate their job.

[vapid jay]

having helped many who come and go in my house, i will strongly support this recommendation. the recovery takes so much time and effort

[vapid jay]

Idk I'd hate it but if it's the reason I'm on my feet and successful then I can atleast understand it

[vapid jay]

Exactly

[spark cobalt]

With all due respect, this guy doesn't seem like he'd enjoy any job unless he's working for Elon Ma. If you find something you enjoy, you should gun for it!

[vapid jay]

Once you save up then you are ready to ask yourself : “what I want to be?”

[summer roost]

I mean, you have to do what you have to do to survive. But I'm willing to bet that there are jobs that would pay you enough to survive comfortably while also being something that you enjoy.

[smoky quest]

It's a lot more difficult to be successful in a job you hate

[vapid jay]

It’s hard to not be successful in cs when all one has to do is just study it

[true harness]

what's high meaning?

[spark cobalt]

Do realize this is like a 20 year old person talking about philosophy. He's kind of the emobidment of:

[true harness]

getting a software job and being successful is far from just studying cs

[summer roost]

you said you know people who weren't successful at CS, and who hate their jobs.

[delicate bane]

id recommend cal newports bestseller for a perspective on this https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You-ebook/dp/B0076DDBJ6

[smoky quest]

It actually is. There is a lot more to build a successful career

[harsh river]

he keeps moving the goalpost depending on what hes thinking in the moment

[summer roost]

I've noticed.

[spark cobalt]

This guy isn't remotely philosophically consistent.

[vapid jay]

If you have a paycheck you are successful

[summer roost]

I've noticed that too 😄

[vapid jay]

Yeah cause they didn’t prep for the job, they literally cheated through college

[vapid jay]

successful at getting a paycheck? ye.

[harsh river]

the jobs with the "highest meaning"

[spark cobalt]

@vapid jay With all due respect, is this you (the picture)

[smoky quest]

There is a lot more to it. Your paycheck won't grow if you aren't successful. Worse, it could lead to you being shown the door

[vapid jay]

The input I've gotten is in my opinion very interesting and both present rather good points. It's something I'm going to have to look into further. But tbh as Noir said it makes more sense for me to do something I'm good at that I hate than try to be good enough at something I enjoy. The fear of not being good enough is to me a strong deterrent

[true harness]

I don't think many people would share that perspective

[summer roost]

yes, because they hated university too. So they went into a degree program they didn't like, and they didn't work at it because they didn't like it, and they got a job in it because they managed to graduate, and now they're in a job they don't like. Isn't that exactly what you're telling @vapid jay to do?

[smoky quest]

fyi, I know many people who failed because of that. I don't recommend your choice. But it's up to you

[vapid jay]

Don’t listen to them

[spark cobalt]

Steve Jobs was depressed as fuck.

[summer roost]

I think we can point out flaws in people's arguments and reasoning without resorting to ad hominem attacks.

[vapid jay]

there is a saying that many of my flat-mates learn in their studies and trainings which they have taught me; if you are not uncomfortable, you are not growing. fear is okay to have and perfectly normal

They are rich people who never were worried about anything in their life, always had friends, proviledged etc

[delicate bane]

not the RecSys algo 💀

[spark cobalt]

[harsh river]

many people are saying the exact opposite of what you're saying, what makes you stand from what the majority says

[vapid jay]

People who had everything, if you let them give you advice they won’t help protect you from the real problems of life

[summer roost]

some of them got pressured into jobs they hate too, believe it or not.

[vapid jay]

I actually really appreciate this saying thank you

[harsh river]

this is coming from someone who had their dream job for 4 years, having a well paying job isnt always the best thing, thats why i decided to finally come to college at 22 to further my education into something i actually do like

[smoky quest]

What make you think they had everything?

[vapid jay]

Let me ask something: what’s your ethnicity

How was your life when you grew up?

[spark cobalt]

My Brother in Christ, idek if you've graduated from college yet, or just graduated, but respectfully, what real problems of life can you possibly be talking about that you experienced with however many years outside of college you have?

[summer roost]

The last person I know who genuinely hated her job snapped and quit on the spot one day. She's been unemployed for about 6 months now, after quitting a job that was paying more than 6 figures. So clearly money isn't enough, at least not for everyone.

[vapid jay]

Did you always have support, did you have to worry about money, did you go on vacations, did you travel the world

[smoky quest]

If you are interested in motivation, you may want to look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us.
They formalize some interesting stuff about what motivates people once they go past a good salary

[harsh river]

im latino, i grew up with a life limiting disability in a 3rd world country until i was 9

[vapid jay]

I think that based on everyone's input....I'm going to look into it further and instead try to see now if what I enjoy is something I can be good at.

[summer roost]

ooh, that sounds like an interesting read.

[vapid jay]

Then what is your stance on career

Thank you I'll check it out!

[smoky quest]

Asking ethnicity doesn't matter outside of the USA.
And no, I didn't have everything. I am the first one in my family to go beyond HS

[harsh river]

same

[vapid jay]

I say benefits over meaning since life is too hard

[vapid jay]

Then why do we have conflicting views

[smoky quest]

That's my point 😉
There is more to it than a single construct

[summer roost]

My wild guess is because you are still very, very young.

[vapid jay]

What were your challenges from school to career?

[harsh river]

you keep projecting your experiences into other people and expect it to apply, you keep generalizing your experiences with everyone else's, the real world doesnt work quite like that

[vapid jay]

Nah it’s most likely because there are some differences in problems

[spark cobalt]

Because not everyone here is influenced by the Youtube Short algorithm.

[summer roost]

people with more work experience than you have more nuanced views of work than you.

[smoky quest]

for another time 😉

[vapid jay]

I care about my family. My parents are immigrants, if I didn’t get my job they will be working for the rest of their life as slaves

[summer roost]

It really seems like you haven't yet seen someone break down from working a job they hate. I absolutely have. I'm betting recursive has.

[harsh river]

same

[vapid jay]

So you are telling me your family has the same struggles as mine, but you never have to worry about it

[harsh river]

i've also seen people break down from jobs they absolutely do love, so it's not all black and whit

[smoky quest]

I have seen quite a few things.
And I sure appreciate a job where it's not just moving boxes from 4 to 12.

[vapid jay]

I think that its possible to have both a job you love and a job that offers good benefits

And you rather tell someone to follow their heart rather than guide them to the solutions to the problems you encountered in life

[smoky quest]

I don't know your struggles. But I know people may react differently to them.

[vapid jay]

Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s easy, and it doesn’t mean it will turn exactly the way you planned it

One of The biggest enemies in your life are your dreams. You’ll confuse illusion with reality if not careful

[vapid jay]

my problems r not yours and my solutions will not fix yours. u can learn, grow, from each other, as i am learning from u, but u can not expect a one to one relation

[harsh river]

my parents are inmigrants, my mom is an inmigrant, she is a single mom with 2 other kids who depend on her, we are from el salvador a 3rd world country, i was born deaf and hard of hearing in el salvador and was there until i was 9, are you saying i should have the same views as you?

[spark cobalt]

Different cultures have different philosophies. I'm Asian, and typically the stigma around here is that parents work their ass off for their child's success, oftentimes at huge financial risks to themselves.

Just because people grew up in a not-so-ideal situation, doesn't mean that things like culture/traditions/environment doesn't influence how they view their own aspirations, family values, etc.

[vapid jay]

The reality is life is hard: I want to protect you from life’s problems

[harsh river]

we don't need you to protect us from life's problems, thank you but we are quite capable of doing it ourselves

but we do it with informed knowledge and decide what's in our own best interests and what's not, you can force your view on other people just because of your experiences and expect it to apply, you keep generalizing your experiences with everyone else's, the real world doesnt work quite like that

[vapid jay]

Kinda doesn’t money matter in that situation?

[delicate bane]

ah interesting. the changelog guys touched on this idea but used the term 'competency' instead of 'mastery', so it seems to be a common theme

[spark cobalt]

We have different definitions of life's problems.

[smoky quest]

The main problem I see for you is that you are letting your fears drive your decisions.
If you start with a defeated mindset, then you will surely fail.

Reasonably, if you get into the school you want, it means they believe in you. So if you get hired.

The advice I would recommend is to write down a list of your fears. From there you will observe two types:

• Unfounded fears. You will realize they aren't real
• Founded fears. Great! You know have something you can work on and address

[dreamy shadow]

[vapid jay]

Doesn’t it make you sad to see your parents work hard for you?

[harsh river]

of course it matters, but im gonna take a job that will let me make money And be happy with it

[vapid jay]

You only have one mom and one dad