This is maybe the only place in my life where some people are as left or lefter than me, so I'm curious on perspectives. I've been studying on my own with plans to pursue a competency-based degree online -- if I prove to myself that I care enough to stick with it.
Given that by now I've become acquainted enough with two jobs to become jaded, I'm wondering how CS is (initial puzzle-solving thrill versus six years later). The tech industry can be rife with chud shit, and I doubt someone with little experience could jump straight into freelancing or working in a more solo capacity. But it's an industry I'm wholly unfamiliar with.
My career experience (ignore these two walls of text if you don't want any exposition):
Journalism: Don't regret it, but solely because it taught me the valuable lesson that I won't always know what I'll actually want in life. Started as a super-lib and left a washed-out sucker. The average reporters I met were nauseatingly status-quo -- either true-and-through bootlickers or too naive to realize themselves as free PR agents for people in power. There's something about years of condensing complicated situations to a few grafs for laymen which rots your brain into an endless chasm of cheap metaphors, impotent virtue-signaling rage, and other cliche nonsense. Met a few good ones who felt trapped like I did, but my experiences with the industry and the average journalist I met were eyerolling. I've worked manual labor jobs where older men literally screamed insults at me, and they never treated me worse (in the ways that truly mattered) than journalists did. When you have no true allies, you don't feel good, and you're not making the world any better, it's time to leave. Seriously, fuck journalism in the USA.
Education: There's a certain comfort with privatization among many teachers I meet that bothers me, but the bedrock idealism of "My actions and words impact how a child thinks" is at least something capitalism can't ruin completely. There's also a fellow commiseration to the extent that many teachers know it's a flawed institution, but we're mostly in it together. Unlike journalism you at least find less eager bootlicking. I've considered getting my Masters and progressing since currently I'm just ESL-certified, which isn't much, but I could still see myself teaching in some capacity as a lifelong career since I've had my fair share of bad days over three years and I'm still motivated enough.
I'm a senior engineer at a small division of a very large company in Silicon Valley. I went to a very good school, but pretty much anyone probably would have been able to get my job. My first boss went to Michigan and my other co-worker went to Wazzu. I think when you're first starting out it helps to look at random smaller companies in established industries rather than just trying to get lucky at a start-up or applying to one of he big ones. Much more likely to have normal people.
As others have said, it's very much a job. The number of times you'll be solving "interesting problems" is low. But sometimes you do just get to zone out and bang out some not fancy but good code.
If you're going to learn anything, I'd learn full-stack web development. Probably the least interesting thing you can do, but the most broadly applicable skillset. I've essentially pigeonholed myself at this point which greatly limits where I can go next.
I honestly haven't run into a bunch of chuds in the office. The worst are probably a couple of weird libertarians. In my experience all my coworkers, American or otherwise, are libs. Lunchroom chat mostly sticks to talking about how much of a dumbass Trump is and people get quiet if I start going off too much at the Dems, but they usually don't disagree, they just don't want to care about politics that much.
Even if you're working some start up, you're in a corporate job. Idealism does not factor into it even a little, unless you end up believing in their corp speak. College seemed to hammer out idealism pretty quick, my instructors would straight up tell you that you're better off just doing this for money, because your dream job probably fucking sucks.
I got into freelance stuff right out of college, because the tech sector fuckin loves the gig economy. It pays well, I've met 0 people left of Bloomberg, but most people above entry level will never talk about politics, so who knows.
I got into freelance stuff right out of college, because the tech sector fuckin loves the gig economy. It pays well, I’ve met 0 people left of Bloomberg, but most people above entry level will never talk about politics, so who knows.
Do you think it's unrealistic to plan a CS career with no prior experience while getting to remain abroad? I left the US a few years ago and am not interested in going back, to the extent that I'd probably even abandon a good career opportunity if it meant I got to remain abroad.
I don't really know much about the job market in other countries. Experience is pretty much the only thing that matters though so I'd say it all depends on whether you can get that first job or not.
Or you could just lie on your resume, either or.
Tech is amazing if you're a young (<30) white or Asian male. If you're only 1 of those 3 you can still make a very good living. If none of those 3, sorry to say but I've never seen or heard of a person like you in this field. But here's the deal. No matter what your outward characteristics are, if you want to do something, if you enjoy it, don't ever ever stop yourself from going out and doing it just because you don't fit a profile. Just get out there. It's indoor work with no heavy lifting.
Ok next up, how is CS after six years in the field? Well, I'm way past 6 years now, but when I was at 6 years I wasn't even jaded yet. The standard corporate bullshit you'll get with any job so I won't mention it. I guess what I hate the most is all the layers of garbage that make up modern web development. All sorts of different partially overlapping frameworks that break in mysterious ways. Nobody knows what the hell is actually going on, they just shrug and blame a third party vendor. It was much better when you were just writing code against an operating system. If something broke, it was your own damn fault and you fixed it. And if people used to hate DLL hell, dear lord how I hate .Net Framework vs Core. Half the features twice as confusing and the things you actually need are only available in the version you're not using.
I could be exaggerating how bad things are now. Web development is just my pet peeve. A lot of jobs use Java, might not be as bad.
The other terrible thing about this field is the way you get paid to ruin people's lives. If you work in gaming, you end up writing more addictive gambling simulators. If you work on the web, you end up siphoning as much personal data as possible to sell out your own users. That's in addition to writing a more addictive website to keep users staring at your shit for longer periods. If you're not doing either of those things, good chance you're working for a defense contractor (congratulations on the lake home by the way) so you have no soul by definition. If you're able to swing something not in any of those hell holes, congratulations.
But that's what modern civilization is all about. You only get paid if your work actively degrades other humans. Our job is to make other people rich, not to make the world a better place. But you left education knowing that already.
I rounded out 2 years in CS recently. I'm a defense contractor and it is hell. It was really hard for me to find work out of college so I decided to sell my soul to get my first 2 years. Working where I did helped radicalize me. Seeing my client up close and personal helped me realize how deep the rot is. I love to code because I am still young and new, but I can definitely tell that I will need to go back to school at some point to either work on content I enjoy or to teach. Everyone is a chud/lib or just politically illiterate and you take courses once per year that make you watch power points about china bad and how it is "us vs them." If you can avoid defense contractor, but it's reliable work. Shit isn't going anywhere.
I was stuck with a defense contractor for my first year out of college and I'm very glad I got out. I got lucky with my next job because they would have happily taken a defense contract but never did (they did take an ICE contract, though) and by the time I left, they knew I'd quit on most government contractor projects. one of the perks of smaller companies is that you have more leverage even as an individual in an industry where collective bargaining is unthinkable and most of your colleagues are chuds. there are a number of small consulting outfits that will teach you valuable skills and are desperate for smart and capable people - you kind of need to know what to look for as a lot of places that fit that description are scam shops but if you can smell bullshit, I suggest looking in that direction as a path out.
I am definitely looking for a way out right now. The company I work at makes most of its money subcontracting to other companies, and my manager has made it clear that he has not intention of letting me leave the contract I am on to work on anything that would help round out my resume. "The client just likes you too much." For now I am trapped on a project that uses a java backend and transcompiles java into javascript. I have this feeling that if I don't leave soon, I will be stuck as a Java developer for the rest of my life because that is all I will be hired for. Thanks for your post, I appreciate it.
The big question is how much do you like programming? If you truly enjoy it, then it's a fantastic way to get bread. For sure there's a lot of the Office Space-esque bullshit, and with the invasion of this Scrum/Agile it's gotten worse. But the peace and quiet moments where you can sip on coffee and bang out some code make it a good gig overall.
There's an overwhelming amount of chud in the industry, this is true; but there is still plenty of demand for workers on interesting projects.
and I doubt someone with little experience could jump straight into freelancing or working in a more solo capacity.
Yes and no. You may not be able to jump into getting paid for your work right now, but you can always contribute to something like a github project. Working with people that are apart of a good github repo, can help you get your sea legs into how larger projects come together. I can't think of an easier yet effective way to set oneself apart, than to have an active github (or gitlab, etc)
I used to be a classroom teacher, now I'm a software engineer.
I got out of teaching and into tech for three reasons:
- money
- intellectual fulfillment (solving problems with code can be really fun!)
- so I wouldn't spend my whole life in academia. spending your whole life in any one thing seems like a bad idea.
Thoughts after a few years in tech, in no certain order:
- I miss teaching and will probably go back to it after a few more years of stacking paper. if you're a dev in the US you can make crazy money, even with no cs degree. after covid maybe this will change, who knows, but when i started there were plenty of opportunities to start out at crappy companies.
- tech workers in the us are a hard nut to crack in terms of organizing because they're paid so fucking much. take a look at salaries on levels.fyi. If you're already red, you'll go absolutely fucking insane looking at the inequality and entitlement.
- the actual work is pretty easy in most cases. depends on where you work. if you're at a startup youre a code monkey and need to fucking grind out commits. at a big company it's just a corporate job probably like any other.
- like Chombombsky says it's great when you get to just zone in and bang out code. but you're in a corporate environment so that isn't so common.
- there's a lot of space to organize workers into coops i think. most of the people who are real geniuses with code don'twant to fuck around with dumb managers etc and are very interested in the idea of democratic workplaces and working on interesting projects. if you just like coding it can be hard to keep a career in your 50s from what i hear, entirely for stupid ageist reasons. i think a lot about starting a coop.
- never, ever, ever underestimate the power you have to effect change as a classroom teacher. if you don't feel it where you're teaching now, go teach in a high poverty school and get involved with the community. you can pump out class after class of radicalized kids. (i want to use some of this tech money for scholarships for leftists majoring in ed. this is a path forward for the left)
one possible path: learn to code™, work in industry for a few years if you want, then get a cert in cs. go teach cs in a title school. basic programming literacy is going to be considered an essential skill like typing in ten years imho, and the poor kids aren't going to be getting it.
I work at/am founding a product-focused tech co-op/startup. It's possible. But also shuttered for a year due to covid and can't say who/what for opsec reasons.
VCs are massive trend-followers, I wouldn't worry about competition from them unless you're trying to make Uber For X (don't) or whatever the current hot tech buzzword is (also don't, but this time just practically instead of morally). It's not really that capital-intensive a field, don't let the VC PR get to you.
I'd check out the bootstrap startup community that's hanging off the side of Hacker News (like indiehackers.com (though their website sucks ass)). They're mostly in it with the goal to make a small privately-held non-coop company to be their own boss and make a living with short hours. But the business strategies are largely the same.
I think that funding from someplace like Earnest Capital could work for a coop. I've been investigating funding options recently, planning to do a writeup for...somewhere.
Prefacing to say I'm an American who's been living abroad for a few years.
like Chombombsky says it’s great when you get to just zone in and bang out code. but you’re in a corporate environment so that isn’t so common.
Yeah this is the caveat with my big idea, avoiding a US corporate environment is one of my utmost goals and I'd prefer to pursue literally any kind of freelance work or company abroad -- if nothing else, American companies with employees based on other continents.
The reason education in any environment is so manageable is because I can still cling to idealism somewhat with the actual mechanics of teaching despite a privatized and pro-establishment environment. The appeal of CS besides some intellectual enjoyment -- though problems do become rote, as you said -- is that my routine work can be cushioned from having to keep a constant friendly demeanor with people I dislike.
I've reached a point where I don't think working a US-based job that's heavy on interpersonal skills with American adults is possible for me anymore. Journalism became nightmarish because my paycheck hinged on developing rapport with grown men and women who were, for lack of better words, disgustingly ignorant and shallow. I don't have the patience anymore and can't go back to it.
Teaching became an unlikely refuge from that, as I feel kinder with students since they're, you know, just students. I've been tired some days like any other but it's really tough for me to feel angry or lose my patience with a child. When I worked with adults in the US I took my anger home daily. Living abroad became another refuge because, even on bad days, I'm still experiencing a new culture and learning/practicing a new language. In the US there's lower opportunity for that.
I could be laying out goals that are immensely unrealistic, but I guess it's better to be told that now rather than later. The way I see it, either teaching abroad or studying for any kind of tech industry work abroad are my two options -- as both sectors are realistic for traveling and I think I can enjoy either one.
I'm beginning a year of studying CS on my own while working, hence this question. At the end of this year I think I'll have more of an idea on whether I want to pursue education or tech further.
tbh spending a year learning on your own is the right way to do it. Don't do a bootcamp or whatever. You can learn more on your own while teaching (are you in a certificated position at a international school or in a TEFL position?) and build out some cool projects. Having a good project portfolio is how I got my first tech job.
tbh if I were to do it over again, I'd probably stay teaching abroad and do programming on the side. Build out projects to market and sell to augment the income from teaching, but also enjoy all the benefits of teaching abroad (lots of saving, free housing, etc). Getting a teaching cert is definitely worth it if you're going to do that, though. And you could get the cert in CS if you enjoy the subject but don't want to go corporate. Some states have privitised their teaching certification process so much that if you have the right experience you can literally get a cert in any subject you want if you have the right kind of verifiable experience and can pass the subject test.
dm me if you want more details on anything, happy to chat.
edit:
I’ve been tired some days like any other but it’s really tough for me to feel angry or lose my patience with a child.
tbh this on its own makes you a better teacher than most. This is 100% the right mind space to be in.
Also, yeah the people in tech can be hard to work with. there's an affect I run into quite frequently of people being intentionally bad interpersonally because they think it shows that they're just dedicated to the code or whatever. something akin to college kids who decide to major in creative writing and thus feel they have to act like a writer. Also there are all the folks who genuinely are uncomfortable interpersonally. tbh I just take the mindset I learned from teaching (patience, patience, patience) and apply it to them. works a charm.
tbh spending a year learning on your own is the right way to do it. Don’t do a bootcamp or whatever. You can learn more on your own while teaching (are you in a certificated position at a international school or in a TEFL position?) and build out some cool projects. Having a good project portfolio is how I got my first tech job.
I have a certification I did in Russia. Plan before COVID was to move to Moscow and teach while I worked on my Russian fluency. It may still be the plan after this year, despite a dauntingly low salary compared to other countries I could be in. If I feel like I'm progressing in a plan that can net me extra income or one day result in a decent salary, the low salary now is less of a concern since I'm only 29 (but steadily feeling older).
Build out projects to market and sell to augment the income from teaching, but also enjoy all the benefits of teaching abroad (lots of saving, free housing, etc). Getting a teaching cert is definitely worth it if you’re going to do that, though.
How long do you think it would take you from scratch to learn how to build a project and profit from it, knowing what you know now? I mean studying, plus polishing a project.
The thing with a teaching certification is that even the most internationally-recognized credential short of an actual certification (what I have now) isn't useful or cared for in many countries. Being white and fluent while willing to adapt to a workplace is what gets me a paycheck.
Past that I'd have to choose whether I wanted to commit my free time to teaching certification or CS knowledge.
Also there are all the folks who genuinely are uncomfortable interpersonally. tbh I just take the mindset I learned from teaching (patience, patience, patience) and apply it to them. works a charm.
Yeah I feel like teaching helped me a lot interpersonally as I've always been a bit square-peg-in-a-round-hole socially. I've heard the statement, "I didn't know how to take you the first few months I knew you, but I like you now," more than once. Nice to hear that end result, but I always think... a few months? Really? When I press them on it they just say I felt cold and uninviting to them, or something. I've always held the mindset that too much insincere small talk was rude and useless if I didn't really care about someone or there was no measurable end goal, like gaining advantages in a workplace by making the right friends as social utility.
Same with privatized teaching. I recall during one job where I was being coached on how to do something differently by an employer and without thinking I said, "Oh yeah, I get it. We need to think like marketers, not teachers," and he just looked at me cross. You don't say the quiet part out loud with people.
Getting closer to 30 I've managed to curb the frequency of situations like this and learn what role to play in a room or shut up. It's like a mindset some edgy 15-year-old would take pride in, except I'm a grown adult and it sucks because it's just who I am and I'm trying not to be that way.
Learning Russian sounds dope.
Check out teachrready or any of the other programs through the state of Florida. If you just observe a certified teacher and have them watch you teach you get a cert. take a year and is fucking insane. Other states are just about as bad (Texas, LA). You can then turn your cert into a $50k/yr gig at an international school doing actual teaching. The money is good and relatively easy and you have plenty of free time. There are so many software tools to build for teachers.
After about a year of pretty consistent study and work I had a couple of solid projects live. I wasn’t making the next {whatever fancy unicorn} but they serve as proof I can learn and get shit done. That was enough to finagle my way into a job. It was also enough knowledge that if I had wanted to I could have felt comfortable hiring contractors to continue building out the projects and have been relatively certain I wouldn’t get cheated.
Check out teachrready or any of the other programs through the state of Florida. If you just observe a certified teacher and have them watch you teach you get a cert. take a year and is fucking insane. Other states are just about as bad (Texas, LA). You can then turn your cert into a $50k/yr gig at an international school doing actual teaching. The money is good and relatively easy and you have plenty of free time.
Googled TeacherReady, can you really do this completely online (without having to go back to the US)? If so that's fucking insane.
EDIT: I see here you do need to go back to the US for testing, but that's just a few weeks and I could visit family. Definitely an interesting idea if I do more research and see how competitive this makes me for international schools.
There are so many software tools to build for teachers.
Interesting problem to think about, and one that isn't morally bankrupt.
Covid makes everything weird but previously you could even do the testing abroad if there was a test center near you. In China most of the places that did toefl and gre also did the state cert tests. It’s crazy.
About half of my YouTube recommendations now are bee keeping, composting and organic farming, because of how much I fantasize about giving it all up after being chained to my computer for sol long. At least you can eat what you make on a farm.
The initial problem-solving thrill wears out after a while as you get more practiced and see more and more of the same self-inflicted problems at one company after another. I was able to pivot my career into working on genuinely interesting and ever harder stuff, but if go down that path then the feelings of labor alienation are particularly brutal, and you need to keep producing golden eggs at a regular pace or they'll start looking for ways to dispose of you.
I do actually like the people I met along the way though. Once you've identified and ignored the chuds, whoever's left is pretty cool. I mean, still liberals, but at least liberals you can have an interesting conversation with on any topic but politics. The lefties in the field are great, but don't tend to stick around long before they go on walkabout and become a beekeeper.
I almost reflexively don't respond in these threads because they always make me feel like I don't live in real life. I'm super, super aware of how lucky I am in the broader context but I also work in a bubble where people aren't getting ground down and find their jobs meaningful and fulfilling.
a lot of that comes down to luck, for sure, but... this industry is good (for now) compared to virtually anything else I could be doing. large systems are something I'm good at and get a real pleasure out of building, so I'm glad to be where I'm at and I'll ride this out until this society collapses or the capitalists manage to depress wages and worsen working conditions, or the rumors about ageism turn out to be true and I do in fact age out over the next decade.
but right now... I'm working 100% remotely for a job that doesn't care how many hours I put in, have total control and autonomy over my area of expertise, get paid way too much relative to the societal value I'm creating, and - as I found out after I was already in my current position for a month - their core technology has serious praxis potential, and the same is true for my coworkers.
that said, there are a lot of shit places that will give you none of those things - I've worked in many of them (this time last year, I was in the middle of a 9 month death march that went from 70 hours a week up to over 100 for the last 6 weeks).
idk why I'm posting this... I guess just to say I'm grateful for what I have and wish deeply everyone else could have the same.
so in that spirit, if anyone wants help with their resume:
- strip out all the identifying info - names, places, etc. replace company names with a rough description of what they do.
- include a description of what you want to be doing, in an ideal world.
I'm also happy to do practice interviews and the like. I've done a lot of both resume reviewing and interviewing over the years and I'd love to put those skills to less soul-crushing ends. DM me if you need the help.
oh, also, we should set up a references program - references are bullshit to begin with and they're so, so easy to fake. hard part is that you need some identifying info to do this well, but we could probably write up some stuff on how to do it so people can ask their friends.
I’m a senior engineer doing embedded software at a mid-size auto supplier, which is probably just about the best case for actual interesting problem solving. Most projects are something new and different with novel problems to solve, you actually get to see the results of your work driving around, and its still fun and interesting. Especially with everything moving to electric vehicles now.
There aren’t very many jobs like that, though, and I’d probably go insane writing CRUD apps in Silicon Valley all day (even if it would pay a lot more than a job in Detroit).
