IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

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Khane

Khane

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This is one of the biggest job markets on the planet. Look at all the consulting firms and off-shore "developers" who get hired who have never had any formal training and barely even speak English. Think about that for a second. Millions and millions of dollars get pumped off shore to India, China and elsewhere for software development work to be done by people you can't even verify are who they claim to be. And even big companies use that practice.

It is very unlikely you WON'T be able to find a job as long as you have a modicum of intelligence and have taught yourself enough to be considered a junior developer. You don't even need to get hired by a company to make money in this field. You can freelance or start your own "consulting agency".
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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He said decent job, not shit job. Nobody is going to work with a Joz's Consulting Agency when his list of credentials is 1-2 lines long. People get into consulting when they have the experience to back up the risk involved.
 
Adebisi

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I figure it's a resume thing. HR has been tasked with hiring a software engineer and has a stack of 50 resumes. The guy with "self taught programming god" might not make it to the first round of interviews.

Anyone with stories of going back to university in their 30's while having a fam and mortgage. eeeep.
 
Khane

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You're very, very wrong about that Deathwing. I've worked with quite a few consulting firms that charge big money for shit talent and still get hired over and over. There is an epidemic of foreign "developers" phone interviewing and nailing it and then having a completely different person come in for the face to face interview. And these people still get hired, absurd as that sounds.

It's fairly easy to get a decent job without a degree in software development. I've been doing this a long time, have a ton of friends in the industry all over the country and have been a hiring manager for the past 6 years. I personally know at least 15 developers who have no formal education on the subject matter. And they are good at what they do and work for reputable companies.
 
Khane

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Adebisi_sl said:
I figure it's a resume thing. HR has been tasked with hiring a software engineer and has a stack of 50 resumes. The guy with "self taught programming god" might not make it to the first round of interviews.
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Yes, this is true at larger, corporate gigs. But at smaller companies HR isn't usually involved in even reading resumes, their only job in the hiring practice is typically the paperwork after the development teams have decided they want to make an offer to a candidate. In this field there is more demand than their is supply of talent. Every company has a need for software developers, even if only in a maintenance and support capacity, because every company has a need for software.

A degree will never hurt you, and certainly broadens the ability to get your resume seen, but it's not remotely a necessity. Your skillset is what gets looked at the most. Even bigger brand recruiting firms like TEK systems fabricate people's resumes just to get their candidates in the door.
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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Khane_sl said:
You're very, very wrong about that Deathwing. I've worked with quite a few consulting firms that charge big money for shit talent and still get hired over and over. There is an epidemic of foreign "developers" phone interviewing and nailing it and then having a completely different person come in for the face to face interview. And these people still get hired, absurd as that sounds.

It's fairly easy to get a decent job without a degree in software development. I've been doing this a long time, have a ton of friends in the industry all over the country and have been a hiring manager for the past 6 years. I personally know at least 15 developers who have no formal education on the subject matter. And they are good at what they do and work for reputable companies.
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The consulting firms themselves have the credentials, not the developers. They hired some no names and their reputation might suffer for it. Totally different than some one-man startup.

I could fill the screen red with links describing HR practices of just throwing out resumes without certain requirements, a degree being one of them. At this point, we're just arguing anecdotal, so I'll admit I don't have the motivation to look up statistics.
 
Tuco

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This argument has happened with Khane arguing with all comers. Until one side gets the motivation to look up statistics for average wages for degree holding programmers vs non-degree holding programmers it's all pretty much anecdotal.
 
Khane

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I don't know those statistics exist. For your first job it's almost a certainty a degree holder will make more money (although I doubt the difference would be significant enough to cause alarm). After that, it's a completely different ball game.

Deathwing, of course there are companies that throw out resumes of candidates that don't have a degree, I've never argued that. But there is so much demand for software developers internationally that even if 50% of companies used that practice you'd still have a fairly easy time getting a job.

The statistic I'd be more interested in is # of employed developers with a degree vs # of employed developers without a degree.
 
Deathwing

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Normalize by age and I think that would be a useful statistic. There are still a lot of older programmers that got into the industry during its infancy and before hiring practices were more standardized.

I think wage is the wrong metric. Unless you include all the people that looked for a job(and didn't find one), degree and non-degree, and include their wage as $0.
 
B

Black_Death

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I'm in charge of a practice at a technology consulting company.

When I am evaluating candidates/resumes, I care a lot more about a proven history of actually delivering products vs a degree. I really don't give a shit about what degrees people have as it rarely directly translates to success in our field. The salary range for these positions is about 80k-160k base.
 
wormie

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Adebisi_sl said:
Anyone with stories of going back to university in their 30's while having a fam and mortgage. eeeep.
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I am doing it right now. BS in Computational Math and plans on going to a masters program afterwards (either a computer science department specializing in machine learning or, and this is more likely, a statistics department with ML electives). I work full time (some weeks more) so I am not a full time student. I do make sure to take as many summer courses as available to make up for not being full time. I do have the luxury of having flexible hours at work since I work for myself and make a decent amount of money. My wife lives and works in another state so I am surviving on a single income. Its a bitch but its worth it.

Like you I fucking hate my current job. It pays wonderfully, it is entirely flexible and its claw my eyes out boring. I already have a BS in economics and was planning on going to law school so I can continue the family business. However, after being part of that business for almost 8 years now, under no circumstances do I want to find myself doing this shit 10 years from now. I am not intellectually stimulated at all, I hate most of my clients and every morning i walk into my office, i feel hate seething out of me at everything around me. Its not healthy to me and its not fair to others around me. On top of my hate for my work, my entire industry here in NY is under investigation by the Attorney General of the US and the NY dept of taxation and finance. This last fact leads me to believe that there is a good chance that in the future the current gravy train will be cut off and I do not want to be around when that happens.

For a simpler version of all that shit above:

If you are not happy with what you do for a living, do not stick around. No amount of money is worth the misery that hating your job puts you through. Go change careers and be happy.

PS. I am 34 years old and married. I have a mortgage. I also have rent in Arizona where my wife currently lives and i travel there once a month to see her. No kids though.
 
Deathwing

Deathwing

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Black_Death_sl said:
I'm in charge of a practice at a technology consulting company.

When I am evaluating candidates/resumes, I care a lot more about a proven history of actually delivering products vs a degree. I really don't give a shit about what degrees people have as it rarely directly translates to success in our field. The salary range for these positions is about 80k-160k base.
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Sure, but that doesn't apply to the discussion. People like joz123 rarely have delivered products. What do you use as criteria then?
 
Tuco

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Deathwing_sl said:
Sure, but that doesn't apply to the discussion. People like joz123 rarely have delivered products. What do you use as criteria then?
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I think if I were learning on my own with the intent of starting a career I'd probably create a product in a field that was interesting and spend a good deal of effort creating a good presentation for it.

Ex: One of the side projects I did a few years ago was to create a software suite that would runtechnical analysisalgorithms on stock pricing. That would be an excellent project for someone with no programming background to create over a two year period of teaching themselves.
 
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Black_Death

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Deathwing_sl said:
Sure, but that doesn't apply to the discussion. People like joz123 rarely have delivered products. What do you use as criteria then?
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He doesn't get in the door without something that he has delivered on. It could be an app or a product or some bullshit for someone else, but he has to have something. My point is that while he is learning, he should be building something tangible.
 
Tuco

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Noodleface_sl said:
My senior project was in-depth as shit. It was also the biggest talking point at all my interviews.
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What was it?

Mine was an automated testing application for engine controllers input/output we did for automotive company. Save an old chinese man 8 hours of work every week running manual regression tests.
 
Khane

Khane

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Which is easy enough to do. You can create a portfolio of projects with real world application even if they weren't ever bought. Create an app and put it into the google play store. Even if nobody has ever bought it you've delivered a product. Create a website for your mother's knitting hobby or your uncles fishing lure collection. It's fairly easy to get your work out there.
 
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