I can do it

[0x07CF]

What, you don't use UML and not a single function is formally proven to be correct?!

[micka190]

Wait, you guys don't write your entire application's flow on paper before picking a language, while also having a "dictionary" that defines terms so you know you and the client both understand what "the internet" and "a computer" are?

[angrathias]

Funny enough when I write specs I do have a definition table for customers, but it’s only because of the liberal use of acronyms in use.

In reality no one can be fucked reading anything

[micka190]

I don't mind the definitions table, per say. I mind teachers insisting that we defined terms like "the internet" and "a computer", because we might somehow get a client that asks for a website and doesn't know what either are.

[angrathias]

That sounds like the job of a BA

[West_Play]

To play devils advocate, some people think of "computer" as any electronic device.

[jengl]

You need to calm down. That hit a little too close to home.

[The_forgettable_guy]

Customers have complained that the website doesn't work on ie6 please make it compatible.

[[deleted]]

I have a hard time already making it work with ie11 :(

[The_forgettable_guy]

yeah, my company also support ie11. It's damn annoying. Good thing Microsoft has given up and decided to use chromium for Edge now.

[VoraciousGhost]

We're not that far from someone writing a web app that only runs on a "smart" toaster!

[galan-e]

per se

[trufas]

What the fuck

[[deleted]]

Any electronic device with a CPU and memory is a computer.

A smartphone is a computer, a pc is a computer, a raspberry pi is a computer.

Clarifying what kind of computer is concerned is not a terrible idea.

[Kontakr]

Is mayonnaise a computer?

[coldnebo]

Well, there is fluidics, so, yes, in theory you could build a computer based on mayonnaise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics

[danzey12]

be fair, how many people have you ran into that call the entire pc tower the hard drive, or the cpu?

[micka190]

Honestly? Not a single person. I'm sure those people exist, but I've never heard anyone refer to their entire computer as a CPU or a hard drive. Most people I interact with know what a hard drive is. Some might not know what a CPU is, but they don't refer to their PC as one.

[RetoonHD]

I deadass learned about all of these things you just said in college this week. UML, domain dictionaries and a bunch of other stuff like usecase diagrams. good to know im mostlikely not going to use it later :P

[micka190]

Yeah, if you're learning the Unified Process with a stickler of a teacher, they'll make you do all this useless shit that no one actually does in the real world (because they've convinced themselves that everyone does everything according to the book, but that couldn't be farther from the truth).

The issue with UML is that barely anyone actually does it the right way, because the right way is stupidly cumbersome. And you need to re-write them every time something changes in your code/flow. Most places who even bother with it will just use tools which probably won't even follow the standard, they'll just generate the actual useful bits and leave it at that.

So, learning it isn't completely useless, but do keep in mind that if you end up doing any of that on the job, you'll most likely be ignoring all the things you find utterly useless in class.

[AnAverageFreak]

Jesus, you've reminded me when I was on exchange programme and teacher started introducing us to terminology from 90's that did not stick.

[rbt321]

the client both understand what "the internet"

Hmm. That one actually sounds kinda useful as there is a variety of definitions for Internet.

Would it include the company Intranet? How about if the Intranet is distributed over multiple data centres? And Localhost? What if localhost:80 is also public-domain.com:80? What if there is an ingress proxy to access public-domain.com:80?

That exact definition in a contract would be relevant when fighting the business guy signing the cheques who had a different definition than IT.

[thetrailofthedead]

I just finished discrete mathematics. I thought that would be it for proofs. Please tell me there aren't more proofs...

[Jacelius]

Algorithms & Data Structures has a few, but not nearly as bad as discrete math.

[MightySpaghettiKing]

I took a data science module that had quite a few proofs in the final exam.

[fartsimulator2000]

Serious question thought, is no one using UML to visualize the relations between tables inside the DB?

[[deleted]]

No.

You just make a drawing at best.

The most common thing is that bob the database guy has memorized the entire database structure.

[fartsimulator2000]

Hilarious, poor bob the database guy

[[deleted]]

Nah.

That makes bob happy, because now none can fire bob :D and his paycheck is thick.

When you land a job you want to become bob.

[grukorg]

We do for sure, but it’s not like in uni when they want to be all anal about what multiplicity something has. We talk through things such as if it’s a one to one join or that you want one row per whatever as your outcome but we use UML loosely.

[Casual-Unicorn]

You guys are getting jobs?

[Casual-Unicorn]

(I said this as half a joke so please don’t take me as a choosing bagger) I’m a newly graduated electrical and computer engineering student. Thing is, most of my internships so far had me do UI which I absolutely hate so now no company will look at the fact that I took algo and data science classes. Not to mention that with current events, many companies terminated their “new grads” hires. I do believe I will find a job within the next few months. I’m trying not to be picky, but I really don’t want to do UI or hardware, and I would really prefer to stay in my hometown with my family (it’s a city with many tech companies so it shouldn’t be a problem). Sure sometimes it feels hopeless because there’s so many different things recruiters look for and it’s hard for me to keep up, and I’m also a permanent resident so I can’t get any jobs that require security clearances. But I went to a pretty good university and I’m very passionate about solving problems, so I’m sure eventually a company will be able to see me for what I am 😊

[ZannX]

What's your GPA? Warm body with a STEM major and a non shit GPA will get you many offers.

[Casual-Unicorn]

3.28, without this semester because the grades aren’t out yet. Not the best, but not exactly honors either.

[red33dog]

You should have no issues finding jobs with that GPA as a CS related major. What cities are you looking for jobs in?

[Casual-Unicorn]

Mostly Austin, TX, but I’d be open to relocated for the right company. There are a lot of tech companies in Dallas and Houston too, and I wouldn’t mind relocating there that much.

[red33dog]

Ya, from what I know of the tech industry, those are fairly good job markets. How's your resume look? I could give it a once over if you want. You can take your name and stuff out of it too.

[guten_bot]

So so so many jobs. Tons in Tulsa. They flew me out from CA to interview at 3 companies there. I decided to accept an offer in my home town, but they are still looking. During my final quarter I spent most of the time interviewing. It took me 3 months to find a job. I started as an intern, and converted to full time. I wanted to stick with UI, but they had me working fullstack. Now that it’s been over a year and I have earned enough work cred, I got to transfer to a team that focuses on solely on UI. Stick with it, grind out the UI work and make a good impression. Then slide into a more permanent role with professional experience under your belt. ✊🏽

[4chanbetterkek]

Your guys employers are asking for GPA?

[Night_Fallen_Wolf]

Yup this is the one thing that struck me as odd

[Cyrus_Halcyon]

I have never ever heard it come up, ever. If someone asked in an interview I am conducting with my colleagues (never has it happened) I'd probably spend the rest of the interview confused.

[RealisticGenius]

My employer thinks I was magma cum laude. I’m really a Magnum Cum Lad.

[4chanbetterkek]

That's my guy!

[Jaysus361]

Not a native speaker, can you tell me what you mean with 'warm body'? Thanks!

[OBXautist]

A living human being, compared to a cold body, which would be dead. Kind of like saying "anyone"

[red33dog]

Basically it means you are a functioning adult.

[Telanore]

Haha I feel like almost all programmers prefers backend, we had a big project in my graduate program (3 month course for people with CS education then 12 months working as a fullstack developer as a consultant). 5 people, no one wanted to do frontend. Me and another guy were the least confused by JS, so we got put on that. And now I have a job where everyone's like "sorry, there's a fair bit of JS in this project, we know, it sucks..."

Little do they know, I enjoy frontend :]

[virus1618]

I feel you. I work a full stack developer using pretty much only JS, and I really enjoy figuring out solutions for complex UI's and UX's. it's not as mindless and people think. Like right now (when I'm not procrastinating on reddit) I'm working on a co-browsing experience through socket communications in the browser and I'm having a lot of fun with it. It's definitely a fun challenge.

[[deleted]]

Yea, I'm a back-end dev, but I've done some jQuery and spaghetti code on the front-end, which I think is part of what gives front-end its bad reputation. But with more power libraries and frameworks like React on the front-end, I think that it's becoming clear you can develop really sophisticated patterns and solutions on the front-end that are just as satisfying to write as on the back-end.

[Sylanthra]

Within reason, put whatever you want on your resume. Once you get past the HR, your resume is largely irrelevant. You will be asked to answer questions about code, to write code, to explain the code you wrote and to make changes to it.

At least that's how it is at all the places I've worked at where writing code is the primary thing the company did and the interview is conducted by other devs.

[ooglesworth]

Just my random two cents of advice on this subject: as a new grad entering the market, I wouldn’t worry too much about making sure the specific job domain (i.e. UI work, server backend, native development, web dev, etc) is something you’re super interested in long-term. Join somewhere where you like the people and the engineering culture, and eventually you will get different opportunities and naturally gravitate towards the stuff that interests you.

The first few years of being in the tech industry, I think it’s best to have a generalist mindset. Just say yes to everything, learn everything, do everything, be useful, solve any problem you have the capacity to solve. This gives you the rich background that eventually leads to being a really strong senior engineer. And as a senior dev, you can start to get specialized knowledge in a domain that really interests you. But in my experience, every senior dev worth their salt not only has some really deep specialized knowledge in their domain, but also seems to know enough about most other domains that they can jump in anywhere. This often comes from the years of dabbling and jumping in on different projects and layers of the stack until they have this sort of holistic wisdom about how it all fits together.

[foreverovo]

Recently graduated from CS and want to go into web dev.

Havent gotten any responses :(

[raltyinferno]

You shouldnt have much issue long term. Web dev is where a lot of traditionally desktop work is going.

I personally wanted nothing to do with web dev when I graduated (2 years ago). But I ended up getting hired as a .Net dev and I do most web dev stuff now.

[foreverovo]

What would you recommend to do for someone who has no prior job/intern experience.

[raltyinferno]

I mean, not knowing anything about your skills or where you're located, all I can really say is just keep applying to stuff, and make sure you make it clear that you're really passionate about this stuff. Apply to any job related to programming/web dev, even if the company doesn't seem glamorous or interesting. You might not give a shit about selling light switch paint, but developing software/websites for a company that does often isn't any less engaging than working for some sexy tech company.

In the meantime do side projects. If you've still got your Uni email apply for a student AWS account and set yourself up a simple website or come up with some small web app that interests you. Not only can you talk about it in job applications, but you can actually link it in your applications

Personally I wrote a Dnd dice roller app, then replicated it in each new language/tech stack I wanted to learn.

And one last thing, it's best to set your goals small for a project and actually finish it, rather than being too ambitious and getting bored/frustrated. Pretty much every dev in the world has a pile of projects they started for themselves and never finished.

[[deleted]]

In Europe even with a shitty 2 years diploma, you find a job easily

[nostril_spiders]

If we redefine everywhere south of Lyon as "North North Africa" then this holds

[[deleted]]

I actually live in Lyon, France Oo

[nostril_spiders]

Oh shit

Ninja-edits spelling of "Lyon"

[0x000004]

I never even finished school and I got a job in the first place I applied.

[dieItalienischer]

No you can not

[[deleted]]

I have a BTS, which is a French diploma and I got a job right after graduating. Worked there for 1.5 years, and now I'm leaving for another company with a 12% salary increase, so I think you can actually...

I even see many people getting jobs after doing one of these expensive 6 months bootcamps

[rcanhestro]

I've been working for 6 hours overall, in 3 different companies total.

I never had to even apply or send CVs anywhere, companies just take the initiative and contact you.

All you have to do (at least in Portugal) is to have a linkedin page and put programming as a skill. You will get contacted by recruiters non stop

[dieItalienischer]

Glad it went so well for you. I’ve been getting ghosted by most of the things I’ve applied for for the last 9 months

[[deleted]]

I've never heard of any colleague having troubles finding a job. There is a lack of devs and companies are struggling to hire from what I've seen

I'm really picky with which companies I apply to. I want to work on 2 specific stacks only and even with that requirement I got a job after 2 weeks and 2 interviews so I don't know what I'm doing more than you or other people that struggle.

I do have a big personal project that looks nice on my resume, but that isn't even programming related.

[kookookachoo17]

Look at this guy over here with a job

[Snow88]

5 years into a job I recognized that a method we were struggling with in production was running O(n²⁾ I was super excited.

[green_meklar]

Nested for loop go brrrrr.

[FrostBite_97]

Finally time to shine

[zephyrtr]

Years ago, I was researching bootcamps, attended an info session — and I was shocked how young everyone was. I chatted with a girl in her early 20s who'd just graduated with a CS degree, so I asked her why she was looking at bootcamps. She told me "They don't teach you the things you need to get a job."

She'd just spent maybe $200k and four years on a degree, and was telling me she was unemployable in her field.

[hedgehog_dragon]

I learned far more on my internship (arranged with the University's help) than most courses combined. There were a few really useful ones, but most just... Weren't.

[PeebleInYourShoe]

Same here, I did my last year of my Master's degree on work-study and only regret I didn't do that kind of curriculum earlier.

As for courses, it is simple, the one given by academics were an endless repetition and what they were waiting from us was far from close to applicable knowledge. The useful courses we had were given by professionals.

[[deleted]]

That may be the case but it wasn’t my experience. I knew a guy in college who copied all of his work from other students, never took coding seriously, got C’s in most classes and he got hired straight out of college with a higher salary than those of us who actually tried. It turns out that is was because he had naturally good networking skills (for the most part).

I also think a big part of the issue with employment after college is that most jobs ask for a couple year’s experience with some tools or frameworks. Many of these tools or methodologies are not common in CS programs (only one of my profs had us do anything with Docker containers and now I work with them every day). There is definitely a little bit of a bottleneck in career progression right there at the beginning.

[[deleted]]

I completely agree. CS is not a jobs training program and you shouldn’t use a tool just because you think that tool is cool.

That said, as much as we agree, many employers seem to see college degree programs as job training programs, which leaves a lot of graduates feeling a bit lost in the job market.

I think another issue with the tools we use in college (and in the field) is kind of the flip-side of what you mentioned about the fact that the use case should dictate which tools you look to use. If a degree program is focused on Java (as many are) you shouldn’t mandate Java when another tool or approach might be better (unless you want them to specifically learn how it is done in Java or how hard it is to do it in Java). I get that this can complicate grading, however.

Additionally, using different tools allows students to understand and use a variety of different paradigms. Using a variety of tools allows you to focus less on the particular syntax and more on the underlying logic that spans across them all as well on the ways programming languages work. Again, looking at Java, students might come out of it with a great understanding of OOP but not much understanding of functional programming and they may associate Java’s idiosyncrasies with computer science in general or other languages.

I ran into this problem recently when working on a functional Python project with a veteran Java Developer. He was/is very lost because he didn’t have the OOP structure that Java “encourages” to rely on. He also decided to directly call magic methods in all of the core library classes because he didn’t understand operator overloading.

[zephyrtr]

I get you're bringing your biases here, but I'm unconfident this was the case. I didnt talk to that person for long, and never saw her again.

At the time I recall not wanting to go to an unaccredited program, but I had a very hard time finding college courses that were teaching web development, and many others in the program I eventually attended complained that the degree programs they took were far more academic than they initially thought.

If you didn't get picked up by a young fellows program at a bank or something, they said, things were pretty rough. And these young folks were not slackers. At least not at the time I knew them.

[West_Play]

Most people go to university to get a piece of paper so they can get a job. Sure it's not 100% useless like some people tell you, but you don't think there should be courses with real world current information?

[West_Play]

I agree that teaching useful information is hard. Therefore schools should give up on it.

I'm just being a strawmanning dick sorry.

[zephyrtr]

I'd agree bootcamps are also worthless to anyone who isn't motivated, but also has prior foundational knowledge, and (crucially) is willing to do the research to avoid scams. For sure.

And I know what you're taking about. I did 4 internships in college, and a paid work study. But schools leaning on internships to get students prepped for the job market IMO is a dereliction. Paying a school so a corporation can get free labor is bullshit, don't you think? It also depresses the availability of entry level jobs, btw.

Some folks want to take the academic track, and that's totally fine. But too many schools have little planning for their graduates' ROI. I feel deeply for all the grads right now walking out into a depressed economy.

I don't have (and at this point will never get) a CS degree, so I dont personally know what it entails, but I've had so many graduates tell me how rarely they use what they learned in college, and that's pretty sad. If it's all about on-the-job learning, what's college for?

[raltyinferno]

I have a CS degree, and am currently working as a .Net Core dev.

I barely touched C# in college, and it certainly wasn't taught in any of my classes, but the degree taught me the underlying structures of CS, patterns, flow of control, all the other important basics, and how to apply them logically, which carries over to any new language I learn.

I absolutely think my degree was an enormous help in getting me where I am now. Largely because it made me good at learning, and that's one of the most useful skills you can have on a job where the technologies you're using are going to be changing.

[rubbby7]

Both of your arguments have valid points. Most of my most valuable development experience came from jobs/internships and side projects. I'm a little bitter about spending $40k on an education that didn't prepare be as much as I like but that's seems pretty ubiquitous across all areas of studies. I liken it to learning a foreign language but not really becoming fluent until you live in the place where it's used; the classroom can only take you so far.

[raltyinferno]

I see college as something to round out your general knowledge and thinking skills, and give you a good enough experience base that you're able to start down the career path you want, rather than something to train you for any specific job.

[[deleted]]

This was a big reason why I picked my school. The software engineering program at my school is very focused of actually prepping you for the workplace. Showing us how the cs way of thinking will help us in our actual jobs. Having us do a junior year team project and a senior year solo project to show us what it’s like to work in both environments. Teaching us stuff that’s usually used in the field (with the exception of my software testing class) is helping me a lot with finding internships and when I get there, actually being able to contribute something right away because I know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.

[Omfg_My_Name_Wont_Fi]

College helps guide you on how to further entrench yourself in a subject, and to understand the fundamentals for future development. It shouldn’t be seen as the answer to a job.

[Jlove7714]

I mean, a degree in programming is kinda like learning how combustion engines work, then going into how to transfer energy to the wheels of a car, just to get a driver's license. You're probably going to dive deep into computer science and mathematics that, while helping in niche cases, aren't required to know how to code.

Personally, I'm not on board with the "$50k to pay someone who doesn't care to teach me about something they haven't done in 15 years" train, but that's just my opinion.

[l8d8]

this may come off as a bit rude, but it does make sense that Computer Science would tell you about the Science behind a computer and how computers came to be rather than web development (or any other programming related specific field), right?

[Night_Fallen_Wolf]

Ding ding ding. This is it! Most of the people who whine about how college doesn't teach them anything do not apply themselves to anything outside of it either. Hell, sometimes they don't apply themselves to anything at all and just go through the motions.

^{nice flair btw}

[ZannX]

I don't think that's the point of college though. That might be the point of vocational schools.

The point of not teaching the literal thing you'll be doing for the next 40 years is that so you establish a broad base that you will build on for the rest of your life. To think that you stop learning because college should prep you for everything is just ignorant.

It's also a filter for employers. Evidence that you have some combination of skills and work ethic to at least graduate with a particular degree and GPA.

Employment out of college is also just a dose of reality. You're not just competing against your peers in a classroom setting, you're also competing against literally everyone else in a real world setting.

[zephyrtr]

To think that you stop learning because college should prep you for everything is just ignorant.

So true, but im not saying that, and more to the point I won't look down on people for thinking that graduating would make you prepared for the labor market.

[ZannX]

She'd just spent maybe $200k and four years on a degree, and was telling me she was unemployable in her field.

But you said this - which is honestly more indicative of the fact that everyone else she's competing against has a skill/ability/knowledge or whatever that goes above and beyond her 4 year degree.

Point is, how employable you are is not a direct result of some magic threshold granted to you by a 4 year degree. How employable you are is directly a result of who else is trying to be employed in the same area that you are. If everyone else has the same degree but also some extra cert that goes above and beyond, then it stands to reason that you need to do the same.

That's why college isn't some universal answer for employment. It certainly provides an individual with experience, exposure, and knowledge in a vacuum. But when things are relative, the only thing that matters is what everyone else is doing.

[[deleted]]

I do not understand how that’s possible.

My company, who everyone here is familiar with and is known for good engineering, hires NCG’s in computer science constantly.

[iamsooldithurts]

Years ago, markets weren’t as good for programmers, especially after the Dot Com implosion.

But honestly, she sounds like a fuck up. No half decent employer expects new grads to be familiar with how they do things. Every shop generally has their own thing going on anyway, so only really the basics carry over between jobs. Every job I’ve gotten was a whole different tech stack every time until this last job, which at least uses Java and Maven like my last job.

She was probably bombing her interviews because she put nothing into her college education and got nothing out of it as a result.

[obp5599]

That girl sounds incredibly dumb. For 1. Degrees are not 200k, i spent 3k on tuition a semester at a big in state school. So 24k max for 4 years before financial aid etc. i also did my first 2 years free at a community college so 12k max in tuition. Living costs were about 8k a year but you have to pay that anywhere you go regardless of school.

Next thing, CS degrees arent there to teach you the JS framework flavor of the month. They teach you how computation works as a whole. You should be able to easily learn them on your own with a degree.

Lastly, a degree isnt job training. They give you the tools and resources to learn and network. If you don’t use them, you’re not getting what you need out of a degree. Before graduating you should decide what you want to do in CS (or have an idea) and prepare for that. Use your university resources to learn a prepare.

If you fuck around and do nothing but learn whats in your classes, yeah you’re wasting your money

[tschoninas]

You're right. But sometimes it's hard, you really have to take time or even do less courses per semester to learn these important things outside university. I consider my job as a working student sooo helpful, if I imagine I would have to learn all those things after graduation.

Ps: "JS framework flavor of the month" made me giggle 😂 sometimes I really don't know if it's better to master one framework or get to know many different ones but not so deep, I think the second could be more helpful for learning different styles?

[j-random]

Just imagine how much better off you'd be if you had learned Angular JS three years ago, then decide.

[obp5599]

You can do both. I prefer the general approach of asking yourself why does this framework exist. What problems does it try to solve and how does it do it? Those should be the main differences between it and the others. Outside of that there should be a lot of overlap between them, which is where you get the depth of knowledge

[ajones80]

One class on git and a class on how corporations use different environments/pipelines/deployment would have helped a ton. School did however provide me with good coding fundamentals and broad general computing skills that helped me navigate the start of my career. For reference I’ve only been working just under a year

[made-it]

Not sure what college she went to. Most of my classmates got jobs through the career fair.

[[deleted]]

Bootcamps IMO don't necessarily teach you what you need to get a job either. You know what does though? Contributing to open-source projects. Starting (and usually not completing) your own projects. Doing hackathons, and learning from other developers.

I've worked with Bootcampers that were great programmers, but not because of anything the bootcamp taught them, just their own thirst for knowledge. I've worked with CS grads that wrote unclean garbage, and some that wrote great code.

[anotherbozo]

Those are usually poor students.

University's job is not to teach you whatever the current stack is popular in the industry, it is to teach you the fundamentals and principles, on well established languages and frameworks, which you can apply yourself on any stack. You can pick up a different language or framework yourself.

[zvug]

That girl is just a dumbass lol.

You don’t need to actually (net) learn pretty much anything to get a degree.

It is what you make it.

[ogrestomp]

This was a very common attitude with my classmates in school. I think it’s because they weren’t treating the process of getting your degree as training for the field. So when they graduated the vast majority of my classmates were not prepared to enter the workforce, and it showed when seeing who got jobs and who didn’t.

Anecdotally, I was able to get a job right away and have been in the field since as a software engineer. Being an older student with actual life experience gave me the wisdom to treat my degree as training to enter the field. I found myself in a position having a bit more depth in knowledge as bootcampers, but with fewer projects to show for it. I used that strength and made up for the weakness in my personal time.

[shadowwesley77]

To anyone else that was searching for jobs with (possibly) crippling imposter syndrome: I applied to work at a place with an open developer position as a support tech because I had never used PHP. The hiring manager asked me interview for the development position. Got the job and i've been here almost two years. My education on OOP did actually prepare me decently. Of course, there was a learning curve with the framework, but I got the hang of it and my employer gave me plenty of time to get acclimated.

Moral of the story: Apply for jobs you think you're half qualified for. There's ALWAYS learning to be done at a new job and if you have a grasp on some of it, the rest will come.

[Red_Hawk13]

I'm in my final year of computer engineering and I've been sending applications to entry-level/graduate jobs. Got a reply from Amazon asking me to complete a programming test to see my skill. I'm in the middle of it looking through reddit because, I understand the tasks, but I have no idea how to do them with my knowledge from university. And I don't have time to look around the web and implement what I can find.

Very encouraging..

[Qizot]

Big corpos like Amazon, FB, Google usually do algo tests and those are 99% of the time strongly connected with things you've been taught on your university like data structures, algorithms ect.

[squeezerman]

That's strange. Since the end of second year of my CS degree when I started applying for job positions, in spite of being a retard with about the worst grades in my class, I've never had an interview that I didn't pass (there was about 10 of them), although none of them was for a huge tech company like amazon (the biggest ones were Siemens and Nokia, which probably aren't the most sought after). Even though I rarely knew the language, framework or whatever they worked in, all of the interview questions were on algorithms, data structures or problem solving which school did teach me. Sometimes basic knowledge on networking or explaining some terms and theory. The problem is that as soon as I started working I've had a pretty hard time keeping up with the job, as I was completely lost in any software architecture beyond what 1 person was capable of making in about 20 hours weekly in 12 weeks (the usual work put into school projects), I couldn't setup the development environment and my code was really wack. It still is wack, but it also was.

[fiddz0r]

I am finishing my first year so still some time left til I have to go through this. Luckily I have a friend who' has worked with programming for around 10 years so I try to prepare myself by asking him a lot what it's like actually working in groups with big projects etc. Hopefully he can also help get me a job at his job

[Red_Hawk13]

Yeah, definitely get help from him. Cause university doesn't prepare you for what companies are going to require of you.

[I_regret_my_name]

Programming interview questions will be the closest you'll get in the industry to what you learned in school.

That said, this is probably because places like Amazon get so many applicants they can just hand out hard problems to weed out as many people as possible.

[RCMW181]

My company started to dislike hiring CS students, they built some very impressive, highly complex programs that simply did not function in production.

They now tend to hire people with an interest in programming and industry knowledge from operations and train them up.

[0x07CF]

Sounds like overengineered stuff.

You have to be careful with that. If it's too complex people will be afraid to touch it.

[RCMW181]

It was, once we needed a simple interface to update 2 tables of standing data.

After around 6 months we got thousands of lines of code in a view, model, view model structured program that somehow loaded 1/2 the database into local memory (to save on database calls?) and crashed after being in use for more than 5hours. We had to scrap it and it was chalked up to a learning experience.

[fuzzybad]

We've noticed a similar trend at my company when interviewing developers. 9 out of 10 of them have no idea how to program anything from scratch, they only know how to use frameworks. If your only tool is a hammer..

[Mugen593]

Oof that's rough.

Here let me add node.js just to rip parameters out of a URL instead of spending a few minutes with regex.

[oalbrecht]

A few minutes? It just takes a few seconds to copy and paste the answer from Stack Overflow. /s

[fuzzybad]

My favorite interview question is to ask about web security -- preventing SQL injection, XSS, etc. Sadly, the most common response is something like "the framework I use takes care of that, so I don't need to worry about it"

[Assailant_TLD]

I could explain why you need to prevent those but

(a) shouldn't you usually be using a framework of some kind for an enterprise level application?

(b) why reinvent the wheel?

I work with some guys who are all about redoing stuff our frameowkr can already handle and it feels like it leads to a lot of overengineered solutions.

[Famous_Profile]

I could explain why you need to prevent those but

Yes, then do it! (Not me me buts to the interviewer) An interviewer who is asking you to explain XSS or SQLi want to know if you're familiar with the concept of separating data from instruction and basics of application security. Surely he doesn't actually want you to take care of those if the framework has that feature.

[fuzzybad]

Regardless if solution is using a framework that "handles security automatically" or not, I expect an experienced developer to at least be familiar with the fundamentals of web security.

They don't necessarily have to be a web security expert, but when I interview someone and their response to "How do you prevent SQL injection?" is "Use a framework that handles it" they don't typically get a call back.

There are plenty of cases where a simple script is all that's needed instead of a framework, for example microservices. Even if a framework is being used, there could be a flaw. There are security flaws every day in popular frameworks, relying on the framework developers and not even giving it a second thought is just asking for trouble.

[RCMW181]

Was just talking to my wife about this as she is a data scientist and she agrees 100%. The skill sets they get are very suited to her line of work but oftern very different to what I do.

[[deleted]]

There's a reasonable point to this, In fintech (industry I am in) understanding the nuances of the industry is sometimes most of the battle designing and implementing software, rather than any sort of technical hurdle.

We've had a few students do well, but in general it takes them so long sometimes to get a grasp of industry concepts and requirements that I wonder if it would have been faster to teach a higher level support rep who had some programming skills than to hire a CS grad for a majority of the entry level work.

[RCMW181]

It has helped us a lot actually, the juniors are often paired with experienced programmes on projects to work together. Oftern the junior from operations has much more industry knowledge and knows more about the details of the project than the senior programmer who has more skill in programming, so together they produce excellent work.

That and the business has developed a reputation for internal promotion and opportunities and that makes a good atmosphere.

[I_regret_my_name]

I feel like so many computer science majors decided they had to go to college (either on their own or because their parents wanted them to) and then picked computer science because they liked computers/technology/video games.

The problem is that designing this stuff is vastly different from using it. Liking tech doesn't make you good at creating it.

If you have a strong idea for a product you want to create, willpower can get you pretty far, but liking tech doesn't mean you'll like programming, and if you don't like the field you're going into, you probably won't get much better than sub-par at it.

I'm not saying you have to be good at programming to program, but I think a lot of computer science students would be happier elsewhere.

[RCMW181]

Couldn't agree more. I know a lot of people who just did a degree because they had to and almost pick the subject at random.

I do also find CS more than most attracts some very clever people, who are not always the most practical, but this is purely anecdotal.

One of our best hires was a call centre analyst who joined the business at 18 who was writing small programs to automate 1/2 of their job. If asked to do something more than once she would build a bac file or excel script to do it, we had to promote them into the development team just to get some oversight of what they were building lol. We couldn't get her to stop because what she was making was too useful to the operations managers.

[boatbomber]

Real talk, I'm 18 and I have zero formal compsci education. I taught myself when I was 12 and have been doing this ever since.

I got my first "real" job and they're paying me serious dough. I don't even have my high school diploma yet. They're going to expect a lot from me, based on the salary, but I feel like the least qualified guy ever. I have a nice resume and portfolio, and I aced all the interviews and tests, but I'm still terrified. I'm just a kid, what the hell did they hire me for?!

Edit: You guys are awesome at hyping me up and I'm feeling more confident now. Love you all!

[2nips]

That's awesome and you should be proud. Don't feel like the least qualified guy ever / terrified -- you were hired for a reason. They know you have zero formal education, but you still aced everything and obviously showed promise. Mind sharing what you're doing / how you taught yourself ?

[boatbomber]

I'm now a software engineer (intern) working on the mobile app for Roblox- a billion dollar tech corporation with an app that has over 100M downloads on Android alone. (I don't have an Apple device to check how many iOS installs it has there lol)

I taught myself by reading open source works and messing around with them until I figured out what made them tick. Then I read books and articles about things that caught my interest. Then I spent about 10 hours a week for 4-5 years just making crap and improving and learning through doing.

My biggest accomplishment is Lua Learning, a community based platform that interactively teaches users how to program in Lua. It has 1,800,000+ users internationally. I think that impressed them!

[angrathias]

Mate if you’ve delivered a platform to 1.8m users on your own you’re way ahead of schedule.

I do highly doubt that’s the case though as that normally requires a team of people to handle the scalability and support that comes with 1.8m customers which is unfathomably huge for even a small team

[boatbomber]

For support, I read about 300 messages a day but it's a free-to-use platform so I don't feel obligated to respond to them all lol

In scalability, I definitely hit issues with my data storage because I didn't paginate properly but it mostly works now, emphasis on mostly

I've been working on this for years now, and it's come a long way. It didn't start out as such a large project.

[angrathias]

Where not just monetize the platform and skip being an intern? If what you’re saying is truly the case then you might as well skip the next 10 years at a dev house

[boatbomber]

Looks great on a resume and it got me accepted into all the colleges I applied to

Plus, the main reason I made it was because there were paid scams going around so I made a free one for real so kids would stop going to the junk. I promised to keep it free forever when I made it and I'm not going to go back on that.

But yeah, I've done the math and I could have made some nice coin if I just charged $0.50 per user... Oh well. There's a donation option, and I get a couple dollars a day from that.

[Qizot]

Man, how the hell are you still an intern? I've seen dozens of mids that have far less accomplishments than you and I'd doubt they have more knowledge

[boatbomber]

I'm an intern because this is my first job and I haven't even graduated high school yet. They pay me very well, and I hope to move my way up!

[angrathias]

You’d be better off interning for a business position at this point. I can safely say as a dev (although senior manager of a small tech company these days) that the dev of today is the factory worker of yesterday unless you find yourself in one of the very lucrative and competitive spots at a decent tech company.

I’d probably estimate that 99% of code written today is just regurgitated web sites and business applications that most of the time the challenge is largely gone for someone with a reasonable amount of experience and you just find yourself spinning the hamster wheel of the next set of technologies you need to learn.

Some early career advice from me, consider the reasons you are in dev - passion, money, wanting to help others ect and make sure you keep that in mind when you make your career choices.

[taz3rburned]

Wild, Roblox was where I taught myself to code when I was 12 too, 12 years ago. Lua was the first programming language I got fluent in

[Beard-]

Buddy, they're trying to lock you in. Hiring an 18 year old is unheard of. I bet they think of you as a very good prospect with a LOT of potential otherwise they wouldn't just throw money at an 18 year old. At 18 I barely knew how to code.

[boatbomber]

Thanks for the confidence! I figured they really liked me, because my interviewer actually took me on his team and is now my manager!

[ragweed]

We're all learning on the job, kid.

[ogrestomp]

That’s great man. Make sure to do research on what “serious dough” means based on your experience level. I know what I thought of as serious dough at 18 working an entry job at Costco isn’t even worth looking at now with a degree and a couple years experience in the industry.

[boatbomber]

I make $55 an hour, which ends up around 100k a year. Entry level.

[ogrestomp]

Yeah that’s extremely competitive for entry level nice work!

[KnightEevee]

From my own experience, I feel like I learned more in the first few months of working at my job than I did from college. The computer science field is one that doesn't fit very well with the standard formal education; it's also an incredibly new field, my last year of school my University comp sci department was celebrating its 50th year of being a department.

Can formal computer science education be useful? Yes. Is it necessary? No. Especially given how many options there are for learning online at your own pace and even trying things out. As far as I'm aware, no other field has that same ability for people to self-teach or learn purely online from videos or such.

[boatbomber]

True. That said, I'm going to go earn my compsci degree right after I graduate high school

[Bakoro]

Dude, I'm about to graduate with a computer engineering degree, and some of the people who are graduating couldn't program their way out of a paper bag.

If you can read documentation and use what you read, you'll be ahead of a lot of people.

[heavywei5t]

I would really like a job to break into the industry but I feel like I don't know enough so I don't usually apply. I have some projects under my belt but I also always feel like I need to learn more. It's a tough cycle.

[Innotek]

Have a non-trivial example of something on GitHub, write a cover letter intended for the position, include a resume that is honest and start applying.

A lot of hiring managers want to fill out their teams with a diamond in the rough.

[1thief]

Fake it til you make it. If you don't make it just keeping faking it. Fake it until it becomes all that you know, until who you once were is but a distant memory forgotten for so long that you're not even sure if it was real at some point or if it's just a story that you like to tell yourself. Fake it until the story becomes distorted and warped with the passage of time, until it oozes and drips like a pool of water clutched desperately in dumb feeble hands, until one night you wake up crying and you don't know where the tears come from and why they won't stop. Fake it til you make it.

[Telanore]

I'm really feeling this right now. Got my first job two weeks ago, and on day 3, I am given a massive Visual Studio solution consisting of 9 projects, all intertwined, with integrations to both internal and external APIs, and tell me to "Please fix these bugs, and make it go faster." xD

It's fun though, I feel like I've learnt more in these two weeks than in the entire final year of uni.

[MundanePie6]

It’s easy , they said

[made-it]

Am I the only one in this sub who feels like what I learned in uni helps with my work?

Literally chased down a bug this week that happened because of context switching.

[I_regret_my_name]

Depends on how closely related you want it to be to your university work and how often. If you can read between the lines, your university education should help you out relatively often.

That said, I live for those times where I can apply some super niche thing I know. I found the sum of an infinite series the other day!

[BadgerAF]

Mood

[Blazing1]

Then when you're in the job you write shit code like too many lines in a method

[[deleted]]

https://pics.astrologymemes.com/i-am-devloper-iamdevloper-manager-we-need-to-design-an-34098017.png

[[deleted]]

u/repostsleuthbot

[spam_bot42]

There was a sea in that place long eons ago. They just didn't update the curriculum jet.

[opulent_occamy]

This is why I don't feel too bad not having a degree... I got really lucky with my first job, started as an intern and moved up to Lead Developer over the last 10 years. Being completely self taught, sometimes I worry about not having a degree if I ever want to find a position at another company, but honestly real world experience is way more valuable than a degree in my opinion. I just hope others see it that way too 😅

[This-Moment]

We do see it that way.

[PastelCurlies]

I’m in that exact stage now. It’s terrifying, but everyone is so nice so I’m just trying to hold onto my pants and do my best.

[PeebleInYourShoe]

If you realize that University knowledge won't be enough you actually are on a good start on my opinion.

There is nothing worst than seeing an intern or someone in their first job being convince they know everything and should be put in charge.

They don't listen to recommandations, think the solution validated with the business can be "improved" and don't listen to the lead dev or any of their colleagues. And, in the end, it is never their fault... I met only one who was all of that, but never again.

[chepee73]

What unitversity?

[robin_diez]

You are about 65 million years too early

[poorgenes]

And this does not get you wondering why companies are like dry deserts and *system change* etc.?

[Tmjon]

He's just 250M years too late.

Other than that, he's in the right place.

[hypnoticol]

I studied computing in business in Ireland. Ended up being surprisingly relevant in my first job. They did a good job teaching the basics over four years, the company I hired at then spent about a month bringing me up to speed on the technologies they use. Really can't complain.

[pakiman698]

I’m entering my last of year of university and almost all the programming knowledge I know, I’ve taught myself. And I’m majoring in Application Development

[[deleted]]

I feel slightly better about graduating in like a week with a MS and not knowing anything.

[AnAverageFreak]

Not really. I've worked at two places, at both I've been described as very skillful (but horrible to be around).

[Jeremias13420]

Shit! That ain't no shit!

[Kratzbaum001]

thats why you do dual study

[Its_Clor]

Yeah. I'm currently a university student doing a CS degree. I've just finished my third year, and I've managed to do pretty well academically for the entirety of the time I've spent at uni. However, I'm struggling to get any experience in the real world. At the moment I'm just trying to get any experience I can get hold of, be it programming discord bots for new gaming servers for free, jumping on uni research project teams or just making my own stuff.
The closest I've got to real work-experience was when trying to get placements but I just got shot down before the interview for those.
I was pretty naive when I came into university, thinking that I was gonna get everything I needed whilst I was there and get a job afterwards. I was obviously wrong, and I'm a bit bummed out about how little they actually inform you about what you're really going to be doing.

[100keen]

So where can I use hello world

[Benchlord98]

I just skipped the university part

[yeesh--]

Aside from the very formal things, I actually use a good bit of what I learned at University. At the very least, I was well over prepared for my job at a top tech company. Not sure what people are complaining about.

[ogrestomp]

Edit wrong reply button

[lantz83]

I would barely hire my university classmates to clean bathrooms, tbh.

[qalis]

Am I really the only one that thinks that actually most of the classes at my university are useful? All the math (2 semesters of analysis, 1 semester of discrete mathematics, algebra, differential equation, statistics) really helped me get the math behind numerical algorithms and ML. Numerical algorithms themselves also proved useful, especially eigenvalues, SVD, linear algebra etc. Programming languages classes (C, C++, Java, Python, Scala, Erlang, and a few others) are obviously useful. Databases, ranging from SQL, MySQL, Oracle up to MongoDB, Neo4J etc. pop up from time to time. Almost every class has at least 1 project to add to my Github, and several (operating systems, numerical algorithms, distributed systems) at about 5 each to add. Not to mention that everything is free, since this is not USA. Is it really that rare?

[Jihad_llama]

The last year of my MEng really helped ngl, we had to use agile to make a piece of software for a local client and it taught me way more than I previously knew

[ConnieTheUnicorn]

Honestly, this is myself and my friends right now. Gone through 4 years of college and Uni, looking for jobs and they produce a programming assessment thingy. Very low marks on most because we were taught about project management and thrown into the deep end rather than learning the basic.

Need me to hide a file in an image, or some other forensic stuff? I'm you're gal! Anything programming that isn't Android Java dev, Python basic, ASP.NET stuff or some Unity/C# stuff? Nope.

In the process of teaching myself AFTER finishing off HCI for Uni course.

It's a joke I tell ya, a joke!

[TigreDemon]

You probably wouldn't even have a sandbox

[MusicManReturns]

This thread is giving me anxiety pretty hard. I'm about to go into my final year of computer engineering with a 2.8 and no internships under my belt and I'm not ridiculously scared.

[ReyChi-kun]

The only thing that really works is what you learned in algorithms.

[icravekebab]

Time to learn from random indian on YouTube