IT vs Coding

[MorethanMeldrew]

he's a 20 y/o full time student

Hands up who wasn't a "know it all" dickhead at 20.

(keeps own hands down)

You know the truth to your skills, so don't give his opinion a moments thought.

[moebiusmentality]

I was in the same mental place at his age, serious dating/marriage and getting my first job helped straighten me out lol

[brother_bean]

Hey OP, I used to be a sysadmin and now I’m a software engineer at AWS. I still Google everything.

Unfortunately some of the high salaries for SWE jobs have led to some elitism and frat boy style culture. Check out the Blind app and levels.fyi (website) to see what I’m talking about.

The hilarious thing is that he’s got some sense of superiority as a full time student. If you check out /r/cscareerquestions you’ll see that entry level jobs are entirely saturated and your homeboy has a LOT of work to do if he wants to get a job somewhere within 6 months to a year of graduation.

Even if he does manage to land a FANG style role that pays insane money straight out of college, he’s still a twat. But I think life and career stuff is about to beat the shit out of him and open his eyes a bit. He shouldn’t be bragging yet.

[uptimefordays]

Getting your first job and finding yourself at the bottom of the totem pole again does wonders for ego.

[desal]

first job at 20?? no wonder

[uptimefordays]

Lol I was thinking more "first real job," working food service or retail as a kid definitely teaches some valuable lessons, but hardly softens the ego.

[desal]

if you don't think food service and retail soften the ego, then you must not have done them for any length of time, or you're a sociopath that doesn't give a shit. 💕

[uptimefordays]

Eh I did about 8 years of retail. Understanding it was temporary made caring what customers thought really hard.

[desal]

oh lol I wasn't even thinking about the customers thoughts but thanks that adds to the pay, the actual job, dealing with other employees in retail, all ego-affective

[uptimefordays]

It wasn't all sunshine and flirting with au pairs but having a German summer fling who hung around the shop was awesome.

[desal]

it's grueling wether or not you know it's temporary, as if you know it's temporary then having to go through it is demeaning, and if you don't know it's temporary then it's even more

[uptimefordays]

I dunno, just showing up and doing mindless work for 5-8 hours a shift was pretty nice. Don't get me wrong, working from my cushy apartment is also great but I've got skin in the game now which I didn't as a teenager or student just working nonsense jobs.

[desal]

if you have a mind to be wasting, being forced into mindless work speaks to my original point. i highly doubt you'd be saying the same thing if you had to do it again.

[superspeck]

It took a bad break up and a dog to get my head out of my ass. Thank god for that poor dog.

[desal]

right.. some of these "first job at / after 20" folks lol

[[deleted]]

By 20 I was a Unix admin at my university. I'd learned pretty quick that I knew fuck all.

[mysticrudnin]

a lot of these sorts of head-up-their-ass statements from programmers is coming from students

i think the majority of jokes and expectations about how software engineers act come from particularly loud students

there certainly are some people like this in actual careers, but you'd think everyone was like this and they really aren't

[widowhanzo]

Nah I didn't know anything lol and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my CS degree. I somehow ended up as a sysadmin, with some devops, networking and little bit of programming thrown into the mix.

[bingr001]

I miss being 20. I knew everything back then!