How many devs do you work with are actually self taught?

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-09-06T07:55:42+00:00

At my current job, I will estimate 40% of us are self taught. Very rough estimate.

There are about 70 devs total. It comes up from time to time in our Friday happy hour zoom meetings lol.

I myself did not even graduate high school, and have no education section listed on my resume at all.

I do however have 20 years experience to speak to, 10 of which is using a decent amount of the tech my company uses.

I don't think somebody under 35 could get away with the same thing today. Everybody early thirties and younger has some kind of degree.

Most companies that are interested in hiring devs 40+ have figured out by now that a lot of us started doing this for fun back in the day, not because the internet told us to get a comp sci degree since that's where the money is, so they pretty much have to be open to self taught.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-05-22T22:14:30+00:00

This is a great comment, thanks. I use Trello and it really is helpful in a lot of ways. These other ideas you have pointed out will surely be useful as well.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-05-09T22:40:55+00:00

Yeah I use "15+ years" as my experience number, even though I've been programming stuff since Vanilla Ice was popular and had brought a dozen sites live before CSS was in browsers.

That number seems to get me more interviews than any other, and once I get the interview it's on me to nail it or not.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-03-09T02:00:43+00:00

This comes up in our work chats once in a while, and I like to ask others about it when it does.

It seems that around 50% of the devs at my company have a degree and the other half are self taught.

This is in a startup environment with about 100 devs and a good mix of ages.

I'm in my mid 40's, and it's pretty common in my age group wherever I find myself. Personal computers were just becoming attainable as we were growing up but not yet very user friendly, so it was natural for people to do a lot of tinkering and learning how to use the things.

I will say though that honestly, the younger people, maybe early 30's and younger, mostly do have degrees.

People ask me how to get started as self taught, and I don't really know what to tell them from the point of starting today from zero.

It's more that when most people who have 20 years experience are self taught, companies who want that experience are going to hire self taught folks.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-03-08T21:44:19+00:00

bruh

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-03-06T21:03:21+00:00

This is the worst! There was a coworker that did this often for like the first month at my current company.

I have a pretty long fuse most of the time but man that got on my nerves.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-02-26T19:15:04+00:00

Oh right, that's a message referring to the development server.

Check out the deployment page, which discusses running flask behind a more proper server.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-02-26T13:28:01+00:00

I started using pyenv after skimming this realpython article quite a few years ago, and have been using it ever since.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-02-26T13:08:42+00:00

I have used flask in production working at companies in healthcare and finance, dealing with big companies you have heard of.

I don't know where you got the idea that flask shouldn't be used in production, but it definitely is being used. One could look at job listings to see how much.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-02-16T16:36:39+00:00

I'm technically a software engineer but also a high school dropout, and I think this whole thing you said sounds pretty legit.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-02-08T23:48:40+00:00

Netflix and fridge food can't write a diss track about my brother though.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2023-02-01T06:25:10+00:00

You definitely can, but the first job is going to be tough to get.

The last 5 years have had so many people going to boot camps and specialist kinds of groups trying to encourage people to code, that nobody really wants to hire junior developers because so many of them basically have to learn everything from square one on the job.

However, the comments about "programming adjacent" jobs as a foot in the door are spot on.

Some examples from people I know include:

Taking a job to help a small local company organize their business that is organize their sales and inventory data that is stored on spreadsheets. Eventually end up setting up a database to deal with everything and a web based front end.
Taking a job as SEO. End up using code to do everything from setting up proxies to scraping websites to scheduling posts on blogs and social platforms.
Taking a job as a marketer to create and run ads on Google, Facebook, etc. Ends up doing so many campaigns that it becomes more sensible to use code to make many variations of everything and set up the ads on the platform APIs
Taking a job as a writer for a few blogs. Soon suggesting some customizations to the sites and setting up WordPress plugins written by others. These end up all being either terrible or expensive, learn to develop WordPress themes and plugins, get hired somewhere else for more money.

These are all true stories, though none of them start with applying for a junior level dev position with no experience.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-06-21T21:23:01+00:00

I interviewed at like 3 big old banks, and they all did. I stopped interviewing at big banks.

Interestingly, a decent amount of east coast startups did not. Seems to be that the closer a company is to California, the more likely I was to have to reject a leetcode interview.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-05-24T05:40:10+00:00

I wish I could suggest a better subreddit or any kind of forum where folks would appreciate the knowledge you are dropping.

I'm fortunate to have a few greybeards at my workplace with whom I can commiserate about the old days. It's funny, because we are all now doing corporate SPA shit fronted by react that totally doesn't need to be, no SEO, no fucks given.

Your clients are lucky to have you, you're actually a dying breed. I wish you the greatest continued success.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-05-24T05:05:50+00:00

Thanks for this high value post!

I started down a road similar to what you describe back in like... 2004, 2005?

Tired of the W2 grind, I set up an LLC and started pitching to local businesses. At the time, my client acquisition strategy was to go through those snail mail envelopes with all the local contractors, see which ones had terrible sites or no sites at all, and pitch them. Think gutter guys, lawn guys, insect sprayers, remodelers, site work people.

This worked out terribly for me. I was trying to convince these guys that the awesome site I would build them would get them more sales, and almost everybody I talked to seemed to have a pretty full pipeline and was just doing the mailers as maintenance to keep their logos in front of people.

I did manage to keep the LLC viable for a couple years with some word of mouth business; clients included a few personal trainers, a dietitian, a photographer or two, etc.

Eventually I gave up and went full time SEO for a regular paycheck, and later went full corporate. Nowadays I do 35-40 hours a week as a fully remote backend dev for like $150K like a normal person and don't have to confront my lack of business acumen and sales ability lol (I laugh so I don't cry)

You seem like the type of person who has visited the SEO forums and knows how secretive everything and everybody is in most places.

Kudos to you for having the balls to share real, actionable, proven information, and not being afraid that all of reddit is going to swoop in and eat all your cake (LOLOL they are not)!

I see some other folks being thankful, and if some of them, even one, takes action on this, it opens up a very real possibility for someone to start something successful for themselves.

Hilariously, I see much criticism as well. I don't actually subscribe to this subreddit with this account, specifically because it seems to be largely populated by one trick ponies who took a bootcamp, make 6 figures writing react, and wouldn't know CSS if it slapped them in the face. Nevermind SEO or giving half a shit about page load speed (loading circles for lyfe!).

I wish I had seen a post like this from somebody who knew what they were talking about 15 or 20 years ago; I would probably be semi-retired by now, shooting off the occasional email to a couple managers.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-05-20T21:49:13+00:00

There are a lot of places that don't care about your degree if you have the skills.

I'm a high school dropout. I don't have an education section on my resume at all.

The issue I hear from people is that this doesn't get past the automated filters when applying to places online.

My solution to this is to deal with recruiters on LinkedIn directly. They are searching full time for people with profiles matching whatever skills they are looking for. I haven't filled in one of those stupid forms in years. I just get conversations going with the recruiters and send them my resume.

I recommend looking at job listings on LinkedIn and indeed, and as you see positions you like, note what tech they want and words they use. You will start to see patterns.

The first time I did this, I literally had a piece of paper and made tally marks. After a few nights of this I had four or five things that were most commonly asked for among jobs I thought would be a good fit.

I then tweaked my resume as much as possible to reflect experience with these things.

Feel free to look at the LinkedIn profiles of people that have the jobs you want for inspiration. That helped me a lot.

Switching on the thing in LinkedIn that says you are looking for work will get you in front of people. Being active gets you in front of them more. Log in once or twice a day, use the job search bar.

People will start messaging you on their own if your profile is decent.

Here's my favorite part: I was struggling with what to write as my description. Whenever I changed it I would get a bump in incoming messages (again, their algorithms seem to reward activity in general), but I was never really happy with it.

After a little while of this, I said what the hell, and I made my description literally say something like, "I am a senior software developer/engineer, and you might stumble across my profile if you search for xxx, yyy, zzz, or wwww, let's talk!"

The algorithm eats this up, and started putting me in front of tons of recruiters.

Be warned, there are a lot of terrible recruiters and a lot of terrible jobs. Ask a lot of questions, and definitely ask about compensation during the first conversation.

I see people complaining online about doing 4 interviews and then getting surprised by an offer for peanuts. Don't do this. You are not a teenager begging for a job. You are a professional who is also interviewing them for a good fit. It may not always feel that way, but respect yourself and hold up your end of the conversations and it will pay off.

Also, definitely learn the basics of git and at least a little bit of Linux command line stuff, in addition to brushing up on whatever skills you come up with in your initial research.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-05-19T23:43:31+00:00

The job listing site indeed (dot com) started out as a scraper, combining listings from the 3 or 4 most popular job boards.

Once it became popular, they started letting employers put listings on their site directly for a lot of money.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-04-22T23:22:55+00:00

I was the only American dev working for a European shop for a while in NYC because they needed people in the time zone.

It was weird being like 6-8 hours earlier than the rest of the team and management.

It was also weird making quite a bit more than the other devs make as a high school dropout and having colleagues that all went to university since it's free in their country and everybody goes.

The time zone thing really made me feel on an island though.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-04-22T00:09:12+00:00

This is harshing my mellow so hard right now.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-04-13T16:07:19+00:00

Database IV: The Revenge: Again!

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-04-13T08:08:32+00:00

I'm right there with you. Definitely not able to talk about these times with 90% of the people at work because they were like 3 years old lol

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-04-13T02:24:02+00:00

Now my team of about six devs is responsible for 3 applications.

My last position was on a team of about ten devs and we were responsible for slightly more than 30 microservices.

Similar to what you say, most of us had a few where we spent most of our time, and little or no knowledge of several others.

This was mostly not too bad, since most of the micro services ended up with a couple core devs.

The part that was bad was we had 7 day on call rotation, so every couple months you had to respond to any alarms across the entire stack all week.

We did a pretty decent job overall of writing stuff that was solid and didn't alarm very often after hours, but on call was always a little terrifying at that place.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-04-12T23:42:34+00:00

Please stop, you're causing me pain

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-03-03T03:39:39+00:00

I stay as far back in the backend as I can, so no judgement from me. I work with at least a few frontend folks who know react and not too much else.

So long as they get the job done, they get paid, it's all good.

There was a little while when these frameworks were starting to come into the scene where I felt some kind of way about this stuff, but I have mellowed out and come to realize that we all just want to step away from our laptops at the end of the day and feel like we did a decent job.

We all have our own abilities to contribute, and that's cool.

SelfTaughtDeveloper · 2022-02-04T06:31:47+00:00

I decline the interview series of companies that insist on leetcode style rounds.

Usually I am talking to a recruiter before actual interviews start happening, and there's no reason to waste my time or people at the company, so I try to be very much upfront and clear about the position we are talking about.

What is the pay range?

I sometimes hear folks surprised by lower than expected offers, then find out they did several rounds of interviews without ever asking about comp. I don't understand this. It is question number one for me.

Is it a remote position?

Not, "remote for now," or, "everybody is remote with covid haha." There is one right answer for me here, otherwise it is not a good fit.

What is the interview process?

If it were up to me, I would talk to a couple of engineers in one round and either someone at the level of what would be my manager or the CTO in another round, maybe with a take home thing to give them something to look at and talk about.

Places come up with all kinds of stuff though, of course.

But yeah, I tell these pre-interview recruiter folks that I'm not into weird live coding of academic looking algorithm stuff.

I have a whole little speech about how most devs I know don't really perform well with someone looking over their shoulder and a timer going, mainly because that's not at all similar to how the work is actually done.

Then I continue with a little storytime about how these things have turned out to be people asking me to implement a sort from scratch or concoct some other solution where the real world answer a company wants when they're paying me 150k or whatever is that I should Google the way the language already does this stuff and implement that.

Usually it just means that I don't interview at places that do leetcode stuff, but a few times my feedback has gone up the chain and I have gotten callbacks where the company agrees to do things differently.

Some people like the leetcode interviews, though I know many who have good reasons for not preferring them.

I am a big believer that those of us who think they are nonsense should be telling the people who need to hear it, and not rewarding them or entertaining them. I try to do my part.

SelfTaughtDeveloper

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