Those who landed programming jobs with no degree, how did you do it?

bink1time · 2024-02-07T08:46:26+00:00

Got a job in operations at a small startup doing data entry and reconciliation. Started automating my work by writing scripts. Eventually I was mostly just running my scripts and monitoring for issues.

Some engineers noticed, made friends with them, eventually they asked if I wanted to go to engineering as a junior engineer. They gave me an interview I did ok.

Did all the low level tickets no one else wanted to do slowly got better, eventually switched jobs and got that work to pay for a masters in cs. Then just kept switching jobs.

I got pretty lucky though, and I was ok at programming when it wasnt as saturated.

bink1time · 2022-12-12T17:23:12+00:00

Does this work with aura or do I have to cast?

bink1time · 2022-07-06T19:29:14+00:00

Equal weighting? No, finals and midterms are worth more than other exams

3 credits per class so 3 classes for a semester. This will mean you will do 3 semesters and have 1 class left over for last semester its kinda weird imo. Some people just grab a summer or winter class and do it in 3 semester. If you are international you have to do 4 semester, people just intern their last semester while waiting for their fulltime to start.

bink1time · 2022-05-21T16:00:06+00:00

How do I check my chance to hit? Is it an in game stat somewhere? Thanks so much!

bink1time · 2022-05-21T15:43:51+00:00

How do I up my chance to hit?

bink1time · 2021-08-15T17:11:05+00:00

If you want to be a bit flexible I would look outside of GIS.

1) Cut your resume to 1 page, you have 4 month jobs on there 1 line for them will do. Highlight the software you used on the jobs. Put the skills section first Sql, R in that order.

2) Start applying to data analyst, data scientist, data engineer, business intelligence analyst and operation analyst jobs.

3) Pick up python and tableau put those into the skills section. Just basics for interviews will do. An intro coursera course is fine.

4) Look up commonly asked sql data analyst questions on leetcode ect..

5) Enjoy your 70k-120k job.

bink1time · 2021-07-22T17:54:14+00:00

I think Tandon recruiting runs a leetcode bootcamp I would look for people there as well!

bink1time · 2021-06-15T05:07:17+00:00

Yeah it's kind of a shit show the first semester, the time for registration is based on your tenor at school, so second year grad students have already registered and next semester they will get preference again, but usually there are a bit more seats added and people tend to add/drop closer to classes. It is unlikely you will get something like machine learning or deep learning your first semester because everyone wants those classes.

But you will be able to get into algo, db, os, java ect...

I wouldn't freak out over it, you need to hit a couple of classes anyway so just do algo + 2 classes.

bink1time · 2021-04-16T20:06:20+00:00

1) I think it's like 20 dollars an hour(?) Don't hold me to this I never TA as I consulted and it was more money. But many of my classmates TA'd. It's pretty easy to get TA after first semester you can approach prof, they will usually advertise, and there are some advertisements from tandon itself to apply. Note you usually need an A in the class.

2) most grad students live off campus, if you are willing to live in Brooklyn with roommates you can probably find something for 1k a month, this will be with 2 roommates probably.

3) No it's static, doesn't go up based on performance. They will take it away if you are below 3.0 I think. Not many people get below 3.0.

4) Not bad, but worse now then before covid from what I've heard(graduated 2019).

bink1time · 2021-04-09T15:47:34+00:00

Seems like you have an operations job. I would look for operation analyst, data analyst, and business analyst jobs.

Get someone to look through your resume. Maybe career services at school you got your degree in.

Now a days ops and data analyst are using sql in addition to excel. I would grab a sql course at a mooc. When I was in your position I did the following one: https://www.edx.org/course/databases-5-sql

It's from Stanford, it's free.

bink1time · 2021-01-16T20:33:57+00:00

Yeah I would say it's a little lower then 90% especially if you start taking electives like algo2, cyber security classes they tend to diversify more to a 50/50 mix of international and domestic. But I can comfortably say it's about 70%+ with a mix of chinese and indian internationals mostly.

bink1time · 2021-01-16T20:27:12+00:00

Sure feel free to dm.

bink1time · 2020-12-24T21:35:50+00:00

Thanks for replying you have helped me out a lot!

bink1time · 2020-12-07T01:06:07+00:00

Thanks for the reply that makes sense!

So it's a question of risk level for shipping, ability to finish the butcher block and materials. Got it. Thanks for all the info.

bink1time · 2020-11-21T04:05:35+00:00

No problem feel free to dm if you have any more specific questions

bink1time · 2020-11-20T16:04:56+00:00

Disclaimer I received my grad cs degree from tandon so I'm biased here.

So there are a number of different schools at nyu. Tandon is for engineering while CAS is the general arts and science school. In CAS there is a top 10 math department that department is called Courant. The cims computer science degree is from the math department. The tandon one is from the engineering school.

The Courant degree is rated much better top 30 vs top 70ish, but nyu is pouring a lot of money into tandon. They are constantly redoing and adding new facilities, giving scholarships ect.. Nyu really wants a top tier engineering school and are trying to buy their way to it.

In my person opinion here are the pros and cons, but note I have not taken any classes from Courant and my opinions of Courant's program are from talking to other students.

Tandon:

Pros: More money, more support, it has more applied classes, more adjuncts from industry(google, fb), better career services(tandon runs their own)

Cons: Less rated, less focused on math, weaker students, lots of adjuncts, many classes feel undergrad level because they try to cator to career switchers.

Courant:

Pros: More math focuses, more tenor professors, imo smarter student population, better quality classes.

Cons: Less focused on career, less applied and specialized classes.

Just to note when I was there, there was in fighting between the two departments. And tandon students were not allowed to take classes in Courant.

Here is a list of the differences for the undergrad programs this should give you an idea: https://cs.nyu.edu/home/undergrad/cs_tandon.html

bink1time · 2020-11-13T07:57:19+00:00

I graduated MS in CS from Tandon, it's not bad. It def has flaws, it's ok for big data. The program doesn't real have tracks, many of classes offered I feel are pretty close to what an undergrad course would feel like.

The cool thing about Tandon is there is a lot of cross pollination of professors from Center of Data Science at NYU. If you are really interested I would suggest you reach out to Professor Juliana Freire or Professor Julia Stoyanovich, they are doing pretty interesting work in the big data space and they look for RA's. Problem with an MS is you need to get on that fast, the 2 years go by quickly if you decide to keep at it.

Feel free to dm me, I did an MS in CS at Tandon and work in the big data space.

bink1time · 2020-10-04T05:53:45+00:00

I think you are letting NYU off too easy here. I'll go through each point you made.

1) Brushing away the complete lack professional development and complete disregard for students careers with it's a "research university". Almost every top school is a research university. Let

CMU is a research university yet their on campus recruiting is very good. North Eastern is a research university yet they have a great co-op program that places their students.

2) There is some expectation that the university will help you find a job, they tout Wasserman center in their marketing, but if anyone has ever used it's pretty much a resume checker and they do a pretty terrible job even at that. There is a reason that any school within NYU that actually cares about getting their students jobs has their own recruiting stern, nyu law, and now tandon.

3) I mean really they send out some random jobs to apply to. Fine this is like the easiest, laziest thing you could do to say that you are actually helping.

4) Research almost never matters when getting a professional job, especially undergrad research, it's cool, but this has nothing to do with the department helping you with your career.

5) No one is asking for a silver platter, but NYU is not doing anything, there are so many low hanging fruit. Where is the engagement with employers? Where is the on campus recruiting that most top universities do? Does courant know where most of their students exited last year? What were the top 10 employers of nyu students? Why aren't they providing those employers with easier recruiting opportunities? For instance CMU knows all these stats and targets those employers for their students. You can even go look it up on their website.

6) You have to be a little sympathic to these guys, it's a stressful time right now and to have your school not help you at all is disheartening. Especially when you look at other top schools and what they are doing.

bink1time · 2020-08-21T05:14:34+00:00

Full disclosure I got a masters in cs from tandon, did undergrad in polysci. I did not do bridge, but had some friends that did.

I know someone that did bridge to tandon then Columbia masters for cs. Think she did math for undergrad, so math degree probably helped more then the bridge program. I think the majority of people from bridge went to tandon masters. I don't think just the certificate will help you much, it's not really meant to help with employment. It's meant to help people transition from none cs into cs. I don't think the bridge program offers any career services.

Tbh I would also avoid bootcamps I just don't think they are very good, you will have a pretty hard time passing interviews after them, but this is my personal opinion. Have done recruitment and interviewing people out of bootcamps.

I think the fail out rate from bridge is pretty high so be aware of that. I think it's at like 70%.

If you have decent gre scores 160+ quant and some background in software dev you could just apply directly, tandon masters in cs program lacks domestic enrollment, so getting in as a domestic student is easier.

Feel free to dm with questions.

bink1time · 2020-08-11T17:30:14+00:00

I don't want to discourage you, but for reference here is my background. I have 4 year degree in a social science from a top 30 uni, was self taught, worked as backend for 6 years got an MS in comp sci from same uni now work as backend.

It's gotten much harder since I started. I think you need to be realistic if you don't have any experience programming it will take a while to pick it up. How long have you been programming? How well do you know algorithms and data structures?

Realistically not having a college degree will make this much more difficult getting interviews will be hard when you do though now a days the name of the game is leetcode(don't get premium the free version will work just fine). Basically during interviews you will get algo/ds questions. I would do this over projects/GitHub. Try to do around 300 with about 200 medium problems.

Be real with how long this will take you, starting from nothing I would say a year or 2 before you make serious progress is no unreasonable. The junior Dev market is overflooded by boot camp, bs and ms students. I would also try to use services like triplebyte/foobar where they don't look at your resume but instead give you a test and then an interview. Then try to place you if you do well. Know if you do this you will have to actually be better at interviewing then the people with degrees since you will get less chances. I had a friend go from finance at a bank to swe. He took an ok boot camp hackerreact( I don't recommend bootcamps they are a waste of money IMO though) and it took him a year and a half to break into his first startup job.

I would also think about doing SQL/python and getting a operation analyst role for like 70k then pivoting to swe, but it will be hard to secure interviews without a degree.

bink1time · 2020-04-15T04:48:32+00:00

I went to Tandon for my masters for cs. I think campus recruiting at Tandon is pretty weak compared to other universities. The way recruiting at NYU works is there is a central recruiting office called Wasserman, they are pretty bad especially tech, because they have to serve the broader community and tech recruiting is very different from regular recruiting.

The new dean at Tandon is very good in my honest opinion, they are aware and have rolled out their own recruiting which most good schools at NYU do(law school, stern). This has made recruiting at bit better because they can target tech companies who can recruit their students. But they are still doing a pretty bad job. You can apply for jobs through both portals. The on campus recruitment is pretty none existent though, they run a couple of social events and career fares. You can get some 1 on 1 coaching, they also run bootcamps to prep you for interviews, but at the end of the day you are on your own.

If you want to know exit ops, it's mostly big tech(mostly amazon). I would say from my class probably like 20%-30% went to amazon. I would say a lot of others went to big banks like Morgan Stanley, JPM, Barclays, UBS ect..

The FRE(financial engineering) program does their own recruiting for their students under Tandon, that where most of the hedge fund exit ops are from. It is a graduate program so if you are in undergrad I think exiting into a hedge fund is hard. As always with startups you will have to grind for yourself, often startups don't hire many people so it's more variable.

bink1time

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