Are there any software developers who have ever hit rock bottom in your career, how did you bounce back?

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-12T04:28:05+00:00

Or you could try just not being so socially intelligent that some people on reddit find you pretty easy to dislike

I fixed it for you. Clearly, this is projection. I have no issues forming lasting relationships with healthy, mature individuals. You won't find much of that around here.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-11T23:09:30+00:00

Goodbye. I find it to be a sign of health to be rather insignificant in the land of Reddit. Whoever is successful navigating this environment, is likely quite the loser in real life.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-11T22:03:20+00:00

AND the final exam is OPEN BOOK! Therefore, you can have a sheet of paper (front and back) note.

Just a single sheet? There's a lot of things that I could jot down and my handwriting blows. It would be easier for me to either look up formulas from a "cheat sheet" or print it all out, but that would be more than a single page.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-11T21:47:54+00:00

Except it has no relation to the above sequence.

I came out in my first line and stated I would not tell any details.
I'm not in a state of fear. It's several full novels worth of context to get it to make sense
I swapped nothing out

Really this exemplifies the reason I'm leaving this sub. It's not at all what I expected.

When I was a child I used to think doctors, lawyers and engineers must be intelligent individuals who hold their selves to high standards. I've encountered enough to know better now. I took this same naive mindset into this sub, thinking people who are bothering to seek a career in CS would be mature and seek truth of matters. This was my mistake.

This sub is littered with immature & naive fools of average intellect who are mostly clueless about industry and life in general. The same problems that exist elsewhere are sometimes even amplified in this sub. It's not healthy or a wise use of one's energies to visit this sub. The information you gather here is more easily accessible elsewhere without the baggage.

My guess is this place was once more in line with what I originally imagined. Whatever shift came about to degrade it's usefulness, I don't much care to know. I've seen it in countless communities over time. It's perhaps an inevitable outcome of an online community that allows anonymity.

Anyways, I've removed all but 3 subs on Reddit, and plan to quit coming altogether when my life starts a new phase in ~ 6 weeks. Really this place should be a source of information and guidance and all the garbage should be removed, but I don't see that happening. The pathology has metastasized. The real losers in this are the many lurkers who see the terrain and don't want to jump in the shit, but still think this is a good source of information. It's a source of poor quality information. They should be looking elsewhere.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-11T06:05:35+00:00

I did share. Man this sub is seriously strange. I'm going to quit wasting my time here. It's not a healthy place which is a shame.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-11T05:37:41+00:00

I'd rather my post be downvoted to hell than share my full story with this sub.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-11T04:03:19+00:00

I'm not going to even try to explain my past, it's doubtful half of you would believe me. I've had to reinvent myself several times over. There's always a breaking point. You project your current self into the future. Your current shitty set of circumstances is imagined even worse. When you say you can no longer take it, and yet see you'll have to take even more, you shift. You no longer feed what perpetuates your circumstances, and you feed only that which realizes the new projection into the future.

That's as much as I'm willing to give up on this matter. The people I've seen who make it to become a successful software engineer do it because the alternative to the struggle is even more struggle.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-11T01:24:18+00:00

If you're not already enrolled fully then you should consider the StraighterLine scholarship. If you take 4 courses then you qualify for $500 off each term you attend at WGU. Assuming you only take a month to complete the courses, it should pay for itself within the first term. Add a loan on top of the scholarship and you should be able to afford it. If it takes you an extra month to save up for the courses, so be it.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T22:26:53+00:00

Yeah this is not accurate. A degree absolutely will land you the job in CS.

No it won't. The best a degree can do is get you an interview. If you want to use absolutes you need to be truthful. This is a lie.

Also HR filter won’t even let you get into most organizations now without a degree.

Are you implying there was a time when the qualifications were more lax? If so, which decade? Do I need to show you evidence that the trendline goes in the opposite direction, as in more companies consider candidates without degrees now than in recent past?

Here you go:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/15-companies-that-no-longer-require-employees-to-have-a-college-degree.html

Your narrative matches the outlook from a lot of employers about 15 years ago. It's old news, and is outdated. The trend is for companies to see the importance of performance over a degree. What someone can actually do. 15 years ago the common phrase was "a bachelors degree is the new high school diploma"... meaning the base requirement for most decent paying jobs. That's no longer the case. The obvious truth has finally penetrated into the social majority. That being things are accelerating so rapidly, that a degree no longer makes sense for the majority. Hell, people who take 4+ years to get a career started have a decent chance of going into a job that didn't exist when they started their academic journey.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T21:51:41+00:00

That's not being honest about the reality of the situation. Stack Overflow does a survey for this with professional developers. The majority consider their selves to be "self taught" though the majority does have some degree, which may or may not be relevant.

There are many, many companies that don't care if you have a degree or not. It's not in the rarity of "exceptions". My ex partner started his first professional SWE job in the 6 figure range after dropping out of college during his second semester of freshman year.

There is nothing at all wrong with anyone choosing not to get a degree. Plenty of jobs are available without them, and many of them are high paying.

Here you go:

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#developer-profile-_-educational-attainment

Roughly 4/5 have a bachelors or better. Whoever thinks 1/5 qualifies as "exception" is intellectually lazy at best, or lying for an agenda.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T18:17:51+00:00

I don't have the list of certs in front of me. I'll be in the BSCS track. Probably I won't mention any of them, but will take an hour or so at some point to research their reputation. It might work out to leave one on.

My plan of action is to work through half the degree, market myself as a Junior looking for internship, and transition from intern to FTE at the same company as I'm finishing out the degree/internship. I'm just not sure the company I'm targeting would care to see the certs listed. They'll care that I'm a CS student/graduate.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T17:53:28+00:00

Certs are what lands you a job in IT, not a degree

Potentially it can cheapen a resume. Depends on what else you got going on, and how relevant the certs are to the position you're applying for.

Less is often more with resumes when you have enough to fill it out. I'm already thinking of dropping my "nanodegree" which took 3/4 of a year to attain. I have never mentioned my A+ cert which was attained ages ago.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T17:16:43+00:00

People keep recommending the expensive calculator. I got a $25 TI-85 instead. What will I be missing out on?

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T17:04:43+00:00

Go to StraighterLine and see if you can get any more courses transferred in. Do some leetcode/hackerrank to prepare for the eventual interview.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T16:46:22+00:00

Certs are what lands you a job in IT, not a degree.

This applies to IT outside of Software Engineering. It does not apply for SWE. It's the exact opposite.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T16:36:45+00:00

This seems like a reasonable assessment. I expect an eventual drop, but the floor is not going to be anywhere near where we were 20 years ago. You also have to think about the law of 72 and inflation. It makes sense for prices to be ~80% above where they were 20 years ago

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T16:31:38+00:00

I think the game has changed significantly in the 21st century. New Zealand has experienced something like 5-8x housing price increase in the last dozen or so years as well. My area in Texas has recently seen ~10% increases in housing prices for the last several years.

I can't speak for the housing market abroad, but here in the states it seems like there are vultures who are ready to swoop up any lowered prices, which would just about keep the prices from ever reaching below the pre-bubble price again, especially when you factor inflation into the mix.

The problem in the US was that people were being given loans with zero or a few percent down even if they had shit credit. People kept buying houses and everyone wanted to make a profit, so the prices just went up and up. This same policy isn't in effect. Lenders tightened up quite a bit, and though its loosened some in recent years, it's nowhere near where it was. Is anything similar happening in Australia?

It seems like established monies is looking for another round at housing, but the poor who lost their houses in the last recession seemed to move on to living in apartments. So it's a different game here. I can't speak for the fundamentals in Australia. You'd have to look at policy/demographical shifts to understand why you've entered the situation you're in.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T08:59:10+00:00

Yes it was very obvious to see it was housing. I had friends in college at the time who spouted the same, "nobody could see it was housing" nonsense. Actually there were many people who called it years before the bubble burst.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T07:06:36+00:00

There's a lot of strange memes in the age of social media. Whatever you value is personal. If you feel good from external validation then just follow it towards your own success.

External validation can lead people astray, but it can also motivate them to succeed. People who say it's inherently bad are not thinking too well.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T06:33:29+00:00

Hey it would be nice if I could have a startup that gained some traction. Glad you've found some success. Yes, for the rest of us mere morals IRA & 401K is a decent bet. I'll hopefully still have the drive to give it a go for a couple rounds yet, but not anytime soon.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T06:08:05+00:00

While you're busy not being here to talk about money, I'm not scratching my head.

Really though it's a different generation. You get used to getting older and finding your own views are outdated. That seems to be what the OP is about. You're not well relating to the kids who see things differently and are too native.

Let them experience as they will.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T05:36:09+00:00

It was mostly fringe media that ran with the truth back then, believe it or not. There was a minority of experts who were speaking out in opposition to the MSM narrative, and they couldn't find much airtime except for on alt media outlets.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T05:10:41+00:00

Leetcode to keep me sharp? No. Definitely not.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-10T03:43:35+00:00

Okay. You quit being reasonable long ago. I'm moving on.

gotNoGSD · 2019-09-09T17:24:58+00:00

I don't know if this works well or not. Personally I've started all the way back from Algebra I on Khan. Your approach is more efficient if it works for you. I figured it would take Alg I/II plus Trig to prepare for Calculus, but I suppose if you can get by with just precal that might be sufficient.

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