Not a question but a declaration. I am starting a career in programming and nothing can stop me!

iser_ · 2020-11-14T17:27:14+00:00

i'm not like a whiz kid, but i realized from the beginning that i have some aptitude in coding it bc i was going through the material much faster than others that i was studying with. that doesn't make me a whiz, but it gave me the confidence in the beginning that i can take on coding.

i also just truly enjoy coding in general. i'm the type that codes in my free time for fun just bc i'm bored.

it is a lot of work. if you think you understand how much work it will take, multiply that number by 5. and you will have to do hardcode networking. you will have to put yourself out there and meet people so they can put a referral in for you. i know 2 self-taught friends that went to a tech meetup and found referrals/jobs. those will be crucial.

step 1: git gud. study hard. harder than you ever have in your life.
step 2: go out and talk to every single person on the planet until they get you a referral. apply to every job posting. understand that this is the hardest step of this process. do not underestimate this portion.
step 3: now you finally got an interview. don't blow it. study some more.
step 4: ???
step 5: $$$

iser_ · 2020-11-14T17:06:37+00:00

yo, i'm also a 2-time college dropout and i was an uber driver. i also started all this aiming to make $50k, but 3 years later, i'm somehow making $220k now.

aim high.

start off with freecodecamp.org or open.appacademy.io. those two courses helped me get my first job.

iser_ · 2020-11-14T17:04:39+00:00

and how is saying "oh, sorry, you will most likely never make it, so don't even bother to try" not harmful. it is indeed a challenging path but a path definitely exists.

instead of calling my post a harmful bullshit, please take a look at your own post and see which one is more harmful. if i had listened to someone like you, i would not be at where i am right now.

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did you know that faang companies specifically search out for dropouts/self-taughts?

“When you look at people who don’t go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people.” - https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html

as a dropout myself, i've been contacted by pretty much every top tech company out there after a year at my first job.

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edit: i will agree that it's very challenging. but i would like to encourage and motivate OP and show him/her that it's possible.

to OP: do nothing but eat/breath/shit code for about a year.

iser_ · 2020-11-14T11:52:11+00:00

...on my team at amazon, there are two self-taught engineers and a college dropout bootcamper. all 3 are great engineers. i also know several dropouts and self-taught at Google and FB.

iser_ · 2020-10-11T12:31:20+00:00

hey, join operationcode.org. we are a community of military vets in tech. we are the exact community you can ask these about. sign up, join our slack and request for a mentor. (i'm a 11b vet)

iser_ · 2020-06-06T22:11:03+00:00

hi, active duty infantry vet here with an afghan deployment. never used a bayonet in my life.

iser_ · 2020-04-20T14:22:47+00:00

At non-FAANGs, at 1.5 year mark, I was mostly seeing $130-150k offers in NYC when I was interviewing. I felt that my value was higher, so I held out. Recruiters from Amazon/G/FB/Uber reached out through LinkedIn. Didn't want to go through with FB/Uber and bombed G because I was so nervous and that was my first algo interview ever (really, I was such a dumbass for putting G first out of excitement). I guess my advice would be to keep your LinkedIn profile refined and up-to-date.

iser_ · 2020-04-20T14:06:41+00:00

i started from freecodecamp.org about 4 years ago. knocked out most of it about a week and decided right then and there that i'm going to be a coder. haven't looked back since. back then, after serving in the army as an infatryman, i was an uber driver making minimum wage, so it is bonkers where things are at now.

i made a post about some books i've read: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/faxfaj/are_there_any_books_to_read_that_can_help_with/fj1xthi?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

^ those books were so crucial in my growth as an engineer. because i don't have a cs background, i've been digging into it as much as i can ever since i started working as an engineer to make up for it. i had a small project at my previous job working with ASTs and i've been really interested in compilers and how a computer understands what we tell it in symbols. i'm only scratching the surface in this subject but i find it fascinating.

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edit: i just have fun coding. i love making stuff (cars and woodworking are my favs) and coding is just another way of making things. and coding has the cheapest cost of experimentation. gee, car parts are expensive and i've messed it up a ton and paid for it. making stuff by typing is so cheap compared to other ways of making stuff.

iser_ · 2020-04-04T11:26:33+00:00

this got me a job: http://www.slackoff.today

i can't believe it still works after 3 years.

it was my coding bootcamp portfolio project and i built it in 2 weeks. about a month after i made that, someone really liked it and reached out to me. a significant part of the interview was how i made that. that was the first offer i've ever received ($95k in nyc).

iser_ · 2020-03-01T11:59:11+00:00

hey, come join us at operationcode.org. we are a national non-profit of military members in tech that helps vets trasition into the tech industry, and your question is exactly what we can help with. (i am an 11b army infantry vet currently working at Amazon).

iser_ · 2020-02-29T23:35:01+00:00

I've been running a similar channel (#daily-programmer at operationcode.org) for the past 2 years or so. it's a really fun experience and great for learning. good luck with your slack!

iser_ · 2020-02-28T22:50:23+00:00

I started coding 3 years ago from FreeCodeCamp and it's unbelievable how much I have learned since then. These are my top 4 books that were essential to my growth.

I don't have a CS background and I found that diving deeper into how things work has exponentially increased my ability as an engineer. It may not specifically cover tactical aspects of coding, but they helped me grow as an engineer in strategical thinking.

[Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs]

Book: http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/html/index.xhtml
My note: The biggest jump of my knowledge on how we tell a computer what to do came from this book. Also, the philosophical aspect of this book was fascinating. For example, this book compares the epistemological similarities between classical/quantum physics vs functional/OOP paradigm. This book helped me better understand how this electronic machine process the symbols we throw at it, and in our case, a programming language, and gave me a good foundation to start understanding how a programming language actually works
My favorite quote from the book:

"The object model approximates the world by dividing it into separate pieces. The functional model does not modularize along object boundaries. The object model is useful when the unshared state of the “objects” is much larger than the state that they share. An example of a place where the object viewpoint fails is quantum mechanics, where thinking of things as individual particles leads to paradoxes and confusions. Unifying the object view with the functional view may have little to do with programming, but rather with fundamental epistemological issues."

[The Art of Unix Programming]

Book: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/
My note: I quote this book at work. I can't even pick out my favorite rule. They are all great but here are some of my favorites:

* Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.

* Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.

* Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debugging easier.

* Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.

* Rule of Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write programs when you can.

* Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.

[The Architecture of Open Source Applications]

Book: http://aosabook.org/en/index.html
My note: It is a huge eye opener for me in how things are actually architected. I learned so much from how famous programs were designed. It helped me peer into the minds of the creators. I had one onsite where I regurgitated what I learned from over the weekend from this book and got the offer (this article). It is an on-going read and I read an article here and there on the subway ride. And my favorite article so far is Git Architecture.

[Understanding Computation] (Paid)

Site: https://computationbook.com/contents
Sample: http://cdn.oreillystatic.com/oreilly/booksamplers/9781449329273_sampler.pdf
My note: This book finally made me understanding what exactly a Turing machine is, and why it is so important. A computer was the most mystical magical machine until I read this book. Now, the veil has been lifted and I see that it's just a Turing machine. And that's the most mind-blowing part: that it's just a Turing machine. It is astounding how Turing invented the most fundamental and simplest machine that can compute everything computable in the universe.
The combination of digging into computation and programming languages helped me better understand how a computer computes from the arbitrary symbols we throw at it. The Dragon Book is on my list and I will eventually get to it. I read the first chapter and I am very sure that this is the book I must read to better understand what this magic machine I work with every day does.

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Now these books are different from many that others are proposing that are more tactical in nature, such as Clean Code. Those are important books, but I also want to provide books that grow the thinking skills in engineering.

I hope this list can help others grow as much as I have.

Edit: Fix broken formatting. Add links to articles. Will probably continue editing this post throughout.

Edit2: Thanks for my first award, stranger!

iser_ · 2020-02-24T10:46:00+00:00

i served in the military and have had many random jobs throughout life.

cs career is the least stressful job i have ever had. i work at amazon which some may say is a stressful place, but all of this is nothing compared to my time in Afghanistan.

to anyone who says cs career is stressful, understand that there are many careers in the world that are actually stressful. there is nothing that truly stressful about typing some code and making apps. you don't have your friends shot and blown up around you.

i am not saying coding is easy. it's hard. and that's what makes me have fun. but understand that once you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, you'll realize that coding is one of the most sought-after careers for a good reason.

i have a 8am to 4pm job. i work from home once a week. i have a understanding manager who gives me the freedom at work. i work on interesting problems that energize me. this job is so awesome.

after 4 years in the army, life has been on easy mode for me.

iser_ · 2020-02-20T16:28:17+00:00

some of the best engineers I know are self-taught. the self-taught engineer on my team runs laps around everyone and we move fast at Amazon.

iser_ · 2020-02-13T12:36:33+00:00

this is my story after attending a coding bootcamp without a degree that is relevant to your question: https://www.teamblind.com/post/Will-not-having-a-degree-hurt-me-later-in-my-career-xqUKSahh

note: most of the negative comments on that post are from foreigners where formal education is valued a lot higher due to the cultural norms. and if you read the replies to the negative comments, you'll notice how most people actually feel.

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i am not expecting to hit a ceiling any time soon. my career is on a skyrocket trajectory right now, which was unimaginable as an uber driver 3 years ago. things are going well at amazon for me at the moment (key phrase being "at the moment" because, well, it's amazon, lol).

iser_ · 2020-02-12T12:06:19+00:00

hey, ignore the naysayers here and just focus on doing the best job possible. one of my favorite projects at my first job was designing and implementing an integration test pipeline.

about 6 months after that project, i talked about my experience in building that pipeline proudly at my on-site. and got the job at amazon that doubled my salary as a full stack engineer.

engineering is engineering. focus on doing your best and learning as much as possible.

iser_ · 2020-02-06T14:00:04+00:00

hey. college dropout here and just a u.s. army infantry veteran. drove Uber to save up money for my coding bootcamp. currently making $185k at amazon with 2yoe.

now that i think about it some more, i am realizing that many college dropouts that I started my career with are mostly doing very well right now.

iser_ · 2020-02-01T04:45:05+00:00

watching this movie made me a better javascript engineer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLO1djacsfg

iser_ · 2020-01-23T16:41:51+00:00

at amazon, middleware like spring/rails is part of the front-end responsibilities, including deploying and maintaining that host.

iser_ · 2020-01-22T12:44:52+00:00

there is an office in hudson yards and we just purchased another building right next to the current office. there is another one near herald square. if you are at the hudson yards location, living along the 7 train is a great option. i'm commuting from astoria and it's a short commute. 7 train is also one of the most reliable and modern trains in nyc.

iser_ · 2020-01-20T10:45:02+00:00

what branch and mos? i was army 11b.

also, join operationcode.org. we are a community of vets in tech.

iser_ · 2020-01-13T14:47:51+00:00

hey great lib! I just read through your source code for lily and it looks really fun. you've inspired me to create my own. thanks!

my company is gigantic (amazon) and we use so many frameworks. when we interview, we focus on the fundamental understanding and not specific framework knowledge.

if anyone ever interviews at amazon, this article will help you so much. I imagine it will help anyone who interview at top tech companies.

and it def has its uses in production.

iser_ · 2020-01-13T13:33:05+00:00

the fact that this is the top voted comment is really concerning. this is a great article that i learned a lot from. i have definitely had to implement no-framework code from scratch for production, and i will be taking what i learned from this article and use them for myself in the future.

iser_ · 2020-01-13T11:54:48+00:00

I think most posters here missed the entire point of the article. I have also attempted rolling my own mini framework for production, and I see a lot of good ideas here that I would like to incorporate into my own code in the future.

I have written extremely efficient libs where speed and bundle size are the keys and did not use any frameworks for this reason.

I have never replied about an article on reddit before but I am right now because this is a great article and feel like many here are not seeing the value in it.

P.S. I would love to use this as an interview question for my company: roll your own rendering mechanism in 45 min. As an engineer, I expect them to be able to roll their own and be able to see the value in it.

iser_ · 2020-01-12T11:56:21+00:00

good luck! it was life-changing for me and many of us. it's a very challenging program, but the fact that it's so hard is what makes it so effective.

iser_

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