What talking with a friend who transitioned from marketing into cloud (AWS) and then into security, and he spends a lot of time studying to ensure he understands all the concepts required for technical discussions.
Curious to see what the community opinions are. Feel free to share your initial background as well.
Basically in-depth computer science knowledge; graph theory, automata, aspects of system programming.
I technically have a physics background coupled with a bit of self-study of pure mathematics. But those 3 categories I feel hold me back in application (in physics primarily, I don’t do real software development).
I am a self taught hack. There is so much I am unware of and things that I don’t know I should know. You shouldn’t let me near your systems. Yet people do.
Background: about 15 years as a hobbyist, mostly as a language and OS junkie, while working a variety of trades and labour jobs. I tried take the computer science aspect seriously.
Early to mid-1990s I started getting work in the field while trying to get a “real” job that matched my background. I never did find that real job, because I was getting too much work helping people and small companies learn about computers and networks, then setting up and managing their systems. In fact, I gained enough of a reputation as a trainer that I actually worked as an instructor for an accredited vocational school for a few years.
Apart from a couple of “drive bys” that I was uniquely qualified for, no real company was ever silly enough to hire me as a programmer. There were, and probably still are, vast numbers of small companies who are badly underserved. That’s where I spent my energies. No real programmer would ever think my code made sense, but without me a few small companies would still be using their computer systems as glorified typewriters and filing cabinets. And no real programmer would ever work for what those small companies could afford.
What I’m missing, and now trying to address in my retirement, is a better grasp on the theoretical underpinnings, algorithms, development processes, architecture, and maybe language design. But I can feel the draw back into relapsing as language and OS junkie, so who knows…
Credentials, that’s mostly it. I don’t have the papers that say I dedicated my time to schooling.
People will say, “that’s becoming less important, it’s how you interview and what you know.” That’s true, but only to an extent, in certain fields, and primarily in America.
Some of the articles on Hacker News don’t make sense. I can’t write a C compiler. I never had student loan debt.
Practically though, it’s moot. I took many CS and math classes at community college, but people don’t think that’s real education for some reason. I can do and understand the silly leetcode questions. I don’t think I could mathematically prove anything anymore.
I never had the money to go to university so I went and found a job instead. Learned everything I needed to from peers to specialize in Rails, then later, general web development. 13 years later, not only am I making far more money than I ever expected to, but I am very confident in my skills.
I regret nothing.
I applied and interviewed! For context, it was a Craigslist ad, and code bootcamps did not yet exist. Openings at companies like Google had tons of competition at the time, but small tech was easy enough to get into without all the entry-level competition produced by bootcamps, and more recently, mass layoffs.
