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monero-xmrHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

100% possible to be a self-taught software engineer

100% possible to be a self-taught software engineer. I have hired many over the years. The hardest part is breaking into the industry, but once you have some experience and references the degree doesn’t matter for many high paying companies (although FAANG and academia might disagree). When I interview ICs it is a very free flowing conversation. When there is a lull I will jump to a new subject. I will just start asking things and keep going deeper until I exhaust your knowledge. “What is the command for listing directories in a terminal? Name a flag you can use - what does it do? How do flags actually work anyway? Do you know any libraries for CLI parameter processing? Ever heard of argc and argv? How do you think those variables are mapped into memory of the forked process?” I go on and on and on. If you just become obsessed with computers and software engineering and put in some years of effort you can beat what school charges you for. Plenty of MIT and Brown and Harvard grads don’t know fuck all about software development. …

Original discussionPath to a free, self-taught education in Computer Science199 source comments · at import
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PI
pipersweHN

I concur - I'm completely self taught (my special interest has been computing and software development my whole life) and the first job was the hardest. Now that I have work experience on my resume, nobody asks anything about my education background (or lack thereof), and I've gone from getting an occasional response to applications to consistently getting responses to most of my job applications.

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emodendroketHN

FAANG doesn't disagree, or at least some of them don't. And to my mind that makes sense, because their rigorous interviewing process should give them confidence in their hires, regardless of credentials.

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pjmlpHN

In many European countries it isn't, as being Software Engineer is a proctected title, can only be used in legal contexts if the admission exam was taken, and the university was reckognised by the state as providing a proper Software Engineer degree.

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tayo42HN

> academia might disagree I thought teaching might be a good laid back alternative income. Now schools consider you without a degree. My path into tech has been really hard without a proper cs degree. Even after my first and second jobs I had a real hard time. I found my way through ops/DevOps/sre I almost switched careers multiple times

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hahnchenHN

> The hardest part is breaking into the industry, but once you have some experience and references the degree doesn’t matter for many high paying companies How to do this?

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gorbachevHN

I interview a fair amount of candidates for open roles at my company. I have never looked at or asked about how they learned the skills needed for the job.

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schwartzworldHN

I can confirm. Now that I'm on the inside, I'd go so far as to say that my being self-taught is a boon, not a hindrance.

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