Comment by donkeyd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by donkeyd | Hacker News Reader

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I commented before, but that was before checking your profile, web site and social media. Now I guess, I have a more personal recommendation.

Apparently, you've worked for the same company for over a decade doing data entry, you just passed your Lean green belt and you like tech.

It could be useful to look at business process automation, low code tools or robotic process automation. I've seen the combination of these things used for automating data entry processes in many industries, including yours.

There are many low code and RPA tools available (Mendix, UIPath, etc, just Google it) that offer free online training and certifications. These certs are not extremely hard to get if you have some interest in tech. For many companies in this field, hiring someone experienced with data entry, that can also do automation of those tasks is like finding the holy grail. Especially when you also have a lean cert.

It might be useful to look on Google for products like the one I mentioned and then look in your area for vacancies that require knowledge of them. Maybe there's an interesting opportunity in it for you!

+1. This is a very good and well-rounded response.

I might add that for tech engineering of any type, getting a BS in Computer Science (from a reputable school) is insanely helpful in the long run if there is an interest in going further in your career and it does not lock a person into one particular track.

I have been in professional software development for 15 years, at both startups and a fortune 15. I have worked as both an individual contributor writing code, and am now a Director of Software Engineering at a large CDN.

I have zero formal computer science training. I have a BA in Philosophy, and haven't taken any classes on programming or boot camps or the like. I am completely self taught.

It was only an issue for my first job. I used a large personal project I created as proof that I could code, and I got the job. After that, it has never been an issue that I didn't have a degree.

I have also hired many developers over the years, and I only really look at schooling if they don't have any professional experience or if the work they did at school is interesting in some way.

Maybe not having a degree will be a detriment at some point in my career, but my lack of a degree has never even been mentioned to me as an issue after that first job.

> I have a BA in Philosophy

> Maybe not having a degree will be a detriment at some point in my career

Something's gone wrong here.

I think they meant a CS or related degree.

Yeah, I meant a CS degree

The question is rather what one needs to know, to be a good software engineer?

Formally, I guess if you learn Logic in your philosophy courses you know everything you need to do programming. Moreover if you know about Plato's Forms you basically know the basics about object oriented programming...

Software design on the other hand is something you can only learn by experience anyway... I had an software architecture course at university, which made only sense to me a couple of years later...

> The question is rather what one needs to know, to be a good software engineer?

As a JavaScript developer, which I am, you need to be really good at keeping up with trends. That's really it.

For most of this line of work your value is the ability to use a tool rather than engineer anything. About the time you attain mastery the industry will move on to another tool. Mastery of any skill takes about 6-10 years of frequent dedicated practice. The hot tool of the moment takes about 2 years to reach critical popularity, 6 years at critical mass, and then 2-4 years of eclipse by something else. If you aren't moving on to the next new thing your career mobility will erode until there is none.

Consider it from the employer's point of view. A good senior is worth about 4-8 junior developers. At first blush it would make more sense to hire that senior developer. Developers come and go though, and most JavaScript developers are extremely junior. Employers never invest in training except as a last resort to prevent internal obsolescence, and it costs a boat load of money to find excellent developers. So, just invest in junior developers as a limited value exchangeable commodity.

I've seen developers have trouble traveling for work without a related degree but that's about it. Some countries have tight requirements for work Visas.

Yes but you need to get the first job initially. And that step, it appears to me, has drastically changed in the past ten or so years. I have tried many years at this point, I love programming and could do it all day if I could, but have all but given up on the idea that I will ever get a job without some kind of schooling, or finding enough time in my 4HL to make something killer.

I change and revise my resume, try to showoff the little things I've made. I keep learning and making, but after many years I believe I have gotten two (rejection) emails back total. I have tried everything. I am so envious of the older people on here who talk about learning on the job.

If I ever can pay back the (humanities) degrees I already have, the first thing I will do is look to a CS degree, for both the desire for that pedagogy and the even bare chance for a job doing something I love.

No obligation, but if you want a resume review and/or quick zoom call to give you personalized advice, my email’s in my profile. Put “HN resume” in the subject line. (I doubt I’ll get inundated here, but if I do, this offer is good for beepboop, ryan, and the next N until it gets overwhelming at which point, I can only commit to emailing back “sorry, this blew up more than I expected” but nothing more.)

Are you willing to relocate? Do you have a github? I don't know what things are like right now, but I have hired someone with no degree at a former startup (though he was fresh out of a coding bootcamp), and it seems like a pretty common thing to do. I frequently see a degree listed only as 'nice-to-have' now.

But you should look for smaller companies which need cheap coders, and be prepared to work at a massive discount from the market rate for a while.

It was actually hard for me to get that first job also (with a CS degree, but no internship and a bad GPA). Actually, the bigger obstacle was not having any relevant experience, I felt like the degree set me back because it taught me very little that was useful for most of the jobs I was applying for. In the end I sort of lucked my way into web development, but was pretty much self-taught or taught on-the-job.

One might argue that the industry and the market are a lot different than how they were 15 years ago, however.

Yeah, but getting that bachelor's at a good school is a full time job. I'm not sure he can afford 4 years away from work.

Community college. One can absolutely get a technical AS from a community college while working full time, it might not be a CS degree, but I bet it will fall under the "or similar" category for most purposes. A more "job focused" AS degree would probably help the OP get out of their current career rut quickly. Given the current job market, companies might be willing to take a chance on someone who successfully completed some technical classes at night already.

In recent years, it has become much more common for community colleges to partner with a larger university to offer AS -> BS paths. The AS will serve as a good checkpoint too. Since, we know how life can be, especially in one's 30s-40s; our situations can change dramatically in the span of a few years.

Yeah, but the comment I was replying to said:

> BS in Computer Science (from a reputable school)

That's pretty much a waste of 4 years unless you can afford that luxury.

I started working before getting my BS in CS (and worked during it) and there was nothing I needed for my job. I really enjoyed a few exams (especially Logic and Automata) and I thought they were nice brain bending subjects. A few exams (especially on databases and programming) were trivial because I knew that from the inside and out.

The only reason I did it was that it was cheap in my country, I had to spend only 12k€ (if we exclude the collective 80 years of taxes my parents had to pay before that) and at the time more companies were requiring a degree.

Just start coding while you can and software developers are in demand.

Honestly, any state school should do. I graduated with high honors from just an average state school and have no problems getting interview requests at fortune 500 companies and at amazon/fb. I do pass interviews also :).

Honestly, a BS in anything is helpful. As a SWE at large the number of teammates I've had with CS degrees I can count on one hand, everyone else came from another walk of life

Personally, I’ve experienced the opposite. Almost all my coworkers have at least a BS in CS/CE/DS and only a couple have an alternative such as a bootcamp.

Software is a diverse field! I've worked at pure software companies employing largely CS people; specialized technical software companies employing more mechanical/aerospace engineers; and in business-focused software companies employing people with non-traditional tech backgrounds.

My guess is this depends when you got into tech. I am a lifer and have been at it since high school; most of my peers got in through sheer passion, when it wasn't nearly as crowded

Yes this is good advice.

RPA isn’t sexy, but it gets you some at-bats on hard technical problems. Once you’ve solved some of those, you’ve learned a few things that are probably applicable elsewhere and can start working your way up the tech ladder.

It’s never been easier to jump from being an informally trained IT generalist into a development career with exponential salary growth along the way — companies like mine have accepted the fact that qualified talent is just too expensive right now; so we need to hire for potential and invest in people or else we will have no pipeline of junior devs.

More to the point "Not Sexy" is important. Hot fields raise artificial barriers to entry because they are flooded with applicants of dubious quality.

Great advice. I would add to get these certs onto your linkedin profile, and to create a portfolio for employers to view. However - be advised that RPA doesn't usually pay very well (but might be more than you're making now), but it can get you into a position inside a company to move to a web or other developer position. Good luck to you!

I'd agree with this. My first internship in my CS degree was doing Excel automation in VBA for a business unit. It quickly grew to "hey, this guy can automate your mundane tasks" and I became very popular very quickly. It taught me at what point automation is worth it [1], and many of my clients were performing hours-long tasks weekly that I automated in less time than 1 single week's work would take them. Needless to say I had some happy clients. The hardest parts are figuring out the problem they don't know they have because they think it's normal, and the unfortunate cases of "sorry I can't help you" because the solution is more complex than the problem.

[1]: https://xkcd.com/1205/

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