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Comment by chlmtt | Hacker News Reader

I used to work at a hardware store. As in literal bolts and nuts type of tech, not software related:) Recently lost my job. Originally from Kazakhstan. Thinking of going back if I can't find anything else.

No credentials to speak of other than the fact that I could probably think my way out of an undergrad level abstract algebra or real analysis problem if cornered. Maybe topology, too. Native speaker of both Kazakh and Russian. Speak rudimentary Turkish, but could easily pick it up to a decent level if necessary. Currently studying CLRS to finally learn how to design algos. Also, trying to pick up Mandarin. Maybe I'll be able to immigrate to China in the coming years. Shenzhen or Hong Kong area.

I'll just leave this here in case anyone has a remote work for me :)

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And what is it that you want to do remotely? Sell nuts and bolts? It’s unlikely someone would read your post and think “oh yeah, you’d be great for our company working remotely”. You didn’t outline a single capability other than selling nuts and bolts.

Resume tip: "x years of experience working at the hardware level. Implemented stacks and queues on bare metal."

Yes I have experience with rust

I don't have any work for you, but it would have helped if you had described your software engineering / computer science skills in more details. I'm not familiar with CLRS.

CLRS is a fairly well-known algorithms textbook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms

The acronym comes from its authors: (Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein)

CLRS = Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein - The authors of the famous book Introduction to Algorithms.

It's a classic undergrad CS textbook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms

The other users correctly disambiguated CLRS. I am not experienced with software other than the rudimentary syntax of Python and Scheme. Read a CS book years ago based on the latter. Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone had any kind of job for me. Maybe something like data entry. Would have to learn coding in earnest after I pick up algo design techniques from CLRS.

>Would have to learn coding in earnest after I pick up algo design techniques from CLRS.

You're almost certainly better off learning to code first and then learning about algorithms once you've got a decent coding level. In a typical entry level coding job you can easily go a whole year without implementing any algorithm more complex than a binary search (if that).

Agreed. I would even say this is the order of importance for being effective in a real job:

1. Domain knowledge (understanding the problems you are trying to solve, for who and why they need solving)

2. Full stack awareness (understand computer hardware, networking, OS, HTTP protocols, UI etc. AND whatever the core components of your domain are. This is crucial for being able to reason about and debug a running system.)

3. Technical communication in written and verbal form.

4. Programming fundamentals. Honestly I feel much more than "fundamentals" is a waste of time for new entrants. If you haven't been paying attention, GPT-3 has taken away the need for programming acumen for most creators. Prior to that Google+Stack Overflow got a whole lot of us through gaps in programming language expertise. Leetcode is literally just a proxy for formal education/privilege and has no direct application in daily work with the exception of a narrow few areas.

If you are truly a nuts and bolts person, let that be your domain. You could write a better inventory, search, and/or checkout system (wow bolts are easily stolen aren't they?!). You could also take the abstract mechanical intuition and focus on robotics.

One shouldn't aspire to work at a "tech company" - most of those that you might think of are actually ad companies. Following the analogy of 100 year old media, Googlers are out selling classified and yellow page ads in Search/Display, Netflix is a magazine publishing house, Amazon is the Sears-Roebucks catalog (Mail order homes!), Meta, the newspaper of newspapers. If you like sales, marketing, and influence it would make sense to work at such a place. I cannot tell you how many people are surprised by this, but it is vastly larger than it ought to be.

If you want to call yourself a developer/programmer/engineer/hacker then show up to build something that will run for a long time and not injure people during its operation. Build something better. If that isn't your ethos or ethic, there are better ways to make money.

> GPT-3 has taken away the need for programming acumen for most creators.

I strongly disagree. GPT-3 is impressive technology, but it isn't even in the same universe as a team of sharp experienced developers. It is a valuable tool for them to use in some contexts, but it won't be replacing them anytime soon (at least not at a company I would work for).

The parent comment might be refering to github copilot or chatGPT, both are fairly decent at removing a lot of google-fu for typical fullstack problems and helping newer programmers get up to speed or closer to a viable solution quickly.

Sibling comments addressed actual disambiguation. For validation, it _is_ confusing, since CRLF is carriage return/linefeed

> No credentials to speak of other than the fact that I could probably think my way out of an undergrad level abstract algebra or real analysis problem if cornered.

That seems like a rather bold claim to make. I don't think anyone could really do that without having studied those subjects deeply. Did you study mathematics at a University and just didn't complete a degree or are you completely self-taught ?

>I used to work at a hardware store. As in literal bolts and nuts type of tech, not software related

As an SWE, this sounds way more fun.

It's about 80% the same as any other store (keep things stocked, tell customers where they are, operate a cash register kind of stuff), 5% copying keys, 15% answering questions that are either really simple ("what do I use to hang a painting") or underspecified ("I need a replacement nut for something"; the trick is to ask them to bring the bolt or another of the same nut if they can).

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