Comment by notastartup | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notastartup | Hacker News Reader

I'm also in a similar position, although I found that my experience of shipping SaaS and software largely on my own is completely ignored. Never mind the challenging software design decisions and the amount of unpaid work one must put in before it starts to make money (software is hard but that's because I'm an Economics major with no clue about engineering and only useless information about the stock market I'm supposed to be able to predict). Not to mention that I've actually worked as software developer at a company for 2 years because obviously what could a guy without a CS degree actually have done such as changing and influencing the company's product design and features?

None of it matters because I don't have a CS degree and apparently reciting algorithms and your ability to solve it in the shortest time possible is an absolute indicator of your ability to contribute to a tiny fraction of that company's product that is far less challenging than anything I've done by myself.

I've pretty much given up going to interviews and back to focusing what really matters, ship more software and get rich.

I agree. I actually approach my learning in a very similar way. Thus I show value by my portfolio of apps (http://garyyauchan.com/) with ideation and designs, and codes I build through passionate googling.

Granted, the other view is that you need to know the "foundation" and the "why" in order to solve problems more efficiently.

extremely impressive portfolio I wish I had that level of output but I simply don't, as I have tendency to work on one hard problem for years.

Half the stuff they ask in interview is did you work this open source software and that, did you know this framework has X feature, can you tell me what it is...I'm like all of this I can google and tell you there's simply no difference, it's a matter when I googled it, but the other view is that they want someone with 5 years of angularjs and mongodb experience in the hopes of finding a multi-year veteran and expert in the myriad of brand new frameworks and technologies that are barely mature.

I used to work part-time as a frontend developer for software company in college. I was also trying to finish up my CS degree in my fourth year of a not so well known college. I had built some interesting apps at the time (with lots of backend infrastructure, and heavy js), but my boss could not look past pedigree. I was not a programmer as far as he was concerned, which was really disheartening and shattered my confidence.

I kept going on interviews and I was eventually able to move to a programmer position, and haven't had much issue since then being taken seriously as a developer (at a few major places). All you can do is keep trying/interviewing, and approach every company with a sincere assumption that they will give you a fair chance.

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