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bradcrispinon Online courses vs. colleges for software engineering

Ohai HN! I lead product and engineering for services and the project reviews system at Udacity - seeing this post gives me a lot of purpose to go to work on Monday. We are hiring engineers who are passionate about changing education!

Frontend engineer on my team: https://boards.greenhouse.io/udacity/jobs/4320541002

All open engineering positions: https://www.udacity.com/jobs#engineering-it?location=all

bradcrispinon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2019)

Udacity | FE Software Engineer | Mountain View, CA | REMOTE | Fulltime

We are looking for an experienced frontend software engineer to fill a key role revamping our student-facing code review and mentorship platforms. You'll be joining a US distributed team of 7 engineers who have been working to democratize education together for a few years. You will write React / Redux (and read some older Angular), live and breathe GraphQL in a BFF architecture, and help us explore the Apollo ecosystem.

Apply here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/udacity/jobs/4290774002

bradcrispinon How I learned to code in my 30s

> However, throwing each person in a bootcamp telling them "coding is wonderful! you can master it in 5 seconds

I am not sure if you read the article? The point is that age isn't a barrier but that becoming a software engineer is a lot harder than just going to a bootcamp and expecting a job to appear. This is about spending a year trying to find a job.

I have zero problem being compared to a plumber with a plunger! If something breaks in the middle of the night, I get paged, grab my mop and my tools, and fix it.

Why does it matter if the average plumber "can't fix your house"?

The pay is good because of supply and demand but I really do not know programmers who decided to get into it for money.

bradcrispinon How I learned to code in my 30s

Soon you will love pointers and structs and everything Go. Keep going (pun intended). Your colleagues are worried about their own work and your manager has made a long-term investment in you, not about the first few months. :)

I couldn't agree more that it is tough going when you realize a challenge is more than you expected. That plus impostor syndrome is what caused me to quit on my first try.

We are moving a lot of things from Python to Go at the moment and it has been great.

bradcrispinon How I learned to code in my 30s

I agree that for rapid learning, focus and repetition are essential. I don't think you have to quit your job in order to change careers into coding, but for me it took a very full year of effort.

bradcrispinon How I learned to code in my 30s

I couldn't agree more. I had a few paragraphs on impostor syndrome that I edited down to "doubt" but I hope it was implied, you must ignore impostor syndrome. There are always going to be people doing Mount Olympus code and that is great! These are the people we can learn from. I get to build things people use and I love it.

bradcrispinon How I learned to code in my 30s

I think you have accomplished the hardest part. Action is now your reward. :)

bradcrispinon How I learned to code in my 30s

I once said that "I realize nothing I do in engineering will ever end up on the front page of Hacker News." Feels like a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Thank you