Ask HN: How many of you are employed, self-taught SWEs?

I have a GED and went to community college for like, 6 years and didn’t get my associates because the final “class” was sitting around the computer lab unpaid. Instead transferred to university and dropped out. Just absolutely hated it. Got married, my daughter was born and suddenly became SUBSTANTIALLY more motivated to “man up and make money”. I lost 75 pounds and suddenly I could think well enough to be a software engineer. Sleep apnea had been killing me at 300 lbs. Had a tech support job and my boss was a programmer. I’d volunteer to do work and he’d give me work that’d push me each time, like learning regexes, writing simple internal databases for the startup we worked at.

Before I had the tech support job I was working on train radiators and it was awful. Came home covered in oil. The radiators weighed thousands of pounds and could easily crush a man.

Couple months later got my first SWE job after making a side project website and making a little YouTube video about the challenges of making a modern web application, like async programming all that stuff. Just kept applying to places until someone liked me, I guess.

Then I gained the weight back and got lazy, got fired from some other jobs. For me at least being fat makes me a bad programmer. Solving health problems for me was key to being able to learn and grow, as the constant headaches and inflammation made it nearly impossible to concentrate.

My job is pretty good, not super stressful. COVID messed me up mentally and I got bad marks for the past six months but I’ve finally gotten the hang of being isolated and not being so panicked. Anxiety and depression make working almost impossible for me without Adderall or some other such stimulant. Trying to wean off of those as I don’t like how they change my personality into a more nervous less interesting person.

pksebben · 5 years ago

Man, I have a lot of parallels to this. Been on a scrip for that stuff for as long as I can remember, and I had a similar experience at school. Hearing your story really gives me hope for myself; so, thanks!

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of work are you doing now? Any tips for your past self?

wincy · 5 years ago

I work as a software engineer mostly backend/middle tier APIs and stuff for a Fortune 500 company now.

I’d remind myself that things like alcohol that act strongly on dopamine can cause SERIOUS problems with adderall, like not feeling any happiness for a week and fun things like that. Adderall is a serious tool to be taken seriously. I joke that Adderall is like a chainsaw. If you’re using it at 3am, there’s a problem. I’d also tell myself that the Adderall isn’t what made me lose weight, and wasn’t the main thrust of me being able to learn. Losing 75 pounds and moving from obese to a healthy weight HUGELY boosted my brain power and concentration power. I was also constantly reacting to food. Had to sort that out.

Adderall let me sort of ignore it for a long time but the underlying condition just got worse. Was put on Nexium for horrible GERD at night at 34, was trembling and all sorts of scary side effects. A ketogenic diet with moderate exercise of walking once or twice a day makes a huge difference. Also magnesium is a like a miracle for my anxiety.

I’d tell me from before I was even in tech at all to just stop wasting my time failing at school and just get a tech job. Although I don’t know if I could have done it without my wife, honestly. I was really good at lying to myself and she put a stop to that shit, excuse my language. I should have tried.

I’d also maybe be less arrogant after getting a good job. I lost a lot of friends who were in a similar slacker boat as me a few years ago. It’s like they stopped wanting to hang out once I became successful which was very isolating.

- Why did you get into the field? What did you focus on at first?

I never planned on being a coder, I was a derivatives trader at first. It turns out being able to code helps a lot in finance. I co-developed my skills between building quant strategies with coding. And coding quickly swallowed up everything, it turns out it would have been easier to be a systems coder first, then develop quantitative skills. I've done an enormous amount of coding in different areas now from that journey as well as a variety of web side projects. A small amount of GUI/FE coding, a lot of micro performance and networking type stuff.

- What are you doing at your job? Is it everything you dreamed of and more?

I have a lot of freedom to decide what I want to do. So I code a lot, but it's what I want to do.

- How did you break that first-job barrier?

Responded to an ad out of uni, went to interviews.

- What were you doing before this?

Uni, where I learned a little bit of coding, but not enough to appreciate the depth. Zoomed over algos and data structures, which it turns out I ended up relearning.

- Any tips for the rest of us?

You can't really do this if you don't like it, but you also won't like it if you haven't learned a bunch of code-related skills. For instance if you don't know how version control works, you'll forever be reluctant to modify your code, which will stunt your growth. Same with sysadmin type skills like how to set up a network, how to move files around, how to set up the OS. You'll think everything is a chore if you can't write some scripts to simplify your coding flow. Something like Docker takes learning before you can use it, but once you have it it helps a lot.

frrp · 5 years ago

What are you working on recently?

lordnacho · 5 years ago

A variety of trading systems, an online multiplayer game.

tunesmith · 5 years ago

My degree was in music, but I dabbled in tech courses too - calculus, discrete math, logical circuits, just because I liked those classes. I took a workshop on C but hated it. I didn't like programming until the internet became a thing. I learned some perl as a student, on my own from reading the book and trying things out. My first job out of college was as a network administrator. Hated it. Second job involved some programming. I learned php and database programming on my own. I later learned java, scala, akka, node, and react on the job (all on projects transitioning away from php). After the first job or two, no one asks or cares about school education level. I'm a principle software architect now, the job is fine. Bullshit and politics are low, and it's always fun to solve a problem.

Fall in love with an uber-ambitious technical side project that you'll never turn into a business but that will make you learn every tech you'd ever be interested in. Then you can tinker on it for life and it'll keep you employable.

halfmatthalfcat · 5 years ago

If you don’t count the two years of Java I took in high school (AP CS), I’m self-taught. No CS degree. Switched majors 6 times in college and didn’t realize until I graduated I wanted to code.

Started in QA, did that for over 3 years. Transitioned to a SEIT, did that for a year. Then finally got the software engineering title. Took much longer than I wanted but got it eventually.

Since then I’ve been through the whole stack. Now doing more DevOps, SRE type stuff. It’s honestly been great. Worked for startups, mid sized and Fortune 500s.

My only tip is if you love to code just keep doing it. Everybody wants to say “I don’t want to code outside of work, I want a life, ect ect.” The only way I’ve truly been able to learn is by having side projects and working on them constantly. I’ve had a side project going consistently for the past 7 or 8 years. Hacking on your own stuff, at least for me, brings me actual joy rather then a lot of stuff I do for my day job.

ykevinator · 5 years ago

If you love to code just keep doing it is excellent advice.

Kaze404 · 5 years ago

Completely self taught here. I went to university for a couple years but dropped out. It doesn't work well with my way of learning. Been working professionally for 4 years.

> Why did you get into the field? What did you focus on at first?

I always liked computers and building things. It felt like a natural progression of my favorite hobbies, so one day I looked up how to write a Discord bot and the rest is history. I had made some websites when I was 12 (specifically for Sims 2) as well.

> How did you break that first-job barrier?

I found an internship when I was in university, and looked for a full time job while I was there. Once I found one, I left my internship and dropped out of university.

> What were you doing before this?

Taking a sabatic year after high school I guess. I played a lot of Phantasy Star Online 2 that year, and it's indirectly the reason my career started.

> Any tips for the rest of us?

It's hard to say because everyone's situation is so different. But one thing I wish I knew is that it's OK to not listen to family sometimes. Personally I heard a lot of backlash from them because from their perspective I wasn't doing anything really. It affected my mental health and was pretty tough at times, but probably to a lesser extent than pushing through university in my opinion.

That advice about family resonates really hard. Thanks for sharing.

was_boring · 5 years ago

I’ll throw my hat in the ring...

I’m 100% self taught, and have a humanities degree. I’ve worked in global 500 companies, as well as YC startups. I consider my greatest strength to be the ability to teach myself, and that has led to front end, backend, ML, etc. work.

I have never worked at FAANG but with most of them going remote, I’ll probably take my chances next year (a kid on the way so staying with current employer to ensure family leave). To be honest, I’m also scared of the rejection.

I view the learning process as multiple steps. The first is to learn the technology to become useful, while doing that it’s really important to learn the social context of it and how to talk to others in an informed way. I can’t stress that enough.

If you are looking to break into industry I suggest doing a few side projects to demonstrate knowledge, and aim for a company who will give you a chance. For me, this was consultancy.

It requires study off the job, but I love it and would be doing it anyways.

guener · 5 years ago

- The Matrix impressed me when I was child. I said to myself “I’m going to build a good world, a good system, my own heaven.” after some time, I found myself reading articles about programming and my adventure has started right there. It was a huge exploration for me. I started to focus on learning a programing language. It was C.

- Taking care the system, developing new features. Yes, It is.

- I built a course system for my school, worked free about 6 months. Learnt a lot of things and this experience gave my first job.

- Make real your every absract notion by coding and drink coffee madly.

so much this.

chank · 5 years ago

I didn't have access to a computer until I was almost 20. Incredibly fascinated by it, I sucked up all the knowledge I could. I started with general IT which turned into a generic call center help desk job. I did that for a few years while learning to code on my own. Mostly basic web related stuff which I parlayed into helping out part time on a project at the company I worked for at the time. Once I had some real resume experience on my hands I was able to work that into a full time programming job at a very small company on a team of three people doing workflow management software. It was very close to dotcom bubble days and I probably got the job because I was willing to work for cheap compared to other developers at the time. Mostly because it was more than I was making before and I didn't know what I could have been making. Outside of a few unrelated courses I have still have no formal training, certifications, or degrees and am entirely self-taught.

Today, I work as a technology lead in the innovation lab at a large reputable company doing machine learning, deep learning, blockchain/crypto, tech evaluations, investment portfolio bootstrapping. Most of what I work on is turned into a product (new or enhancement) or acquisition for the company. I think there are multitudes more opportunities than were available when I was starting out. My advice is to always keep learning on your own and from others. Don't let yourself get to comfortable and find projects that are challenging and interesting to work on.