Picking an arts degree wasn't you first mistake. It was a consequence of earlier mistakes.
Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn. I'm sure if you did a 100 Intro to Programming course you'd breeze through it but programming != CS.
The worst thing you can do in college, at a job or even in life is to go into a situation thinking you have nothing to learn. That's just a recipe for being in exactly the same place 10 years from now. Do you really think your professors, your future colleagues or even your fellow students have nothing to teach you?
Even if they don't, you're alienating and isolating yourself by dismissing other people so flippantly. That alone will deny you mentors and friends.
I can't speak to what you do now because so much of this depends on circumstances eg where you live, what your financial situation is, etc. But 22 years old is not by any measure too late to turn things around. You may have to make some uncomfortable choices (eg working a shitty help desk job while studying part time) but the only limit here is whatever mental barricades you erect for yourself.
> Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn.
I made this exact mistake at 17/18 and even had a very similar line of thinking as OP, but my decision was not to go to school at all.
I ended up in the industry a few years later, but have had a mostly crippled career. It was unfortunately drilled in my head around the time that people were handing out six figure salaries to anyone who could remotely program regardless of education.
Being self taught doesn't have to cripple your career. I'm self taught and doing reasonably well, and there's another guy I worked with a few years ago who's also self taught and studied music in college who's now an engineer at Facebook making I don't know how many zillions of dollars. Looking at LinkedIn just now, I discovered that another self taught engineer I know, who doesn't even have a high school diploma, is now working at Netflix.
In a sense, we're all fortunate that we lucked into a career in an industry that de-emphasizes credentials in favor of knowledge, ability, and track record.
> Do you really think your professors, your future colleagues or even your fellow students have nothing to teach you?
This is so important. When looking for a job, make sure you're not the smartest/most knowledgable person there. Seek out an environment with people who know more than you, at least in some fields.
Another big thing (at least for me) is to always challenge yourself. Work on stuff you don't know how to do in advance, things that require you to learn new skills. I find I get bored and burn out quickly if my work is just doing the thing, instead of figuring out how to do the thing.
The problem here is metacognitive skills: knowing what you don't know.
The parents are right: "Parents went ugly, they said I was a careless, stupid, ignorant boy. I know they are not right." Acknowledging that is the first step. The second step is understanding that's true of most 22-year-olds. Age 0-12, you worship your parents. Age 13-19, ego really grows. You rebel, and do the opposite of what your parents want since you believe you know better. Early twenties is when you start to understand that you are, indeed, a careless, stupid, ignorant boy, and start to take advice from others. That's growing up in a nutshell.
Most of the more successful people I know get really good at taking advice from others, putting ego aside, filtering advice (not all of it is good!), and keeping an open mind. The executive version of that is delegating, and knowing whom to delegate to.
Constantly shifting focus is 100% standard for that age, and it's a fine way to grow. People at that age also really do mimic (usually stupid) role models. The "I want to be the cool computer wiz without a degree" is completely standard (only insert "rock musician" "soldier" "goth" etc). It's how your brain is wired.
I know this sounds like dime store psychoanalysis, but it's helpful to know you're not alone, and it's just how people are wired.
A few thoughts:
1) A CS degree should not be easy. If you're where you think you are, you can test out of the freshman CS courses. If you're a hotshot, you can start with a graduate-level class on sublinear-time algorithms or something. More likely, you can start with junior and senior classes. Those foundations are important, though.
2) Getting good at math is important. Social sciences degree was a mistake.
3) At 22, optimize for growth, not for profits. Profits can come later. There is an order of magnitude difference between a principal at Google and an entry-level coder. You don't get there incrementally.
4) There's plenty of part-time work, contract work, etc. available if you hunt around. A good path might be work half-time and school half-time. Both grow you in different ways.
5) It sounds like you have a good foundation to get wherever you're going. It doesn't feel like it, but you're on the right track.
> you really think your professors, your future colleagues or even your fellow students have nothing to teach you?
I really like this.
I mean, it happens often that I learn something from colleagues who have less experience that me just because while they searching for a correct way to do something ( which I already know ) they find interesting logically based solutions that maybe are not the best, but bring with them experience of some function or logic that I do not know
> Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn.
Thousand times this. I'm 33, programming since 8, working in the industry since 18, and can confidently call myself at least a senior, with a lot of leadership experience. And yet, I routinely go through CS courses from Stanford, MIT and CMU on YouTube (intro to databases by Andy Pavlo right now), and really envy people who have got to go learn at those institutions.
There's a lot of knowledge to be gained by doing projects and tutorials and working. But there's so much "hard CS" stuff that is just not that easy to learn on your own.
I'm 41, been coding since I was 10, working since I was 17. I've been at the top of my specialisation as a developer. I absolutely love coding but am finally moving away (coding is not the most valuable use of my time - however much I enjoy it).
I learn something every day. Try to read a paper a month (although it's more like 4 a year nowadays). I still regularly read books and like the OP go through courses from the top unis.
Unlike OP: I've had no trouble learning on my own (thanks to the amazing courses available online). Actually, I do a lot better. Sure, I hit roadblocks - but surpassing those roadblocks is where I learn the most.
Maybe it helps that I started on the 8-bits and spent a couple of years in my 20's studying for a BSc in CS (partially via the Open University, but mainly by reading/practise/Coursera/MIT).
Ah, man, kid, try being 43 with a Github profile full of half-finished repos.
You haven't failed. Part of what's pathetic about the tech industry and culture, and why I've mostly bowed out of it, is that it makes you feel like you're a failure at 22. Christ, even rock singers get until they're 30 to feel that way.
You're fine, man. You just need to decide what you really want. If that means being a coder, it's easy - figure out the framework du jour, learn it, get paid to build stuff with it. You'll probably be able to keep up for about another fifteen years before you realize you have no idea what the hell this new thing is that all the 22 year olds are clamoring about that runs entirely contrary to every good habit you've ever learned. (Say, separation of code and presentation - I'm looking at you, JSX. )
But you can do a lot in fifteen years. My advice is to have something else after you age out of tech, though, which you're nowhere near doing yet. Me, I'm a writer and musician, and though neither pay as well as they used to, it's still something to do other than my part time Node coding day job.
You got this, man. Sky's the limit. Just be smart about your choices, because that time moves much faster than you would ever believe. Nobody believes that until it happens to them, but nonetheless, it's true. Make the most of these days.
And for God's sake, don't spend all of your best physical years sitting behind a laptop. There are hot singles in your area, my dude. Go find some. Life is too short and this industry does not love you the way you think it will. Find a person to do that instead.
Tangent, but JSX is a templating language, and templating languages don’t dictate whether your presentation logic is well separated. You can write well-stratified React code or poorly-stratified React code, the difference is whether you choose to separate it that way. For example, see the S convention in styled-components.
Conversely, you can have terrible Django templates that contain all your controller logic.
this was a really good post. youre not going to get the top job at google, but you can make a lot of money by just getting good at one backend language + sql.
Almost no one failed at 22; failing that young can basically only mean you are in jail for 20+ years or with a needle under a bridge. All the other 'failing' will be a faint memory in 10 years, if you remember it at all (besides from posting this blog post, which, personally, I would remove).
I don’t think you failed, you just haven’t found the groove you fit into yet. In college I made a similar series of missteps and even found myself sitting alone at a Dunkin’ Donuts outside at 3 AM when a drunk guy came up and harassed me with his terrible app ideas.
I had no friends at the time and that was halfway through my college career. Things only went uphill from there. Well, not really because they went momentarily downhill as well. But overall it has been positive.
Keep working at finding your fit, and flesh out that portfolio with at least one finished project.
Which toxic world have we built that let people think that tinkering, exploring different facade of life, and not being able to find a programming job at 22 is called failing?
The glorification of 400k packages right after graduation, of founders becoming paper billionaires before they have their first gray hair, the lack of representation of various software dev career paths... All this (and more) is giving an unrealistic and fake vision of what we do and become as software engineers.
Many of us here like to look down on what social media does to the life of teenagers, creating insecurities and disturbing development, but we’re doing the same exact thing in our industry.
The last sentence in the post gives a glimpse of hope, but the general tone resonates with something I’ve heard too many times around me. Life is short, yes, YOLO if you want, but no, not being a top software dev at 22 is not “having failed”.
22 years old is young man. I don’t know how many bad decisions I’ve made at that age
You’re not failing, that’s just consequences of repeated bad decisions.
Software engineers never stop learning, so it’s a mistake thinking there’s nothing else to learn in colleague. There’s a reason why reputable universities have try to structure curriculums and subjects to earn that degree. Many people said that you don’t need uni, but there’s a reason why we (human) created education system, evolve, and try to get better for hundreds of years
With that said, many other software engineers doesn’t have a degree as well. Go finish up cool personal projects, work as junior SE, enhance your skill, and climb the way up
Enjoy the drill my friend. It’ll be fun and hard at the same time
I was incredibly close to being you. I was close to getting into Arts but my dad smacked sense into me (don’t regret it. Turns out you can paint after work.)
I work with people similar so my advice (take it with a grain of salt) is (if you can’t go back to get your degree or get into a bootcamp) is to just start building something. Go work at an early stage start up which is absolutely desperate for some hands. Write articles, blogs, cultivate a personal brand. And be nice to yourself: you’re still incredibly young. There’s so much time you have left to choose your destiny.
This is not a failure. This is just someone seeing a small slice of their life and having some disappointment.
I have a different but parallel story - in college, I got a degree in fine arts. I studied philosophy. And I worked in the computer labs to keep a small skill set in tech. And it worked out just great - after college, I started working full-time in tech. At 22, I was not a hugely successful software engineer. Quite the contrary, I could not code a single line. I was doing deskside support at a hospital. This was not a failure, it was a beginning.
Because at 49, I've been a software engineer for over 20 years, done startups and large company work, mostly successfully. There have been more successful years in the software world than the number of years I had even been alive at 22.
22 is a starting point, not a missed goal. No matter where you are at 22, most of your adult life is ahead of you.
Readit News
Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn. I'm sure if you did a 100 Intro to Programming course you'd breeze through it but programming != CS.
The worst thing you can do in college, at a job or even in life is to go into a situation thinking you have nothing to learn. That's just a recipe for being in exactly the same place 10 years from now. Do you really think your professors, your future colleagues or even your fellow students have nothing to teach you?
Even if they don't, you're alienating and isolating yourself by dismissing other people so flippantly. That alone will deny you mentors and friends.
I can't speak to what you do now because so much of this depends on circumstances eg where you live, what your financial situation is, etc. But 22 years old is not by any measure too late to turn things around. You may have to make some uncomfortable choices (eg working a shitty help desk job while studying part time) but the only limit here is whatever mental barricades you erect for yourself.
I made this exact mistake at 17/18 and even had a very similar line of thinking as OP, but my decision was not to go to school at all.
I ended up in the industry a few years later, but have had a mostly crippled career. It was unfortunately drilled in my head around the time that people were handing out six figure salaries to anyone who could remotely program regardless of education.
In a sense, we're all fortunate that we lucked into a career in an industry that de-emphasizes credentials in favor of knowledge, ability, and track record.
This is so important. When looking for a job, make sure you're not the smartest/most knowledgable person there. Seek out an environment with people who know more than you, at least in some fields.
Another big thing (at least for me) is to always challenge yourself. Work on stuff you don't know how to do in advance, things that require you to learn new skills. I find I get bored and burn out quickly if my work is just doing the thing, instead of figuring out how to do the thing.
The problem here is metacognitive skills: knowing what you don't know.
The parents are right: "Parents went ugly, they said I was a careless, stupid, ignorant boy. I know they are not right." Acknowledging that is the first step. The second step is understanding that's true of most 22-year-olds. Age 0-12, you worship your parents. Age 13-19, ego really grows. You rebel, and do the opposite of what your parents want since you believe you know better. Early twenties is when you start to understand that you are, indeed, a careless, stupid, ignorant boy, and start to take advice from others. That's growing up in a nutshell.
Most of the more successful people I know get really good at taking advice from others, putting ego aside, filtering advice (not all of it is good!), and keeping an open mind. The executive version of that is delegating, and knowing whom to delegate to.
Constantly shifting focus is 100% standard for that age, and it's a fine way to grow. People at that age also really do mimic (usually stupid) role models. The "I want to be the cool computer wiz without a degree" is completely standard (only insert "rock musician" "soldier" "goth" etc). It's how your brain is wired.
I know this sounds like dime store psychoanalysis, but it's helpful to know you're not alone, and it's just how people are wired.
A few thoughts:
1) A CS degree should not be easy. If you're where you think you are, you can test out of the freshman CS courses. If you're a hotshot, you can start with a graduate-level class on sublinear-time algorithms or something. More likely, you can start with junior and senior classes. Those foundations are important, though.
2) Getting good at math is important. Social sciences degree was a mistake.
3) At 22, optimize for growth, not for profits. Profits can come later. There is an order of magnitude difference between a principal at Google and an entry-level coder. You don't get there incrementally.
4) There's plenty of part-time work, contract work, etc. available if you hunt around. A good path might be work half-time and school half-time. Both grow you in different ways.
5) It sounds like you have a good foundation to get wherever you're going. It doesn't feel like it, but you're on the right track.
I really like this. I mean, it happens often that I learn something from colleagues who have less experience that me just because while they searching for a correct way to do something ( which I already know ) they find interesting logically based solutions that maybe are not the best, but bring with them experience of some function or logic that I do not know
Thousand times this. I'm 33, programming since 8, working in the industry since 18, and can confidently call myself at least a senior, with a lot of leadership experience. And yet, I routinely go through CS courses from Stanford, MIT and CMU on YouTube (intro to databases by Andy Pavlo right now), and really envy people who have got to go learn at those institutions.
There's a lot of knowledge to be gained by doing projects and tutorials and working. But there's so much "hard CS" stuff that is just not that easy to learn on your own.
I learn something every day. Try to read a paper a month (although it's more like 4 a year nowadays). I still regularly read books and like the OP go through courses from the top unis.
Unlike OP: I've had no trouble learning on my own (thanks to the amazing courses available online). Actually, I do a lot better. Sure, I hit roadblocks - but surpassing those roadblocks is where I learn the most.
Maybe it helps that I started on the 8-bits and spent a couple of years in my 20's studying for a BSc in CS (partially via the Open University, but mainly by reading/practise/Coursera/MIT).
More generally, (at least) two things obtain for the serious IT practitioner:
- One never graduates from being a student of the subject, even after the 'I Love Me' wall is fully covered in diplomae.
- One always lives in a glass house, even if Duff's Device makes sense at a glance.
You haven't failed. Part of what's pathetic about the tech industry and culture, and why I've mostly bowed out of it, is that it makes you feel like you're a failure at 22. Christ, even rock singers get until they're 30 to feel that way.
You're fine, man. You just need to decide what you really want. If that means being a coder, it's easy - figure out the framework du jour, learn it, get paid to build stuff with it. You'll probably be able to keep up for about another fifteen years before you realize you have no idea what the hell this new thing is that all the 22 year olds are clamoring about that runs entirely contrary to every good habit you've ever learned. (Say, separation of code and presentation - I'm looking at you, JSX. )
But you can do a lot in fifteen years. My advice is to have something else after you age out of tech, though, which you're nowhere near doing yet. Me, I'm a writer and musician, and though neither pay as well as they used to, it's still something to do other than my part time Node coding day job.
You got this, man. Sky's the limit. Just be smart about your choices, because that time moves much faster than you would ever believe. Nobody believes that until it happens to them, but nonetheless, it's true. Make the most of these days.
And for God's sake, don't spend all of your best physical years sitting behind a laptop. There are hot singles in your area, my dude. Go find some. Life is too short and this industry does not love you the way you think it will. Find a person to do that instead.
Conversely, you can have terrible Django templates that contain all your controller logic.
also great advice to get some excercise
You did not fail: you just started trying things.
I had no friends at the time and that was halfway through my college career. Things only went uphill from there. Well, not really because they went momentarily downhill as well. But overall it has been positive.
Keep working at finding your fit, and flesh out that portfolio with at least one finished project.
Happy to chat, pc.peterso at the Mail of G
The glorification of 400k packages right after graduation, of founders becoming paper billionaires before they have their first gray hair, the lack of representation of various software dev career paths... All this (and more) is giving an unrealistic and fake vision of what we do and become as software engineers.
Many of us here like to look down on what social media does to the life of teenagers, creating insecurities and disturbing development, but we’re doing the same exact thing in our industry.
The last sentence in the post gives a glimpse of hope, but the general tone resonates with something I’ve heard too many times around me. Life is short, yes, YOLO if you want, but no, not being a top software dev at 22 is not “having failed”.
You’re not failing, that’s just consequences of repeated bad decisions.
Software engineers never stop learning, so it’s a mistake thinking there’s nothing else to learn in colleague. There’s a reason why reputable universities have try to structure curriculums and subjects to earn that degree. Many people said that you don’t need uni, but there’s a reason why we (human) created education system, evolve, and try to get better for hundreds of years
With that said, many other software engineers doesn’t have a degree as well. Go finish up cool personal projects, work as junior SE, enhance your skill, and climb the way up
Enjoy the drill my friend. It’ll be fun and hard at the same time
I work with people similar so my advice (take it with a grain of salt) is (if you can’t go back to get your degree or get into a bootcamp) is to just start building something. Go work at an early stage start up which is absolutely desperate for some hands. Write articles, blogs, cultivate a personal brand. And be nice to yourself: you’re still incredibly young. There’s so much time you have left to choose your destiny.
I have a different but parallel story - in college, I got a degree in fine arts. I studied philosophy. And I worked in the computer labs to keep a small skill set in tech. And it worked out just great - after college, I started working full-time in tech. At 22, I was not a hugely successful software engineer. Quite the contrary, I could not code a single line. I was doing deskside support at a hospital. This was not a failure, it was a beginning.
Because at 49, I've been a software engineer for over 20 years, done startups and large company work, mostly successfully. There have been more successful years in the software world than the number of years I had even been alive at 22.
22 is a starting point, not a missed goal. No matter where you are at 22, most of your adult life is ahead of you.