I have a pretty good idea, thanks to many posters here in 2p2, of what's needed to launch a career in web dev. What about general s/w dev? As some of you know I'm trying to get out of poker (been playing online, professionally, for just over 10 years).

I've taken some of those google interview logic game puzzles. I've done very well in them. So the aptitude to be a developer is there, but the experience is not.

If I took a free MOOC course in Python or RoR, and learned the basics, would that be enough to get me a job as a junior developer, if I can demonstrate aptitude?

From my own personal experience, I'd say the sooner you start applying, the better. Build something stupid simple and start applying. Too much knowledge is more of a detriment than a bonus. If you start applying to JR level jobs and get hit back with "I have this senior level position you may be a good fit for," then you went way too far, IMO. Don't let that happen to you.

At the end of the day, many companies seeking JR devs are looking for someone to groom. They want someone that will gladly do mundane things for 2 years, gain some experience, and slowly progress up the ladder. I know this flies in the face of all the advice you read online about whiteboarding*, showing a bunch of self-motivation, talking about passion projects, etc, but trust me, the bloggers who write about all of that stuff are outliers. Most employers want something simple and only want to know two things: can you do the job at hand and will you stick around for a while. Remember that, from a strict business perspective, you are an investment, or rather, meant to be an investment. It is much easier to consider yourself an investment if you walk in with some small base that can be built on.

*irt to whiteboarding, I've never once been asked to write a sorting algorithm. I only recall being asked one "puzzle" question. Most of the questions are things you should know how to do after 3 months of programming: can you do fizzbuzz, can you write a function that maps {word : word_count}. Really basic things like that.

GTK. Thanks. Problem I'm finding is that so many s/w jobs I've come across are using head hunters, and head hunters will toss my CV straight in the trash when they see my lack of experience. My potential or aptitude are worthless to the head hunters.

Don't go the head hunter route if you're banking on potential. Go to meet ups and network. That's your only in if you don't have experience. You'll be surprised how many small businesses and startups are willing to take a chance with someone who can speak the language of business, be outgoing, and know enough code to not accidentally launch ze missiles

There's no clear line dividing web vs general software development at the junior level. And at the senior level, you still wouldn't neatly fall into "web" vs "general" but rather be defined by specialties, technologies and/or domain knowledge, some of which may be specific web technologies. Unless by "web dev" you mean something closer to web design and pure front-end or even Wordpress/Drupal kind of stuff. Most web dev is just software dev.

Quite frankly, these aren't used as often as you'd think - they are used more often for less technical positions at top software companies as a proxy for intelligence. I've recently talked to people at major software companies and they've mostly said these types of questions are either banned, discouraged or somewhat frowned upon and coding/algorithm/data-structure/software-design type questions are preferred. Not saying that they aren't used at all - they were all the rage in the early 00's so I'm sure they are still around - but I wouldn't equate that to aptitude or even ability to pass interviews. It just means you're smart and are good at puzzles.

It's not about the experience, but basic skills and desire to program. And some ability to demostrate those skills and desire.

A single online course won't be enough to teach you the "basics" - I mean I'm sure you can find some kind of job with no experience or real skills but "enough to get me some job" is a very low bar. There are people in India with no real programming skills working as software developers for $5 an hour. Reasonable jobs are going to require that you possess real skills and demonstrate conclusively that you can code. There are lots of CS graduates with four years of formal CS instruction, thousands of lines of code written, tons of potential, understanding of basic CS concepts and more, etc, who are having trouble landing suitable jobs. "If I do this one thing, would that be enough" is not a particularly constructive mindset given that your competition is doing everything that they can. This is not a field that rewards idle speculation.

grunch. You need to show you can do the job. Easiest way to do that is show examples (github, portfolio) of you doing the job you're applying for.

When people say make a portfolio on github with your code... How does that work exactly? You are expected to put your entire code for the websites you have created o github or only part of the code is exposed? What if these are sites you are serious about and not just mock sites you hacked together?

I thought people in here have said 4 yr CS grads don't have that much code written???

Most don't. I've interviewed a ton of new grads in the last year and most of them have never written anything bigger than a standard school assignment. The ones with github and open source contributions is a very small minority. And these are the best CS students from Stanford/Berkeley/CMU and we still reject a huge % of them.

They don't have that much code written, but that's still an order of magnitude more than what you would've written after a single MOOC.

I don't know about github being a small minority - it seems to me that having an "active" github account is a standard career recommendation these days and kids coming out of college (and bootcamps and what not) are putting everything they've ever done up there to appease recruiters and hiring managers who are using it to screen candidates. If I see a resume from someone who's either in school or recently graduated and I don't see a github account, I'm mildly surprised. I don't think it's a meaningful signal - it's just something you're supposed to do now. I think a lot of open source projects are also starting to receive a lot more terrible contributions and pull requests from people who don't know what they are doing for this reason as well. It's a big change from even like 2-3 years ago.

Also, standard school assignments are sometimes more significant than what a lot of people do in dev jobs - it's not uncommon to see cases where people had 3+ years of experience but the most meaningful projects they've done were in school.

Candybar, do you ever look at the github, or is it just something you notice when you don't see it?

I've seldom met an interviewer or recruiter who actually looked at any of it. I generally assume they are looking at the commit heat chart and number of stars. More often than not, if I bring up the github, the response is "You have gitbub? I didn't notice that."

So, yeah, sure, most CS grads do not have a lot of code under their belt. But... they have a few years of CS classes under their belt. In order for you to be seriously considered as a candidate, you need to demonstrate that you can do some of the things that they (should) be able to do just from graduating with a CS degree.

The way you do that is to demonstrate your knowledge via what you can do.

I haven't been in a position to hire someone with no experience (either a new grad or someone with similar experience) so I don't know how I'd go about it, but I'd probably be more interested in what your projects DO than actually looking at your code. If that looked interesting I'd probably want to talk to you about your code, but I kinda doubt I'd be going to read it, unless I was heavily leaning towards a yes.

I mean... you're lucky if a hiring manager reads more than the first page of your resume, are any of them really reading code?

I'm a software development manager for a large corporation with an it shop of approximately 2k folks. Do a fair bit of hiring junior through senior people.

Without a 4 year degree with good grades or significant (years) real IT experience, HR screeners would never forward your resume to me for review.

With degree and good grades or experience, you should be able to pick from multiple offers.

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I kind of don't know what people are supposed to be building to prove themselves. If I can build a facebook clone, a twitter clone, an instagram clone, a youtube clone, a new york times clone etc.. what is it that I am supposed to be doing because all of that seems fairly easy and mundane... what are they looking for exactly? something more complex/math involved?

Well, barring any evidence to the contrary, what you expect a non-CS grad to be able to build is approximately nothing. That is, if I hauled a random non-CS-grad off the street, could they make a facebook clone? Almost surely not.

As a non-CS grad, you are trying to prove yourself to be as competent as a CS grad who has zero experience. No offense to new grads, but that is not some massively unattainable bar.

I'm most interested in projects that someone has done that further some other interest of theirs. That is, what I want to know about a candidate is: why do they program? Is it because they want some dollars? Or is it because they see computers as a tool to solve the problems they encounter? A person who is motivated by the latter will learn a huge amount over their life just following their own interest. The former may have to be dragged kicking and screaming into getting truly good at programming.

I've written tons of code in my off time that is related to my hobbies and interests. If a potential employer wants to see what I can do, those things are what I show them. Most of them are not web-things (but most of the coding I have done professionally is not web programming)

Mundane might be a product of how you feel working on websites, which I think they are for the most part, but definitely not easy. Cloning those sites is far from trivial.

Yeah if I'm looking at a borderline case or feel indecisive/bored/curious, I use it to look at some real code that they've written. Most of the time, you see simple apps with not much beyond basic scaffolding, school assignments, textbook/MOOC/Euler/practice problems and that kind of stuff. I'm not expecting to see much more - it's not about the volume and it's not about the significance - I just want to see code, any code. I don't look at the commit chart or open-source contributions or anything like that. If they have done anything substantial that they'd like to be considered, I expect to see it described on the resume. And if it's well-described, I don't need to check it out on github to evaluate it, any more than I need to look at the proprietary code they've written in a previous job to evaluate their experience.

It's rare to find something that would substantially change my opinion. Most of the time I don't need to look at the github profile to make a decision (to interview the candidate and at what level of priority) and it's more about a bored mind slacking off.

Some truth bombs here. Even in a hot market, you get like hundreds of (mostly unqualified) resumes for any kind of normal respectable software engineering position. The default answer is no and you need some way to go from no to yes. If you don't have experience or a traditional background, a lot of things come into play. For example, a recent non-CS STEM (especially math and physics) degree from a respectable school would help. High GPA would help. High standardized test scores or a degree from a selective school would help. Any kind of career in a STEM field would help. Bootcamps would help and MOOCs and active github profiles with interesting projects that are clearly described on the resume would help. But an actual real-life CS degree does cover a lot of this ground - it's a STEM degree, covers material equivalent to 10+ MOOCs including some math courses, forces you to do a bunch of somewhat interesting and challenging projects, usually includes a couple of projects where you have to work with others, requires some kind of intelligence and motivation, and actively choosing CS over other majors says something, etc. It's not a high bar, but it's a significant one.

It's really hard to say you can't get any job in category X without Y because there's a very long tail of terrible jobs in any field and lots of shops just need cheap, warm bodies but asking whether a single MOOC is enough is like asking if reading a single poker book is enough to make a living as a poker pro.

I think anyone who has held a web dev job and been in a position where they had to work with a team will realize how clueless most people are. No one on my team can even answer basic js trick questions... like why does object a not equal object b when they look identical. They can't explain context/scope in js. These are all the sorts of things you just assume people know when its their job to know that stuff but most don't seem to (at least in my limited experience so far).

What about a Stats degree from a top school, decent GPA (3.0), many years ago? Stats at Berkeley is the 2nd highest rated program in the nation. The avg graduating GPA in math or stats at Berkeley is about 2.7.


Totally get your point, and not disputing any of your claims. I believe it. Though, interestingly enough I read a single poker book and was profitable immediately after. It became my "job" as I was out of work at the time and poker was fruitful enough for me to live off. Ofc that was 2003 when playing ABC was all you needed to grind out profits. My game has evolved, though mostly from experience and watching other talented pokers.

I would not include that GPA on the resume (3.2-3.3 is borderline for most technical jobs where they care about GPA, no one cares what the average was for the program) but a degree from a top school (which UC Berkeley definitely is) will help. At this point, it is probably the main thing on your resume that will attract attention in a good way.

I get that you're a smart guy who can learn things quickly but programming professionally is much more than just being smart enough to do it. You need to be interested and you need to put in the effort. I think you can demonstrate that you're a smart guy. But you also need to demonstrate that this is what you want to do. Anyone can click the apply button on LinkedIn. In a perverse way, at a low skill level, trying to show that it was very easy to pick up those skills - like you seem inclined to do though it may be different in IRL - actually works against you because in your case, people will be more judgmental about your level of commitment than about your smarts. Whatever you do, you need to spin the other way and talk about the challenges you faced.

Generally, once you've established that you're smart enough, you need to work much on demonstrating your effort level, commitment, and other things. There are virtually no jobs in technology where "stats degree from UC Berkeley" doesn't establish enough "smarts" that you would come close to qualifying for. So you need to get used to talking about your efforts - genius slacker persona may be charming in a social setting but hiring managers absolutely do not care for it. You face a higher bar here because of your poker background - you're already prone to being labeled a flake. If you try to sell yourself as a smart guy who didn't have to work hard to get to where you are (which you sort of did on a digression without being asked), you will set off all kinds of alarms.

In terms of effort, you need to show broadly two things. First, you need to show that this is something you're interested in and you're the type of person who really dives deep when it comes to things that interest you. This is the "passion" part of your sale. Second, you need to show that you're willing to do things that do not interest you. This is the "work ethic" or "discipline" part of your sale. For good technology jobs, passion is probably more important than work ethic but your background leaves major questions about both that you need to address.

This whole "what skills do I need and do I need a github profile" stuff is just a way to address these questions. Employers know that people need time to ramp up and don't come in with all the skills they need but you have to be willing and able.

If you want to optimize or getting into the game:
- Learn Java
- Apply to Java shops

Get and work through the Java job interview book (something exposed). You'll basically see those problems a lot. Mostly algorithm stuff.
Even if you go for another language get that book if you've never done programming interviews it'll be rather helpful. Just solve the stuff in your own language. You'll need to pick up some "CS stuff", mostly algorithms. At the very least learn to identify divide and conquer type of problems (quick sort). At least I think understanding quick sort will get you the most bang for your bucks.
You could do worse than finding tutorials for all the algorithms and doing a "kata" for each during the week.

Find interesting small projects, work on them and push to github (learn git basics, too). A CV with no code is kind of meh.

RobbenHasRobbened.jpg

GG, off to the other game

Why?