An inspirational read. Personally I am at a strange spot in life where I am trying to rediscover my own self worth as a programmer after working for several years as the CTO for a small startup company. I've been out of work for a few months now. It can be hard to wake up and know that the places I have interviewed are not interested (there have been several). It isn't that I am trying to get another executive position because a "programming" position would do me just fine. I am just trying to keep a positive outlook and move forward. So it is good to read about success, I guess, that is the result of hard work. Anyway I feel adrift. I am working on my own project/potential company so perhaps that will turn out to be a way to feed myself. Probably it wont. Am I out of the programming game for good? Sometimes I feel that way, but I can say that I was mesmerized by that first hello world.
What positions are you applying for? Roughly how many places have you applied to? How far do you get in the interview process? What do you think is the reason for not getting the offer?
Probably people feel it's dated and not appropriate for tech, but What color is your parachute stills seems fundamentally sensible to me. Points like:
most jobs aren't advertised; think of your search like shopping for a job that suits you; see how you are solution/resource for some problems; and what silent questions interviewers want answered, or should want. In order: why us? can you do the job? what's special about you? will you fit with us? can we afford you?
There's a lot of encouragement in it, especially extensive sections taking inventory of what you have to offer, your knowledge, skills and especially what engages you.
I don't know what the issue is exactly. I worked for two years at an insurance company using c#. It was a good group of people. I decided to join a startup. I worked through the process of growing the technical side of that company from 0 to 150,000 paid accounts. At almost the 10 year mark, I was let go due to financial difficulties. The company that I worked for, which still exists, is now run by one person - the original founder - in conjunction with a partner company that now manages the stack and handles sales. It is a bit of an odd story to tell and evolved into what it is today because of the pressures of trying to keep a company alive, I guess. I went from being a programmer to being the CTO during this time. I wasn't managing a team other than an intern once in a while so I was responsible for administering the servers (AWS) just as I was responsible for furthering development. It all fell to me for the most part. We did have another programmer for the first couple years, but they left. It was pretty taxing to be honest.
When I am asked how many people I managed I can only honestly say two interns and am then told my skills are not enough.
When I am asked to take home a programming assignment or whiteboard something the end result is that my skills aren't good enough.
It is a mystery to me because I built a system that currently processes 80 to 150 million emails a month. It encrypts them, it stores them, it makes them searchable. There is even functionality to encrypt outgoing emails as well! To be fair the core component was already built prior to me joining the company: the PKI api. But as needs grew I built around that. I built the web interface (not the design: I'm not a god). I wrote code to process incoming/outgoing email. I created an ES cluster that scales itself (probably not very well and search is astonishingly slow, but the customers don't seem to mind given the low price tag). I programmed in php, perl, ruby, javascript, and then eventually heavily used golang for its concurrency. The system is not perfect nor am I.
I too thought that people would be super interested in working with me, but I haven't found that to be the case at all. I guess am not good at networking so here I am. If you want to see what I have built in my own time recently, the url is in my description. It is a tragic example of my design skills and the code is all my own. Interestingly - or not so - it is entirely written in golang (+ gopherjs).
Damn, it looks like they’re slotting you into a tech lead / people management role because of your years of experience when your experience is better suited for a senior IC role.
Regarding the coding challenges, could it be that your code structure / cleanliness has atrophied from not working in large groups?
How good are your algorithms / data structures skills? If not already good, would you be able to develop them from practicing leetcode? Many people complain about fang style interviews but the nice thing is that if you are capable of doing those kinds of problems there isn’t as much other weirdness in getting a job. With your yoe you would qualify for going straight to phone interview with pretty much any company on interviewing.io if you do well on a few practice phone interviews there first. (I’d also be happy to provide referrals to a couple companies if you can do leetcode style problems.)
Yeah I have become painfully aware of the downside to be found in being the only developer at a company: no finger on the pulse of where the industry is moving and no experience with working with a group of people, which probably yields better results. I was always interested in teaching myself things and continue to do so - my current personal project uses kubernetes, which I am finding is nice enough to work with - but my algorithm skills do need some work. I practiced at hackerrank for a certain period of time last year. I found that I could not think up solutions for the hard problems off the top of my head. Medium problems were hit and miss. That isn't to say I couldn't understand an answer if it were presented to me.
Thank you for the suggestion. I will keep your offer of a referral in mind thank you. Where would these companies be based out of curiosity?
Nick's story is inspirational, but are there any stories like this that don't center on a pedigreed education?
Sometimes it concerns me that American class structure is so stratified that it's impossible to have social and class mobility like this without an elite education.
I'm sure he would have had similar outcomes had he gone to UMD, but would he have if he had gone to UMBC?
Posting from a throwaway account since I don't really like to draw attention to this in general.
I intentionally decided not to attend a university and instead work hard and learn in the field. Instead of CS classes I read the core works and learned concepts through building things and working with experts around me. There are amazingly smart people in every company who love to teach others what they know.
Over the course of 20 years I worked at fortune 500s, tech giants, and startups, learning and building every day.
Eventually I was given the opportunity to build small teams and learn to effectively lead people. Through lots of help from those around me and research about effective leadership, I was able to move up as I demonstrated execution and results.
Today I hold the title of VP of Engineering at a growing startup in the enterprise space. We're doing very well and I'm continuing to learn every day.
The message here? It's not for everyone, but a degree is a piece of paper. It may get you in the door, but so will a track record. You may find you need both, but you certainly need the last one to make a successful career in any industry.
I think the "piece of paper" question depends on one factor that few people seem to mention: timing.
I started my career in 2000, literally at the tail end of the dot com boom. I got my foot in the door right right before the door slammed shut for a little while. While I DO have a degree, it's not in engineering, math or any hard science. I got in because "Linux Systems Administrator" was so in demand, even during recessionary times, that it was easy to get in the door someplace. Then I was in a busy metropolitan area with an industry that relied on Linux/Unix (finance). For what it's worth, my state school cost under 6K a year, as well, with no aid.
Would I have the same luck today? I'm not so sure.
If it makes anyone feel better, your luck flips somewhat as you get older, the funnel gets tighter and you have to compete with hipster tech that people with 4-5 years of experience (and engineering/science degrees) have. Hipster technology (defined as buzzword tech) includes: some of the latest JS frameworks, Kubernetes/microservices, and more. However, in the enterprise world us oldies do quite well for ourselves as wisdom is recognized -- AS IS, circling back -- being able to learn new tech quickly. Proprietary environments with very complex systems appreciate those people and aren't deterred by degrees or hipster tech missing.
I actually withdrew from college to accept a job in 2000 for exactly this reason. The writing was on the wall for those who knew how to read it, and I knew if I didn't get an offer right away I probably wouldn't get one for years.
'The piece of paper' matters beyond that. Alumni networks are a thing. And people like to help their Alumni, because they hope to get the same in return.
If you don't mind me asking, do you think the same holds true for someone looking to work in another country?
I have just started my career in development in Brazil, without a degree. However, I was considering getting one in order to improve my chances of finding work in the US or Europe. Would I be better off using that time/energy working on projects and studying on my own (and accumulating work experience, of course)?
I can only speak about UK and Eastern Europe, but I think that holds true about most of Europe in general.
Dev work is generally very lax on academic credentials. Most of the time a great work record, open source contributions or other easily referenced work counts waay more than any degree you might hold.
Some startup gigs can even scoff on degrees, because it might indicate complacency rather than entrepreneurial spirit :)
It depends on the country. I'm also Brazilian and got German and Australian work visas without a degree. Most of Europe should be fine. I reckon for the American one you would need at least 12y of experience. The biggest challenge is to convince the company to sponsor you since a self-sponsored visa without a degree is usually quite tough.
I am actually living abroad now. I think the math is different depending on what country you are from though, choosing to be born in the US carries unfair advantages.
I'm an interesting case of this to some degree - I attended SUNY Binghamton for undergrad, applying last minute after I had gotten rejected/waitlisted/offered informally transfer acceptance at all of the colleges I applied to (Harvard, MIT, CalTech, Princeton, Columbia).
While I'm not an executive, I am a senior engineer being groomed for management at a FAANG currently. I have no doubt that I could move to being an executive or carve out a career in management if I want based on my track record.
While having better paper credentials help you earlier in your career, I'm a firm believer that the paper doesn't guarantee a successful career, and that there is no substitute for executing.
He went to University of Wisconsin which was #25 out of the top 25 schools. Because it was in the top 25, he claims he got many more lucrative offers at graduation from friends who were in schools that were just out of the top 25 but were just as if not more qualified.
There are two ways to look at this:
a. School prestige matters
b. Prestige doesn't mean you have to go to the #1 school
Personally, I find a to be a bit depressing in the sense that lots of factors outside your control influence where you go to school. However, b is very encouraging and a good reminder that there is always a "hack" that gets you the same result for less effort. (Or it's good to be "lazy" in the Perl sense of the word).
This story is interesting because it's the admissions system of the pedigreed education that lifts him up and gains him the necessary privilege credentials to open future doors. Despite having a lot of disadvantages along the way. Fortunately somewhere he learned to be immune to a lot of normal discouragements.
(Kind of the complement to "intersectionality"; how to discuss people who have an advantage on one axis but not on another?)
This is something that worries me, especially if you studied at a non-US uni. Would he have the same experience if he studied at one of the best Spanish/French unis? I'm not persuaded of the quality of the top US universities being that much higher to justify the insane costs (that is, from the perspective of a non-US person wanting to get to the US IT industry).
yup a lot of companies still require a degree with a good gpa as a bar for entry(even if you've passed the interview!)
the question is would you want to work for these companies anyways? the rigidity is usually representative of systemic issues that will result in employee unhappiness anyways. the bean counters don't care about you and factor in time to you leaving and design policies around that.
Well this was FANG (ebay uk role) but the hr gate keeper was based in Spain so I suspect even though my first job was on campus at world leading rnd Uni in the UK I got dropped.
The average HR person in Spain wouldn't have a clue about CIT and probably though I was a car mechanic.
Moving social class is very hard. I think the best bet is higher education, but today that is not a guarantee. This guy worked very hard, but I think it was mostly luck - his interest (computers) during the golden age. It might not have gone as well if he was interested in relative theory.
I think a lot of countries are like that, not just the US.
In the UK, a metric ton of politicians, financiers, business magnates, artists, you name it come from OxBridge. It's been like that since forever, but things are getting better.
In the country I grew up in (Scandinavian country), the vast majority of business people came from two different schools - even though we had two-digit amount of colleges and universities.
Some industries and firms still put a lot of weight on your pedigree - and will mostly hire from a select number of schools. But IMO, things are getting better.
Just about anyone has the ability to go to a top tier school provided they have the ability to manage there. Most have transfer programs with local schools with a few stipulations. For instance, you can go to a community college and transfer into the UC system.
My wife and I both came from impoverished backgrounds and went to community college/low-quality state schools and graduated from a top 10 computer science school.
RE: downvotes -- please tell me how I'm wrong? I'll happily give you a 3 year plan to get into a top tier engineering school given that you have a willingness to move.
The problem with a lot of these places isn't getting in (if you have enough perseverance or desire). The problem is getting through the work after you've gotten there.
1) Kids from poor / lower-working class families - compared to their peers "higher up" in the socioeconomic chain - simply do not know the importance of a good school. Further, they do not even know the jobs that will follow, or even require such an education.
Even regular college is a long-shot for many, and to them, college == college.
If you're a upper-middle class kid, with parents working as bankers and consultants, then I can promise you that they'll push you to aim high (academically). Hell, they'll probably plan your (academic) life long before you can walk or talk.
In fact, having educated parents seems to play an important role on the chances of your success. If you're poor, chances are that your parents don't even have a HS diploma.
2) Getting into a prestigious school isn't just about getting good grades - you need to show skills and drive far outside that scope. Lots of poor kids can not afford that luxury, like volunteering, getting GOOD at extracurricular activities (sports, instruments, etc.), etc. Some families _depend_ on their kids working after school.
When I grew up, I thought bankers where the people/tellers you actually saw behind the counter. I had never heard of consultant. Silicon Valley SW devs? Had no idea.
None of my parents went to college - they worked menial factory jobs, and we lived out in rural nowhere. 10% of my HS class went to college, and in that case, a no-name rural state college. No big companies _ever_ came to career fairs, so we had zero exposure to them.
If by chance you were exposed to the world of Silicon Valley tech, New York banking, etc., you were told it was too late - that train had left the station before you even enrolled college.
For many of us, the absolute pinnacle of (professional) life was to become a local gov. worker, engineer at the local utility company, a store owner, farmer, or similar. Maybe a doctor if you were deemed very, very smart.
So even if you see some success stories here and there, they are so incredibly rare. Show me one poor (minority or not) kid on scholarship at HYPS, and I'll show you hundred others going absolutely nowhere.
> If you're a upper-middle class kid, with parents working as bankers and consultants, then I can promise you that they'll push you to aim high (academically). Hell, they'll probably plan your (academic) life long before you can walk or talk.
Can't upvote you enough for taking on this point, and wanted to specifically call this one out.
There will be lots of anecdata from people out there who have pushed entirely by themselves, but the data across the world shows that social mobility is limited as much by aspiration as it is by solely grades. It isn't solely parental (although most of the time it is), but also driven by the school environment.
If you're unlucky enough to be in a shit school, with shit teachers from primary to 6th form, and lack of support or knowledge of education and career paths at home, you're essentially fucked unless some stroke of luck comes out of somewhere.
For the most part, agreed. However, the parent comment suggests that this is due to the exclusivity of "elite education" rather than the cultural factors that are present during poverty which also reinforce that poverty.
Part of the problem with this narrative is that it makes it seem like these universities are unreachable bastions of the elite, and not things that a kid from a mining town could go to. These institutions are accessible, and part of changing cultural norms is changing this perception.
I remember my Mum saying that if we had stayed in Brum (Birmingham UK) they would have tried to pull strings to get me into king edward's one of my gradparents was a headmaster :-)
For non Uk people that's Tolkien's old school and regularly is ranking 1 or 2 in the Country.
How do you explain the cost of education in the modern world where the logistics of information are as cheap as never before? Any kid on the world could access material from the best teachers on the planet. So why keep this legacy system for education that is more and more based solely on prestige?
Sure, there is a chance for everybody. But why make it a chance that will certainly remain unfulfilled for a significant majority?
That's fairly irrelevant to my comment. The cost of achieving a 4 year education doesn't have to be high, either.
Let's assume we're talking about Georgia, a place with a low cost of living and access to a high quality engineering school.
Year 1: Work in the state, securing in-state tuition costs
Year 2+3: Go to Georgia Perimeter College (2 year tuition cost: $4600)
Year 4+5: Attend Georgia Institute of Technology on the transfer program (2 year tuition + fee cost: $12,400)
Total cost of tuition is now $17,000 over 4 years.
To get at your point about information logistics: nothing has ever been more useful in my life than being surrounded by intelligent people going through the same grueling process that you are, supporting each other and working together for the single point of trying to learn material and complete assignments under unreasonable deadlines.
There's also difference between access to the best instruction on the planet and having direct communication to some of the best instructors doing some of the most interesting work on the planet.
> trying to learn material and complete assignments under unreasonable deadlines.
Oh, come on, people tend to survive university.
I am thinking of models for educational institutions here, not golf clubs.
Of course the environment is important but that is not an argument for artificial exclusivity and if only in context of the material given.
Pay for the direct line if you wish to do so since information is more widely available today, the difference between formal and "guerilla" education will get smaller.
And there should be a vast economic interest to decrease this distance. With the exception of business interests of universities of course.
I work for a big 4 tech company and I've never had tasks as unreasonably paced as the ones I had in school. Admittedly I went to the school reported to have the worst work life balance in the country while I was there.
The environment isn't important, it's the deciding factor in the quality of your education. A good environment with the right curriculum is the single most effective way to learn a difficult subject, develop the habits that help you learn, and have the conversations that lead to retention.
There is a vast economic interest to decrease the distance here. You have a ton of eLearning resources at your disposal. They just don't work as well for most people.
Like it or not, the main cost of university is not from education or from helping graduates find jobs. It's true that anyone with an internet connection can access course material from top universities and from top professors. But only a university can get you a community, a network, a signal: you may call that prestige; society doesn't care.
I would also like to mention that the UC system is one of the more open, impactful universities when compared to the privates.
> How do you explain the cost of education in the modern world where the logistics of information are as cheap as never before? Any kid on the world could access material from the best teachers on the planet. So why keep this legacy system for education that is more and more based solely on prestige?
That's probably because reading/watching materials isn't everything what education is or what brings its value. Just the fact that the system manages to get 8-18 year olds to read those materials and learn them makes a start difference, not to mention allows access to mentors and peers doing the same thing.
You could have automated gamification of education without the overpriced manuals and professors. There's just a strong monetary pressure to not have that.
I don't know about that. I had pretty OK grades in high school (2nd in my class, got a community college degree while I was doing it..but so did everyone else) but only managed a SAT (1500/1600) that could only get me into local schools in-state. Without having a compelling personal narrative I think getting into the elite schools is difficult.
That's true, but compounding returns are real in careers as well. That's my concern, at least.
I think there's a pretty significant outcomes difference in terms of social class in the top of the class at my school and the top of the class at say UWashington or UWaterloo
I don’t think they compound too much in our industry. It might take you a few years longer to get into a fang or decacorn but after that you’re on an even playing field.
> For a long while it was common for me to start the work day at 5 AM and end around 11:30 PM. I don’t eat breakfast or lunch — don’t want to waste the hours when I could be working.
For you or the culture. If someone said this about gambling or drinking or hopping on one foot everyone would clearly recognize there was a problem. Work as an unalloyed good is a dangerous puritanical belief, like most other puritanical beliefs.
That's what I've gathered too; I've been doing IF for a couple of weeks now, and my diet consists of one meal a day that I try to keep between 1k and 1.5k calories. My only refined sugar intake is two biscuits a day (46kcal each) after dinner, and my vitamin C comes from either a kiwifruit or an orange.
So, if I consume 2,500 cal per day at breakfast, fast the rest of the day, and keep my weight steady, then consuming 2,500 cal at supper instead of at breakfast will cause me to build fat reserves.
It seems to me that, as a corollary, I can consume 2,000 cal at supper instead of 2,500 at breakfast and still hold my fat reserves steady. The calories from supper are used with greater efficiency.
So, given that I can choose freely how many calories to consume at any time, aren't calories consumed later in the day actually _better_ on a lot of dimensions?
Also, the breakfast depicted in that article looks delicious.
>In two years as VP of Engineering at Reddit he grew the engineering team from 35 to 170 and led the major initiative to redesign and re-architect the 13-year-old site.
>led the major initiative to redesign and re-architect the 13-year-old site.
The redesign that everyone, including me, hates with a passion? I continuously have to revert to the old design, the new design is horrible.
Is it just me or did UIs just start getting worse at some point? I just take it for granted that every redesign will somehow reduce features while increasing clutter.
Reddit was minimal and I could safely browse it during down time at work without too much suspicion, that's also what I like about Hacker News, the new design is hard to conceal at work.
> Long story short is that in the Maryland-DC area they have what are called magnet schools, and if you can pass a test sort of like the SAT, they will let you leave your current school zone and bus to a better one. Whether or not you think that’s a good or bad idea, or fair or unfair, it is what I had and it was a way out.
Standardized testing gets a lot of flak for being too rigid or biased, but I think its rigidity serves an important purpose. You may be living in an unjust society, but if you can score X on this test, you will get Y. There's plenty of information on the test as well as resources anyone can use to score well enough (online, public library or school library). It's an easier sell to many disadvantaged groups and present a clear way out, whether it be a magnet school or university.
> You may be living in an unjust society, but if you can score X on this test, you will get Y.
In an unusual society, those who are disadvantaged will also be disadvantaged on this test if it becomes important enough to predict one's future prospects. Think private tutoring, specialized schools, summer camps, all focused on teaching you to get a good score on the test, and all expensive as ever (ie inaccessible). And now, your education system develops you for the test, not for life or jobs.
It's an easier sell, but it's a lemon and not a well designed and performant product.
His comment on magnet schools is interesting... Different areas must implement it differently. In south Florida magnet schools isn't just for smart people. High schools specialize in medical, engineering, law etc. and you can apply for those. I went to one that had the International Baccalaureate program which is suppose to be for the "smart" kids and had academic requirements. Unlike Nick, who went from a poor mostly black high school to a mostly white... The IB program was in a mostly black, and poor high school.
The same template was used for a few other schools, till the rich white schools wanted a piece of the "smart" kids and got their own program. Now the IB schools at the black schools floundering and are suffering (I think mine closed down)
Although most of my classes were different from the rest of the school, I shared some classes and of course extracurricular activities. The IB program gave me a more diverse education due to being around a population of people I woukd never be around.
I have a similar experience to yours, as I went to an IB Magnet school in Central Florida. I believe in Florida at least, they purposefully put the magnet schools in the poorer districts, as a way of allowing the local disadvantaged youth to excel in school, and give them the best education possible in their district.
They also then bus in the kids from elsewhere in the greater district who purposefully chose the magnet school due to the IB program, as another way of helping these same disadvantaged kids. I'm not sure quite how effective it is, but I understand the logic.
I’ve worked with Nick at PowerBI. He was hard working, mega ambitious but still down to earth. He deserves his success as much as anyone.
But then again this is America and we love struggle pr0n. Tons of people work 16 hour days in and out that don’t get the same success. The survivor bias is real.
Great read and a bit sad too. The Ray Rogers part sounds almost like a movie scene. It's hard when you lose interest in your childhood friends because you don't have anything in common with them anymore.
I agree with you. Maybe this is not the proper place to express this view because it looks like a personal attack, but the engineering team of reddit seems to be very, very subpar. Downtime almost every day, extremely long page generation times... Maybe they should review their hiring processes.
Any Reddit employees in this thread? I need help with my account that I have had for 7 years and can't get back because of an internal issue. Please leave your contact info so I can get in touch.
