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The top rated answer though is pretty priceless. The easy way to over come the experience requirement, is to put in the time. But the relevant response is that when you don't know what you don't know, you're not nearly as effective as you think you are. I remember being so depressed at Intel one day when I figured out I was tons smarter than this senior engineer I was working with but I didn't have a shot at his job until I had more experience.

I advise folks, don't rush, breathe, look around you, learn. And then apply all that. But recognize its very hard.

Generally the advice here to just apply is solid too. If the skill set matches I and any other hiring manager will give you a look. And experience comes even when it isn't 'paid' so doing projects in your spare time is also a great tool.




Was your story supposed to conclude with "then I got his job and realized how hard it was" or were you really smarter?


Lol, no I didn't stay long enough at Intel to qualify. They had hired me as a hardware guy, but between board bring up from a hardware perspective and a software perspective I found I generally liked the software work better and so moved on to Sun Microsystems.

I did however come to appreciate that even though things are "obviously easy" on the surface there could be mitigating factors which made that not true. My favorite example was 'give all the source code rights and IP to RPC/XDR to a standards body so that they can standardize it' (which I tried to do with the IETF in Amsterdam in 1993. Easy right? No so much. Not when other people don't want that to happen. So not a technical issue.


Chuck's the real deal. ;)


The top rated answer main point is also funny as well. It reminds me of my town. They are more than willing to vote for more services and while also more than willing to pay less taxes. In the short term, it's a party but in the long term it's a disaster waiting to happen.

People want everything for free. Or in this case, people want all the success without any of the failures which lead to that success.




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