Who here is an employed self-taught programmer?

I've been learning front end web and Java dev for a couple months. I started doing it as a way to pass the time but I'm really enjoying it now. Basically I never went to college and landed my jobs as a high speed production mechanic.

My job is in a factory and we're having layoffs since the company can't sell enough product. I'm looking for other work but none of the places I interview at pay a living wage and I have a family to support.

If I kept picking up programming skills over the next year, could I become employable as a junior developer and switch careers?

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>java

just kys already

Yes. Some of the greatest programmers didn't even finished college, take Steve Jobs as an example

Yes, it's totally possible. It took me about a year of working at it part-time to get to the point where I landed my first programming job.

Yes. I did. I was a useless depressed person who failed art school. I said fuck this, and downloaded a bunch of books on psychology, business, marketing, design, copywriting, writing in general and yes, programming. I had some very basic knowledge from highscool and I made a few hobby projects though the years, but nothing substantial.
I made myself a website, started uploading projects to github, got my LinkedIn in order. Notice that programming books weren't necessarily the most important. You need to get an understanding of some very basic business principles and know how to communicate through concise writing.
Anyway, I'm drunk, so ask if you want to know more.

3 guys in our office never finished college, I'm still in college but not for programming.

Those guys hopped on the frontend webdev train really early (as in 5+ years ago) as self thaughts and lots of companies in our city would sign them immediately because they have actual hands on experience.
Myself I started doing backend/infrastructure 3~ years ago and get a lot of offers too because apparently nobody else bothered at that time.

Guys from code camps/'learn to code in X months' like usually don't make it, they just spend too much time solving problems anyone with experience should already have solved multiple times.

Oh and in most serious companies literally nobody is looking for a 'full stack' guy.

Tldr: you CAN get employed, easily, but try to actually master things first

Yeah I did this.

I programmed for a long time as a hobby with various languages. Decided one day that I could get paid to do that after trying a bunch of other jobs that I didn't like.

Ended up focusing webdev since its most in demand, and on Javascript and Node.js. Spent a few months filling in the gaps in my knowledge. Made a resume that was saturated in tech buzzwords to bamboozle the non-technical recruiters... got a job after 6 weeks doing Node.js, even though most of the jobs advertised here are ASP and PHP.

Got paid more than I was expecting, got a decent raise after 1 year. Its going well.

If you want to know what kind of path to take in your learning I'd recommend this video
youtube.com/watch?v=sBzRwzY7G-k

I would highly recommend focusing on backend, because its way easier than frontend. Frontend complexity is just completely fucking retarded.

I am a self-taught programmer to some extent. Learned C in freshman year of college, but never finished and flunked out. I had no problems in that class, aced it and even helped out some bros who needed help understanding concepts in labs.

I work with PHP (Laravel Framework, CodeIgniter Framework), jQuery, Perl (yeah, I know).

I only make 40k a year though, so once I finish my projects, I'm updating my linkedin, start my own app (hopefully self sustaining to create some extra income even if it's beer/ammo/rent money), and then moving companies once I hit my two year mark.

Prior I was a helpdesk IT guy for like 2 years, so I love development much more. It's like a puzzle/challenge everyday.

Are there any self taught embedded programmers out there? I cant stand web dev.

>linkedln
Does that shit really works ? Do you get offers directly or it is just for meme credibility

>Made a resume that was saturated in tech buzzwords to bamboozle the non-technical recruiters.

Any tip on how to do that? I am a junior data scientist looking for a job but based on job requirements it is obvious that these are mostly written by faggots who don't know shit about data science.

It does work, I got more than one unsolicited offer through LinkedIn. Just never wait for it to work though, just keep on applying for jobs and spamming them cover letters and something should pop up eventually if you have the right skills (technical and human skills of course).

I have master's in economic. Year before graduation started programing. Year and half later got my first job as C# ASP.NET MVC developer.

Steve "poo in loo" Blowjob was just an ideas guy

>It does work [...] Just never wait for it to work though
>keep on applying for jobs and spamming them cover letters
I can't do that, I can't even add a friend of facebook (zero friends), too much anxiety and zero confidence and self esteem
>if you have the right technical skills
ok
>and human skills of course
I'm dead

I did my undergrad in economics and now I'm retraining, thanks for the hope.

Did you only used books ? Any other sources of info or paid courses maybe ?

>I can't do that, I can't even add a friend of facebook (zero friends), too much anxiety and zero confidence and self esteem

Stop crying about it and start working on fixing it. You can't do jack shit in the real world if you can't communicate effectively with people. Seek therapy, join classes, jog, lift weights, just do whatever it takes to conquer your fears. I mean, you can't out the problem to disappear on its own, right?

>seek therapy
I did, it helped a lot, best thing I ever did, had to stop because poor
>join classes
again poor, but there are some municipality-sponsored classes, so I may join them, I hope I will be able to talk to someone
>jog, lift weights
I'm too embarrassed to jog and too sad to work out alone
I don't even leave alone (again poor) and my parents don't let me do anything

Just make a giant "skills" section and fill it with every language, library, framework, tool and database you have ever messed around with, or which you could answer some basic questions on.

Don't blatantly lie, just be verbose and generous with what you put down. If you've messed with something for an evening in your bedroom it counts as "experience".

For webdev this is easy because you can't set up a Hello World project in the latest front-end meme framework without encountering at least a dozen buzzword-worthy tools and libraries that you can put on your resume.

When you get an interview with someone who knows what a computer is, just be honest if you don't know much about something, don't bullshit your way into a job that you can't do. And don't worry about fucking up, your resume should provide you with plenty more interviews because that's what its designed to do.

Just do calisthenics in your room, probably won't fix things but it will help. Great idea on the municipality-sponsored classes. There's no silver bullet for this shit, just doing things that will help you move in a positive direction whenever you can.

>I'm too embarrassed to jog and too sad to work out alone

Personal growth necessitates that you face your fears and endure discomfort. Or you choose to remain miserable, but comfortable.

For social anxiety and social skills, therapy is nice if you can afford it but there's shitloads of books and self-help on the internet that you can find PDFs or torrents for.

>poor
That is where the magic of the internet comes in my friend. Look for PDF books, but avoid the """motivation""" rubbish on youtube. Most of the advice they give is absolutely horrible (although you might find one or two good advices among the trash) .

>too sad to workout alone
Ahhhh, the classic mentality of "i have to do it with a friend (or gf) otherwise it is sad" get rid of that.

I used to be afraid of people until I realized that they have zero tangible effect on me. I mean if someone doesn't like the way I speak, so what? i tried and i lost nothing in the process. If someone doesn't like my looks, again, waht is the big deal? did i lose money? did i lose dignity? after all it is just a stranger.

You can make it man, best of luck with that!!!

>Just make a giant "skills" section and fill it with every language, library, framework, tool and database you have ever messed around with, or which you could answer some basic questions on.

I literally did that but I put the level of the skill I have so anything I missed with i put "Basic"(it is expected of you to put your knowledge level if you are applying for companies in Germany). I have shit like Python, SAS, SQL, CPLEX, all that shit. I also mention on my cover letter that I am a very quick learner and not afraid to venture into new areas. I mean in my CV i worked as a software tester, data scientist (for around six months in a government run institute) and as a translator and volunteer instructor and so on.
How are my chances user?

This works.

Say you know everything but know one thing well.

Most employers won't care if you're self-taught. Before applying for a job, learn a bit of an assembly language, 20-30 hours would be good. I recommend NASM because getting it setup is easy and the documentation on its website is decent enough. This will help you understand what is happening "under the hood."

Maybe pickup a good book about data structures and algorithms as well if you feel like you're inexperienced in this area.

Lastly, practice some common programming interview questions before going in for any interviews.

Good luck.

This.

Also
Wozniak>Jobs

>break leg in construction job
>get six months off /w half pay
>learn basic php
>hired before my injury leave was over
Not that hard, just requires you to make it happen. Tips:

>fuck social networks
>fuck job websites
>fuck physical books
>fuck code schools
>make baby's first landing page
>make github account
>make contact with other devs
>make friends with people who do business
>make love to your wife and have many children (seriously, I got hired because the guy liked the fact I have five kids)

>(it is expected of you to put your knowledge level if you are applying for companies in Germany)

That sucks. I just put "have experience with X", because I consider fucking around with it for an afternoon "experience"

>How are my chances user?

I don't know. I'm not a German recruiter. Just try and adjust as appropriate

I'm more interested if there are many programmers that make a decent living by just working alone, not remote work but just being their own boss? I suck at teamwork. Unfortunately, the market for freelancers seems terrible at the moment.

>If I kept picking up programming skills over the next year, could I become employable as a junior developer and switch careers?
Not with java, when your competition are 2$ per hour pajeets it doesn't matter how good you are because it's race to the bottom.

>Unfortunately, the market for freelancers seems terrible at the moment.

Probably because you're planning to rely on the race-to-the-bottom pajeet sites like Upwork.

If you want to be viable as a freelancer you have to make connections and find clients in the real world who value your services

> If you want to be viable as a freelancer you have to make connections and find clients in the real world who value your services

I've never been there but I heard enough complaints from decent programmers to know it's gone completely south for some time now.

bumping for interest

I like stories like this

I just start teaching myself last week

My method right now is
Free Code Camp for the basics and the projects, reading a textbook to supplement FCC, then refining my projects.
Is this pretty good or should I add something?

I'm an employed self taught linux systems engineer. Good money, work is fun, love it. Never went to uni.

Absolutely. Add lots of items in the skills section, get people (coworkers maybe) to endorse you for said skills, then wait as the job offers pile up. I've never applied for any job on LinkedIn yet I got around 20 job offers (and I made my profile a couple of months ago).

I was in the same boat. just force yourself to pick it up and after a year of suffering, you will be a normie

Any advice on building a network of clients? I think the best way to get in is find a remote wage slave job, gain some (((experience))) then transition into freelancing.

If they are they started 20 years ago

Today I would say it is almost impossible, but if you think you know your shit you can apply

The thing is, everyone asks Bachelor's degree for that kind of shit

t. webdev with no college who can't stand it and would love to get into embedded

>engineer

You are not an engineer if you don't have the degree, and by saying so you are shitting on people who worked their asses off to get the tittle.

Never understood why so many of you faggots want to program. I'm enjoying being a comfy network/firewall/systems admin for the last 10 years.

>I only make 40k a year though

Hell, I make 35K doing helpdesk. Shit's easy money.

What do you recommend that I focus on learning?

I'm using the Odin Project, it's a guide of what resources to study and not it's own program.

If I could go on disability for 6 months that would be perfect. I'm not working more than a couple days per week because of the layoffs, so I'm just outside of unemployment benefits.

Fuck off retard, no one cares about your worthless sheet of paper. I'm better than all my peers and many of my seniors without a degree, wipe your ass with it.

>pseudo-technician doing technician's work is buttblasted

Go figures

I'm not an engineer myself, though I do have some coworkers who calls themselves "Web Engineers", of course they are just webdev monkeys, it is really disgusting how nowadays everyone uses that word so loosely.

Tell me Linux """engineer""", what is it you do exactly? If your answer is any other than writing code for the kernel consider suicide (and even so you are an entitled little bitch to a tittle that doesn't belong to you).

I'm partially self-taught.

I've learned programming during highschool pretty much by myself as my prof was incompetent and avoided answering any programming questions besides the super basic stuff she was teaching by just reading the textbooks verbatim. I ended up going to lots of coding competitions. I did get some help though as my father is a programmer and while he didn't teach me per se( he didn't have much time), he often answered my questions. I went on to software dev college but they really didn't teach me much more in terms of programming, I had some good practice in programming classes and I learned some more advanced theoretical background and math, then I dropped out and found a job as a C++ programmer.

I think getting a junior programmer job and learning from people in the field while you also work on real software is the best way to learn programming. Just be sure to study some theoretical background as well.

Freelancing is viable but you need to actually have a good amount of experience and skill. You won't avoid communication though, you still need to coordinate with the client or in-house devs who also work on the project. Good freelancers are in demand because they lift a lot of burdens from employers that come with employing a person and in the end they end up cheaper than employees.

I dropped out of school (didnt even get bachelors), got an interview for junior embedded C tester with transition towards development, and even though I told them to the face in the interview that I've never so much as seen embedded and the only thing I knew that they used was C, they gave me an offer. (I ended up refusing)

Embedded programmers are relatively rare(since there are no pretty fancy websites or graphics) so the companies are often willing to train people so long as they seem passionate and eager to learn.

I'm not even the guy from the initial comment fuck nuts, just letting you know that just because you went to a university doesn't mean you know fuck all about anything. Some of the stupidest people I know are graduates.

That is irrelevant

You might be a genius and the one with the degree might be a retard (well, if he got there he isn't that stupid)

But he is an engineer and you are not, why deny the facts like this, who is the one obsessed about the tittle?

You know technically it is illegal to say you have a degree when you don't right? I hope you don't sign documents saying you are an engineer dear god.

For the second time, I'm not even that guy and literally never said I was an engineer. I see that degree of yours is really helping your basic comprehension of the English language.

>evading the argument

Nice one! When I say "you" I mean everyone who calls themselves something they are not, out of their ridiculous sense of entitlement.

My degree is just fine thank you, I'm fine saying I'm a technician and I don't need to call myself an engineer even if I'm doing the same work as one.

Though everyone knows 90% of today's systems engineers actually do technical jobs, like sysadmin shit or webdev shit.

>who is the one obsessed about the tittle
Clearly you, since you're the one arguing semantics over something so trivial.
The autism here is unreal

We're all gunna make it brah.
>I'm not working more than a couple days per week because of the layoffs, so I'm just outside of unemployment benefits.
That's plenty of time to learn and make connections. As I said, it's about going and doing what you know you should be doing. Get yourself a pen and a nice big planner/calendar. Jot down a brief outline of what you want, start filling in the step to get there, then schedule when you can realistically accomplish them one by one. You'll find it seems impossible when you first write it all down, but by the time you're knocking out the first few steps it starts to come into focus. Before you realize it, you're making sense of everything and meeting people who can make that goal happen.

In any event, the one thing I have to reiterate is just DO something. If you live in the first world, you've got a social saftey net to catch you when you fail. Don't live your life terrified on being on the streets. People who aren't insane and don't have serious drug and alcohol abuse problems don't end up homeless. People married with kids definitely don't end up on the streets without major substance abuse problems. There are programs, charities, and people out there willing to lend a hand if you fall so be brave and take a chance.

Has anybody here used Colt Steeles web dev boot camp off of Udemy? I got it for 12 buckaroos

Possibly a stupid question.
Can someone not particularly smart or computing-oriented learn this way?

>he thinks you need intelligence to code
Ultimately, many people in compsci are repeating the same menial tasks over and over again
Intelligence helps, especially with bugs and errors, but if you devote the time you'll be able to secure a decent job.
If all else fails there's always data entry.

Computer-orientation is like riding a bike. You pick up the rote motions and muscle memory over time. General intelligence is a problem, but only if you're sub-90 IQ, in which case you probably need a manual labor job.

>he fell for the student debt meme

>program bots for Runescape as a hobby on and off for ~3 years
>drop out of college
>make buzzword soup resume
>get hired at some meme company doing meme-tier garbage because they're too cheap to pay anyone else

I make 45k a year to write code in BASIC and C#. Once my one-year mark is passed, I'm jumping ship so I can make ACTUAL money, with an even more buzzword-soup resume.
A lot of being good at your job is to make what you're doing sound complicated even if it isn't. As long as nobody can comprehend it, you'll be fine.

>I was a useless depressed person who failed art school. I said fuck this, and downloaded a bunch of books on psychology
This could have turned out very differently. If only computer programming was an option for Hitler.

I'm self taught and employed. Spent about two years learning in my spare time, you could do it faster.
Do CS50X and Freecodecamp and you'll be hirable. You just need to have a firm understanding of syntax and make a few projects. Show your best project off at interviews. Put it on your resume.

This is also true of Bill Gates, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, and countless others.

>Oh and in most serious companies literally nobody is looking for a 'full stack' guy.
They are, they just gave up looking for them randomly and just find contractors instead.

Those guys are literally "to smart to go to college" tier.

Free code camp is good. Once you finish the front end track I'd go ahead and do CS50X.

Bootcamp trainer here

If coding clicks for you, you can get the skills to be competitive in three months of study and practice. Otherwise it could take 4-6. This is assuming you know nothing to start with.

The bigger problem will be getting interviews. If you're not already in a place with lots of entry-level tech jobs, moving from or with your family for greener pastures can be rough.

Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey aren't. Gates is a fucking wizard but those guys are pretty normie

Yeah getting someone to actually give you a chance isn't going to be easy. But if you're persistent and willing to take a pay cut for a year or two while you do your time and get experience, you can do it.

Yes, it's really good, not a meme. Especially the later half.

>t assmad CS professor.
What's wrong do the SJWs not sign up for your class? Logic is racist after all. I can learn more with youtube in a month then a year in your shitty class.

Recipe for finding a programming job without experience.
>Find an open source Java project on github of value
>Build a project using it
>Find issues
>Correct issues
>Contribute correction back to project
>Get contribution accepted
>Accelerate contributions while keeping quality of contributions high
>Maintainers realize you don't suck
>Grant you commit privileges
>Apply for jobs
>Experienced open source developer
>Committer on $well_known_project

I'm just putting the user in his place because he is saying he is something he is not.

Imagine if anyone could just say that is a self-taught surgeon and practice, we would all be lost.

>living in a country where he has to pay for university

lmao, must suck to be American

>projecting this hard
>using the word 'racist' in something not related to race

Where did the CS professor touch you?

It doesn't matter your knowledge, you can just be a guy who knows a lot, but if you don't have a tittle don't call yourself something you are not.

Go back to

I was semi-NEET for many years. One day some user on Sup Forums said that I could get an dev job using personal projects as experience. I was kind of doubtful, but since I've got nothing to lose, I tried it anyway. I was kind of surprised I got hired.

Learn elastic search and apply there, they hire remote, don't care about age, pay like $100k to start, all Java stack. They also hire for customer support and pay like $80k or so just for that (all remote positions).

Java is prob the best lang to learn if you want a job right now, because every single big corp still uses Java due to Junit testing built in ect. Front end dev is a nightmare of complexity unless you're using Typescript.

To switch careers you find somewhere you want to work that has open sourced their shit like say, Elastic Search. Then you squash bugs there for a while until graduating to writing features (For free of course). Do that enough and eventually they will recruit you for a job.

If anybody here wants to learn Software Development (not CompSci), then do this (it's free, you only pay for cert if you want one) edx.org/micromasters/software-development You start with scheme, graduate to Java, then after OOP junk you learn Typescript which is actually not a bad functional way to write front end garbage.

If anybody wants to learn real CS, as in you don't care about "industry" bullshit and want to know theory, you follow something like this: functionalcs.github.io/curriculum/

Whew lad, thanks for the info.

Anybody know any remote jobs for entry level front end devs? I don't really mind the pay tbqh

Does it have to be webdev?
I'm super interested in C++
Could I get employed if I become "proficient" at C++ for lack of better term since I know it's a mess. Or would I need more languages in my toolset?

i can't say i'm self-taught. i bullshitted my way into my first (exceptionally shitty) job and people have been cool and helped me out along the way.

t. php / python webdev, making ~90k

weworkremotely
jobspresso
remoteok
google those.

also post yourself on the 'Who wants to be hired' thread on Hacker News every month.

If you just want to make $35/usd hour and punch in and out like a factory worker whenever you want learn wordpress, there's a shitload, SHITLOAD of paying jobs for wordpress still, all of it remote, can go live in Thailand on the beach and make $35/hr.

Look up web assembly

Because you're now a webdev whether you like it or not, since you can write binaries in C++ and they get fed through the browser. Seriously, try it out write some shitty game or something and post it to "Show HN" on Hacker News you'll get job offers. Otherwise people who hire for C++ are Faceberg, any bitcoin/blockchain startup or coinbase, video game companies, microsoft ect.

I do something similar, where nobody seems to know how the fuck to write a proper job description, so I made a tiered system for how I describe the skills I have: one word for stuff I learned in school, one word for stuff I learned on my own and haven't applied, one word for stuff I learned on my own and have used in small projects for myself or tested out using on small projects at work, and one word for stuff that I've used frequently for projects at work. I go through job postings and reword my resume to match the things they're looking for with the appropriate word.

When you get a real data guy, who is used to looking for patterns all the time, reading your resume, he'll probably ask what the differences are in the interview.

if you can learn C++ good enough to do anything useful, you can figure out all the other shit people use in a few days.

Me. Worked on some fortune 100 companies already. I just learn everything in a austistic way. (That is, obsessively)

Name five who were 18 or older after 2005.

What language(s)?