Title + I already have two degrees from social science fields, but sadly I'm not diverse enough/too white to actually break into upper echelon jobs, or even entry level non-profit positions. Essentially I can grind it out for twenty years and hope to hit 80k in 2040, or I could just realize I'm gonna switch up my career and go into something profitable. Right now, I've gotten job offers from organizations, mostly government, in the low 40s high 30s. I've done some simple coding in the past, but realized two things.
I'm not really able to grasp topics on my own outside of a classroom environment if I'm not addicted to the material, like I am to policy and politics. I'm not looking to be babied but simultaneously recognize the need for some form of structure and obligation format for the basics. Overall, it's been pretty overwhelming for me.
I get a thrill off of building things, and enjoy my accomplishments, and sometimes the process when it comes to the basic stuff. Overall, I find coding interesting, but I'm not an neurodivergent r-slur who thinks in cs terms naturally.
Does anyone have any comments or advice? I'm only applying, will prob make a more committed decision in March when I hear back from other government positions.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I found little of what I learned in college applied to the actual job. If ur gonna get a degree for your resume do it cheap. Maybe that will be different if you haven't coded as a past time before. For actual work like experience do personal projects. Game dev if you cant think of anything else to do. And then contribute to some open source project. Put the open source contributions on your resume and then get good at leetcode if you want to tryhard for a job at a major high paying company or dont if ur fine making less at some unknown company.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Yeah, I was working on a personal project and it dawned on me I just didn't have the ability to comprehend most of what I was seeing by myself. At first I leaned on some friends, but I realized that was bothersome to them. Took up a lot of their time and I was being inconsiderate.
So overall, yes I can do it for cheap, and I have some ideas for personal projects. I appreciate your advice.
If you have any other suggestions or things you learned on your journey, please share. :)
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
At my level the majority of my job is bug fixing/adding features to existing large codebases. Once you have some knowledge I highly suggest doing some new person friendly work on open source github projects. That's very similar to the actual job experience.
Also get a decent level of competence with one language so if you need to do something you always can. But learn others too. And make sure you are familiar with very different languages so you don't get overwhelmed when switching from C++ to python for example. It is very likely you will be expected to quickly pick up new languages and cowtools on the fly.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context