Ask HN: Late-bloomer engineers, when and how did you discover programming?

Re:Ask HN: Late-bloomer engineers, when and how did you disc... by sua3000 on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @08:02PM (#22951475)

I got a degree in public relations and took a job doing tech sales at a Series A company. I was the 6th employee. The product was pretty unstable so I taught myself to code to improve their QA infra.(basically writing automated tests). I went on to build product for them.

Now I work as a SWE at FANG (not Amazon).

I definitely remember feeling like you did before I joined my first big company, but fortunately it's working out. Happy to answer any q's you might have along the way.

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Re:Ask HN: Late-bloomer engineers, when and how did you disc... by weakfish on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @09:23PM (#22951921)

Thanks! Do you have any recommendations for types or scope of personal projects? I see the advice to build stuff a lot but never what or how much. I’m specifically interested in security and systems, NOT front end web dev which is what most guides and stuff are geared towards.

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Re:Ask HN: Late-bloomer engineers, when and how did you disc... by sua3000 on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @09:33PM (#22951972)

> Do you have any recommendations for types or scope of personal projects?

you're in a really great place to teach yourself because colleges will generally have hands-on, free help. Beyond that I would say get projects that people or business need - you'll be way more incentivized to learn. An internship with a small startup where you work for cheap would be a really great starting place. It's a tradeoff - cheap labor for them if they're willing to help teach you.

For security & systems, look for backendy, devops, or rel-eng. opportunities. You'll quickly learn a lot.

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Re:Ask HN: Late-bloomer engineers, when and how did you disc... by teachrdan on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @08:10PM (#22951522)

Why is it important that you're not at Amazon? Because they'd be biased against engineers with your background?

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