And to think I've been cooking for barely over minimum wage because I don't have/can't get a degree. Cool

@torbuntu Pluralsight.

I also scored highly on the Triplebyte exam but I'm waiting for the technical interview results before posting those results.

I have an high school degree in arts and in two years I architect solutions and get paid 4 times the minimum wage. Don't low ball yourself

College is overrated (and costly)

@bartmr it's just a matter of finding an employer that values the same things I do. I'm working on it.

@bartmr extremely. Trade school was an immensely better investment. Aside from highly practical skills I use regularly, it paid for itself typically within the year, not decades later.

I understand some people learn best in that environment, and that's totally okay. But we really need to move to a system where it's about proving knowledge regardless of how you got there. Not about how much money you had to throw at a particular school, especially when admission scandles keep happening.

@pk76 I blame the parents and our friends. In my friend's group, I was the "most probable to go work as a cashier" and my mom wanted to kick me out of my house. I make twice as much as her and she has a masters... and my friends... well, a lot of them had to leave the country. People can say that theory today is essential, but it all comes down to people skills and over-delivering when doing your job. #millenials

Isn’t this pluralsight ?? I love that site

@rantytee Yup!

@pk76 Professional opinion on pluralsight? Is it worth it? My company is potential looking to pay for subscriptions, if that doesn't happen may look at purchase it myself.

@BobbyTables as opposed to my unprofessional opinion?

It's good. Content is well structured. Not sure what language/stack/platform you focus on, but at least for me it covers the subject area well.

Granted I'm more interested in the skills assessments than anything, but education is always good.

You don't need a degree to get a programming job, especially in this market. I just checked the top 5 postings on my go-to job site and only one of the five even mentions a degree. Most job postings that do list a degree will say "degree or equivalent experience", or are listing wishlist items and would be happy to hire someone with no degree if they were otherwise a good fit.

@HollowKitty tell that to the amount of times I've been told that's the reason why they're passing me over during/after an interview.

@pk76 Ehhh. That's the reason they think they rejected you. I would bet the actual reason they rejected you is because they thought you were too much of a risk. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" and degrees are an easy way for a hiring manager to prove they "bought IBM" wrt their hires, but not the only way. Jobs, Zuckerberg and Gates were all dropouts, but if they'd applied to the jobs you've been applying to they'd be hired in a heartbeat, because they were "IBM" for a different reason. If you really can't get a degree (even in another country?) you need to find another way to make yourself seem like a safe hire, or find a way to get in the good graces of some hiring managers willing to take a risk on you. Being a significant contributor to a significant open source project would be a way to do #1 and moving to a tech hub and going to meetups to "network" might be a way to do #2. There are lots of working devs out there without degrees and the market is as good as it gets rn.

@HollowKitty I'm pretty sure they know more about why they think and feel the way they do than some random person on the internet with no relations.

@pk76 Okay, be salty and accept failure if you choose. The fact still remains that I've worked with many successful developers who have no degree, and I've also participated in many hiring committees where most of the people hiring have no real clue what they want and are derping around into walls and hiring based on feelings. You not having a degree may be part of the reason and the most obvious reason, which is why that's what they told you. That doesn't remove the fact that other people without degrees are getting hired, often at the same companies that reject people with that same reason.

@HollowKitty you're going real strong with thinking you know things about people you can't possibly know. I've been building up an even bigger portfolio, I've been proving my skills in both skills assessments and certifications. I've hardly accepted failure.

I just don't think it's appropriate to assume you know better about other people than they know about themselves. For example, I'm not gonna make claims about you and those others devs. It'd be weird for me to say something like "you think you had good experiences with them, but..."

@pk76 The advice I gave was not intended to be an attack on you or the work you've done so far. It was intended to give you some tips on how to hack the hiring system. Things from the hiring side don't look the same as things from the being-hired side. A lot of people look at job ads and take feedback from job interviews as if they were absolute rules handed down from god and I can tell you with certainty, for most companies THEY ARE NOT. For some companies they are, and if you were looking to hire on at one specific company then your arguments about me not knowing them personally would make sense. But if you can't find ANY programming job then understanding how the industry works in general would be helpful to you, if you chose to listen. The people writing jobs ads and running interviews are just people. They can make mistakes and they can make exceptions. They write bad job ads and run bad interviews and you can work around both issues if you know how.

@HollowKitty moving to some major tech hub isn't exactly easy to do. Property values around those areas are brutally high. Well beyond what I can do at the income I can get.

@pk76 Ugh I know, especially for the major-est tech hubs. SV is a shitshow. Minimum wage people can't even afford to live inside the city at all and junior developers are living crammed up like sardines in shitty apartments. I saw a docu lately about kids in SV living in what were effectively programmer bunkhouses. Free wifi and you get your own TV in your bunk, but no real privacy and it costs as much as a full studio apartment in any sane city. By tech hub I mean something a little less hub-y but still with a tech community. Somewhere you can move to and survive while you look for that dev job, but where there are actually tech meetups you can go to and meet people who are employed doing work, who would be interested in hiring you if you developed skills in areas that match what they need. I live in Canada and there are at least a few cities in each province that have this.

@HollowKitty well my plan as it stands right now was to finish up the Triplebyte stuff and see how that works out, and gradually work into my own software company, since I've got at least a few things I can B2B, and got one for general consumption coming soon.

@pk76 That works too. I never was enough of a salesperson to make the self-employed thing work for me and I admire those who have that mix of sales and technical ability. It is honestly worth a lot more than a crap degree.

@HollowKitty I do in a limited capacity. I can do B2B decently since I can sell on technical/financial merits. General sales makes no sense to me. I just can't wrap my head around how people buy based on a sense of community around a brand, or how the product will effect their self image.

It's enough to start on. Should probably do some cold calls Monday.