Two Years, Four Nanodegree Programs, and a New Career
blog.udacity.com
blog.udacity.com
I took the 9-month Self-Driving Car Nanodegree and managed to find a job in the AV industry right before graduating.
I found the ND worth every penny because they broke down really dense topics that you’d usually need to be in a MS program at CMU or Stanford to undertake. Now I’m leading AV development at my current employer!
Like any course or degree, they can’t cover everything. That’s ok though, because you’ve learned enough to continue learning by reading current academic papers. You must be motivated though.
There’s a lot of nay-sayers on HN. I’d encourage you to ignore their excuses for not completing their ND. Usually these people don’t have enough grit or motivation to do something hard. If you really want it...you’ll work hard and persevere to get it.
On the other hand, seeing comments from people who dropped out of nanodegrees makes me consider that maybe it's a little more difficult than it seems. Moreover, the job market for mobile is just bad. It's either six figure rockstar, or unemployment. I think doing one of the javascript ones might have produced better job prospects.
At this point, I'm resigned to indie development while I work a part time non-tech non-profit job to make rent. Currently working on a MacOS desktop app that might make a few bucks, but probably not.
Regarding the education comment...I’m going to disagree with you there. Employers don’t care where you went to school. They care about what you’ve done in the past (doesn’t matter if it’s at work or on the side) and what you can bring to the table. I had to compete with people with PhDs for my current AV job but I got the job because of the whole package of skills that I bring rather than theoretical knowledge in a single niche topic.
This depends on the employer. Google is notorious for not only caring about your school, but your GPA. Also as someone who has looked at hundreds, if not thousands, of resumes over the years - the reality is you very quickly start to look for any sort of signal and schools are definitely something some (I would guess most) consider.
Do I think it's unfair? Sure. But recruiters simply do not have the time to look into every applicant with any sort of detail.
This part is non-trivial, is it? Coming up with a new kind of app idea (which is useful, not just shows 3 twirling balls or something) is not easy.
And doing the millionth todo app or something is not the same.
You'd look for established people and their works from your domain and copy them to study their methods, their style. Figure out and differentiate the core from the frills. Tweak, mix, combine, jam and fuse what you've learnt.
Then you'd merge your favorite styles together to create your own, novel work. Repeat enough times and you have a solid portfolio.
Unfortunately, the programming world is crippled with 'get rich quick' apps/websites/products.
Most newbie programmers believe that unless they have a novel idea, they cannot and should not build an app or a website. That attitude sucks the life and joy out of learning anything including programming.
I strongly urge you to copy, steal and be inspired by as many apps and websites as you can before going for novelty.
What you will learn in the process far outweighs any commercial success that you can hope for.
Good luck.
Am intrigued by your comment, as my interpretation of what you want and what you're doing seem to be at odds with each other.
My assumption is you want to get a paid developer role, whereas your side project seems to be satisfying personal curiosity (otherwise, you'd definitely already have an answer to the question of whether your Mac app would make a few bucks). The latter is immensely important in its own right, but quite likely won't solve the first problem itself (again, if it were to, you'd have a surer answer to whether it was likely to make money or not).
I flamed out of university without a degree at all, but put myself in places to get a CMO role (which I ultimately hated, but still...) at a startup because I aligned my side projects with what I wanted from my career rather than just things I wanted to build. It's a hard choice, but it's one that probably has to be made.
Also, your nanodegree looks to be unused as-is, with little link to the work you're currently doing (sure, it's an app, but Android/mobile to MacOS/desktop is about as far as you can stretch the "app" link) - how are you framing it with employers?
That said, you do have to adopt a non standard route to getting a job from a nanodegree. You can't apply like average graduates; you have to network, hustle, and build up a stronger portfolio than your graduate peers
According to the OP's LinkedIn profile, he started his undergrad in Computer Engineering in 2015, started doing Udacity courses in 2017, and expects to complete his degree in 2020.
No it's not. There's explicitly a part of the article that asks if he was able to get a job without a degree. He does not have one.
> Currently working on a MacOS desktop app that might make a few bucks, but probably not.
Why not make your side project a javascript oriented one? Two birds with one stone.
> And I’m actually still attending my university online, to finish my Bachelor’s. I’ve stayed enrolled the whole time.
I’d recommend reading the papers from the DARPA 2007 challenge. https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783642039904
Pro-tip: You can google each chapter title and find PDFs for free.
They also provide you with a lot of different perspectives from a practical system design level.
the less we use this as a verb, the less the next generation will use it.
and cheers on your nanodegree. i've finished 2 myself.
Also is it worth doing The self driving degree if you’re unable to move to Silicon Valley? I mean is it worth trying to get into that industry if you can’t move to a tech hub?
The typical path into this industry is to start at a big supplier ('tier 1' in automotive parlance) like Bosch, Continental, Valeo, Delphi etc. If you are half competent, you can get yourself poached by a car manufacturer after a couple of years. You can go the HN dream path and work for a tiny Silly Valley startup in the hopes of getting equity or getting acqui-hired down the line, but that will mean far less compensation and longer hours in exchange for a tiny chance of winning the startup lottery. Though TBH at this point the handful of winners are pretty much established and the almost 100 other startups in the AD field in the Bay Area are almost definitely not going to succeed.
Good luck :-)
My sister was also battling cancer so this made it even more difficult from a time and emotional standpoint.
- the videos are not lectures; they're short, scripted segments. While the production is polished, I found the format irritating. I much prefer actual recorded lectures like the many wonderful (and free) ones available from MIT
- the programming assignments were not challenging. I didn't really feel like I gained anything from them.
You know all of those videos are optional? You can just skip the intermediary assignments if they are too easy, and go right to the final project in each section, which is the only part that is graded anyways. Also, the last project is a portfolio piece of your own design, so you can make it as hard as you want as long as it meets certain criteria.
Were you able to switch jobs/careers at all eventually?
I was in the first cohort of the front-end nanodegree, and I also took the full-stack shortly after. I'm pretty shocked by this statement. For me, the vast majority of learning happened by implementing the topics that were discussed in the short videos. Given that the videos are very brief summaries of the topics you're meant to implement in the projects, It's pretty odd you gained nothing from doing them. Did you know the material before starting the nanodegree? If so, I'd argue the fault is on you for choosing a curriculum meant for beginners whilst being intermediate or above. Otherwise you're a very rare person for being able to learn more from watching videos and reading articles than by actually practicing what is taught.
That said, the fault is not his. Shitty udacity never ever mentions they are for beginners. They sell it as "career changing". So blame is on them.
A large portion of learning material (feels like >95%) caters to beginner or junior level people. Very rarely do you find books or tutorials or material meant for those beyond the junior level.
Even the "advanced" or "intermediate" videos on places like Pluralsight, Lynda, etc feel like it's barely a step above beginner. I don't have much experience with Udacity but I'm guessing it's the same?
It seems, IME, like the only way to learn the intimate/advanced knowledge is to talk to core developers or others who have a similar problem domain.
One simply has to muster up the motivation and effort to seek them out.
Honestly the best way to improve, IMO, is to just start participating and contributing.
"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."
-- Confucius
It feels like for every C# in Depth or YDKJS there's 100s of other resources strictly for the beginner. It's just hard to sift through 100s or 1000s of resources before you find something worthwhile.
after that, you have better honed long tail search queries for online.
It felt like a connect the dots drawing - giving an ipython notebook with pieces of code missing.
I understand the need to prevent people from spending money they can't afford on a degree they can't get, but personally think a weeder class would be a much more fair way to go about doing that filtering.. make me pass a few really hard classes before signing up for the degree program.
It isn't Udadity's responsibility to force people through a system. Rather, they set a bar (payment) for some resources and then allow anyone who wants to use their material to do so.
This isn't a classical university/college setup, where success of the institution is marked by how many people graduate.
I'm not quite sure how we could evaluate their system, though, as these kinds of large-scale course offerings with low barriers to entry are a newish phenomena.
I know this one is in the Udacity site itself, but I've seen similar posts in other websites. Maybe they're actively advertising it via viral blog posts?
They all offer to generate fluff pieces in fluff piece blogs (also without official branding) and SEO the heck out of them.
...if only community colleges and branch campuses of state universities had VC marketing cash, we would hear these uplifting stories on the daily.
Udacity is pay by nanodegree. Coursera is pay by month.
It was a great deal then.