povertyworld

Well, if people are really concerned about this they could always trying hiring American developers with 0-3 years experience, and giving a chance to developers without STEM degrees, or degrees at all. This article still reinforces the idea that elite degrees are the only way to judge "talent".

I think the real reason programming interviews have become torturous is to discourage people from changing jobs. It's a kind of unspoken anti-poaching agreement.

That sounded bad. If programming becomes illegal, I'll focus on graphic design. Short of a bolshevik style coup, they won't be able to ban that in the United States.

Programming is the last decent job that doesn't have a bunch of artificial barriers to entry put up to protect privileged people from competition from the industrious poor. The day I need a license from the government to own a compiler is the day I check out of this life.

It's amazing what a living wage job will do for people.

Is there any other industry where people have to put up with this nonsense from hiring managers? You'd think a $100k javascript job was a partner at Goldman Sachs the way these guys talk about it.

I think you're confusing Udemy with Udacity. I think this confusion is common, and probably not helping Udacity much.

Woah, where are they selling these $12 tech books? I just blew like 50$ on Manning's half-off sale ordering prerelease books. There was nothing below $40.

By behavior I mean not doing the class work.

Anecdata, but this was my experience. I have a November birthday, and the school district in Massachusetts gave my parents the option of having me start a year younger than everyone or wait a year. My parents opted to send me to school a year earlier. I performed poorly, and at one point was labeled with ADHD. On the standardized tests they gave in 6th grade I scored at the 12th grade level, so I don't think my problems were cognitive as much as behavioral. Also, in high school having some peers who have been held back a grade being 15 years old while one is just turning 13 can lead to some rather unpleasant physical bullying. I often wonder how those early experiences may have limited my life.

I was so tempted to send that article to my mom, but I didn't know how she would take it.

I'm no longer interested in a paid developer role.

No.

I think the point of Udacity, or at least why I did Udacity, is to get some kind of credential to get past HR gatekeepers (which did not work). I didn't do it to learn. I already taught myself Swift and iOS, and I'm sure I could have taught myself Android too, but I wanted some kind of credential, and I can't afford to get another degree.

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.

I did the Android nanodegree, and have never had so much as an interview. I think people's success after Udacity is largely determined by their educational background before Udacity. For example, the article is ambiguous about whether the student finished his computer engineering degree at university or not. I have a non-STEM degree.

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.

That's because undocumented workers live in undocumented housing which is to say illegally subdivided dwellings that people who aren't part of that community will not have access to even if they wanted to live in a fire trap.

>in 3 years, you can: Learn TensorFlow. Publish an AI paper. Beat state of the art on a few datasets.

As a low income indie dev without the academic credentials to get past HR gatekeepers for stable full time work, I can't help but feel studying ML is about as wishful as creating a hit game. I have started studying ML this summer, and although I find the NLP applications really interesting since I have a social science background that exposed me to some literary theory and linguistic ideas that overlap with NLP at times, I think making a living wage doing it is just as much of an unrealistic dream as writing some killer app. The jobs all require PhDs, and the data science competitions have literary thousands of people with PhDs and industry experience competing for five figure prizes. When one is poor with no prospects these kind of pipe dreams feel so good to get caught up in as that sweet haze of hope numbs the critical thinking, but in a clear moment it looks like the ML gold rush is exactly the same as every other tech hype. That's not going to stop me from geeking out on PyTorch and trying to wring sentiment out of blocks of text or whatever, but I won't be able to honestly write a blog post about it in a few years asking if I wasted my time. I already know the answer.

I usually just skim HN for links, but I this article and had to make an account. I've been making about 15k a year about the last five years. I live in a major metropolitan area. The section I live in is finally getting hit hard and fast with gentrification, and it's terrifying. Right now I can ride a bike to work, but if I'm forced to move somewhere that I have to pay to commute, my job won't even make financial sense anymore. I don't see anyway out.

I did a bachelors in a social science at a cheap non-elite state school, so most people will say I deserve a life of crushing poverty. I suppose that's possible. I did try to make myself relevant to the economy by doing a coding bootcamp, and an associates in design, and put apps into the iOS and Android appstores. Of course I would have rather done a masters, but that is about as realistic as buying a house at this point.

Everyone says they can't find programmers, but I have yet to see one job that I meet the on-paper requirements to even apply to, and I'm willing to relocate anywhere in the country (obviously I can't afford property or a family) Even if I did get an interview I'm sure I won't do well answering trick questions about data structures on a white board anyways.

Other than the constant stress, being impoverished for so long has definitely given me a negative attitude. I know, you guys went through the same thing that time you had to sleep on your buddies couch after you finished your MBA at Stanford and Goldman Sachs didn't have an opening, but for some reason I'm just not handling it as well.

Anyway, I'm just going to keep writing apps and pushing them out to the appstore, and maybe one day one of them will make enough money to poke my head out above the poverty level. See you then.