The least-effort strategy, and the one I used for my current job, is to talk to recruiting firms. They have access to job openings that are not announced publically, and they have strong financial incentives to get you hired. The usual structure, at least for those I’ve worked with, is that the prospective employee pays nothing, while the employer pays some fraction of a year’s salary for a successful hire, where success is defined by lasting longer than some duration.
(I’ve been involved in hiring at the company I work for, and most of the candidates fail the first interview on a question of comparable difficulty to fizzbuzz. I think the problem is that there are some unteachable intrinsic talents necessary for programming, and many people irrevocably commit to getting comp sci degrees before discovering that they can’t be taught to program.)
I think the problem is that there are some unteachable intrinsic talents necessary for programming, and many people irrevocably commit to getting comp sci degrees before discovering that they can’t be taught to program.
I think there are failure modes from the curiosity-stopping anti-epistemology cluster, that allow you to fail to learn indefinitely, because you don’t recognize what you need to learn, and so never manage to actually learn that. With right approach anyone who is not seriously stupid could be taught (but it might take lots of time and effort, so often not worth it).
Formal credentials certainly help, but I wouldn’t say they’re required, as long as you have something (such as a completed project) to prove you have skills.
The least-effort strategy, and the one I used for my current job, is to talk to recruiting firms. They have access to job openings that are not announced publically, and they have strong financial incentives to get you hired. The usual structure, at least for those I’ve worked with, is that the prospective employee pays nothing, while the employer pays some fraction of a year’s salary for a successful hire, where success is defined by lasting longer than some duration.
(I’ve been involved in hiring at the company I work for, and most of the candidates fail the first interview on a question of comparable difficulty to fizzbuzz. I think the problem is that there are some unteachable intrinsic talents necessary for programming, and many people irrevocably commit to getting comp sci degrees before discovering that they can’t be taught to program.)
I think there are failure modes from the curiosity-stopping anti-epistemology cluster, that allow you to fail to learn indefinitely, because you don’t recognize what you need to learn, and so never manage to actually learn that. With right approach anyone who is not seriously stupid could be taught (but it might take lots of time and effort, so often not worth it).
Do recruiting firms require that you have formal programming credentials?
Formal credentials certainly help, but I wouldn’t say they’re required, as long as you have something (such as a completed project) to prove you have skills.