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What were (or are) your initial thoughts about the technology/software development industry?

Laura Weatherhead on December 09, 2018

“It’s all men.” “You need a technical degree before you can even knock on the door.” “Everybody is really clever.” I’m curious... how do we, ...
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Laura Weatherhead

I asked my mum a couple of questions - purely out of curiosity - and was rather surprised by the answers... as a yardstick, Mum is not technical and not part of the industry, and I asked:
What do you think about the technical industries?
A: “They are quite insular - it seems like you need a certain set of training or skills to get in. The industry also seems quite aloof; like they are privy to a lot of information that no one else really know about and they are proud of it.”
How does that compare to similar industries that require certain skills and have a lot of information eg doctors and lawyers?
A: “With doctors and lawyers they are generally public facing - you can go to an office and talk to them and hold them to account. You don’t really get that with technical companies. I don’t even know who I’d talk to”
I guess I’d never really thought of it like that before...

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Laura Weatherhead

Yeah that’s interesting about the job titles - you’re right that there’s not really accepted benchmarks for when you transition from one level to another, it all seems to be down to individual companies and confidence.

I guess also because info tech is still a moderately young industry and essentially generating new branches every year we’re prone to slightly off the wall job titles. Titles that don’t mean a great deal but are fun like “SysAdmin Wizard” and “Network Guru”. Cute but somewhat meaningless to anyone outside the industry!

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Anna Rankin

I grew up with a software engineer for a dad, but only personally began pursuing programming several years ago. Because he worked for himself from home for most of my life, I assumed than programming was a much more solitary pursuit that I find it to be (I never saw the email lists/chats he was involved in, and dismissed his meetups with peers as "nerd conventions"). I though there was only one way to be a programmer; I also assumed you had to be ridiculously mathematically smart, speak/read binary, and understand a lot more about hardware than I've needed to.

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Laura Weatherhead

Haha - quite similar to me. My Dad was a software engineer and even now in his 70s will occasionally try to grapple with jQuery or C# or some fad that's floating around. I think when you love code, jobs may change but that love never really goes away :)

also assumed you had to be ridiculously mathematically smart, speak/read binary

I really enjoy the mental picture this paints of a development stand-ups!! I mean, I think it might sound barely more comprehensible at times haha

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dumdumdev

I believed I could learn a lot faster how to build a site. I mean I knew that the learn to code in 5 minute sites were bull but I thought just a little code and I would be golden.
Every step I realized I needed to learn something else to get to where I wanted.

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Max Ong Zong Bao

Hmmm.. these are some of the rules I can think of at the top of my head when I first started out.

1) I need to know everything in a job description to apply for a job.
Which is really a large portion of technologies that you need to learn as a developer.

2) I must be a genius developer to be a software developer professionally.
Which till this day, leaves me with the chills down my spine that I almost didn't pursue a developer job straight after university.

3) I need experience for an entry-level job
This is actually a catch 22, cause I had come across multiple entry-level jobs.

Which requires you to have from 2 - 5 years of experience. This practice is really insane and ridiculous that sometimes I wonder how out of touch are the person recruiting developers.

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Yury

I thought it'd be easier. Less talking to people, more clear requirements so all I'd have to think about is technology and algorithms