I don’t think you failed, you just haven’t found the groove you fit into yet. In college I made a similar series of missteps and even found myself sitting alone at a Dunkin’ Donuts outside at 3 AM when a drunk guy came up and harassed me with his terrible app ideas.
I had no friends at the time and that was halfway through my college career. Things only went uphill from there. Well, not really because they went momentarily downhill as well. But overall it has been positive.
Keep working at finding your fit, and flesh out that portfolio with at least one finished project.
University is kind of soul sucking, and not a great meter for real world success.
But do put in the work to find a friend group. They don't have to all love programming. Pick up a sport or hobby and use that as your social bridge if need be.
You've not failed. You're 22. You probably know as much as any graduate does.
There are companies out there who don't put a lot of emphasis on a degree. A degree is a good filter, but that's it. You have good programmers with a degree and you have people who really make you wonder how they got a degree.
I'd recommend not exclusively looking for jobs through job seeking websites but instead email directly as an enquiry. Just say upfront that you don't have a degree, you know how to code and you're looking for a junior position to get the professional experience and learn from your peers.
Write this up in a cover letter and send it with your CV.
Don't focus on the glamorous tech jobs, they seem nice, but there's just as many interesting challenges to solve in many other companies. And remember, this is just a career starter.
Why would you say upfront that you don't have a degree? That's not wise IMO. If they ask, sure, don't lie. But better avoid that question and sell yourself without focusing on issues. And when you're sold, got work offer, now they won't really care.
Because their job posting say they want you to have a degree. Applying for a job and just ignoring that requirement and making a remark like "yoU dIdN't ask!" in the interview is as good as lying in a lot of people's eyes. They asked in the job posting.
Honesty is the best policy. If they are willing to interview you with that knowledge up front then you're more than halfway there.
Agree with this. I’ve hired hundreds of software engineers and I don’t give a flying flip where you went to school or even if you got a degree. What I do care about is whether or not you can do the job, and that comes from actually doing the job (whether you’ve been paid to or have pursued your own projects). Most new grads are totally useless TBH. I’ll take a GitHub showing you’re passionate about building and a solid interview over a robot with a degree nine times out of ten.
Almost no one failed at 22; failing that young can basically only mean you are in jail for 20+ years or with a needle under a bridge. All the other 'failing' will be a faint memory in 10 years, if you remember it at all (besides from posting this blog post, which, personally, I would remove).
Hey, when I was 22 I had a laptop which I had taken in exchange for work which I hadn't delivered due to my poor work habits, an honours program that I'd dropped out of, no money, no one successful project I could point at, and some experience in a computer shop and the helpdesk on campus as my entire work experience.
Once the shop that had provided the laptop threatened to repossess the laptop I finally got off my backside and delivered the project for them (an online directory of lawyers written in PHP, would you believe - in 1999).
At 22 is definitely the best time to fail! If you've learned skill that will make you valuable somewhere, then you definitely haven't failed for ever.
P.S. do come back and post about your success in 20 years, and let the next 22 year old "failure" know that failure at 22 isn't that big a deal even if it feels like it right now.
I am agree with ironmagma. Everything has just started. A long journey is waiting for you.
For me a bachelor degree is so easy but keeping the passion in programming like you is very hard.
So keep your passion, keep going with clear plan. You are able to achieve your goal.
Good luck :)
It's only failure when you give up, I see this blog post as a part of your success story that you'll laugh over some years later. You're only 22.
The 8 years of tinkering experience you have puts you ahead most, if not all, devs who started in college.
Do some side projects to completion (google for ideas; but things like to-do lists, unsolicited redevelopments of some existing apps/games, etc) and pick a stack to focus on. Work on it every day.
If you do that, I'm sure you'll get a job within 6-12mo, and I don't see the harm in staying with your parents for that time. Good luck!
I don't know anyone who wants a job for its own sake. Maybe there are some people desperate to eat and so will think a job is essential but what you really want is freedom. Money facilitates that freedom and a job is the poorest way to get it so don't feel bad that you had fun coding.
* Maybe there are some people desperate to eat and so will think a job is essential
Maybe? I feel like this describes virtually every living human being. Only the most fortunate of the most fortunate have the luxury of not struggling for survival.
Depends how you define the most fortunate. It seems to me like if you are disciplined enough to work for a while and be frugal while you do it, no matter how smart you might be, you can save a month of living expenses for every month you work - at least. So you might work 5 years then get 5 years of freedom, and that's at the lowest level. The most fortunate might work for a year and get 3+ years of freedom
Picking an arts degree wasn't you first mistake. It was a consequence of earlier mistakes.
Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn. I'm sure if you did a 100 Intro to Programming course you'd breeze through it but programming != CS.
The worst thing you can do in college, at a job or even in life is to go into a situation thinking you have nothing to learn. That's just a recipe for being in exactly the same place 10 years from now. Do you really think your professors, your future colleagues or even your fellow students have nothing to teach you?
Even if they don't, you're alienating and isolating yourself by dismissing other people so flippantly. That alone will deny you mentors and friends.
I can't speak to what you do now because so much of this depends on circumstances eg where you live, what your financial situation is, etc. But 22 years old is not by any measure too late to turn things around. You may have to make some uncomfortable choices (eg working a shitty help desk job while studying part time) but the only limit here is whatever mental barricades you erect for yourself.
> Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn.
I made this exact mistake at 17/18 and even had a very similar line of thinking as OP, but my decision was not to go to school at all.
I ended up in the industry a few years later, but have had a mostly crippled career. It was unfortunately drilled in my head around the time that people were handing out six figure salaries to anyone who could remotely program regardless of education.
Being self taught doesn't have to cripple your career. I'm self taught and doing reasonably well, and there's another guy I worked with a few years ago who's also self taught and studied music in college who's now an engineer at Facebook making I don't know how many zillions of dollars. Looking at LinkedIn just now, I discovered that another self taught engineer I know, who doesn't even have a high school diploma, is now working at Netflix.
In a sense, we're all fortunate that we lucked into a career in an industry that de-emphasizes credentials in favor of knowledge, ability, and track record.
You’re right, the “crippled” career part was as much due to other circumstances at the time, but a certain benefits of the degree program could have still helped alleviate those issues.
> In a sense, we're all fortunate that we lucked into a career in an industry that de-emphasizes credentials in favor of knowledge, ability, and track record.
Agreed, though I think there are costs to this as well, but most people probably will never worry about them.
You can still get a degree. I know someone who went tot law school at age 50, and back when I was in school I roomed with someone who was 35 self taught programmer who came back to study.
Technically yes, but it will be made significantly more difficult and more expensive that going at the culturally acceptable time and a lot of the value with fade overtime. I’ve tried to go back and I’m not even particularly old.
> Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn.
Thousand times this. I'm 33, programming since 8, working in the industry since 18, and can confidently call myself at least a senior, with a lot of leadership experience. And yet, I routinely go through CS courses from Stanford, MIT and CMU on YouTube (intro to databases by Andy Pavlo right now), and really envy people who have got to go learn at those institutions.
There's a lot of knowledge to be gained by doing projects and tutorials and working. But there's so much "hard CS" stuff that is just not that easy to learn on your own.
I'm 41, been coding since I was 10, working since I was 17. I've been at the top of my specialisation as a developer. I absolutely love coding but am finally moving away (coding is not the most valuable use of my time - however much I enjoy it).
I learn something every day. Try to read a paper a month (although it's more like 4 a year nowadays). I still regularly read books and like the OP go through courses from the top unis.
Unlike OP: I've had no trouble learning on my own (thanks to the amazing courses available online). Actually, I do a lot better. Sure, I hit roadblocks - but surpassing those roadblocks is where I learn the most.
Maybe it helps that I started on the 8-bits and spent a couple of years in my 20's studying for a BSc in CS (partially via the Open University, but mainly by reading/practise/Coursera/MIT).
The problem here is metacognitive skills: knowing what you don't know.
The parents are right: "Parents went ugly, they said I was a careless, stupid, ignorant boy. I know they are not right." Acknowledging that is the first step. The second step is understanding that's true of most 22-year-olds. Age 0-12, you worship your parents. Age 13-19, ego really grows. You rebel, and do the opposite of what your parents want since you believe you know better. Early twenties is when you start to understand that you are, indeed, a careless, stupid, ignorant boy, and start to take advice from others. That's growing up in a nutshell.
Most of the more successful people I know get really good at taking advice from others, putting ego aside, filtering advice (not all of it is good!), and keeping an open mind. The executive version of that is delegating, and knowing whom to delegate to.
Constantly shifting focus is 100% standard for that age, and it's a fine way to grow. People at that age also really do mimic (usually stupid) role models. The "I want to be the cool computer wiz without a degree" is completely standard (only insert "rock musician" "soldier" "goth" etc). It's how your brain is wired.
I know this sounds like dime store psychoanalysis, but it's helpful to know you're not alone, and it's just how people are wired.
A few thoughts:
1) A CS degree should not be easy. If you're where you think you are, you can test out of the freshman CS courses. If you're a hotshot, you can start with a graduate-level class on sublinear-time algorithms or something. More likely, you can start with junior and senior classes. Those foundations are important, though.
2) Getting good at math is important. Social sciences degree was a mistake.
3) At 22, optimize for growth, not for profits. Profits can come later. There is an order of magnitude difference between a principal at Google and an entry-level coder. You don't get there incrementally.
4) There's plenty of part-time work, contract work, etc. available if you hunt around. A good path might be work half-time and school half-time. Both grow you in different ways.
5) It sounds like you have a good foundation to get wherever you're going. It doesn't feel like it, but you're on the right track.
> Do you really think your professors, your future colleagues or even your fellow students have nothing to teach you?
This is so important. When looking for a job, make sure you're not the smartest/most knowledgable person there. Seek out an environment with people who know more than you, at least in some fields.
Another big thing (at least for me) is to always challenge yourself. Work on stuff you don't know how to do in advance, things that require you to learn new skills. I find I get bored and burn out quickly if my work is just doing the thing, instead of figuring out how to do the thing.
> you really think your professors, your future colleagues or even your fellow students have nothing to teach you?
I really like this.
I mean, it happens often that I learn something from colleagues who have less experience that me just because while they searching for a correct way to do something ( which I already know ) they find interesting logically based solutions that maybe are not the best, but bring with them experience of some function or logic that I do not know
Failing is part of an interesting life. Obviously, it sucks at the time, but you gain a lot out of it. Read atomic habits and don't be hard on yourself.
Advice from fellow college grad: stick to whatever you find less irritating. In last 6 years I've jumped from Android development to ML to backend on Elixir. You got it!
Man I feel this guy. After my past startup failed I just have not had the energy to find any work and its been almost two years. No math/algo experience, seems like everyone and their mother can build shit with react. The only industry I find interesting is simracing (simulated racing) and I'm trying to find some sort of "in" in this industry, or any motorsports. Applied to some formula1 web development jobs, red bull etc, but no luck.
OP I like the ending of your post, 22 is young and you have no failed yet. I'm 28 and "failed" but I am also still young so there is hope.
I started on a computer science degree when I was 28. Graduated at 30, had several job offers before the end of my last year.
It was tough to go through those 3 years working part-time while trying to keep up with a high load of university assignments, but at the same time, I never learned so much in my life and had fun while doing it, met lots of incredible people and campus life was pretty nice.
But now, all that is just a distant memory and I am just thankful to myself to have had the energy to do what I needed to find myself in a better position, and today I am happily working for over a decade in the software industry and could probably move anywhere I wanted, but am very happy where I am.
Hope this motivates you as you seem to be in a similar position I was in 15 or so years ago.
Thanks. I don't think motivation is what I need, I have it in droves, I think my wires are just fried right now with no way to recharge, it is tough to do anything.
I am thinking of doing a mechanical engineering degree but it is rough to have worked 15 years in the startup industry with nothing to show for it, all equity turned to dust, opportunity cost etc. Could have had a house and a family at this point.
Good luck in your journey, it's great you finished and so quickly too!
I was incredibly close to being you. I was close to getting into Arts but my dad smacked sense into me (don’t regret it. Turns out you can paint after work.)
I work with people similar so my advice (take it with a grain of salt) is (if you can’t go back to get your degree or get into a bootcamp) is to just start building something. Go work at an early stage start up which is absolutely desperate for some hands. Write articles, blogs, cultivate a personal brand. And be nice to yourself: you’re still incredibly young. There’s so much time you have left to choose your destiny.
I feel the same way sometimes. I'm just about to finish Uni and I feel like I haven't really learnt anything over the last 4 years. I've worked on projects that I feel demonstrate I know what I'm doing more than most people in my year, however all employers are looking for is a perfect GPA and not what you've actually produced. I want to make my own business but I just don't know where to start.
> I'm just about to finish Uni and I feel like I haven't really learnt anything over the last 4 years. I've worked on projects that I feel demonstrate I know what I'm doing more than most people in my year
Lol I’ve done a little over 4 years in the industry and feel like this.
This is not a failure. This is just someone seeing a small slice of their life and having some disappointment.
I have a different but parallel story - in college, I got a degree in fine arts. I studied philosophy. And I worked in the computer labs to keep a small skill set in tech. And it worked out just great - after college, I started working full-time in tech. At 22, I was not a hugely successful software engineer. Quite the contrary, I could not code a single line. I was doing deskside support at a hospital. This was not a failure, it was a beginning.
Because at 49, I've been a software engineer for over 20 years, done startups and large company work, mostly successfully. There have been more successful years in the software world than the number of years I had even been alive at 22.
22 is a starting point, not a missed goal. No matter where you are at 22, most of your adult life is ahead of you.
I’m 59, and I still learn new stuff, every day. It’s difficult, humbling, time-consuming, and often frustrating.
And more exciting than I ever imagined.
Also, I’m a high school dropout with a GED. I ran a pretty intense engineering team, for one of the top imaging corporations in the world. I had Ph.Ds on my team, and regularly worked with some of the top engineers and scientists in the world (and wanted to strangle some of them).
I actually feel like I’m just getting started, now.
Which toxic world have we built that let people think that tinkering, exploring different facade of life, and not being able to find a programming job at 22 is called failing?
The glorification of 400k packages right after graduation, of founders becoming paper billionaires before they have their first gray hair, the lack of representation of various software dev career paths... All this (and more) is giving an unrealistic and fake vision of what we do and become as software engineers.
Many of us here like to look down on what social media does to the life of teenagers, creating insecurities and disturbing development, but we’re doing the same exact thing in our industry.
The last sentence in the post gives a glimpse of hope, but the general tone resonates with something I’ve heard too many times around me. Life is short, yes, YOLO if you want, but no, not being a top software dev at 22 is not “having failed”.
22 years old is young man. I don’t know how many bad decisions I’ve made at that age
You’re not failing, that’s just consequences of repeated bad decisions.
Software engineers never stop learning, so it’s a mistake thinking there’s nothing else to learn in colleague. There’s a reason why reputable universities have try to structure curriculums and subjects to earn that degree. Many people said that you don’t need uni, but there’s a reason why we (human) created education system, evolve, and try to get better for hundreds of years
With that said, many other software engineers doesn’t have a degree as well. Go finish up cool personal projects, work as junior SE, enhance your skill, and climb the way up
Enjoy the drill my friend. It’ll be fun and hard at the same time
Ah, man, kid, try being 43 with a Github profile full of half-finished repos.
You haven't failed. Part of what's pathetic about the tech industry and culture, and why I've mostly bowed out of it, is that it makes you feel like you're a failure at 22. Christ, even rock singers get until they're 30 to feel that way.
You're fine, man. You just need to decide what you really want. If that means being a coder, it's easy - figure out the framework du jour, learn it, get paid to build stuff with it. You'll probably be able to keep up for about another fifteen years before you realize you have no idea what the hell this new thing is that all the 22 year olds are clamoring about that runs entirely contrary to every good habit you've ever learned. (Say, separation of code and presentation - I'm looking at you, JSX. )
But you can do a lot in fifteen years. My advice is to have something else after you age out of tech, though, which you're nowhere near doing yet. Me, I'm a writer and musician, and though neither pay as well as they used to, it's still something to do other than my part time Node coding day job.
You got this, man. Sky's the limit. Just be smart about your choices, because that time moves much faster than you would ever believe. Nobody believes that until it happens to them, but nonetheless, it's true. Make the most of these days.
And for God's sake, don't spend all of your best physical years sitting behind a laptop. There are hot singles in your area, my dude. Go find some. Life is too short and this industry does not love you the way you think it will. Find a person to do that instead.
Tangent, but JSX is a templating language, and templating languages don’t dictate whether your presentation logic is well separated. You can write well-stratified React code or poorly-stratified React code, the difference is whether you choose to separate it that way. For example, see the S convention in styled-components.
Conversely, you can have terrible Django templates that contain all your controller logic.
this was a really good post. youre not going to get the top job at google, but you can make a lot of money by just getting good at one backend language + sql.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadI had no friends at the time and that was halfway through my college career. Things only went uphill from there. Well, not really because they went momentarily downhill as well. But overall it has been positive.
Keep working at finding your fit, and flesh out that portfolio with at least one finished project.
Happy to chat, pc.peterso at the Mail of G
But do put in the work to find a friend group. They don't have to all love programming. Pick up a sport or hobby and use that as your social bridge if need be.
There are companies out there who don't put a lot of emphasis on a degree. A degree is a good filter, but that's it. You have good programmers with a degree and you have people who really make you wonder how they got a degree.
I'd recommend not exclusively looking for jobs through job seeking websites but instead email directly as an enquiry. Just say upfront that you don't have a degree, you know how to code and you're looking for a junior position to get the professional experience and learn from your peers.
Write this up in a cover letter and send it with your CV.
Don't focus on the glamorous tech jobs, they seem nice, but there's just as many interesting challenges to solve in many other companies. And remember, this is just a career starter.
Honesty is the best policy. If they are willing to interview you with that knowledge up front then you're more than halfway there.
Does not sound like it:
> They were right in a way, all these years all I was doing was having fun, I wasn't prepared for a job.
You did not fail: you just started trying things.
Once the shop that had provided the laptop threatened to repossess the laptop I finally got off my backside and delivered the project for them (an online directory of lawyers written in PHP, would you believe - in 1999).
At 22 is definitely the best time to fail! If you've learned skill that will make you valuable somewhere, then you definitely haven't failed for ever.
P.S. do come back and post about your success in 20 years, and let the next 22 year old "failure" know that failure at 22 isn't that big a deal even if it feels like it right now.
You're so young. You can still get your degree in CS. I'm near 40 and I'm just now writing my bachelor thesis.
The 8 years of tinkering experience you have puts you ahead most, if not all, devs who started in college.
Do some side projects to completion (google for ideas; but things like to-do lists, unsolicited redevelopments of some existing apps/games, etc) and pick a stack to focus on. Work on it every day.
If you do that, I'm sure you'll get a job within 6-12mo, and I don't see the harm in staying with your parents for that time. Good luck!
Maybe? I feel like this describes virtually every living human being. Only the most fortunate of the most fortunate have the luxury of not struggling for survival.
Your mistake was thinking you could go into, say, a CS degree and have nothing to learn. I'm sure if you did a 100 Intro to Programming course you'd breeze through it but programming != CS.
The worst thing you can do in college, at a job or even in life is to go into a situation thinking you have nothing to learn. That's just a recipe for being in exactly the same place 10 years from now. Do you really think your professors, your future colleagues or even your fellow students have nothing to teach you?
Even if they don't, you're alienating and isolating yourself by dismissing other people so flippantly. That alone will deny you mentors and friends.
I can't speak to what you do now because so much of this depends on circumstances eg where you live, what your financial situation is, etc. But 22 years old is not by any measure too late to turn things around. You may have to make some uncomfortable choices (eg working a shitty help desk job while studying part time) but the only limit here is whatever mental barricades you erect for yourself.
I made this exact mistake at 17/18 and even had a very similar line of thinking as OP, but my decision was not to go to school at all.
I ended up in the industry a few years later, but have had a mostly crippled career. It was unfortunately drilled in my head around the time that people were handing out six figure salaries to anyone who could remotely program regardless of education.
In a sense, we're all fortunate that we lucked into a career in an industry that de-emphasizes credentials in favor of knowledge, ability, and track record.
> In a sense, we're all fortunate that we lucked into a career in an industry that de-emphasizes credentials in favor of knowledge, ability, and track record.
Agreed, though I think there are costs to this as well, but most people probably will never worry about them.
Thousand times this. I'm 33, programming since 8, working in the industry since 18, and can confidently call myself at least a senior, with a lot of leadership experience. And yet, I routinely go through CS courses from Stanford, MIT and CMU on YouTube (intro to databases by Andy Pavlo right now), and really envy people who have got to go learn at those institutions.
There's a lot of knowledge to be gained by doing projects and tutorials and working. But there's so much "hard CS" stuff that is just not that easy to learn on your own.
More generally, (at least) two things obtain for the serious IT practitioner:
- One never graduates from being a student of the subject, even after the 'I Love Me' wall is fully covered in diplomae.
- One always lives in a glass house, even if Duff's Device makes sense at a glance.
I learn something every day. Try to read a paper a month (although it's more like 4 a year nowadays). I still regularly read books and like the OP go through courses from the top unis.
Unlike OP: I've had no trouble learning on my own (thanks to the amazing courses available online). Actually, I do a lot better. Sure, I hit roadblocks - but surpassing those roadblocks is where I learn the most.
Maybe it helps that I started on the 8-bits and spent a couple of years in my 20's studying for a BSc in CS (partially via the Open University, but mainly by reading/practise/Coursera/MIT).
The problem here is metacognitive skills: knowing what you don't know.
The parents are right: "Parents went ugly, they said I was a careless, stupid, ignorant boy. I know they are not right." Acknowledging that is the first step. The second step is understanding that's true of most 22-year-olds. Age 0-12, you worship your parents. Age 13-19, ego really grows. You rebel, and do the opposite of what your parents want since you believe you know better. Early twenties is when you start to understand that you are, indeed, a careless, stupid, ignorant boy, and start to take advice from others. That's growing up in a nutshell.
Most of the more successful people I know get really good at taking advice from others, putting ego aside, filtering advice (not all of it is good!), and keeping an open mind. The executive version of that is delegating, and knowing whom to delegate to.
Constantly shifting focus is 100% standard for that age, and it's a fine way to grow. People at that age also really do mimic (usually stupid) role models. The "I want to be the cool computer wiz without a degree" is completely standard (only insert "rock musician" "soldier" "goth" etc). It's how your brain is wired.
I know this sounds like dime store psychoanalysis, but it's helpful to know you're not alone, and it's just how people are wired.
A few thoughts:
1) A CS degree should not be easy. If you're where you think you are, you can test out of the freshman CS courses. If you're a hotshot, you can start with a graduate-level class on sublinear-time algorithms or something. More likely, you can start with junior and senior classes. Those foundations are important, though.
2) Getting good at math is important. Social sciences degree was a mistake.
3) At 22, optimize for growth, not for profits. Profits can come later. There is an order of magnitude difference between a principal at Google and an entry-level coder. You don't get there incrementally.
4) There's plenty of part-time work, contract work, etc. available if you hunt around. A good path might be work half-time and school half-time. Both grow you in different ways.
5) It sounds like you have a good foundation to get wherever you're going. It doesn't feel like it, but you're on the right track.
This is so important. When looking for a job, make sure you're not the smartest/most knowledgable person there. Seek out an environment with people who know more than you, at least in some fields.
Another big thing (at least for me) is to always challenge yourself. Work on stuff you don't know how to do in advance, things that require you to learn new skills. I find I get bored and burn out quickly if my work is just doing the thing, instead of figuring out how to do the thing.
I really like this. I mean, it happens often that I learn something from colleagues who have less experience that me just because while they searching for a correct way to do something ( which I already know ) they find interesting logically based solutions that maybe are not the best, but bring with them experience of some function or logic that I do not know
OP I like the ending of your post, 22 is young and you have no failed yet. I'm 28 and "failed" but I am also still young so there is hope.
It was tough to go through those 3 years working part-time while trying to keep up with a high load of university assignments, but at the same time, I never learned so much in my life and had fun while doing it, met lots of incredible people and campus life was pretty nice.
But now, all that is just a distant memory and I am just thankful to myself to have had the energy to do what I needed to find myself in a better position, and today I am happily working for over a decade in the software industry and could probably move anywhere I wanted, but am very happy where I am.
Hope this motivates you as you seem to be in a similar position I was in 15 or so years ago.
I am thinking of doing a mechanical engineering degree but it is rough to have worked 15 years in the startup industry with nothing to show for it, all equity turned to dust, opportunity cost etc. Could have had a house and a family at this point.
Good luck in your journey, it's great you finished and so quickly too!
I work with people similar so my advice (take it with a grain of salt) is (if you can’t go back to get your degree or get into a bootcamp) is to just start building something. Go work at an early stage start up which is absolutely desperate for some hands. Write articles, blogs, cultivate a personal brand. And be nice to yourself: you’re still incredibly young. There’s so much time you have left to choose your destiny.
Lol I’ve done a little over 4 years in the industry and feel like this.
I have a different but parallel story - in college, I got a degree in fine arts. I studied philosophy. And I worked in the computer labs to keep a small skill set in tech. And it worked out just great - after college, I started working full-time in tech. At 22, I was not a hugely successful software engineer. Quite the contrary, I could not code a single line. I was doing deskside support at a hospital. This was not a failure, it was a beginning.
Because at 49, I've been a software engineer for over 20 years, done startups and large company work, mostly successfully. There have been more successful years in the software world than the number of years I had even been alive at 22.
22 is a starting point, not a missed goal. No matter where you are at 22, most of your adult life is ahead of you.
And more exciting than I ever imagined.
Also, I’m a high school dropout with a GED. I ran a pretty intense engineering team, for one of the top imaging corporations in the world. I had Ph.Ds on my team, and regularly worked with some of the top engineers and scientists in the world (and wanted to strangle some of them).
I actually feel like I’m just getting started, now.
The glorification of 400k packages right after graduation, of founders becoming paper billionaires before they have their first gray hair, the lack of representation of various software dev career paths... All this (and more) is giving an unrealistic and fake vision of what we do and become as software engineers.
Many of us here like to look down on what social media does to the life of teenagers, creating insecurities and disturbing development, but we’re doing the same exact thing in our industry.
The last sentence in the post gives a glimpse of hope, but the general tone resonates with something I’ve heard too many times around me. Life is short, yes, YOLO if you want, but no, not being a top software dev at 22 is not “having failed”.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLt_yDvdeLQ&ab_channel=TEDxT...
You’re not failing, that’s just consequences of repeated bad decisions.
Software engineers never stop learning, so it’s a mistake thinking there’s nothing else to learn in colleague. There’s a reason why reputable universities have try to structure curriculums and subjects to earn that degree. Many people said that you don’t need uni, but there’s a reason why we (human) created education system, evolve, and try to get better for hundreds of years
With that said, many other software engineers doesn’t have a degree as well. Go finish up cool personal projects, work as junior SE, enhance your skill, and climb the way up
Enjoy the drill my friend. It’ll be fun and hard at the same time
You haven't failed. Part of what's pathetic about the tech industry and culture, and why I've mostly bowed out of it, is that it makes you feel like you're a failure at 22. Christ, even rock singers get until they're 30 to feel that way.
You're fine, man. You just need to decide what you really want. If that means being a coder, it's easy - figure out the framework du jour, learn it, get paid to build stuff with it. You'll probably be able to keep up for about another fifteen years before you realize you have no idea what the hell this new thing is that all the 22 year olds are clamoring about that runs entirely contrary to every good habit you've ever learned. (Say, separation of code and presentation - I'm looking at you, JSX. )
But you can do a lot in fifteen years. My advice is to have something else after you age out of tech, though, which you're nowhere near doing yet. Me, I'm a writer and musician, and though neither pay as well as they used to, it's still something to do other than my part time Node coding day job.
You got this, man. Sky's the limit. Just be smart about your choices, because that time moves much faster than you would ever believe. Nobody believes that until it happens to them, but nonetheless, it's true. Make the most of these days.
And for God's sake, don't spend all of your best physical years sitting behind a laptop. There are hot singles in your area, my dude. Go find some. Life is too short and this industry does not love you the way you think it will. Find a person to do that instead.
Conversely, you can have terrible Django templates that contain all your controller logic.
also great advice to get some excercise