I'm in college now and have just been told I won't be receiving my CS degree. I came in as an English major because my grades weren't good enough to enter the competitive CS program at my school, so I just took CS courses on override. But here too, my grades were not good enough and I won't be allowed to transfer into the major. I'll have to settle for an informatics degree, and after graduation get a CS degree from WGU or something like that.
I suppose I'm looking for validation from anybody else who had a tortured academic path. I'm a little sick of being told I am not good enough because I don't meet the metrics.
~5 years after college, I learned to code, and it's been a passion since. 7 years after college, I started a path I am still on to become proficient at math and science. I am still on that path. I"m 37, and am in a coffee shop reading a paper about interpretations of electron charge distribution. At home, I am coding general relativity and chemistry sims. I had no interested in this sort of thing while I was in school, and if I'd pursued them, I almost surely would have failed out.
I have a well-rounded math*+science+engineering background and knowledge base now, but it was almost entirely from self-study.
Good luck!
*Math in terms of the sort you'd need for science or engineering. I think the abstract stuff may be beyond me forever, in the way functional programming is. I think you need a certain level or type of intelligence for that.*
Seriously. Study after study has shown that the thing that matters most is resilience. The ability to push forward saying "I AM CAPABLE!".
https://medium.com/@ocarolinestokes/resilience-is-the-underl...
You clearly have that. Keep pushing on.
A counterpoint is that i have friends with PHDs who've never actually got a job post PHD and are generally angry at the world for not giving them what they deserve given their school proven intelligence. They are not determined to be successful despite any setback such as lack of job offers and because of that they simple aren't successful.
So you seem to be doing the right thing. Getting the informatics degree because it's the next best thing to the degree you are determined to do is the right thing. Push forwards. Don't ever for a second think of giving up.
And if you have both talent and resilience, you’ve got a proper superpower.
It ain't talent or education. It's perseverance.
I would love to give you my perspective on this as I see a lot of non-neurotypical students. Some of these students do well in an academic environment; some don't - and to generalize this across schools; some schools have a more regularized population and select for this. Similarly, others accommodate more for these types of things versus schools that do less.
Additionally, it is well recognized that academic success is not necessarily an indicator of how well people "do in life". What academic success is, however, is a door opener for other opportunities. There are other door openers, like being a really good coder.
What you need to do is to figure out what your "superpower" is. It might be coding; it might be math, or something like being able to relate longitudinally to a task over a long period.
Everyone has a superpower, it's just some people are not aware of what it is. Go at figuring that out, and don't let people tell you something about yourself that you do not believe. My sister puts this another, simpler, way "Don't let the turkeys get you down".
Good luck!
I've seen many people try something to a very superficial degree "oh that's clearly not for me".
This is particularly frustrating dealing with people who haven't yet found their path but clearly have potential. They keep looking for something they can somehow do naturally thinking that's the way success happens. Even the best artists, programmers, mathematicians had to actually work at it before they became good.
This may have been true at one point, but if it was ever true, it no longer is.
To get well-paying jobs (above the poverty line), you either need a degree or you need a certification. The certifications run into the exact same component issues of academia. Its optimizing for a specific type and limiting everyone else, and importantly its not primarily based upon knowing the material.
Certifications are the only alternative to a degree, and they get deprecated regularly and have no due process. Deprecations are as if you never had the certificate. If there is an issue, at best the single (only) company doing the testing will refund you for one certification, and then not allow you to try again (barring you from receiving a certificate). This is only in the case where you can prove they have done fraud/deceptive and unfair business practices, but can't get a court to nullify the NDA to provide standing for future litigation. If you can't, prove malfeasance they'll just keep your money; and their default practices try to limit any evidence they might provide. Accountability SOPs in a normal functioning business are often completely absent.
Employers will bring you in for interviews, and low ball you because they'll say "I see you don't have a degree, or applicable certificate. We can't pay you what we would pay a qualified person... How does ... <lowball or just above minimum wage> sound?" (for skilled work normally paying 70-100k for the IT position). They count on you being desperate enough to take the pay cut after they have wasted as much time as possible.
Additionally business insurance can sometimes dictate that certain positions hold a comparable indicator of proficiency, where experience is not counted.
This same conversation occurs regularly even when you have a decade of direct experience doing the exact same job. I know because its happened to me during many interviews, and I've compared notes and every other person who has followed a similar path that I've met has had it happen regularly as well. I do well because I'm a miracle worker, but I always have to prove myself at every step, because I am significantly more than I am on paper.
For many people who have the education and skill to do the jobs, qualifications are just another means to limit future opportunity, keep wages low, and reduce income mobility.
In my opinion your advice is harmful because it misleads about reality, and the experience required to find out otherwise necessitates needless suffering.
Don't like what I said?, tough, this is the harsh reality of IT and really any job today. Its the cult of qualification. Who decides who is qualified is a corrupt process when that criteria is not based solely upon knowledge and skill... as education and certifications are based on other criteria with the mentioned criteria being secondary today. Its another form of tweedism by adding a filter at an earlier stage so you only get certain candidates later. Lawrence Lessig can explain it to you.
Those stories of getting hired into IT are unicorn stories that are almost always the exception than anything else. You might get one opportunity in a 30 year period if you are lucky, if at all.
I would have appreciated someone not giving me the same advice you gave, 30 years ago. It resulted in two decades of wasted effort and financial loss, it was deceitful and limiting. It is the former because the person giving the advice should have had constructive knowledge of knowing better based upon their position and authority.
Ignoring what I'm saying or downranking to make my post invisible to go on with happy thoughts just means you are volunteering or misleading others into a struggle session that won't ever end, until they re-exam what you said and ultimately discard it. They won't thank you for that when all is said and done, and doing something like that is one of the more evil things a person can do. This is why when giving advice its important to know from what you speak, to have and show credibility.
These are hard truths, its better to actually educate and give people a chance than mislead them into self-limiting cycles of suffering without warning for potentially decades.
"Just be yourself and find your superpower" is rubbish when you are trying to find a job to feed yourself and progress to financial independence. Coding at this point will likely be eliminated by a Chat-GPT based derivative in a few months or worse case a few years, and you'll be only a halfway decent programmer by then and likely completely dependent on social nets for food thereafter while somehow bearing the cost to go back to school to re-educate.
It’s hard to measure smart. Especially to measure myself. How do I know if I’m smart or stupid? Beats me.
I’ve met people who think they are dumb and seem like a genius to me. And I’ve met people who wear “I’m a genius” and literally showed me a Mensa card and seemed very dumb to me.
I’ve met lots of people claim to be smart when “it’s important” but seem stupid to me.
So I don’t try to measure smartness.
Some people suck at school. That doesn’t mean you’re dumb. If you’re happy and productive then don’t worry about it.
But one want to substantiate intelligence is through credentialing systems like school. There’s tons of flaws and no way perfect. But I think it’s more accurate than just asking people if they think they are smart.
So, depending on what makes the kid an an outlier, they might struggle in this system that wasn't designed for their needs.
The best programmers I ever knew were terrible students. Like drop out at 6th grade terrible.
But in OP’s case, I think it’s reasonable for the school to set their standard for admitting to a CS program and then stick to it. I’m not sure how OP can prove if they would do well if they got in and really cared. As they knew the requirements and importance so if they cared enough they would perform at the minimum. Just saying “I’m smart and I swear I’ll start working hard if you let me in” will never be very successful for purposes of admitting people to a limited size program.
The fact is: one should avoid even having an opinion on ones own intelligence. It's a form of ego-driven navel-gazing, and can only hurt you. On the other hand, if you dedicate yourself to deep understanding, attentive listening, clear communication, and thinking things through in your work, you will develop a reputation that goes far beyond "smart".
But I think it’s more likely that considering myself capable of solving problems is a good thing. It’s a trait called self-efficacy. Thank you, Mom, for getting me that subscription to Scientific American when I was nine.
Here’s where I might agree with you. In my youth I joined Mensa and Intertel, to try to hang out with the smartest people I could find. I can report that it is a poor heuristic for socializing. I came to the conclusion that a gathering of people filtered specifically for performance on intelligence tests results in conflict, not harmony.
As I aged and became a teacher, I found it is better to treat everyone as potentially brilliant, in some possibly undiscovered way; or at least as possessing qualities that may unlock the brilliance of others. We’re all valuable if we seek to be, and intelligence tests are beside the point of living.
Things turned out ok. None of the big companies that visited campus would interview me. I ended up at a late stage startup that had taken a hit in the dotcom crash and did really well there. Then the company was bought at a premium a year later and I got a nice deal from the stock conversion.
Later I joined a big mega org and moved up to the VP level there over the years. A have a friend who did something similar - he’s some big shot at a bank now.
The key is getting in the door and kicking ass. Be good to people. At the end of the day, once you have a track record, nobody gives a shit about your 2.0 GPA after a few years unless it’s a company that likes to collect Ivy diplomas.
Funny story - I interviewed for a gig apparently by mistake. The interviewer scoffed and said they rarely hire anyone from state schools, and that I’m wasting my time. 6 months later, I’m making 5x as a consultant to do same thing and pull their chestnuts out of the fire. I got a very touching gift from the same dude, who didn’t remember me.
Also consider that development may not be your jam. Devops, analytics or other disciplines may be more your speed.
The key is someone gave you a chance. And for this to continue you need to give others a chance.
I grew up poor as fuck and in shady neighborhoods hanging out with street hoodlums associated with real gangs. Pile on ADHD and later on diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, I didn't really stand a chance. Somewhere in my late teens I decided to drop all my meds and just harness the advantages that my mental conditions gave me. I had to work 10x harder and smarter than my academic peers to get where I am, but I made it :)
My confidence in myself improved after school ended. I can learn almost any topic if I'm allowed to learn it my way, but in school you have to learn it their way. It's not enough to know the answer, you have to show your work, and your process needs to be right. Once you're a grown up, none of that matters anymore.
I was always in trouble. My daughter asked me about this recently: why? Why were you always in detention or the vice principal's office? I couldn't answer. I think I was just a noisy distraction for the kids and teachers.
That's part of ADHD, too, though. A big part of ADHD is executive dysfunction and one way to activate it is by applying accountability. I can't say whether or not you have it, but that's not a good metric to discount the possibility.
I have ADHD and am the prototypical gifted kid who continuously failed throughout school, but is really good in a work environment.
But, frankly, it's pretty much bullshit.
I was an average student in university. The courses I liked, I did well in. The ones that I struggled to engage with, not so much. The reality is that once you are out in the real world, no one's going to tell you what to do.
If getting a CS degree is that important to you, then stick with it until you can qualify for it. But there's no requirement that you must have one just because you want to work in the field.
Note: There might be companies that won't consider you as a candidate if you don't have a CS degree. My recommendation is that, again, unless you really want to work at a company like that, find your own path.
In the working world the best jobs are not at all like school - you make your own projects, there is no defined right answer, and there is room for lots of different types of people. Very different from school, where it is highly structured, in the box thinking, with very inbred processes.
My number one tip would be to work really hard in the beginning to get yourself into a place and position where you can be creative and shine. You may not land there in your first job, so bite the bullet and break out of it as soon as you can.
I wrote a Mac program to help ADHD folks in academic difficulty, but it didn't sell. It's now free from Apple's App Store. It's called Epiphany Workflow. It might help some.
Accepted directly into my University’s CS program, first year was pretty difficult. During the first summer I started working for a local tech company, they wanted to keep me on past summer so I stayed. A year later I was interviewing with Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, Uber all at the same time (no clue how my LinkedIn drew attention). Now I’ve been with AWS for 8 years as a sr. engineer, no degree.
I learn best by doing, so I followed the paths that would enable my learning. For me, studying and testing never worked well.
My take on your story is that college grades aren't necessarily an indication of how well you will perform professionally. Get your game face on and figure out how YOU can win, and understand that it doesn't have to match somebody else's definition of success.
I learned very late in life that there is “smart” and there is academically strong. You can have the former without the latter. For years I believed both to be the same and until I grew up and met academically strong people who extremely clueless in most aspects of their lives.
I am not saying I am Good Will Hunting here. Far far from it. All I am trying to say there is hope. Don’t let other people and/or societal and cultural norms define you. Let your skills and your knowledge define you. Education and grades more about winning the signaling game and I fully admit that it does give one a little bit of a leg up. But that’s not the only way. Good luck!
The funny thing now that I'm 30+ years out of college, college is stupid easy. I try to take a class or two every year, just to learn things that interest me. These are normal college classes filled with people that could be my children and nothing has changed, all the young people sit in class like they are being forced to be there, they don't ask questions and to me it seems like they are totally uninterested in the subject matter. Of course as the older student I ask lots of questions and challenge the instructor if they are teaching outdated bullshit, which is more often than you'd think, I know the other students hate me because I blow the curve but now that I'm way separated from college life learning is a lot more fun.
I've dropped out of highschool due to lack of attendance, lost almost 4 years trying to figure out what is wrong me. Put my parents through hell, wasn't nice. In the end I've realized that I wasn't depressed because of childhood traumas or whatever, but because I wasn't able to commit to studying, or to be able to properly focus on anything. Which in turn made me feel like shit, vicious cycle. Getting through high school would be easy, but that wouldn't fly in college. I literally read one page of notes and went to do 10 different things, before I realized that I'm supposed to do something else.
I'm writing that because a lot of helpful people tried to figure out what is going on with me, but I think that I've hidden the real thing (focus issues, missing some basic social queues, thinking "too fast") that was "different", so well, that I only could have realized that I have something ADHD-related at 24, as an adult.
Anyways, finished high school alternatively, now doing 2 degrees at uni, it's the exact same struggle, but I know myself better and it kind of goes. Medication is terrible, it's either methamphetamines for life or nothing. My grades are still terrible, but you can find your worth elsewhere.
I am both incredibly happy and frustrated it was pre-me that post-COVID online schooling gets more credit and justification for people with various struggles. I know that it would have saved me at least 2-3 years, so I look out for what is going on in that field. Cheers
Guess what, it never mattered. I worked my way from a 5 person consulting gig to FANG now over a 10+ year period. My grades, the school I went to, and the amount of time I took to complete my degree has never mattered.
My advice for everyone is, work hard and be curious. Take each failure with a grain of salt and keep trying.
Uni was a much better fit, being able to study and learn in my own time, and on my own way. I still remember my first two years at Uni. Barely passing almost all tests/exams with a 50%-60% despite spending many hours at night in the library to study before going home to do the same. I felt like an imposter faking in class.
One day, after struggling so much, I realised that trying to force myself to learn. Instead, try to understand the material by experimenting with it.
If I was given a piece of code, I would modify it and re-write it from scratch in my own way. Slowly my grades started to improve, but most importantly I began to enjoy Uni much more. I met many people, and found friends to have fun and muck around with.
Looking back now that I'm working full time, it's like a fond memory where I did many embarrassing things with friends.
I'm still early in my career, but almost all my skills/knowledge I've developed came from me experimenting and exploring in my own way in my own time.
I'm not sure if this helps, but that's my rough journey.
Only you can really answer this and it is a big step on the path to life long learning. Look at the parts you control vs external locus. Then move on, don't dwell, the only way is forward.
The ADHD thing will depend on who told you.. was it a professional? If so I would try to see why they diagnosed you that way and again self-reflect, what do you have control over and would medication or adaptive strategies help. If it was just a concerned comment from someone you trust, then maybe get evaluated. Again just reflect on it and come to your own answer. Maybe it is nothing.
There's a lot going on in a CS degree program across a wide range of intellectual subjects. What might be helpful is to think about what the CS programme is really trying to teach and that is how to learn and operate at these various levels of abstraction and how to come up with new levels of abstraction (or at least introduces you to thinking in that way, basically what people now term computational thinking. We use these abstractions to study computation itself and the world etc...
So to translate, in the "real world" you will be writing software at various levels of abstraction to solve some problem domain. That is why the degree is useful. The specific implementation details depend on the job itself.
But you can have a successful career just operating at one level of abstraction and know it well. Cobol programmers are still in demand for example. :)
I dislike making excuses, but my time in the education system felt more akin to being pushed through a meat grinder. I remember one of the only times I went out of my way to actually attempt to do well in a class was when I was graciously told "I would amount to nothing" by a teacher, and used the rage incurred from that statement to to score in 99% percentile in all of he's exams following.
The reality of the situation for most of my time I was a socially inept barely functioning alcoholic. The people I surrounded myself with were all losers who didn't do much else other than smoke weed and fornicate with each other. I think I probably could of done better, but even so I still found myself in a carrer I genuinley find interesting with good prospects for growth. I don't credit the education to that at all.
To be brutally honest... all the education system really did was hold me back
I started at UC Berkeley in 2010 as a Political Economy major. Hated it, tried the intro CS class because I liked computers, loved that one, but struggled to find motivation for required math classes with tons of homework. Had to take a semester off to work to support myself. I made friends with great people at my student job, joining a cybersecurity team, doing some psychedelics. Didn’t scape the GPA together to declare CS major by the cutoff semester. When my friends started graduating, I gave up and dropped out.
I had no interest in FAANG types (at the time, they had very similar energy to those courses I hated) and looked mostly at startups. No one ever brought up my lack of degree.
I applied to Airbnb with a rec from a friend’s older brother in 2014 and got the job. Once you get that first job, no one will think about the degree. Since then I make enough to not worry about much. I’m about average with my friend group career wise; resume: https://jake.tl/resume.pdf
Sometimes when someone asks me a complicated question I say “sorry I don’t know, never got a degree” to elicit some eye rolls. My girlfriend hates that one.
Here's some of my advice:
* School and grades will one day be behind you and it won't matter.
* While you're in school, go and see a therapist for at least anxiety and depression. ADHD is co-morbid with those, so you might hit three birds with one stone. Even if nothing is "wrong" they can still point you to programs and services on campus.
* Computer Science curriculum is much harder than a programming job.
* You will be evaluated throughout your CS career. Don't take it too personally. Interviews are the worst offenders here, but there's also performance reviews. And yet nobody knows how to evaluate programmer performance properly.
> I came in as an English major because my grades weren't good enough to enter the competitive CS program
Especially don't take this personally. Lots of weird people find weird ways into this industry. For example, my old boss was an elementary school teacher five years ago, took a Masters in CS, and started as a junior programmer in his 30s.
As a final point, the mere fact you are reaching out here means you want to be here. You should be here. Don't let one little competition (especially for a crowded CS program) drive out that desire in you.
That's a feature. The fact that we expect kids to wake up at 7am, sit and pay attention in silence for hours is mindbogglingly absurd. For a decade after leaving school, I had residual semi-PTSD after getting home from work, with the feeling that I had to study or prepare homework for the next day. Our education system basically is long-term conditioning to create the perfect desk worker, the well-oiled cog for the Machine. I don't think I've spent more than 10 hours studying in my entire school career.
FWIW I got ADHD too. My crush once berated me by saying "you're so smart, why don't you put a little effort in your studies?" I dropped one year before graduation, so effectively I never finished high school and spent a sabbatical year smoking weed, chatting on IRC and writing a hobby OS. Good times.
https://github.com/1player/klesh
Fuck schools. Maths was alright, but the only class I truly loved was philosophy.
From that era I remember TriangleOS, SkyOS (with that fancy GUI) and Unununium (was it the Python OS? I only remember the Hans Reiser quote on the home page) It was such a buzzing scene.
Did a lot to temporary work and finally got a clerical job. Later the government opened the YOPS program (Youth Opportunities Program) and I went off to learn COBOL
Got a programming job with it and after a few years applied to go to University (at 29). Fortunately there was a drive to accept "mature" candidates (less qualified) and I was accepted to study Artificial Intelligence as an Arts Degree
Managed a 2ii (a 3 would be viewed as "didn't actually fail" but a 1 or 2i would have been a "good" result)
Went back to being a programmer
People genuinely thought that I would / could get 10 O Levels in the same year, I must have been smart enough to impress my teachers but it all fell apart when I sat down to do the exams
I think that I am at least intelligent but I get sidetracked (the amount of time I spent investigating prime numbers / golomb rulers when I was supposed to be learning calculus). It is still an issue. I have finally learnt everything that they tried to teach me at school (I'm 62 now) and a bunch more
However I was never told I was smart, only that I should try and that I was at least capable of achieving great things academically
I could have done more but that was all down to me and the effort I put forth
I've always been an autodidact not as a point of pride but instead of necessity. I grew up really poor and, given it was Alabama, our education/library system wasn't great. I taught myself a lot of things, and because of that, had a lot of interests, which led to a...er...chaotic college experience when the road to education was less narrow.
My point is, yes a lot of people go through this, and the only path you're limited to is the one you pick. Getting into a career in engineering without a degree does require some hustle to get over the initial inertia, but you can do it. If you feel like you have the knowledge and wherewithal to make it happen, major in a "backup" or something that interests you. If not, there's no shame in it, so pursue the plan you laid out. All in all, the ultimate result is that you learn how to think about things and pick up some skills along the way. However you and your brain get there isn't really defined.
(Ninja edit to say: I was a low B student in high school, had a 3.2 GPA in my bachelor's work. I took some master's classes from Harvard when I could afford them, and I was knocking them down with a 4.0. Environment makes a big difference too, so don't feel like you're stuck in what you've tried. You might just need to find the right place.)
I can't help but notice you mention three times what you've "been told". Your frustration with the gatekeepers is palpable, but remember the world is a big place and college administrators are not notable for their broader influence; don't let them get in your head! What I'll say is this: a lot of things in life come down to intrinsic motivation. Why is it that you are in college? If your goal is to become a professional programmer than go write code and build stuff, get your foot in the door somewhere, and show what you can do.
Then I nearly failed out of engineering school (twice!) because all we did was tortuous math problems and we never designed or built anything, it was overwhelmingly disappointing. I came out of that program depressed and exhausted.
I graduated into a pretty terrible job market and managed to score a single offer for an entry-level engineering position. I finally had something real to do! I worked 60 hours a week teaching myself everything I had actually wanted to know, through a combination of digging up info on the internet and making a lot of rapid mistakes in classic "fail fast" fashion. And eventually I applied for a masters' degree program, which I did part-time (one class per semester) while working.
That was 20 years ago, these days I'm a "principal engineer" at a rapidly growing start-up. Still struggling with imposter syndrome from time to time.
Some points (say, set X) are impossible to reach, because one doesn't end up on a point that reaches X. For instance, MBB consulting recruits students from elite Ivy League. Usually, MBB alumni moves to F100 companies laterally, thereby reaching C-levels faster. You can read posts on collegeconfidential dot com, how some students plan a course of action when they were in middle school to get into million dollars per annum jobs. The chance of success is higher if one traverses the well-trodden path, that's why there is a rat race.
Not that it helped much, school was always boring. Then in highschool I started high but each year I went to a different level, because I was just doing the minimum I guess.
I had a great time at highschool, because of computers. Gaming, programming, the internet just started etc.
After highschool I went to middle level applied education. This was more slacking because I already knew it al (from hobbying, fixing computers and working in a computer store). I worked as a programmer in the last year and because of that i didn't finish it on time. A year later I got my diploma. A while after I started higher applied education and that was the same story, but this time I was working even more haha.
At that school I did learn a lot, also finished a year later than planned.
You're not alone. I'm without a degree and conducting pioneering work as outsider science. We don't need the approval of or support from academia to do meaningful and impactful work. Learn how to creatively present what you can do so you can bypass standard funnels for things (like hand-delivering something you've made to demonstrate your skills to a hiring manager, bypassing whatever their hiring process is...people will poopoo this and try to tell you it's arrogant...let them sit in their own discomfort, as it has everything to do with their issues, not yours; if they ask if you think you're better than people using resumes, you can always say "everyone's better off leaving resumes behind because they'relargely bullshit. This is how it starts for me" if you believe it).
The metrics suck. Every human is infinitely valuable and anyone saying otherwise has a colonized mind. Also, seek out decolonization practices & therapeutic ways of being to protect from the self-harming thoughts/practices these systems naturally indoctrinate people into.
Remember: the moment you orient toward tearing down academia, they're locked in there with you, not the other way around. You become the torturer simply by being in a way they have no control/impact on. You are enough to liberate yourself from the torture by refusing to value harmful cultural norms and by speaking out against them. You are not alone in this. If you need support, my contact info is in my profile.
After working a few jobs in Silicon Valley, I built an IT business in Santa Cruz, CA and have now ran it for about 30 years. I took any job that I found something in it I wanted to learn. I wrote database software, installed wiring, servers, eventually telephone systems, security cameras...
Now I work part time in a very rural part of coastal Northern California. I have signed up for and completed quite a few remote education-type courses, I study whatever subject interests me.
So my poor schooling, going from an almost straight-A to almost flunking out entirely had little impact, and now I school myself to my desire.
Do what you want to do, and just go for it. And forget what other people tell you, that is them, you are you :)
But at the same time I haven't exactly had much career success, and have been failing upward for 10 years easy. Have been fired or laid off from more jobs than most people have had.
Looking back, and maybe looking forward, I might try and become an electrician or something and try coding as a hobby.
There's something uniquely burnout inducing about the process of trying to find another job in tech.
I didn't go to college because I just couldn't stand it. I self taught basically everything I'm good at.
Keep in mind, these educational pipelines aren't just there to make sure you know the stuff. They're there to also see if you'll eat the shit you have to eat to make it in your field. Sometimes that's important. Doctors are committing to work long hours at the drop of a hat while people are screaming at them for the rest of their lives. But in other cases it's just hazing, it's just gatekeeping to keep pay up. I've never been much of a shit eater, which is why I'm not a doctor.
By the time you're attending college then you are old enough to understand what motivates yourself and how best you must apply yourself to learn. There's always multiple reasons why somebody might struggle but college also requires you to be responsible for yourself and figure out how to navigate that world through services available.
College has much less handholding than high school as you're an adult.
I have worked as a senior dev, architect and technology strategist for over three decades. The lack of degree almost never has come up. I started in pure tech, then was in capital markets for many years, where ability matters a lot more than academics.
Note that you have to be an autodidact for this to work. You have to be able to learn a lot on your own. This is a big problem for many, many people who need a structured learning environment to understand a topic. It is also somewhat unique to software developers and related roles.
The first was among the most brilliant people I've ever met. Sure, this person was a full-ride honor student with straight As all around, but they never found the challenge they needed, even when sitting in on grad-level classes for fun. They hardly ever studied, spent most of their time playing video games, exclusively took classes in their areas of interest, and transferred to another school when those classes ran out. Repeat for at least three colleges, taking over a decade to finally cave in and fulfill their undergrad requirements. Then after school, their career never really took off.
The second was, to put it politely, not the sharpest tool in the shed. They studied furiously to master material that seemed trivial, and whenever I tried to discuss advanced topics with them, they were completely lost. But they worked hard, harder than anyone else I knew, to maintain a perfect GPA. Went on to have a very successful career.
I suppose I bring them up to point out that even academic success doesn't paint a full picture.
My own academic performance in college was wildly inconsistent. Started off with scholarships, Dean's list, etc., then plunged into failures and academic warnings (barely avoided probation). I recovered, hit Dean's list again, and then back into failure mode. Then another last string of As during my senior-level courses brought me back into a low 3.x GPA at graduation. Regardless of the recoveries, damage was done, costing me intern opportunities that might have helped out a bit when graduating into a recession.
Depending on my mood, I could place the blame for my failures on a lot of things. A few different medical conditions ultimately requiring surgeries and months of prescribed opiates. Lack of parental support. Depression preceding my downturns. Undiagnosed (at the time) ADHD. But in retrospect, I also could have been smarter in how I dealt with all those things instead of embracing the self-destructive aspects.
I have a "feature bug" where I need to really be interested in something to want to learn it and then I can be borderline obsessive about it. Fortunately software development is something that I am interested in (most of the time). Once it get an idea about something that will improve the product or fix a bug, I can really "lock in" on it.
Around junior year in high school I somewhat started applying myself again but it was far too late to get into a good college.
Went to community college for a couple years and then transferred to a cheap in state school with a decent CS program and graduated with a CS degree.
Fast forward to today and I work in Silicon Valley, own a house, and have a family. My teammates have CS degrees from universities like Stanford and MIT. I guess it all worked out in the long run, it just took me longer to get here.
I don’t have any regrets, I met a lot of important people on my journey I wouldn’t have met otherwise.
Then I discovered the first mmorpgs and my grades took a turn for the worst, kind of. But it also lead me to learn about programming which I am grateful as I love creating.
French system, so went to what is called Classes preparatoires... Very tough to remain interested when the end goal is not knowledge but just working for an exam happening in 830 days...
Weaseled out my way in a top business school but the major was management and finance and although it wasn't CompSci, I'm again grateful because maybe I would have been disgusted if I was force fed algorithms, compiler theory and what not (which I took on in my spare time).
In the end, I'm well rounded having learnt Math, Physics, Chemistry on a level equivalent of a bachelor for each more or less and having a few notions gleaned from business school and later experiences.
To enter the BSchool, I was actually around the top of the list (we are ranked based on exam results). But during Bschool my grades were still terrible. Unmotivated, I wasted a lot of time. Should have built a business or something... I just can't cram for exams, was never me.
Don't necessarily focus on school, focus on the skills you need for what you want to accomplish.
Grades can be important though as the GPA is used as a discriminant when applying online.
But the reality is that everyone has their own path and connections matter more. All these paths are made for you to work for someone else and make them money anyway...
So yeah, grades don't mean that you are incapable. I am/was probably more skilled than many of the people I was in school with. (sounds perhaps arrogant, doesn't it? Oh well... I have spent the time for it so I have the confidence ... Still working on it, haven't reached my final form yet... ;o)
Important note: if you have difficulties forcing yourself to do things, each time you do 't feel like it, that's the sign that you should fight against that feeling. Learnt that a bit too late for my studies... :)
Intelligence is just one component of academic success and while it is a strong correlate, it isn’t a guarantee.
For what it’s worth, it is possible to get this on track. I eventually restarted school at UVM Medical School and did exceptionally well in my year there. You will need to find a system that works for you to handle the responsibilities of your academic workload.
So naturally, anyone aspiring to be other than that, will be screwed to various degree.
I'm a certified genius. A member of Mensa.
But I never do well in school.
I do train myself to have the following attitudes : grit, honesty, initiative (note: different than assertive), be a helpful (friendly) person.
People consider me to be a rather successful person. Personally I don't think I am yet.
I taught my children the same, and I said these to them:
"I would never demand good grades from you. I won't even mind you skipping school/uni classes.
I do however expect you to always try your best. And try to develop your network of friends."
2) While you can't compete head on with CS grads with excellent grades, you don't need to. Domain knowledge can be critical in this. If you are applying to a s/w house that specializes in medical s/w, a few classes in medical technology or managing a medical practice could be decisive. In such a case I wouldn't apply through a CS headhunter but through a headhunter that specializes in a medical field and who might have a client who needs your help.
Good luck!
You wont work in Big Tech right out of school, but do your time at a startup and then work your way up.
[0] - My excuse is I had a traumatic brain injury when I was 10 and have a terrible short term memory. It takes me 3x longer to learn anything, but once I do it sticks. I also thrive in remote environments where everything is written and searchable.
I went from being a smart kid in a high school class to being average or slightly below average in university. Suddenly, school was moving faster than I was comfortable with. When I got a few bad grades I really struggled with that because it hadn’t happened before. I managed to get things turned around in my third year and have had a really great life since, but those first two years of school taught me a lot about myself.
Curiously, my feeling is that even years after things still got easier for me. I am convinced that a particular kind of intelligent person might just take longer to get adjusted to the school system. For some this will also happen after school.
I've since had a great career, and if the folks in my graduating class are any indication, GPA doesn't really predict career success. It has more to do with the stuff in this Ted talk:
I just never found those other parts of “schooling” that enticing.
I feel that homework should be optional, made for people who don’t understand the material to hopefully have it make sense. It’s like people who need to grind 500 LC to feel good because they don’t actually understand arrays.
Attendance should be optional. I’m paying the college to go to school. I’m there to learn, and if I am getting 90-100% on tests (A grade basically) I should not be penalized for not showing up on time or skipping altogether. Doesn’t matter now, I’m over it.
I studied business in school. I’m a self taught swe.
Now that I’m a staff engineer and started my own company I can’t believe how much school just tries to make you an average person and punishes people who are creative and ambitious. Homework is an opportunity cost and waste of time. Mandatory attendance is basically bullshit meetings people set up and have to be told they’re wasting people’s time.
Most people who did well in school were early game advantaged. Maybe they did well in mid game. Most fell off end game.
Now that I’m in my end game I see that the people who always ended up at the top (valedictorian or too 5%) are mostly doing average things. They fell off. I would beat them on tests 1v1 or group, so they would gank other lanes (homework and other busywork BS) leaving me open to farm knowledge and capabilities, push farther. Eventually you will show up in team fights beefy and turn the tide completely.
Almost everyone who I meet now that’s successful and forward thinking either dropped out of college or found it just beneficial just for the people they met. They are all fast learners and adapt quickly. School should be about building capabilities and knowledge.
I’m planning on sending my children to private schools where they will be tested and pushed on knowledge and capability. Not the ability to be a drone.
Most of the young people you’ll meet in SV are overachievers. This is because almost no one is willing to hire someone with a bad gpa, low tier school, or with meh projects/internships.
I’d be hesitant of taking advice from people with 20+ years experience because the market when they entered is drastically different than now. Even some folks with 10+ years (who don’t switch jobs often) might not know how dramatically important things like leetcode are.
Throughout my life I felt like what your are feeling right now. But I would say things eventually fall in line of you are persistent enough. It may take some extra time but it will.
Regarding ADHD, I would recommend you see a psychiatrist and follow your routine properly.
I taught myself to program. Built a career working for startups. Started my own startup. Now running a product agency.
Don’t worry about school. Apply yourself to work that matters to you. Be patient. Always seek to learn and improve. Don’t be afraid of failure.
My kids are in an Expeditionary Learning school (based off Outward Bound), and I think that would have worked really well for me. Much more hands on, and a much smaller class size. They have K-12 in a school the size of my Jr HS. My daughter's graduating class size was less than twice the size of my HS Social Studies classrooms.
But, I'm watching my son struggle in a lot of the same ways that I struggled. School is just something he does until he can get home and do programming. But in retrospect, I understand the value of figuring out how to do the boring things. I call it "making license plates". It's boring, you just pull the handle and crank one out, but it needs to be done. So I'm trying to both foster his love of the programming and computer stuff, while also trying to get him to have strategies for dealing with the boring stuff.
I was quite lucky after HS. I thought I needed to go to college, so I tried to go down that path, but it just was totally the wrong path for me. Meanwhile, I had some connections that led to getting hired by Hewlett-Packard while I was still in HS. So, after trying a semester of Community College, which I totally failed at (in some ways it failed me, but let's be honest: I wasn't engaged with it at all).
Through luck and connections, I was able to always be employed at something I love. For me, the work was engaging and educational. I always loved learning on my own, it was just the learning in school that was a problem. Today, in my 50s, I feel fairly well educated, still have a passion for learning, and have a good job and family.
It's a different world now, in many ways. But, CS people are in high demand. In some ways, the traditional CS education is going to struggle with the new world. People need the foundations, in order to be able to leverage LLMs, but CS teaches through a lot of rote work that LLMs can do. It's a lot like embracing calculators in mathematics, which I remember there being two minds about back in my Jr HS era.
Unfortunately, I think you're going to have to pick a path that suits you.
I wrote this book about it, specifically to help folks like us: Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar, by James Marcus Bach.
I guess I have ADHD. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s more a superpower than a disability. My son has been diagnosed with it at 29 and finds that Adderall helps a lot.
I was smart, but didn't care and never studied a single day until I dropped out as a HS sophomore.
I did go back to a CS program at some point but did not graduate.
But I've always learned stuff on my own.
I have zero degrees today, but I have a better position and salary than a lot of people my age with masters.
It wasn't until I started a company with friends that my career took off, and now I'm semi-retired building a platform as a service for funzies.
Life is strange...
go work for 5 startups over 5 years. after that you’ll probably have a better perspective on everything, and some money in your pocket.
if you wanna play real fast and loose, you could even do 5 startups in 2.5 years. this might actually be a better idea, as startups vary wildly.
if you’re having trouble interviewing, build things that are interesting to you, and talk about them in interviews.
if you’re still having trouble interviewing, be open to lower paying (compared to faang) roles. think of it as high pay education rather than low pay employment.
glhf! building is fun, and software is malleable, accessible, and cheap.
Never did homework. Never studied. Drew a lot of pictures.
I'm very selective in my enthusiasms.
Is ADHD overdiagnosed in US or underdiagnosed in Eastern EU?
I've seen people go through school and adulthood, with different doctors vacillating between "you definitely have ADHD" and, "there is no chance that you have ADHD". Clearly something is up, and their symptoms broadly fit the guidelines, but the typical medication (amphetamines) sometimes seems to do more harm than good. "It helps me focus, but gives me no control over what I focus on" is a common refrain, even in this thread.
I am sure that accurate diagnoses have helped a lot of people, and I don't want to belittle that. Based on my personal experience, though, I'm not sure that "prevalence of ADHD" is a particularly useful label for large-scale analyses.
Chronic heavy metal poisoning for example was a common underlying cause that was often diagnosed as a spectrum disorder depending on symptoms presented.
It was very difficult to test because it doesn't stay in the blood but instead binds almost immediately. You had to work with a willing doctor and use a chelator and cause acute poisoning to determine if this was the case. Treatment options were not very good either.
For example, many people who received silver dental fillings have had this, while the ADA called it silver, and promoted it as stable, science in the last 20 years has shown marked neurotoxic effects which is why its mostly not used anymore (to my understanding).
The chemical composition of those fillings was 50% by weight mercury which leached when people drank acidic drinks (i.e. soda). Teens and young adults were at higher risk.
That's a poor way of characterizing the issue. I think you should look more closely at why you haven't done well instead of internalizing that you are just not the right type of personality.
> I've been told I have ADHD
A lot of heavy metal poisoning is often mistaken or misdiagnosed for spectrum disorders. Its hard to test for chronic poisoning because you have to take a chelator which causes acute poisoning to even test for it. Having been labelled in this category often is a disadvantage because structure is incredibly important for people on the spectrum but you can ask for certain accommodations and they are required to give them if you have a diagnosis.
> told I won't be receiving a CS degree ... because my grades weren't good enough for entry.
You have not said where you are located, but if its anywhere in the US this is par for the course. Its important to recognize the reasons for the failures and place blame where it actually belongs.
Many times in US based curricula, the student is set up to fail, and by that I mean in any other industry if the same practices were followed it would be fraud and they'd be found liable. That being said, sometimes it is because you have repeated personal failures and not addressed them, but this latter aspect is in the minority.
What I'd suggest is re-examining your failures, and identify exactly what caused them with a objective view, and what if anything you can do to fix them.
Start with examining what any student needs to control basic academic outcomes, and whether those requirements were met for the classes you took.
When setting up your schedule, were the classes appropriately advertised based on the amount of time they require for pass. Classes are rated by unit hours, if the college recognizes a 12-unit course as a full load, divide 40 hours by 12 and you've got the max number of hours any class should require (per week per unit) in coursework for the 16 or 12 week period. You cannot expect your best work if one or multiple classes exceed this since you'd be exceeding safe limits for any professional job. No one does well when something requires 60+ hours of work a week for an extended period of time. This can actually send people to the hospital. If its above 40, they have not provided the necessary control over basic academic outcomes.
Additionally, structure of the course is important. There are systems properties that are necessary for any test/exam to be valid, or have a valid inferential basis; these properties are normally covered in an EE class; take an overview look at the properties from MIT OCWs videos. You may need to look at the book but its cheap and well worth having. Don't worry about the math, look at what the properties are, how they are defined and tested.
The professor may have removed or added properties (without understanding this rigorous approach) to limit the people who pass, or fail people. They may do this for any arbitrary reason.
This is often seen in non-deterministic questions being asked on tests without a basis for inference. An example might be a multiple choice question with 3 or more actually correct answers to choose from (breaks determinism and inference).
Causality spirals are specifically designed to fail people. An example of these is the classic 3 question test which I've seen numerous times in engineering tracks, where the 2nd question requires the correct answer from the 1st question, and the 3rd question requires the correct answer to the second question. Classes that use these often have two main tests, which don't occur until you can no longer receive a refund.
Ultimately they amount to the whole grade, and you can only get 1 question wrong out of the two last question on either test and still pass.
Additionally, there may be other dirty tactics that further optimize for failure. An online grader may randomize each individual students question pool. If there is a problem with the questions, the professor may not take action for a question that other students didn't get, there is no clear signal to them that something is wrong with the test and they didn't vet the question pool.
Online material and graders may mark correct answers as incorrect, and have subtle dark patterns embedded to induce failure spirals. They may not provide a means to report problems to the professor. This is done by not providing a button, and the dark patterns may have text on a red background that pops up with each incorrect answer after every question. Its the opposite pattern for dopamine loops which are embedded into games as addiction triggers, only this is a frustration trigger. It does this when the question was answered correctly, you get no popup when its correct, you get a red popup when its incorrect. Its subtle, but after 4 or 5 times of this happening, you can't concentrate because its futile, and that applies to a broad set of the population. Its known pedagogical circles that this causes poor outcomes, there was a classic psychology experiment where this was tested by telling the teacher a particular low performing student was gifted, and the low performing students did better when they were told that compared to when they were told they were low performing.
Mismatched coursework, inference requires matched coursework; if the lecture and material covered do not match what's tested, they are testing your guessing or mindreading ability. This is common in courses that pay professors to teach who then refer their students to Khan Academy (yes this happens regularly), and online material such as an etextbook where the reading doesn't match what is being tested.
Lack of any redemption mechanisms so snowballs continue until dropout. This usually means no extra credit, no test retakes, no communication regarding the exact material that will be tested, no study guides that are verified for accuracy before the test, and no legitimate guidance provided by the professor during office hours. These all happen regularly in academia and impact outcomes towards the negative.
There is an escalation path if these issues are the case, but unfortunately unless you know how to accurately document and case-build, and have the money for a lawyer to sue them; by the time you get to reaching out to the Board of Trustees, you may still get no action.
After all, all bureaucracy seeks a lowest common denominator, which is often negative production value; and in any bureaucratic system standing is important and the people in these positions have their standing threatened since they themselves are also teachers or were at one point. Its easier for them to do nothing, since taking any action against their peers threatens their social standing among educators, they are all in it together first, and for the student second. These are longstanding issues that are common with any centralized structure that lead to corrupt systems.
There is a rule of thumb for checking disadvantaged structure based off probability, but it requires multivariable calculus and really doesn't tell you much except that you need to dig in more detail.
Probabilities are also notoriously impractical when it comes to actual likelihoods, its useful in finding out whether the distribution curve for passing has been scrunched to the point of pass|fail with extremely narrow outcomes.
Most of these problems are found in core transfer classes that are always full. The result is people can't transfer into specific programs since they often can't pass those gatekeeping courses with arbitrary pass requirements.
Some courses structured as described have a pass rate of less than 10%, and that includes all previous years of dropouts among the pool of potential passes; they don't track re-attempts.
The people that pass these courses are often people who break academic honesty policies. I won't tell you to do that, but sometimes in a corrupt/fraudulent system where they've lied or misled about the actual prospect of completion, I can't say its not a reasonable alternative given the lack of any kind of reform possible and the lack of any actual due process within the system. Being state funded means that often, absent any gross provable negligence, nothing legal will have standing; but you'd need to talk to a lawyer (with a proper case built, either for discrimination or fraud). If you plan to go the latter route, I'd suggest not tipping your hand.
Also, I've run into a few instances where test questions have marked my answer as incorrect when it was correct, and upon review it showed the answer they claimed I submitted was not the answer I submitted. I would suggest you use a screen recorder while you are doing any kind of assignment like this since you cannot trust anything will be above board.
Although I think there's a lot wrong with the education system, and though I am glad that I didn't graduate with a boatload of debt like my peers, I look back and regret not taking my education more seriously and working on ways to maintain focus. This is of course a function of getting older. When I was young, the prospect of finishing college and getting a career was overwhelming, often to the point where I couldn't handle it. Stress can be good, but for me it would hit a threshold where I just rationalized away my poor results by telling myself "I'm just not that good but I've got to go through this anyway because the consequences from my parents will be worse than otherwise." Being young, it's really difficult to understand the scope of your future adult life and to value the time you have during your youth to set all that up, especially when you have the impulse and focus disregulation of ADHD.
Ultimately, I became a programmer without receiving a CS degree. I'm torn as to whether I should have or not. My 30-something self wouldn't mind a CS degree, but good luck telling that to my 19 year old self.
> I'm a little sick of being told I am not good enough because I don't meet the metrics.
Welcome to the ADHD club. No doubt you've been also told that you're "careless" and all that. This says little about what you're capable of or how intelligent you are. Don't fall into the trap of feeling that you're broken. ADHD is a trait many people have, and I believe it's more of a disorder in modern society where individual roles have been largely homogenized into a few environments that don't suit everyone. Don't let the "you're not good enough" stuff to get to you. Most if not all people making you feel that way don't understand ADHD at all.
If you can, take as few classes at a time as you can get away with. When I was in college, I was encouraged to take at least 6 classes a semester so I wouldn't "fall behind" my peers. In retrospect, that was probably dumb. I'd have managed better grades if I could take 3 classes per semester instead and just spend a few more years in college.
Also, if you aren't on medication, I think you should consider it. I was prescribed methylphenidate way back in high school, but I stopped taking it because it made me feel lousy at first. Now that I take it as an adult, I truly regret not having just stuck with it when I was younger. You get over the negative effects but the benefits continue as long as you take the medication, even if you don't "feel it". It's not for everyone, but I went from not believing in it to believing in it. I think more people take Adderall and Vyvanse these days, but I have no experience being on them.
One thing that helps me in my career is going to bed early (around 9:30p), waking up early (5:30 or 6:00 am), jumping in the shower, and then starting work immediately. Nobody is around to distract me during those early hours, and I have a ridiculous amount of energy and focus-capacity, both of which diminish for me as the day goes on. By the time my team's standup happens, I've gotten enough done that the rest of my day can go much easier. Looking back, I wish this I would have taken my college classes as early in the day as possible. Taking 6+ classes a semester, sleeping in like so many young people, and cramming in my homework at night was very counterproductive.
Here’s the best most beautiful part about coding:
### ain’t no one can stop you ###
You don’t need* a degree to do it. School is not the gatekeeper. The information is yours for the taking.
Check it out: https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--...
You do NOT need to pay money for that course, I know they really try to get you to sign up for a nanodegree but click around till you can take the course.
If you can understand and replicate even 30% of the material in that course you are a certified badass.
Can you load data from a file, manipulate it, and save it to another file? Congrats you are able to get a job with some effort.
If you have an opportunity to take any courses, even the video courses, from Dave Beazley, do it: https://dabeaz.com/ (assuming Python is your thing). You will know more about Python than all of your professors and anyone interviewing you.
Last bit of “stick it to the man” advice, you have one major advantage over more experienced developers that often goes overlooked: the ability to go deep on a technology. Most senior developers need to be generalists, the cost of going deep is almost never worth it. At this point in your career you actually have the opportunity to become better, for instance, at TypeScript or Python by spending a whole year or two studying the hell out of it while you look for a job. And being a specialist early in your career is something you can hang your hat on, people WILL hire you just for your subject matter expertise, and they figure you can learn the rest on the job.
Oh yeah two more things (I also have ADHD) #1 go to conferences, like PyCon or ClojureConj or whatever you are interested in. They are extremely welcoming for new folks. We are excited that anyone gives a sht about the stuff we are interested in. You will almost certainly walk away with tons of interview opportunities if not offers.
Lastly, about school — don’t overlook the opportunity to make friends and take advantage of the school resources. That’s my biggest regret from school. I don’t have any friends from college despite being a generally outgoing person. And schools have an ENORMOUS amount of opportunities available and most people don’t take advantage of them. These opportunities for socializing and resources are MUCH harder to come by after school in the work force.
tl;dr fck school
