
Ask HN: Breaking into low-level programming work with o a CS degree? - personalpicture
*Title should say &quot;...without a CS degree&quot;<p>When I attended college, I was undecided for a year and a half. Then I majored in Design and my career took a less artsy path as I was more drawn to making websites. I took my own &quot;personal bootcamp&quot;- read books and tutorials on web programming.<p>I now have several years of experience as a web developer, but I fear that I would pigeonhole myself in websites and mobile apps (not really interested in that) if I never have an engineering-based background. Especially because there are several fields in low-level programming I&#x27;d like to go into that emphasize math and engineering.<p>My first hunch was to read books on low level programing and brush up CS theory and then apply to entry level or internships (if possible) as a &quot;self made student&quot;- an analogue to a college student taking undergraduate classes.<p>But I fear that my made up credentials might not matter. This doesn&#x27;t fare well for people that change their minds about their career.<p>As another caveat, I&#x27;m unemployed. I have all the time in the world but living like a broke college student because I&#x27;ve used up my severance and emergency savings. So I&#x27;m broke as a college student, but without the internship opportunities of a college student. Worst of both worlds.<p>I don&#x27;t know if I&#x27;m asking for the impossible but I want to get at least a grip of where I should even begin looking for a trial of low-level programming work. Any ideas of where to start?<p>I want to make it clear I am not looking for work at Google or Facebook. AMD, ARM and NVIDIA are more my speed. Since I can&#x27;t get an internship at a place like this then something as &quot;internship-like&quot; as possible. Something that gives you a chance to try something you haven&#x27;t done before committing to a full time job.
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caymanjim
I've had a 30-year career as a sysadmin and developer, and I don't have a CS
degree (or even a highschool diploma). Most of the people I've worked with at
Fortune 500 companies don't have CS degrees. If you think you know enough to
do a job, apply for it and be honest. Don't lie about your credentials. If you
have no related job experience, you can build an online portfolio by
contributing to open source projects, or highlighting your own solo endeavors.
Get a GitHub presence, start a tech blog, make a portfolio site to showcase
what you can do.

The quick and easy way to get a job is to go to an immersive code school
crash-course. I have a lot of misgivings about the quality of candidates they
tend to produce, but I've seen enough good people come out of them that I
don't dismiss them. I've hired plenty of people with no other CS background
and no related job experience. They're expensive, but the payoff is huge if it
gets you a job. Some of them are free until you start working. App Academy
specifically operates this way, and produces strong candidates (they have a
competitive application/vetting process).

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personalpicture
I have a Github but it's mostly web dev projects. In your career, what
projects have you seen that would impress semiconductor companies?

And as far as immersive code schools go, I haven't seen any bootcamps that
focus on low-level programming.

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ThrowawayR2
> _AMD, ARM and NVIDIA are more my speed._

An important question to ask yourself is: what do you envision yourself doing
at companies like these?

> _Since I can 't get an internship at a place like this then something as
> "internship-like" as possible._

AFAIK, there isn't any such thing. Unlike web jobs, where demand is (for the
moment) so high that even less experienced people have at least some chance of
being considered, systems programming jobs more or less require you to know
your stuff up-front because most of the abstractions that web or app
programmers take for granted simply don't exist at the systems programming
level.

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magical_mishka
Build a side project. You're more likely to get hired if you have a portfolio
of work to showcase, rather than a CS degree.

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personalpicture
Do you recommend I look at engineering students' portfolios online for ideas?
If I assume that is what helps them get co-ops at Intel and whatnot.

