
Ask HN: How to make up for lack of CS degree in software engineering? - zabana
If you are self taught, how did you get your foot in the door in the industry ?
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Artemix
To answer the question put in the body, I simply contacted companies with my
portfolio and my Gitlab profile link and quickly got answers.

At least here (country is France), most new and small companies don't care
about how much you spent on tuition and studies, but care more about who you
actually are and what you can provide.

It's following a mindset of "people are not tools", unlike a lot of very big
corporates and companies, which generally requires CS or "big" degrees to get
interested.

I'd not ask about getting my foot in the door of the industry, but rather a
small subset of it: Where and in which work categories do you want to work ?

Corps. and big companies ? Small but stable companies ? Startups ?
Associations ?

You'd really need to target what you are seeking.

As I've been able to see here, corps. are generally more for very stable but
not evolving jobs, in which you generally don't have a big place for
responsibilities and decisions. So more of an easy job than an "interesting"
or dynamic one.

Startups are the opposite: they move very fast, everyone have something to say
that may change how the society works but it's a really quick movement: the
society may spawn and work a few months, or even days, before dying out. You
have a very dynamic environment but must be ready for potential crashes.

The "small society" have been the best balance I've found so far. They
generally target dynamic developers (devs. who have a lot of projects - even
ridiculously small - in a variety of domains). They are more stable than
startups but you also get more "power" than an entry-job in a big corp.

Another thing we can notice is that young people generally target start-ups
and small companies, with the hopes to find interesting, fast and new
projects, without really thinking about the actual future of the society: it
kinda follows the open-source contribution logic ; you come and contribute to
the growth of the society, but are ready to move out and go on another
projects later.

Older people in this industry can mostly be seen working in "small" or big
corps, as mainly seeking stable jobs that can provide a steady and guaranteed
income.

