Ask HN: What were you doing around the age of 18 – 20?

3 points by OldMidnight 7 years ago | 3 comments

I'm currently a 2nd Year Uni student at a relatively prestigious University in the country I live in (Ireland), studying a mix of Computer Science with business, as I enjoy both (more so the technical aspects). I recently built and deployed my personal website, using self taught full stack technologies, something I'm thoroughly proud of. Languages I would use mostly are the regular web technologies and frameworks(JS, Vue, React etc), Python as the main language I would use and Bash (eh) for maintaining a project I'm working on. I have dabbled in Java before and I'm making it my 2019 goal to learn C++. I'm also trying to get a summer internship with one of the big tech companies here. While also trying to do all this, I'm also working a full time job (20-30hr/week) in a retail position for the last 3 months (is my first job) Despite all this, I feel my priorities are all mixed up, or I'm unintentionally slowing myself down in some area. 2019 is here and I want it to go down a different path. Thing is I've heard a couple final year students doing my course say they've been looked down upon as having lackluster technical ability compared to full CS students, which worries me as I enjoy programming but want to set up my own business at some point in the next 2 years. Just looking for some advice on how to move forward with everything, maybe I have a little too much on my plate?

ldoughty 7 years ago |

Can't speak for your country, but when I look at entry level job candidates, I look for people that have a personal project and passion. Portfolios are good, but I like adding people that can show they dabbled at home, even if it's a personal file server, or game server.

Full CS people probably have a leg up on you, but it's not unsurmountable. Many full CS candidates I've seen only have education portfolios and no personal projects. Again here, I found people who do full stack work on their own projects are easier to train and bring on board.

Your milage will vary -- most of what I said above means nothing if your resume is only read by a computer.

So my advise is maintain a personal project or three -- even small ones. Don't go too wide on languages, focus on 1-2 main languages and go deeper. It's easier to side step to a new language later (most of our new hires don't know Typescript, sometimes only barely JavaScript, but if they know ably programming language well, they tend to pass our open-internet code challenges)

OldMidnight 7 years ago | |

Gotcha, that was on the plan so appreciate it!

weitzj 7 years ago |

I studied and worked in parallel and really enjoyed the parallel work and grow my career in CS.

Still I would say, if you have the possibility/luxury to work less and finish your studies faster with more focus, I would go this route as in my opinion you will gain more time in the long run to focus on your next steps after studies.

If you are not overwhelmed by the 20-30 hour/week work/studies schedule and can keep up, then Inwould continue this way.

Either scenario should involve side projects.