[wincy]

I didn’t graduate high school and am a software engineering team lead at a large corporation. I don’t really have much sympathy for these people. It’s important to stay plastic and keep learning through your life.

About five years ago I got fired/quit from my second dev job and realized nobody was hiring node.js developers. So I looked at the local dev listings and saw the majority were .NET or Java. I spent the next month while unemployed reading an 800 page book on .NET (to be honest I got to page 400 or so before I was like “okay I get it”) and snagged a job as a mid level dev at a .NET shop in a Fortune 500 company. I didn’t even buy the book, I pirated it (apologies to Phil Japikse!).

I think we need to teach people that learning stuff yourself is free if you know where to look. We teach everyone school is the only path to knowledge which is, quite frankly, the most expensive, slowest, and overall worst way to learn almost everything. Outside some limited domains most concepts necessary for gainful employment can be self taught.

Isn’t that what the internet was supposed to do? What we all imagined when we’d talk, wide-eyed and endlessly optimistic, about the internet to people back in the 90s and early 2000s? Wasn’t it supposed to make information free? Which it has, for those of us who know how to look.

[blown_gasket]

This reads as survivorship bias.

I also think it's quite the opposite - knowledge jobs can be self-taught with a spectrum of degree within that statement as well. Computer programming - absolutely. Electronics - once you start working with real devices rather than sims you now have to invest not insignificant capital if you want to use testing equipment and measurement tools. Accounting - I'd guess you have to invest capital to take the CPA exam (United States) and you may even have to have interned before that.

However, if we look at other 'gainful employment': mechanical work - sure you just need to have the engines available and ready to be worked on; not necessarily a free endeavor. CNC programming - maybe there are simulators but again you will want to eventually learn the feel of real equipment. Woodworking, metal-working, other-fabrication - you are going to burn through a decent amount of source material before you learn what you're doing. Commercial driving - some places will pay for you to go through the whole program, you can't just self-teach yourself and apply how to drive a commercial truck.

The last sentence just reads as condescending (there are some individuals that are morally opposed to the idea of pirating, you have indicated this is not the side you fall on).

[TeMPOraL]

> I think we need to teach people that learning stuff yourself is free if you know where to look.

In software. Where there are almost no costs to practice or even to start making money off your knowledge. Where the market is growing so fast that everyone and their dog can half-ass some learning for a few months and then land a job - at least if they're young enough, and not operating at peak capacity like most adults. There's literally no other career path like this right now. No one else gets to pretend they've learned something, and get a shot at catching up to minimum competence levels on the job before the employer realizes what's going on and fires them. And that's just a reflection of the shitty state the industry is in.

No, giving people advice based on tech career paths is just a thinly veiled insult.

> I don’t really have much sympathy for these people. It’s important to stay plastic and keep learning through your life.

Remember that 5 years from now, when your job and all your career prospects disappear thanks to GPT-6.

[hadlock]

Given the substantial financial benefit you got from his (800 pages!) work, you probably owe it to him to buy a new copy of the book. Order it from your local book shop if you can.

[wincy]

Haha! I actually saw him at a conference last year and thanked him. You’re right though. I should definitely pick up a new copy, and display it prominently on the bookshelf behind my desk.

[JimtheCoder]

"I think we need to teach people that learning stuff yourself is free if you know where to look. We teach everyone school is the only path to knowledge which is, quite frankly, the most expensive, slowest, and overall worst way to learn almost everything. Outside some limited domains most concepts necessary for gainful employment can be self taught."

While I agree with what you are saying and am also 100% self taught myself, I think a large portion of people (especially outside the tech world) just aren't able to pick up a book, read it, pick up the knowledge and put it into practice efficiently.

Especially with no accountability or social pressure that sitting in a classroom provides...

I am not arguing for college or university, but I think that just giving people (especially someone in their 40s or 50s) a book and expecting them to pick up new skills may be asking a bit too much...