[marcbarros]

I"m not a software engineer, but I wish I had learned it in college instead of studying business. Now as a startup founder I'm at a disadvantage because I can't just start building products I see, I need a team just to start.

As the CEO of Contour it wasn't about pay for great engineers. It was about having an interesting problem to work on and a company culture they wanted to be a part of. Yes you compete on pay, but for a start-up, everything else you offer is as important.

Growing up I didn't even know what you could do with engineering. I loved math, but had no idea what you could do by being an engineer. I think a lot of kids don't realize the creativity you can harness with engineering and how you can "build" real things. It was always presented to me in terms of math and being nerdy. Just like writing, I hated it because it was about "grammar" and not about expressing yourself. Now I love to write.

For kids I think it is framed up wrong and until more engineers have kids and teach their kids just what you can do, we will be short software engineers.

I'm now trying to teach myself with codeacademy and it's hard.