Coding isn’t easy. It also takes logic, math skills, ability to solve problems, and patience to debug, among a million other things depending on your company. If just anyone starts coding, we will get a lot of crappy, terrible, buggy software and firmware.
Generally, that’s why engineering is not an entry-level job that anyone can just pick up and start working. I work at an engineering company, and their interview process is not easy to pass.
Go ahead and try, but most beginners and ones without an engineering degree will not get hired.
Agreed.
This whole idea of “coal miners can learn to code” is just absurd.
The 5 year period of my life when I learned programming at work (I was directed to learn it and FIGURE IT OUT), and then did code, was one of the hardest, most exhausting, most creative, and memorable periods of my life.
If you love it, it’s truly great! The patience, brain cells, and logic needed is tremendous. But worth it.
Even if you have the degree it is often not enough. When I got out of grad school the first time with an MS in physics, one of the jobs I applied for was in IT with a software firm. This was the mid-1970s and along the way to the degree I had taught myself FORTRAN, ANSI COBOL, PL/1, and the rudiments of Assembler. There were a little over 20 applicants for the job, and we had to take a test as part of the interview process. The night of the test I saw the room was a little less than half-filled with white guys, a few white females, a few Afro females, and a smattering of what appeared to be Indian/Asian types. The test was majority programming/systems problems, with a few basic logic and math problems thrown in (e.g., working with hexadecimal numbers) along with things like flowcharting and traceback/debugging. The test was scheduled for two hours. I finished in about 45 minutes, took 10 minutes to check my answers, and was out in under an hour. Everyone else was still working on the test. I felt pretty good about my chances.
A couple weeks later the lady in charge of hiring called and said if I wanted to pursue the job I had to sit for another test. This time, the room only had one white male (me), three Afro female, and about four of the Asian people. This was another two-hour exam but much more focused on machine and OS-specific questions, how to put together the JCL for a given batch job, database design and access queries, user interface design, file structures, and the like. It was clear to me that this was getting down into the weeds of what the company was doing. It took me a little over and hour to complete, including answer checking, but I was still first out. As before, I felt pretty good about my chances.
The following week the HR lady called me into go over my application. She said it was the strongest one, but they were hiring one of the other applicants (I found out later it was one of the Afro females). When asked where I came up short, the only answer I got was that the other candidate "was a better fit for the position". It was clear that I was rejected as a "punishment" for what they now call "white privilege". I asked about the test scores and was told they were the highest of the group, as I suspected, and that was considered in the hiring process, but the company also had "other factors" to consider. That merely confirmed my suspicion about being discriminated against. Then came the usual platitudes, that because my application was very strong, they would keep it on file for consideration of any other openings, blah blah blah. My response to that was basically "Don't bother, I don't want to work here anyway.", and left without another word or gesture.
Eventually I saw the handwriting on the wall and went back to grad school to finish my degree, this time in engineering, where at least merit and ability are given reasonable weight in hiring.