From engineer to iOS programmers

To write this article, I have the feat: "Engineer VS Programmer. Or where the engineers go . " It turned out that I was not the only one, and as you can see from the comments, the interest in this topic is great, so I decided to describe and comment on my story about the way of becoming a programmer.

This post reflects only my point of view, as it will be full of criticisms about the education and employment of today's engineers.

School

Back in school, I was best perceived by subjects with a technical bias: physics, computer science, and mathematics. Toward the end of training, like everyone else, the question arose: "Where to go next?". Then I could not give a concrete answer, since I didn’t refer to those people from the stories like: "I wrote my first application in the 9th grade". I was an ordinary schoolboy who didn't want to do anything.

As a result, the choice fell on the university: "MIET" . For me, he seemed optimal in terms of prestige / labor. Also, at the time of admission (2010) he had a great advantage - the student did not enter the specialty or even the department, but the faculty. Further distribution went only on the 2nd course, if memory serves me. It was a great option, as it seemed to me, for a man who does not know what he wants.

University

You probably guessed that for 2 years I did not understand what exactly I want to do. The disciplines being taught did not bring clarity, as they were common. And by the time the specialty was chosen, I again chose the most common .

First job

By the 3rd course I had the realization that it was time to start looking for work. Fortunately or not, right from the 3rd year the teachers began to hunt students to their offices. At that time I was ready to go to work in any place and for any money, for the sake of invaluable experience.

This office is engaged in the development of various products of microelectronics.
to order, orders are mostly state.

During the first two months, I only did that I ruled those documents and disassembled resistors. But then there was the first salary ! As many as 5000 ₽ (4350, after taxes). At that moment I thought it was a lot of money, now it's funny to remember.

After a while I was given my first serious task. It was necessary to develop an application for Windows that communicated with electronic equipment over several digital interfaces (rs232, usb, can). The equipment was designed to test more complex products and simulated the signals of those systems with which the tested equipment subsequently worked. Not bad for a first assignment to a student, who had all the experience in laying out electronic elements in boxes. I did not have any curators, because no one knew this kind of programming. Of course, all the code I wrote was terrible, everything worked with brakes, etc.

So, for a while, I studied exclusively govnokodingom writing software for Windows. The salary was raised every half year for the same 5000 ₽. I was satisfied with everything, I was a student who came to work 2-4 hours a day, and at the same time received experience, as it seemed to me. This continued until the writing of the bachelor degree.

Half a year before the bachelor’s degree, there was a need to develop a new equipment for testing products. And here I was already hanged on a completely different job, namely the full cycle of creating some modules of this product. My responsibilities included creating an electrical circuit, topology, debugging and writing software. This time I was lucky and I got a curator. Miraculously, almost from the first time it all worked. At that moment I was happy, the first product created with my own hands and everything worked.

Master's

After the defense of the bachelor’s degree, the first serious conflicts with the authorities began. Due to the fact that I did not come to work for more than 2-4 hours, but for the full day I stopped to arrange my earnings. But any skirmish ended with the phrase: "Do not like it - leave," for some it is so familiar. I even began to look for vacancies, to the position of a C ++ programmer, since the knowledge in other areas of development was extremely superficial.

But at some point, the new bosses promised the "golden mountains". And it was decided to stop looking for work, because I believed it in my naivety.

Thus, the first year of the magistracy passed. Nothing particularly outstanding during this time did not occur, only the amount of work increased. But the promised salary did not grow so. Any talk about the promise ended with the excuses of the authorities. As a result, I realized that there was nothing to catch in this place, after graduating from the university, and began to think about my perspectives.

Final chapter

Since I had some programming skills, I finally decided to start developing for iOS (in this place you can insert something of your own).

This was the last year of study at the university. For 6 years, being there, some really needed knowledge was given only on the last courses, when everyone was already working and the majority could not allocate enough time for this.

So, something I digress. It was decided to take the head and start learning (in the 6th year, then). Having stuffed a few bumps, I found very good courses in iOS development , I advise them to all beginners. I had to study all my free time, and in the meantime I worked full-time and wrote a master's thesis.

By the beginning of spring, I mastered the basic course and decided to walk through interviews. Of course, I was carried to pieces, but I found out what exactly employers want and what gaps need to be filled. Then I turned up a couple of remote projects from my friend to develop applications. This was a huge leap in my knowledge.

After graduation, I almost immediately quit. Since the projects described earlier were not completed, I tasted all the delights of distant work. This allowed me to replenish my strength before searching for a full-fledged office work with the development team.

Summary

Work searches

This part, as it turned out, is nothing remarkable. After reading the mountains of articles on Habré, I was able to compile a simple summary and knew which sites to publish it (for everything that was possible). I finally found work in just 3 days (and by the way, through My Circle ).

Reflections

Education

Whether it is necessary or not, you decide. In my organization, many people work with degrees in economics and historians, and this does not prevent them from working as programmers. On the other hand, if you need a diploma somewhere, you will not have it. Yes i treat to my his diplomas, no more, as to the crusts, which may be useful, and perhaps not. There are a lot of articles on this topic. Maybe I do not know something and in other universities give knowledge that has a greater relation to life. Here, as in the diablo - until you pass for everyone, you will not understand who is better. Perhaps I was so disinterested in learning, it does not matter.

The only one of the critical drawbacks of my university I find is its geographical location. All the same, Zelenograd is not Moscow, no matter how you might seem at the very beginning. The distances are really big and spend 3 hours every day on the way to work, this is very tiring.

Engineer job

First of all, I believe that a person should specialize in narrower things than engineering as a whole (some may be indignant about what I called programming a narrow specialization, but in my last office that was exactly what they thought).

I believe that the sooner a person decides what he wants to do, the better for him and his career. And there will not be such situations when students get more salary than you.

Also, I advise today's students to be extremely careful if you work for a government organization. If you are given very heavy tasks on the principle - if it comes up, it will become a cool engineer and figure everything out, then one advice to you is to run. On such tasks, you can only learn copy-paste, not understanding what is happening.

The work of the programmer

Why programming? A small entrance threshold: no matter how trite it may sound, but to begin to understand that what is happening here is much easier, in a more popular area than in engineering. You can not just hear a huge amount of stories about economists - programmers. Also, to the entrance threshold can be attributed that you only need a computer in order to start doing something.

What area of ​​programming you go - your choice. Even if you make a mistake, retraining will already be much easier, and the accumulated knowledge will only help. Can not be said about working with iron - the layout of printed circuit boards, I just can not help.

Total

I tried to briefly talk about how I came to programming. The path was quite long, as for me. Do I regret the time spent? Probably not, because I was able to essentially touch everything related to microelectronics and it, although it is extremely superficial and choose for myself the most optimal option in terms of work pleasure and sn (by the way in just six months of normal work, my sn has risen 2 times , regarding the one that I got working as an engineer).