cloudedcordial

Many of us go to conference to present their work, connect with like-minded individuals and possibly finding the new opportunity.

From the off-hand remarks from some conference organizers, their work carried some risk and could be thankless. They could face the following unpleasant things: * A speaker got cancelled because of something they posted or said. * Nasty people violated code of conduct. * Conference organizers got verbal abuse and death threats because they rejected a speaker's proposal. * Anything money related.

What are the other difficulties of the conference organizers?

Are there any of you here who pursued a STEM education, entered a STEM field but left STEM altogether not due to retirement age?

Some people became jaded on being a cog in a huge machine. Some people got fed up with the work. Some people got burn out. Some people failed to find a fit in the field.

A large company in my country posted some tech-related openings saying that they would like to hire someone who has been diagnosed formally with Autism.

I was very skeptical about such a posting. It sounds like a big corp just want to write a bullet point about "doing good in the community" without understanding what those individuals need in a workplace. A large workplace is cruel for people who cannot read faces, read between the lines and work together with other. Educating the entire department on Autism spectrum on short notice could be unrealistic.

The stereotypes say the folks with Autism are so good in one single thing that other shortcomings are overlooked. In reality, many have just average or above-average intelligence but are not genius. They could be "brillant jerks". If you have two people with the same skillset, you'd choose someone with people skills because teamwork is important in modern workplaces.

Someone I know has a formal diagnosis for Autism. They went for training in tech. They are high-functioning that they read & write, navigate the city and play video games. They need special prompting to say what they could do: Open-ended questions such as "tell me about yourself" would invite a blank face for them. Even if they disclose their disability at job application time, I wonder what the HR and the hiring team could accommodate given the hiring process is here for fairness to all candidates.

This person wasn't offered a job even after going through the in-person interview.

Are there any of you who did not have any post-secondary education in any disciplines and found success in tech? What was your journey? Would you recommend people to follow your path?

My aim for this question is not to have someone use this post to justify that they should not attend college or university. My advice still leans towards an education to expand their minds and to make human connections. I also acknowledge that formal education does not work for some people.

During my career, I met several folks who fell into tech during or right after high school. They enjoyed the work and decided to start working at 18 or 19. By their mid-20s, they had earned a few years of real-world experience when people in the same age bracket were still finding their place in the profession.

Here are rough stories from two folks I worked with:

Person "A" started working part-time for a local tech firm as a manual tester towards the end of their high school career. He worked in various departments including support, IT and software development in the same firm. By his mid-30s, he was promoted to become the DevOps architect with 20 years of experience in the industry.

Person "B" disliked school and found work in support after quitting high school. He moved around different companies and roles including QA, software developer and manager. His last known role was as principal engineer in a software company.

I pursued computer science because of the career prospect, the fact that the salary is not capped by regulators and I had the grades to get accepted in a program. I am not a senior developer, but am never out of work for more than 2 months in my entire 15+ years career with the up and down in tech. I live comfortably in a low-cost-of-living area. I am not looking for FIRE. I switched roles every few years so that I could learn new tech stacks and get perspective from different teams.

The increased responsibilities of senior+roles are daunting. I once had the energy in my younger days to jump into the challenges, but ended up jaded after not getting the results. People have been just looking out for themselves. (Not wrong!)

The conventional wisdom for getting job leads as a new grad and early career is to go to job fair, have a portfolio and open a LinkedIn account. These things allow the prospective employers to see your work or to reach out to you.

The experienced folks don't necessarily attend in-person events, may not keep their LinkedIn profile up-to-date and may not have a website at all. Some don't event have LinkedIn at all. They could be very choosy for in-person events because they take time out of their day: Many have family commitment. They have established their (offline) reputation to the point that their work speaks for itself.

My goal is to have the least amount of info out in public when possible: Social networks for offline friends, family and close colleagues only. Somehow I don't feel that I'm at a point in my career that I can ditch all my online presence and still get job leads.