10 Reasons Why Self-Taught Engineers are the Best in the World

When it comes to learning, passion is essential. Because if you have passion you have the boundless energy you need to overcome the challenges you will face in becoming a self-taught engineer. Formal education is not a requirement any more, all you need is a curious mind and passion for learning. This is why self taught engineers often deliver the best results. This is why a lot of tech companies these days choose to reject people with an engineering degree and ten years of experience, and instead hire those that are either fresh graduates or those with no formal engineering education, as long as they are passionate about their field.
Here are some reasons why companies may prefer to hire self taught engineers:
1.) They aren’t in it for the money

In the tech business, a lot of difficult problems occur. These problems are often tackled by passionate engineers working in their company’s purely because those people love to be challenged. They don’t care how much work they have to do and how many hours they have to put in to finish the project. They are thirsty for knowledge and they believe that whatever frustration their work gives them will be outweighed by the new things they learn along the way.
Engineers often give away free resources online. Many of them are self taught software engineers. They share their work with others to give back to the community, as they have gained so much from it themselves. One of the best websites to access free online programming resources from professionals is Livecoding.tv. Here, you can watch experienced engineers code products live. You can chat with them as they tackle real problems, and work on real projects.
Another great site is thenewboston. This website is also founded by a self taught programmer named Bucky Roberts. This website offers free educational materials such as programming videos, science subject videos, math and many more. The site offers a great user experience. You can even watch the videos without signing up.
2.) They Don’t Require Much Supervision

With programmers, less is more. These kinds of people or engineers believe they know what they are doing and they have high self confidence. When problems occur, they usually don’t complain, because it’s their chance to learn something new. They become an expert at what they do because they embrace failure positively.

Complete article: https://medium.com/@livecodingtv/10-...06f#.be8oej84m

What do you think of the article... or are you the author?

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Originally Posted by anthonyemuobo

They don’t care how much work they have to do and how many hours they have to put in to finish the project. They are thirsty for knowledge and they believe that whatever frustration their work gives them will be outweighed by the new things they learn along the way.

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Personally I think they sound like idiots if that is their mindset. I do understand the reward of learning new things but Work/Life balance is important. Otherwise you're just another slave. And besides that there is research that suggests that it impairs learning (google it). If somebody told me that I had to work more than 37.5 (40 max) hours a week I'd tell then to f off (perhaps it seems like a good strategy when you're young, but the more I learn the more I believe that it's never a good strategy no matter your age)

Edit: HODOR!

10 Reasons Why Salesmen Selling Religion are the Best Leaders in the World

1. Profit
2. Gains
3. Money
4. Currency
5. Cash
6. Wealth
7. Opulence
8. Affluence
9. Fame
10. Fortune

Reinstate slavery for economic growth! It'll trickle down, I promise!

There's only one word to describe religious speech, and that's flatulence.

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Originally Posted by Salem

There's only one word to describe religious speech, and that's flatulence.

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I object to that! Flatulence is a useful source of energy, you see.

Calling self-taught engineers the best in the world because they don't know their worth or skills, don't have any self-esteem to walk away when you screw them, and are willing to work like slaves, is like calling actual slaves the best workers in the world. After all, they do the most work for the least cost, and you get to abuse them in any way you wish.

Here in Finland, lots of companies, especially telephone marketers and web content creators, like to use high-school kids to do the work, because adults will not work for such slave wages (no minimum wage in Finland, you see), and high-schoolers are too naïve to realize they're being exploited, especially if you blind them with bullpoop talk. Just like shady salespeople, and tele-evangelists or whatever those money-askers on TV are. Makes me angry.

Wow. This is super relevant to me. I literally just got my first MEAN stacks job like 2 months ago and they already want me to work a 56 hour week... This thread has been good for me lol

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Originally Posted by MutantJohn

they already want me to work a 56 hour week...

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Typical exploitation.. very common, too.

This occurs when management -- especially middle management in larger organizations; in smaller organizations, those managers who have been promoted to their position with little to no actual management training or experience -- thinks they can enhance their own position by squeezing just a bit more from the workers/production teams. They may, for example, have a financial incentive to do so: if they wring a bit more out of the teams, they themselves get a bonus.

Of course those "managers" love self-taught engineers; they're the most pliant workers!

Unfortunately, I for one am at a loss as to how to effectively counter the pressure. I know from my own experience that increasing your efficiency and/or output does not work; they simply ask for more, until you burn out and quit, at which point they just hire someone new. If you have my kind of luck, you also get very little to no attribution for your efforts, and possibly even get badmouthed behind your back. Such experience wreaks havoc on anyone who just wishes to do their work well, and is not worth the work experience. You may just end up burned out and spending years in therapy, trying to re-learn how to cope.

Suggested counter-strategies include pointing out that work product quality (and even the volume, especially for creative work) drops when weekly work load exceeds about 40 hours, or daily work load exceeds about 10 hours (depending on how often you get a rest day, how long the commute is, and what kind of breaks (voluntary and forced) you get). There is actual research on this, so it's not just verbal fluff.

A more common approach is to find out the underlying reason, and to try to counter-manipulate the manager to use better management techniques; a lot of people do this instinctively, as a social survival strategy.

Perhaps someone here has been successful in countering such pressure, and could give us hints?

Dunno, I have not met a good programmer with a formal education and years of experience who is not "self-taught" in some way, but I have met self-taught programmers without such background who came in it for the money as a kind of "Imma be the next Mark Zuckerberg/whoever is in fashion!" thing. A more likely reason why "a lot of tech companies these days choose to reject people with an engineering degree and ten years of experience, and instead hire those that are either fresh graduates or those with no formal engineering education, as long as they are passionate about their field" is that they are startups that did not have the budget for the former, hence hired the latter as slaves -- I mean unpaid or very lowly paid interns -- and then hired them after they graduated.

The myth that software engineering is this type of field that, unlike all other engineering fields, doesn't require formal education is still strong. And let us not even think about the fact that it is illegal to call oneself Engineer, without a formal engineer degree.

Adding to what Laserlight said, I'd give three more reasons as to why these so-called self-taught "engineers" may get hired often:

a) The company that did the hiring hasn't got burned yet by software "engineers" without any formal education. Just wait...
b) They are actually in need of programmers, not software engineers. But they don't really know the difference.
c) Lack of knowledge, a still relatively young profession, no regulatory or license body (on some countries).

It's true, I was a physics major and I don't think I could've learned programming the way I did without my education.

t's true, I was a physics major and I don't think I could've learned programming the way I did without my education. - Agree.

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Originally Posted by MutantJohn

It's true, I was a physics major and I don't think I could've learned programming the way I did without my education.

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Having seen your creative abuse of C++, I believe you. ;)

I am a self taught person.

My position is neither pro or con education. Do what works best for you. I understand that a formal education does ensure you know more than just coding(mathematics, writing skills, etc) but I don't believe that you can't take the initiative to learn those things on your own especially with how accessible information is anymore.

But I also think personality has much to do with it as well. If you like to learn new technologies, patterns, best practices outside of work or school that person tends to be a stronger developer / engineer.

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Originally Posted by Yarin

Having seen your creative abuse of C++, I believe you. ;)

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C++ loves the abuse lol.