Training on the job

Dice che di notte, invece di guardare Marzullo, imparava a programmare; autodidatta, anche grazie a Codecademy. Adesso, dopo aver venduto il suo Instagram a Facebook, si ritrova in tasca un bel gruzzoletto (400 milioni di dollari?). Sto parlando di Kevin Systrom.

Poi scopri che non è proprio del tutto così vero (notti, autodidatta, programmare), ma il risultato non cambia.

So anyway, long story short, I only took one CS class at Stanford, and instead of majoring in it, I coded basic projects on the side for fun (a student marketplace, an internet radio station, etc). At Odeo as the intern I picked up Ruby on Rails but forgot it quickly as I took a marketing job at Google.

Only at my next job at Nextstop would I say I went from being a hobbyist to being able to write code that would go into production. The lesson I take from this all is that a) don’t give up so quickly if it’s something you actually enjoy and b) 99% of what I do on a daily basis I learned on the job — classes/majors can prepare you to learn on the job, but *doing* the work is where you learn what you’ll use every day.