How is it to do aa for a livng, and conditions

General
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Hi,
It’s not so much my purpose, but a wish of mine that incidentally, once I’ll have absorbed and processed all the books I have about Ada, that I might as well look for a job.
But is it even possible without coming from a uni ? How do employers judge candidates with no practical experience , We all have to start somewhere. Do they look at hobby projects ?
How common are work from home jobs ?
I’d imagine programming in general lends itself a lot ?
Beside assembly, as a rule in your experience do you find necessary to do other languages to get a job ?

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Here in Orlando Florida, the way to get a developer job is to be a web developer. Javascript, React, Node.JS, etc, with good HTML/CSS skills. Maybe start with a couple very simple jobs done cheaply for local tiny businesses, and get a following.

As far as Ada, I don’t know how you’d uncover Ada jobs, but back in the 1980’s most of them were defense jobs and required security clearance. I’m learning Ada because it’s a very robust language I might use instead of C for my own work, but I’m not expecting to get employment or jobs using Ada.

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I thought so, but I can’t imagine there are those big societies like Adacore JUST to cater for the militaries’ needs.

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AdaCore’s Industries and Customer Projects page shows the industries they’re involved in, and some customer projects. There’s also a Case Studies page.

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This is a really rough time to look for a job without a degree, but I think the landscape for that is improving. Less and less folks are going to college/uni and while work places are slow to realize this in their hiring, it is starting to happen slowly.

I can’t speak for everyone but I’ll speak from only the experience of places I have worked. Most tended to still look for degrees (lots of older generation), but that has started to change a bit in the last few years, so there is hope for the future.

The main things I suggest are try to really highlight:

  1. Your experience you do have. Even if you don’t have a degree or practical work experience, you can maybe show big projects you worked on with others in a community or on your own (show github/gitlab/sf/etc repos).
  2. Your desire to learn and improve. Let the employer see that you are eager to pick up anything you already don’t have experience in really dive into it to learn it. Show them projects (even your own github/etc) where you picked up something totally foreign and learned it.
  3. The things you like to do for fun that might bleed into work experience. I often ask folks what they like to do as hobbies / for fun. Some places I have worked are way more likely to take a candidate that builds robots for fun at home over a person that likes to hike and mountain climb, even if the latter has a better degree transcript.

If all else fails and you feel you can’t get a job doing software you like, you can try something that can sometimes really pay off. Look for a place you want to work and get a non technical job there (I started in office work at a place). Get to know everyone that works there and be friends with them. Continue to do fun programming things at home, document them and put them in public repos. Then at some point share those fun things you do with folks that work there. Let them see your work and then sometimes that’ll be the lasso you need to get a foot in. If you can get people inside the org to recognize your talent from inside, you have a chance to get past not having a uni degree or past work experience.

It’s a more risky strat but if you can’t find a job you like otherwise, what do you have to lose?

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  1. Show them projects (even your own github/etc) where you picked up something totally foreign and learned it.
  2. Some places I have worked are way more likely to take a candidate that builds robots for fun at home

Excellent, because that’s exactly I wanted to do (murderbots and embedded programming) for years anyway. And as I noticed for the last few months, Adaptability and dedication are qualities I have in spade. I’m no genius that learn super fast, but I can take on topic reasonably close to my current skill set and extend it, and I love it, at least when it comes to Ada and I think hardware.
Btw I do have degrees, but they’re unrelated to computers. I did try a computer science degree once, but the courses were horrendous, it was mostly theoretical math, not even the interesting, useful applied stuff. There was no other option, and given the current situation, here or where I could possibly enroll, this won’t ever change. It’s not like I hate unis, but nowadays I consider them straight up obsolete and detrimental on every levels.

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Just keep in mind that in the current environment, it is an uphill battle without a degree. The hill is getting less steep as time goes on, but it still has a slope. You might find a lot of "no"s along the way.

I would definitely stay away from expressing that last part in interviews. Even if you find them detrimental, many many others don’t and you are trying to “sell” yourself to an employer. You may have to think creatively on how to respond to questions about why you didn’t get a uni degree. Don’t lie obviously, but like all things in sales, try to think of good ways to respond that leave the employer with a good impression overall.

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