as someone who has been in SWE for a long time, i think what elendinel is getting at is that to be solid software engineer you do need training that's much more extensive than a bootcamp for a couple of months. you may be able to pick up how to write basic or even medium level programs using a scripting language, but programming languages, underlying grammars and how they run on hardware processors in fact requires a very comprehensive understanding that's rarely achieved without extensive coursework or experience and math is a part of it. LSAT like logic skills only scratch the surface of being able to succeed at programming of only the basic kind and for sure don't cover a large range of algorithmic and programming skills needed to be a really solid comp sci engineer.juzam_djinn wrote:i think at this point me and the other guy just have to agree to disagree with you, friend. like i said earlier, I've seen nearly a dozen people (many of whom barely cracked 90th percentile lsats and gres) go and spend close to a year in an intense bootcamp and end up at Microsoft, FB, Amazon, Hulu, etc. Sure they're not on the sexiest product team when they arrive, but they're still making good salary at reputable companies. And yeah, standardized tests aren't perfect proxies for coding ability, but they're not half bad (especially the lsat if you can crack a 175+ without having to prep for a year or more...)elendinel wrote:I have worked in both SWE and law, and haven't just "investigated" one and done "a task" in another.mrgstephe wrote:Yeah, so this pretty much confirms my suspicion. You really don't know what you're talking about. The ability to program is completely and totally different than high level mathematics. They are not even remotely similar. I also didn't say good LSAT score = good programming abilities. I said good LSAT + T6 law school + everything that implies = good programming acumen (essentially, high intelligence = ability to program). Those are two very different things.
At the core, programming logic and logic needed for analysis arguments/games/etc are the same. They both follow the same rules/regulations (except computers execute it perfectly, whereas humans fail from time to time). You are correct though - a perfect LSAT score does not indicate the ability to solve PhD level scientific problems. Where you are wrong is in the assertion that you must be able to solve/understand scientific things at that level to have a 'good' computing job. That is just an opinion.
But I'll leave it at that. At the end of the day, I'm a master's-holding engineer that is investigating law, and I can say (since I've got my foot in both of them now), the logical skills needed to succeed at my job are almost identical to the logical skills for analyzing the LSAT (which was my initial assertion).
I am not actually saying you need to be an expert in PhD math to be a programmer. Just that it is just as illogical to assume someone will be able to pick up programming quickly based on their LSAT score, as it would be to assume that a good LSAT means they'll also pick up high-level math pretty quickly.
And of course programming skills and math skills are related. Programming was created by, and still greatly relies on, mathematical theory. You can't optimize your code well if you don't understand how it works, and you can't really understand how it works if you can't understand the mathematics/algorithms that go into what your code, specifically, is doing. For sure, someone can string together code to make a UI or can throw simple scripts on top of someone else's API/tools without any mathematical (or, really, programming) talent whatsoever, but such a person isn't going to be able to do a whole lot else without an ability to grasp mathematical theory beyond calculus when the need inevitably arises. A lot of people tend to overestimate how well they code because they forget that optimization/being able to understand complex algorithms and how they work, regardless of the programming language, is just as important as writing something that doesn't crash and knowing the basics of what a hash table is. It hinders them in the long run, unless they have that theoretical basis, or an ability to get there. LSAT doesn't tell you that either
Bottom-line (to return to my actual point): it's silly to tell someone that their getting a high LSAT score and being in biglaw means they can just spend a few weeks on Google or a few months in bootcamp to get a well-paying tech job with nice benefits, with literally no other information about the person to go on. But I don't want to derail this thread any further by talking about an option OP doesn't seem to have any interest in pursuing, anyway.
and sorry for derailing even more. I know OP's not interested in this work, but I don't want people to overestimate how difficult it is to switch to programming if they're willing to put in the hard work up front.
what intense bootcamp gets you job at these places with no engineering degree or background? perhaps they got job in some sort of peripheral work, such as testing/product validation, and not core software engineering? i don't think anyone who had no CS/EE or engineering degrees can get SWE jobs with FB/GOOG/MSFT just because they went thru some bootcamp. i only know of one person working in one of these without a CS/EE degree as a SWE, but he had a solid sciences/engineering degree other than cs/ee and was a java programming enthusiast/guru from his UG days. i work in silicon valley and almost every SWE at these reputable companies is a CS/EE major or at least an engineering/sciences degree holder with expertise in a well known programming language (not just scripting).
