Christian McCarrick If you are truly interested in becoming a software engineer, I would not let your fear that you are not good in math stop you.  Most people who think they are not so great in math just have not had a good experience in learning it.  In some cases it is made worse […]

Christian McCarrick Machine Learning is also used in more Qualitative ways.  At AltX we were using machine learning to not only identify what news, blog and regulatory documents where relevant to specific Hedge Funds, but also to pull actionable information from those sources in near real-time.  The ability to identify specific named entities from those […]

Christian McCarrick Pros: Feeling that anything is possible Striving for excellence Insatiable curiosity Never settling / accepting the status quo Desire to always improve & learn more Great conversations More liberal world-view (generalization being made here) Incredible loyalty if you earn trust Building things from scratch that really can change the world Cons: "Brogramer" The […]

Christian McCarrick Do you have 10 years of software development experience?  Have you had good career progression from Jr, to Mid to Sr, to potentially architect, etc.? What languages are you proficient in? In what part of the country do you live? $100K per year is actually considered close to the average salary for a […]

Christian McCarrick Do you have any experience with Computer Science or software programming? If so, then it is a bit easier.  I would plan on preparing for a couple of months by studying and doing practice problems.  You must be proficient in at least one programming language: JAVA, Python, etc. Get the book: Cracking the […]

Christian McCarrick The best answer would come from someone who has worked for both companies.  I have not worked for either. A majority of Amazon jobs are in Seattle, while Uber is in San Francisco (soon to be moving to Oakland). I would look at sites like Glassdoor to see what people say about each […]

Christian McCarrick You mention this is for an Intern position.  I assume it will only be for a short-duration? If it is an intern position, I would not worry too much about the money.  Yes, your money will go a lot more in Chicago, but an Internship should not be about the money. I would […]

Christian McCarrick Yes, you can get a software developer job without a degree, but since you are already at university I would recommend you finish your degree.  During your studies you can also continue to learn software development during your spare time.  Contribute to open source projects on Github to get some experience.  Take online […]

Christian McCarrick Three potential roles come to mind: 1. Start your own company.  All of the press these days is about building these huge unicorn companies, but the majority of startups are actually very small companies that bootstrap.  If you go down this route you will certainly be doing most of the work yourself, particularly […]