Career advice for young system programmers
The author likes to point out how developer career online advice, blogs, rants etc. aren&#x27;t applicable to low level programming roles, with a patronising tone but they&#x27;re right nonetheless. Although embedded people will say the same about system guys, TCS researchers about all types of SWEs and so on.<p>However they seem to be falling into the same pitfalls with the frontend rockstar programmer-influencers; omitting and even undermining the importance of formal computer science education.<p>Especially if we&#x27;re talking about getting into non-web development&#x2F;IT roles, it&#x27;s quite a lofty goal to expect mastery in programming complex software without some structured curriculum that will help you obtain the fundamentals to do so. And no, Coursera unfortunately won&#x27;t make the cut most of the time.<p>Get a degree in Comp. Sci&#x2F;Comp. Eng or at least some STEM degree and then a Masters. I understand the US-centric view of tertiary education being a risk due to large capital investment but in the rest of the world where it&#x27;s affordable&#x2F;free, most would hesitate to hire self-taught developers, even in web development positions.<p>The degree may not be enough for systems programming  competency and this is where advice in the article about open source contribution comes to play, but I&#x27;d say it&#x27;s kind of necessary unless you&#x27;re some <i>bunniefoo</i> type of brain or idk.