Inspiration

The story of Sun Ling has inspired many people who lack a college degree but want to make a mark in the programming industry.

About a decade ago, Sun quit her job as a worker at a battery factory in Shenzhen and studied at a programming school for a year.

From 2011, she worked for a tech company that calculated salaries for civil servants in the city. In 2017, she applied for a paid internship in the United States and later received a job offer from EPAM Systems, a software engineering company that provides services for Google. Her annual salary was about $120,000.

"It is not easy to copy Sun's career path," Zhang Xiaohe said. "She worked so hard that she got a well-paid job in the US, but not everyone has such determination at such a young age and without the benefit of higher education."

He added that before 2015, most non-graduate students at his training school could find jobs with competitive internet companies, but now things are much harder.

"The development of the technology has seen large companies rise up in the past five years. The gap between the large operators and other companies is widening," he said.

"Large companies offer higher salaries and better working environments, but they demand much more from their programmers, including better educational backgrounds, fast learning ability and even experience of working for other big outfits.

"Programming schools shouldn't sell people dreams of success and attract those who aren't interested in researching technologies and are really not at all suitable for this career."