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Ask HN: Getting foot in door as a Software Engineering Student

9 pointsWickerM9 comments

Looking for advice from others who might have gone or going through what I am doing.

Currently, I have a full time job as a mechanical engineer who regrets the industry I've gotten myself into. I've decided to go back to University and pursuing my degree for Software Engineering in my off time as well as learning AWS and Penetration testing as additional learning resources. However, right now I'm losing steam at my current job and want to go somewhere that might open more doors. I've looked at Datacenter Technician jobs (currently living in Chicago), technical support jobs at local colleges & universities.

Are there jobs that people could recommend as someone who has interest in cloud, software engineer, penetration testing that are good entries for students?

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When I decided to go back to college as a 30 years old dude, most of my professors had projects that offered a small pay. I even end up working for a multinational startup for a year (my payment was crumbs, but it was better than nothing). Maybe try something like that. You can make great connection at college. Get closer to the professors who likes the same stuff you do, they would be able to recommend you.

I transitioned from liberal arts degree -> telemarketing / inside sales -> field engineer -> education company teaching IT to underemployed communities -> big IT consulting firm -> normal software engineering job,

You have an awesome background,

Some surprising types of companies that helped me transition into a software engineering role where i am today and am happy with:

-education companies teaching software/IT (lots of online/non-profits doing this nowadays in the US, pays not great, but its fun to teach and you are working with software which is a step in the right direction), i found education hours are usually pretty structured (when you are with students), so that gives you time to continue to ramp up skills outside of those hours, i initially enrolled as a student at my program, at least you will be able to tell your friends/family what you do all day if quitting your job is on the table, and then went on to work for the school for a brief time

-field engineering (installing software systems/robots/machines on client sites), sounds like you have a good background for that, a step in the right direction in my opinion, being on client sites can be pretty brutal though in terms of not having time to improve skills out of work hours due to work deadlines/exhaustion of physical nature of the work and the traveling.

-big consulting firms, big IT consulting firms like Deloitte, Cognizant, Capgemini, handle staffing software engineering/IT departments at a lot of big US corporations. So like Google engineers might mostly be normal Googlers, but there is probably still thousands of IT consults working at Google full time (on projects with like 10 year contracts, obv easier to get hired by IT consultant than a firm like Google) These firms hire both extremely qualified/experienced engineers and newbies like us who might be getting in the industry. Might not be the dream job for someone getting into software engineering, but I found working with senior engineers at Fortune 500 companies to be a great step in the right direction.

We take interns at our shop. Even had a program (pre-covid) where we had high school students doing an internship type program - and I will be hiring them when they finish university (if I can steal them away).

Any work you do as a student will pay off in spades. Very common to start off doing some testing - and it is easy to think it is the Charley work. Look for a place where the developers write tests, not necessarily have dedicated QA staff. Take time to learn whatever language they are developing in. Most folks don't spend the extra time honing skills right away and if you can get one of the senior folks to mentor, it will accelerate your career.

Help desk or internships would be good. Any position related to the field will look better on your resume than nothing. You can learn a lot in a help desk or many intern settings because you need to be a generalist so you get exposure to many things.

If you are already in the process of night school, then you might as well apply to some of the jobs you want. Reach out to the recruiter and suggest bringing you in as an intern (paid) until you get your degree and then be promoted into the role. It's a bit of a long shot, but some places will do it.

You have domain knowledge of your job. Can you identify problems that can be solved with software in your job, organization, or sector? Can you build and finish software to address these problems and bring value to people? Can you get it used.

If you do that, you'll be way ahead to get a foot in the door. It shows you can notice problems, build products to solve problems, and get users.

This arc is very attractive.

Do you already have a degree in mechanical engineering? If you do, you will likely be able to switch to software without doing another full undergraduate course.

I do, however its an Associates Degree

hi wickerm - not sure if this applies to you - but we released an scholarship for this kind of thing for under represented groups (https://vectorized.io/scholarship/)

Thanks! Will look into it, but doesn't seem I would fit the category. I will try submitting regardless

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