Ask HN: Former engineers, how did you transition your career to software? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Former engineers, how did you transition your career to software?

2 pointsCadellFastro11 comments

Former non software engineers, how were you able to transition your career to being a software engineer/developer? I've heard of bootcamps, but are there better options?

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It took me about 3 years of self-study to feel confident enough to really apply for jobs. I'd had a couple of embarrassing interviews when I first started, and it spooked me.

When I finally got serious about changing careers, it just came down to a numbers game. Recruiters are the gatekeepers to most jobs, and they don't speak GitHub. I got lucky to apply to a job that had someone who knew JavaScript looking at the resume. They sent me a coding challenge which I later learned I was the only candidate to really complete. I wrote my first JavaScript tests for that challenge.

Ultimately I think my long runway allowed me to hit the ground running. That first job was at a small shop where I got to handle a lot of diverse tasks, including backend work (I mainly do front end). I would have stayed there much longer, but they paid the very low end of the salary range and I have two children to think about. My 16 months there bought me a much better paying, albeit less satisfying position.

I think bootcamps used to be better than they are. They won't teach you anything you can't learn on your own, and you arent going to be a dev in 3 months anyway. It takes a long time to really grok it, and I spend a lot of time on personal development.

Probably wont help you, but here is the condensed version for me. Born in the early 80s. First home computer mid 90s. I “liked” computers. Took desktop publishing in high school (photoshop, basic design, art classes), worked summers for a photographer doing digital alterations and mock ups. Started university and majored in business, minor CS after a friend told me If I took CS101 intro to programming that he could get me a gig working nights with him. Learned PHP 3 and how to make incredibly insecure web admin stuff and sql. Graduation, worked insurance, investment advisor, construction, and also was a math teacher. All the while, I did some side projects with php/mysql. Lost my teaching gig and put out a tech resume through a recruiter and managed to impress one company to bring me on as a developer. Been doing that since (over a decade), taking on greater responsibility and having a few amazing mentors.

Most of my portfolio at the time I started real dev work was tools to help in the classroom and a few sites made for very small businesses. I didn’t know about source control, unit tests, any of that. I could parse form data and get data in and out of mysql. Somehow I learned proper schema design and enough html/css/js for “dhtml” that I was worth taking a risk on. Probably some books I had read

Canned from my first sales job, during my second sales job spent time on freecodecamp and other sites like that but still was very intimidated by bugs and learning new tools.

Did a bootcamp, but luckily was kicked out of bootcamp for failing a test and got my money back.

Did a field engineer job where i travled to different factories to help install robots. Still not traditional software engineering.

Did a free bootcamp, worked as a teacher at the free bootcamp (most fun ive ever had in my career even though it was only 3 months),

Worked as a software dev (really just managing off shore devs) for a big consulting company at a bank for 1.5 years. Low pay, 1 of about 10 American citizens in department of about 5000 technical staff at bank, weird job.

After this, finally got a nice dev job which i am happy with.

All in all, took about 3 years after i got laid off, until getting to the job I am happy with now. Getting through recruiters in those initial stages is very hard, but after you get professional experience that barrier pretty much disappears.

I work with a lot of "non software" engineers that write a lot of software.

To paraphrase an exec at a meeting some time ago, "every company is a software company - some haven't realized it yet" (this was in the context of a moderately sized domestic manufacturer).

There's obviously a difference between production software engineering and day to day scripting, but if you're not heavily investing in developing software skills for engineers of all trades you're losing a lot of ground in design and production automation to competitors.

So I would say that there isn't a transition so much as a decision, just start coding parts of your job. Decent rule of thumb is never do the same task more than twice.

There's also tons of value in being a domain expert that can read and write code - if you're in a highly technical field there's almost certainly a company trying to automate your expertise. Try and find the people doing it and help them out!

Got a bachelor in Nanotechnology and a master in high frequency electronics, when it was time to hit the job market I realized there was none for someone like me.

Started to teach myself programming, started with CS50, got a job. More as an engineer then sw-developer, taught myself python and machine learning in my free time. Transitioned to lead a project with big AI focus also was the lead dev. Switched companies a couple of times since then but still today I try to do a online course or to read a book, article etc.

I guess I will always feel like I need to fill the academic gap of not studying CS in university.

Also a course I think is amazing that will give you good knowledge of one of the most popular frontend frameworks and some background knowledge in databases and backend.

https://fullstackopen.com/en/

I did one course in Visual basic and Java, then used matlab and python in my undergrad and graduate degrees.

When I went into automotive engineering I wrote some data anlysis tools in python. I ended up in management where I wrote some pretty impactful VBA to build powerpoint decks out of excel sheets. During this time I also did some of Freecodecamp.org in the evenings.

Then the stars sort of aligned and I got a job 50/50 between client management and coding.

Right now I'm doing CS50 to plug the gaps in my knowledge and really really loving coding. I plan to finish FreeCodeCamp afterwards!

Advent of Code 2020 is happening right now - https://adventofcode.com/. I really recommend it if you want to get exposure to different problems in a more fun and relaxed environment with a good community around it.

Worked as a lawyer but was coding on the side. I started making legal technology products and selling them as SaaS. Then I decided I loved that way more, moved to Spain, started doing freelance development, and eventually got hired full time by a client.

Since then I've changed jobs a few times, but love what I do and have never looked back.

You went from SaaS to job, while many are trying to do the opposite. I’m interested to know whether you kept them going and why you didn’t go full time on them?

Sure - I just didn't make enough money from it. Looking back, there was potential but I didn't have enough experience to grow the product, and my technical skillset wasn't anywhere close to the level I've reached working as a full-time software engineer.

At some point I'd look to doing a SaaS again, but I'm happy working on other stuff just now and improving my software engineering skills.

I'm still transitioning but I've taken my knowledge in Civil 3D/Revit, disseminated the APIs, and picked up C# and Python. I'm trying to create tools to help engineers in software. I think that's the fastest path forward to becoming a developer.

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