How do I get my first swe job without a CS degree?
Currently a data analyst crunching numbers in excel sheets. The interviews I get are mainly senior analyst role, occassionally analytics manager role, and rarely data scientist role. I can do basic SQL too.
Leetcode and python
I don’t have a degree at all. I didn’t do a boot camp. It was rough. I had to work at a smaller terrible dead end company for about 6 months. During that time I built a really shitty app, but it worked. Then I had to have a friend refer me to a bigger company. The role was for a jr eng and I knew the applicable parts so I got the role. After that I had mobility.
Did you use your “shitty” app to get into FB? Sounds like you are under crediting yourself
There was a couple jobs after the shitty app where I built some cool stuff and used that to get to FB.
Get contract work on Upwork, charge significantly below market rate to attract customers. Each customer is now an employer bullet point on your resume. Once you have 2-3 bullets as a data scientist you’ll be more believed. Need to know a lot more than excel and sql to be considered a data scientist though... how’s your business understanding? How’s the math and physics? Do you understand the data enough to generate meaningful insights from it or are you just writing reports? Another post suggests online certs, these are Likely good so you can understand the different topic areas beyond your current skill set.
I studied business and worked in banking for several years. I did an online boot camp and applied for internships in small startups (you won't get a Google or Facebook interview after a boot camp). After one year working as engineer I applied for FANG companies and got one offer. Now I have recruiters contacting me everyday.
Work your way up from small companies. Look for companies that are in a non-tech related industry who need custom development. Be humble and likable. I was hired in a small town by a local web development shop out of highschool after studying on my own for a few years. Moved to another, slightly larger shop, then later moved on to work at a company that was owned by a friend. After that I spent the last two years working for another, smallish, locally owned company (e-commerce) in a different small town halfway across the country as their sole in house engineer. This all happened within the course of 12 years. In that time I've been studying computer science, software engineering, and relevant industry topics off and on on my own. Next month I start as an SDE 2 at Amazon. If I had gotten my shit together sooner I would probably have been able to land better jobs in the past decade, but I wasted a lot of time and didn't even start trying until a few months ago. If you're more mature than I was, and work harder than I did with clear goals in mind - you'll make it a lot faster than I was able to. Good luck!
Congrats on your offer man 👍
Contribute to OSS projects. Point to the URL with your GitHub PRs.
Engage in intercourse with the interviewer
If you can code someone will hire you. Go after less fashionable brands, anything like ford or Sears will do
Have some side projects or open source contributions. You need to prove that you’re capable of coding. The accept a place that will hire you and where you can code l, even if the pay isn’t spectacular.
Probably do a code academy and have some skills and a portfolio