TL; DR - AWS recruiter now; I want more complex problem solving, respect, and comp - love the type of problems SDEs can solve. Good reasons for career change at Age 29? ——————————— Biology grad here, dropped out of medical school after realizing I need a career where I can surround myself with healthy people (kept catching whatever the patients had). Tried sales but quickly realized I need to feel good about what I’m selling, so I started networking to learn about what everyone else is doing with their careers. I don’t know much about Comp Sci - took a coding bootcamp that turned out to be a scam (one day I showed up & they had cleared out the entire building), which set me back another 13K on top of the 100K+ debt accumulated from 1 year of med school... federal loan with compound interest is a killer. I did enjoy learning HTML, JavaScript & CSS, but ran out of savings & struggled to keep up with the bills, so I put it on hold. Sort of fell into recruiting at a staffing company, learned about this whole new world of engineering, and gained a lot of insight into various companies & industries. With some personal growth and some luck, I got into recruiting at AWS and absolutely love the company. I just want more. I miss science (especially biochem, physics & math) and am fascinated with the endless opportunities AI/ML and Deep Learning can provide, and the Big Data everyone here at AWS works with. I genuinely enjoy learning about the things the teams I’m recruiting for are doing, and I’m sitting here thinking, “I want to do that.” As a recruiter at AWS, there is opportunity to make an impact at a large scale- plenty of projects I can work on as long as I hit my hiring numbers, but there lies the frustration. Recruiting is essentially a sales environment, and your success at AWS is ultimately measured by how many hires you make. To get to a hire, there are a lot of factors out of my control & the output is never consistent. I can put in X amount of work, and the end result can range anywhere between 0-5. I despise the fact that I have to focus on these metrics to keep my job & feel hindered in my desire to focus on work that is more about building something meaningful, rather than meeting a metric. There is opportunity, if I continue to put in the work, to build something meaningful as a recruiter (& possibly Program Management in the future for innovative projects). I don’t need to learn how to do everything myself if I find a solution to a large-scale problem & if I can just lean on others’ expertise. I just want more control (relatively) over the performance I’m measured on and more domain expertise that involves more scientific knowledge & problem solving, in addition to grit & strong work ethic. I’m sitting here wondering if SDE careers are as rewarding (complex problem solving, respect, comp) as they seem, or if they are just as affected by bullshit politics & management tactics. I’m considering getting a 2nd bachelor’s in Comp Sci through a postbacc program rather than a bootcamp, because I want to establish a solid foundation in this new field rather than just rudimentary coding/projects that IMO focus on learning how to run the same rat race, just in different shoes. My question is two-fold: 1. Am I wanting to get into Software Development for the wrong reasons? 2. At age 29, 100K+ debt, & no savings, what’d be the most efficient method to make this career transition?
Try a few coresera/eudacity courses. They’re cheap, some of them are free. There is that “grass is always greener” analogy but to me it looks like you are genuinely interested in comp sci. You are playing against time so I would suggest training courses rather than a formal degree just coz formal degree means atleast 4 years. I have seen examples where people have self taught themselves some skill and got a job. Most often they are iOS or Android app developers but there are examples all across the board. Good luck! And don’t get scammed again. You work in amazon so you should know people who are better at spotting scams
Thank you for the suggestions! I’m taking Java programming through eDX just to familiarize myself with programming a bit more; since I have a biology degree, if I go through Postbacc it takes 1.5-2 years to get a BS in CS... what I’ve noticed, especially as a recruiter, is that AWS SDE needs very strong CS fundamentals, and it’s easy for recruiting to overlook self-taught developers simply due to there being no incentive for someone to take that risk. But I guess I shouldn’t assume or feel limited by what “most people do.” When you say ‘playing against time,’ is it because a developer career lifespan is short? I noticed most developers move on to some sort of management roles 10+ years into development, but a lot of companies are focusing on creating roadmaps for people who want to stay within an individual contributor role. I guess the question is how much of the skills I can teach myself vs skills taught in a formal degree program are applicable in an SDE role & how it affects career growth.
Yes coz when you’re 40 and still coding either you gota be a principal or architect or you’re competing against college grads who are way cheaper to hire. You would know this better being in recruiting. Second you only need strong CS fundamentals for software engineer jobs. There are other programmer roles out there that just worry about domain knowledge. Front end, and mobile app developers are probably you’re best bet if you want to just start working ASAP. If you are okay to spend time and learning cs fundamentals and get a software engineer role it is way more rewarding especially technically
Go for it. You're basically me when I'm 29. Physics degree. Pre-med. Finance and now trying to get into PM. If you need experience in CS (working on projects), lemme know! I can actually use a hand in a start-up.
Oh wow, thanks!
Tc?
Go for it You got like 30-40 years of work ahead of you. Just be sure you actually like coding. Maybe take a short online course on coding 101 first Also as people mentioned - search for tech academy - if amazon can help you get there faster / cheaper - why not Once you have amazon sde on your resume for couple of years nobody will care about anything else
Yes
"TL; DR - AWS recruiter now; I want more complex problem solving, respect, and comp - love the type of problems SDEs can solve. Good reasons for career change at Age 29?" It's dunning krueger effect talking, don't do it. You will fail miserably and be miserable. " if SDE careers are as rewarding"" They are not. Especially not at big companies, you will mostly work (esp at junior/mid level) on maintaining legacy code and being woken up in the middle of the night to restart some servers. Especially in AWS the work is like 90% ops. If you like using vim and going blind from reading log files for 5 hours a day to figure out which node died, then go for it. "fascinated with the endless opportunities AI/ML and Deep Learning can provide" Did this as well. At big companies AI/ML is mostly hyper parameter optimization. Meaning you will write shitty python / bash scripts that brute force search optimal parameters so you can get that extra 1% increase in whatever metric you are trying to optimize. Some companies require PHDs for this. Software is shit and most of the problems have been solved already, there is nothing new. Some smaller companies solve some original problems, but you probably won't get into them with your background. If you want to do "science", software is not the field for you.
Thank you for laying it out for me this way. It’s making a little more sense why a lot of people just recommend the bootcamp route; if the end goal is more about tedious groundwork, it wouldn’t make sense to go through the theoretical & “science” part of comp sci through a degree program. There are things I disagree with about your comment, like Dunning-Kruger effect and most of the problems having been solved already with nothing new, but I appreciate your detailed input & the insights it provides! Plenty of exciting problem-solving done at AWS and other companies.
"Plenty of exciting problem-solving done at AWS " Like what?
Amazon has a program for this. I know a recruiter who is doing it now. Going from L4 recruiter to SDE1
Someone mentioned Tech Academy before but when I search for it it just talks about career mentorship. Is there an actual program that allows you to focus on the role transition?
Have you tried searching Amazon Technical Academy? I knew someone who was involved in that, but don’t know if they still are.