I posted a few days ago about breaking into tech with a civil engineering background and got a ton of solid advice. I’ve been grinding leetcode, focusing a ton on bringing up my DS/Algo skills and started a project. I want to start applying to jobs within the 2-3 months to test the waters. Looking for suggestions on companies to research that may be a bit more accepting of a non-CS background or less competitive to get into. Microsoft would be the dream but I think that’ll be attempted as a second job. Primarily interested in SDE roles, language so far is Python (will learn Java or C++ next). I’m currently living in Bellevue so the Eastside is ideal but would do Seattle if theres better options there. If it helps I wouldnt require sponsorship. Thanks! TC: 90k
Every company will take you for entry level. You have technical degree, just show your coding skills (leetcode, small projects). Crush the behavioral interview too.
Behavioral interviews are something I consider myself excellent at. I’ve never made it to the interview phase at an engineering firm without receiving an offer. Job interviews in my field are basically 90% behavioral/conversational with the remaining 10% of me selling my educational background, project background and technical skills. How big should should a small project be? Also, is it worth it to add another language to mix, as in would it be preferred to be fairly green at 2 languages or better at 1?
Trying to answer all the previous questions here. Don’t think boot camp is necessary. Not sure tbh, some are positive others didn’t find it helpful. EPI is great book to work through. Seems like the questions are not currently asked anymore but still can learn a lot of necessary fundamentals and patterns there. That’s what you want anyway, not just memorizing solutions and hoping they ask same question. A small project is really just a web app for most people. You should know what is frontend backend, relational db, basic http/https. Maybe nosql like MongoDB. Other projects have been ML api, or school work programming projects. I’d go with web app, keep it simple. Just follow some tutorial and get familiar with how to structure an app code base and what are the architectural components. Most of your effort should be on algorithms and data structures. Be very good with one language, python is a great choice. You should know all of the basic things ie dictionary and its most commonly used methods. It will be good to know how memory is managed in python.
Excellent! If it would’ve been an insanely positive boost, I would’ve considered it. But I also have a low stress job I work a flat 40 at that I would prefer to keep while learning. The biggest sell on EPI to me was the python specific version, seems like CTCI is based on java which would’ve threw me for a bit of a loop trying to both learn and translate over to python. Excellent! That sounds pretty reasonable, I’ll follow 2-3 tutorials and then try creating my own project from scratch. I also want to give a web scraper a shot as well. That works for me. I’ll continue focusing on those and bumping up my python abilities! Would memory management be like stack and heap type stuff?
For career changing, really any company where you feel like you will learn a lot and is willing to take you. My earlier post, any of the tier 1a) or 1b) would be great places to start. I personally started at a tier 2 and things worked out fine anyway. https://www.teamblind.com/post/Best-tech-companies-in-Seattle-area-6qeqbEcB
My biggest concern was finding companies that have a more structured engineer training regiment as opposed to trial by fire. Also, finding companies that maybe more likely to consider non-CS degreed but self taught. That’s a fantastic list though!
Indeed has hired many coding boot camp people in the past and onboards them appropriately. I think the general attitude is still friendly towards them. In general all companies make some effort to bringing a newbie onboard but learning by trial and error and proactively seeking resources is expected in this industry. You can do it! But don’t mentally paint yourself into “career switcher”. I bet you’re not that much different from an average CS grad in terms of first year on the job performance. Attitude and commitment matters so much more than background at this stage. Commit to learning a ton the first few years.