Career switch (ops->eng)
Hi all, Liberal arts major, haven't had any technical roles but have strong analytical skills (SQL, bit of R, python, Ruby, etc) I'm looking to change careers here soon and try to get into something more technical. How the heck is anyone supposed to transition into eng without a CS degree (well, most importantly the internships from it). I've been working on webdev stuff - RoR, building some full stack projects to have a portfolio I'm not shooting for FAANG or anything, I'd be happy with a webdev junior role somewhere, but I have no idea how to get my foot in the door to get those 1-3 years before I can start applying for real eng jobs. Any advice?
I am a self taught engineer. I have a liberal arts degree. I learned on the job and at nights. I was fortunate to get a start at a tech company but with only a few months of experience I struggled mightily too when i had to apply for new roles. I built a handful of solid web applications, hosted them via heroku and put them up on Github. I read/studied “Cracking the Coding interview”. I read the source code of knockout, Angular, and backbone (popular at the time) and applied to every software Engineering role I could find. I wrote a cover letter for every role, explaining my background and how hard I worked. Every phone call I got, I explained my story, my passion. I finally got a shot at an on-site, and nailed the interview. For reference, I applied to over 100 jobs before i finally got that first break.
Or become PM. Same pay, same / better trajectory, and you gotta command engineers
I like technical challenges though!
Automating people to do what you want is a technical challenge.
Liberal arts major... feel sorry for you
Thanks for your productive and insightful comment lol
Welcome 🙏
Background really doesn’t have that much to do with it. The biggest thing with programming is being a self learner and being able to think through problems on your own (with in reason of course). Learn continuously, build things continuously, fail early and often. It all depends on how serious you are. Serious as in how many hours you spend a day typing code into a computer. Biggest mistake I see people transitioning make is assuming talking about it, thinking about, reading about it, taking classes or bootcamps about it, getting some job about it, etc. will make up for spending hours and days in front of a computer actually being about it.
Yes, definitely get that. I did a (shitty) boot camp and it sucked honestly. I really love building so that's what I've been trying to do. My coding time goal has been minimum of 30hrs/week
Build an app on your own. Post it on GitHub. Once you've done that, companies will be more willing to take a chance on you
Thank you for the advice, I'm definitely trying to build up a portfolio right now
Similar boat here. My approach is to take a couple of CS courses from Stanford SCPD and then apply to GA Techs MSCS program
Can't you do that program online through Udacity?
Right the online MSCS