Posting on behalf of my wife. She has a PhD in computational chemistry from a US school and has a decent publication record including contributions to a popular open source computational software. She has had experience with fair bit of python programming during her PhD. She is currently working as a post doc developing commercial computational software. While she writes code from time to time, a large part of her job involves figuring the science part. So at her core, she is still a chemist/material scientist who can code. Of late, she has been feeling disillusioned by her current job situation partly because of the shitty pay and partly because of the lack of a well defined career graph. She has expressed interest in switching to a SWE role focusing on web dev. We looked in to some coding bootcamps like App Academy, UC Berkeley Extension which could provide the necessary ground work for the career switch. What I wanted to get a better sense of is whether folks have seen people breaking in to this field from a traditional science background like hers? Is 3-6 months enough to get hands on and become interview-ready? While I feel it should be possible, I may be biased because of my CS background. Another question I have is whether recruiters would be interested in a profile like hers. I am also planning to reach out to some of the recruiters I have worked with in the past to get their take on this. Thanks for your input. TC: 280k
Is this the new “asking for a friend”?
I wish but i am indeed posting on behalf of the missus
If you are not against BodyShops, Wipro and infosys are hiring freshers who does not need H1-b
Interesting thanks.
What’s your wife TC expectations after switch since the motivation is higher TC?
She makes 40k as a post doc. So doubling that sounds like a good target which I assume is realistic in the bay area
She’ll easily double that by going to pharma industry anyways. I currently work at JUUL and we pay ~ triple that for PHD toxicologists/chemists.
OP, I dont see a problem with her plan to change. Pretty straightforward, if she want the fast route: bootcamp + low tier work until the resume builds up. However, she is going to have a hard time having a shot at the tier 1 companies, even tier 2. If she wants a shot at tier 1, MSc in CS + shot at them as new grad hire. Longer study route but almost guarantee a interview shot if coming from a good MSc program.
Not sure why it sounds like to me, I practiced Karate for the last 10 years but I’m considering becoming a MMA fighter in the octagons, not the right analogy but what you’re getting into might be as messy and you’ll train up every part of your body to win
SWE career graph isn’t well defined either. You get to senior and then kinda blah, job hop as a manager to another company only to get asked leetcode hard by Junior engineer.
If you have GC or you are a citizen, by all means possible. Otherwise, H-1B in such a scenario can be a pain
GC in the works. Hopefully be end of 2019. She has H4 EAD for now
Check out freecodecamp.org - they have a forum where many non-swe people landed jobs at msft etc. Read it up for inspiration. My wife is doing their free self-taught course, which is web oriented a lot, so might be even more fit for your wife.
Awesome. Will look this up
She should look at Applied Materials if she has material science background. Computational chemistry would fit right in. TC is easily 3-4x postdoc. DM if she needs a referral.
Hey thanks for chipping in. She has actually considered Applied Materials and had applied to a job there a year back which seemed to be a great fit. But she never heard back and assumed her profile wasn't cut out for it. Perhaps a referral could make a difference. I will DM you her resume. Thanks a bunch.
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Just have her leetcode for 6 months, she should then be ready.
She needs to do some CS 101 before that I suppose 😛