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In my experience, in the absence of a CS degree you need a portfolio, though posting on HN may be a good shortcut. While you're job hunting, if you haven't alr

In my experience, in the absence of a CS degree you need a portfolio, though posting on HN may be a good shortcut. While you're job hunting, if you haven't already, start building something moderately technical. You don't have to build anything that cures cancer, but if you can build a reasonably complex project consisting of at least two independent modules (say, a frontend and a backend) with a modern stack, you should have a reasonable time finding a job. Tech is still the place where one may find lucrative work without a field specific degree, but the part that everyone leaves out is that you have to demonstrate above average talent in some other way first. In any case the practice and knowledge will likely be useful to you. Personally I spent some 5 years building a distributed client/server MMO in my spare time before I finally transitioned to tech and it's amazing to continue to see how much of what I practiced applies to professional development. Note that my experience is with the U.S. job market so yours may differ. Edit: additional advice is to leverage your past degree and target software development in the area, if it exists. Especially if it's a place where ML is still young. Programmers are a dime a dozen, but those who can understand and translate between code and applied science are hard to find and very much in demand, though generally at smaller outfits and especially startups. Further, a startup may be more willing to take a risk hiring you if you're ok with sacrificing some pay for a hot resume entry. Once you have solid professional coding experience job hopping is relatively easy, especially if you have hard science/math in your background. And the work will be substantially more interesting than pure coding, IMO.

indigochill 7y ago
With a bit of luck, you might also be able to angle in from some other position. I originally worked in customer support, found opportunities for automation, built a couple small tools on my own time, convinced management I was more efficient automating than doing support directly, and that snowballed. No engineering degree or prior portfolio to speak of. But I was also quite lucky and the company (and support department in particular) is constantly strapped for engineering talent.
- Reedx 7y ago
  This works well at game companies. They're almost always starving for tools. Schedules/management tend not to make time for them, but devs love tools and they make a huge difference. Get in via QA or support, make some tools. You'll probably be able to transition to engineering.
  - Beltiras 7y ago
    I'd advise against seeking gaming positions instead of going for more 'boring' sectors. There's cut-throat competition for any position in gaming while you have to scour the earth for boring things like Axapta specialists (meaning someone with sysadmin background + a little practical experience), Sharepoint site admins and other gruntwork. Opposite of sexy but a (usually) well paying job with options for consulting work. I'm lucky enough not to have had to go that route but if I ever find myself long-term unemployed, that's my plan-B.
    - philipps 7y ago
      I work in the area of online learning and am curious to learn more about these “plan-B” jobs. Is there a whole range of software development jobs that the education sector isn’t preparing graduates for? And which might be easier to apply to, for developers with more unusual backgrounds or trajectories? Where do you think are the biggest gaps / the biggest unmet demand?
      - Beltiras 7y ago
        There's no unmet demand. Nobody wants to work with boring tech unless given incentive. Sharepoint is kludgy once the site grows a bit. Almost anything else will be more elegant at it's job but the suits drank the koolaid so it has to suffer.
        Beltiras 7y ago
        I should clarify what I mean. There is no unmet educational demand. Some tech things are decided not on merit but by PHBs. Still needs to be serviced.
IshKebab 7y ago
> in the absence of a CS degree you need a portfolio If you can demonstrate good programming skills I think most companies would still hire you even without past job experience (I assume that's what you mean by portfolio - if you mean Github projects then in my experience nobody really looks at those). A CS degree is also irrelevant - pretty much all programming jobs in the UK just want any technical degree. In all the companies I've worked in most people did maths, physics, engineering or CS, but CS was still a minority. If you can program well then the real difficulty will be getting your CV past HR since they probably will dismiss it based on lack of experience. I'm not sure how to solve that but asking here seems like a decent thing to do.
- cheschire 7y ago
  > if you mean Github projects then in my experience nobody really looks at those This makes me so sad. As a hiring official I love reading through an applicants commits. It says so much about their personality, what they choose to say, when they choose to commit, their attention to detail when they think nobody is “really” looking.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    If they link their github profile to show, the commits you see are what they allowed you to see. So you’re not really seeing what they do when “nobody is looking”.
  - sshine 7y ago
    It's a culture thing, I think. I've spoken to recruiters who pretend I didn't say anything when I mention my GitHub account. I think if enough people don't have open source / pet projects, it seems hard for a non-tech to evaluate it. Whereas a CTO / hiring tech lead would probably learn more about a person by viewing commits than the resumé.
    - pdpi 7y ago
      It’s super easy to favour people who have a github profile with a bunch of projects in it, but that biases you towards a certain style of candidates — é.g. It’s definitely easier for single, childless candidates to devote their time to a side project than for somebody who has a family.
z3ugma 7y ago
One specific place you can demonstrate your abilities and help the world out a bit is at Ruby for Good - you can jump in and build frontends and backends of web applications. The code is public and open on GitHub so you can show specific commits to prospective employers, and speak intelligently to having solved real-world business problems with code. Come contribute to https://github.com/rubyforgood/voices-of-consent https://github.com/rubyforgood/voices-of-consent if you'd like!

indigochill 7y ago

With a bit of luck, you might also be able to angle in from some other position. I originally worked in customer support, found opportunities for automation, built a couple small tools on my own time, convinced management I was more efficient automating than doing support directly, and that snowballed. No engineering degree or prior portfolio to speak of. But I was also quite lucky and the company (and support department in particular) is constantly strapped for engineering talent.

Reedx 7y ago
This works well at game companies. They're almost always starving for tools. Schedules/management tend not to make time for them, but devs love tools and they make a huge difference. Get in via QA or support, make some tools. You'll probably be able to transition to engineering.
- Beltiras 7y ago
  I'd advise against seeking gaming positions instead of going for more 'boring' sectors. There's cut-throat competition for any position in gaming while you have to scour the earth for boring things like Axapta specialists (meaning someone with sysadmin background + a little practical experience), Sharepoint site admins and other gruntwork. Opposite of sexy but a (usually) well paying job with options for consulting work. I'm lucky enough not to have had to go that route but if I ever find myself long-term unemployed, that's my plan-B.
  - philipps 7y ago
    I work in the area of online learning and am curious to learn more about these “plan-B” jobs. Is there a whole range of software development jobs that the education sector isn’t preparing graduates for? And which might be easier to apply to, for developers with more unusual backgrounds or trajectories? Where do you think are the biggest gaps / the biggest unmet demand?
    - Beltiras 7y ago
      There's no unmet demand. Nobody wants to work with boring tech unless given incentive. Sharepoint is kludgy once the site grows a bit. Almost anything else will be more elegant at it's job but the suits drank the koolaid so it has to suffer.
      - Beltiras 7y ago
        I should clarify what I mean. There is no unmet educational demand. Some tech things are decided not on merit but by PHBs. Still needs to be serviced.

IshKebab 7y ago

> in the absence of a CS degree you need a portfolio If you can demonstrate good programming skills I think most companies would still hire you even without past job experience (I assume that's what you mean by portfolio - if you mean Github projects then in my experience nobody really looks at those). A CS degree is also irrelevant - pretty much all programming jobs in the UK just want any technical degree. In all the companies I've worked in most people did maths, physics, engineering or CS, but CS was still a minority. If you can program well then the real difficulty will be getting your CV past HR since they probably will dismiss it based on lack of experience. I'm not sure how to solve that but asking here seems like a decent thing to do.

cheschire 7y ago
> if you mean Github projects then in my experience nobody really looks at those This makes me so sad. As a hiring official I love reading through an applicants commits. It says so much about their personality, what they choose to say, when they choose to commit, their attention to detail when they think nobody is “really” looking.
- kortilla 7y ago
  If they link their github profile to show, the commits you see are what they allowed you to see. So you’re not really seeing what they do when “nobody is looking”.
- sshine 7y ago
  It's a culture thing, I think. I've spoken to recruiters who pretend I didn't say anything when I mention my GitHub account. I think if enough people don't have open source / pet projects, it seems hard for a non-tech to evaluate it. Whereas a CTO / hiring tech lead would probably learn more about a person by viewing commits than the resumé.
  - pdpi 7y ago
    It’s super easy to favour people who have a github profile with a bunch of projects in it, but that biases you towards a certain style of candidates — é.g. It’s definitely easier for single, childless candidates to devote their time to a side project than for somebody who has a family.

z3ugma 7y ago

One specific place you can demonstrate your abilities and help the world out a bit is at Ruby for Good - you can jump in and build frontends and backends of web applications. The code is public and open on GitHub so you can show specific commits to prospective employers, and speak intelligently to having solved real-world business problems with code. Come contribute to https://github.com/rubyforgood/voices-of-consent https://github.com/rubyforgood/voices-of-consent if you'd like!