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I personally would not spend any money on becoming a SWE. Spending that money will not get you anywhere if you lack motivation. Sure you can audit some free onl

I personally would not spend any money on becoming a SWE. Spending that money will not get you anywhere if you lack motivation. Sure you can audit some free online courses, see e.g. https://www.classcentral.com https://www.classcentral.com but paying money will solve very little. Instead I would go for work experience. That will give you the feedback to know what you actually need to learn. Apply for all sorts of (junior) on-site work as part of a larger team. You will need co-workers to ask and show you to quickly gain experience. On-site work will give you that feedback needed to not lose motivation. You will probably need to apply to many jobs. You will not get an answer back at all, or get rejected after interviews over and over again. That occurs to most of us! Perhaps also look at software testing or security surveillance. That is two paths I know acquaintances have taken to eventually get SWE positions. Both can be just-a-work on days when motivation is lacking, or allow you to automate stuff in Python etc to eventually do more and more SWE. Forget Google etc. The truth is you will probably need to work 10 years at smaller places first to gain experience. And that is probably a good thing. A hyper-competitive environment might not allow you to grow the way you need to. Best of luck with your career and kids!

avl999 5y ago
> Forget Google etc. The truth is you will probably need to work 10 years at smaller places first to gain experience. Well technically all you need is to grind on LeetCode for 6 months to prepare for an interview to get the position. The Google interview esp for a Jr/entry level position is firmly selecting for time spent preparing rather than any other factor (assuming you have a CS/Math/Engineering degree to pass the recruiter filter)
shoo 5y ago
you probably have a fairly good shot at getting a junior developer role somewhere. you may not be competitive at getting a role at a highly prestigious top-tier employer who gets a huge number of fresh grad applicants, since such employers afford to be very picky -- but there are plenty of other software jobs out there with decent pay and tolerable working conditions where you can gain practical real world experience working in industry as part of a team on serious projects. submit job applications to a bunch of places. for each application and interview process there is a fair amount of variability and luck involved in the process generating a job offer even if you would be a strong fit for the role. i wouldn't pay money to 'pivot' --- get a job where you are getting paid to learn on the job as a junior engineer.
Hermitian909 5y ago
> Forget Google etc. The truth is you will probably need to work 10 years at smaller places first to gain experience This is, IMO, highly presumptive. I have a friend who's entire career after college was "competitive rock climber" (his degree was not in STEM). He went to a bootcamp, joined a small company, and 8 months later jumped to Google. This was in 2018, he's thriving there now and his been promoted to a mid level engineer. Not everyone can do that of course, but I wouldn't limit yourself.

avl999 5y ago

> Forget Google etc. The truth is you will probably need to work 10 years at smaller places first to gain experience. Well technically all you need is to grind on LeetCode for 6 months to prepare for an interview to get the position. The Google interview esp for a Jr/entry level position is firmly selecting for time spent preparing rather than any other factor (assuming you have a CS/Math/Engineering degree to pass the recruiter filter)

shoo 5y ago

you probably have a fairly good shot at getting a junior developer role somewhere. you may not be competitive at getting a role at a highly prestigious top-tier employer who gets a huge number of fresh grad applicants, since such employers afford to be very picky -- but there are plenty of other software jobs out there with decent pay and tolerable working conditions where you can gain practical real world experience working in industry as part of a team on serious projects. submit job applications to a bunch of places. for each application and interview process there is a fair amount of variability and luck involved in the process generating a job offer even if you would be a strong fit for the role. i wouldn't pay money to 'pivot' --- get a job where you are getting paid to learn on the job as a junior engineer.

Hermitian909 5y ago

> Forget Google etc. The truth is you will probably need to work 10 years at smaller places first to gain experience This is, IMO, highly presumptive. I have a friend who's entire career after college was "competitive rock climber" (his degree was not in STEM). He went to a bootcamp, joined a small company, and 8 months later jumped to Google. This was in 2018, he's thriving there now and his been promoted to a mid level engineer. Not everyone can do that of course, but I wouldn't limit yourself.