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My experience getting a tech job with no degree or relevant work experience

• formerkrogemp 4y ago
  Honestly the same problem exists in many fields. I wish more careers had something of an apprenticeship model.
• tomcam 4y ago
  > If the people who ran the bootcamp were going to recommend one person to local employers I wanted it to be me. So obvious and yet so rare.
• leesec 4y ago
  Author here: feel free to reach out if you have any specific questions for switching into coding. Always love to help people out.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • gbasin 4y ago
    Pbd, can anyone really learn to code?
    • leesec 4y ago
      Probably not lol. And even more wouldn't want too. But many can with the right encouragement and guidance.
      • goldcd 4y ago
        There are also "code adjacent" jobs. Aside from a few weeks training on an unrelated Masters I'm IT-unqualified, but got a job with an IT company making software for an industry. I started out coding, but knew I was never going to be great at it - although it can be really satisfying to make something 'elegant' that's yours. Then moved into a more customer-facing role, trying to capture what they wanted the software to do. Learnt elegance was maybe of less importance, than solving real world problems. Then moved into Product Management, which was maybe the first time I felt a 'good fit'. Gave me the opportunity to come up with 'big vague ideas/themes', and defer the implementation to the architects and devs who were actually good at the job. You try to break it down into consumable chunks - but it's on you to make it all come together. Final thought is just that even outside of dev, I now realize there's a massive spectrum of people within it. Some want you to absolutely nail-down the down criteria and will deliver against it. Others want to understand why, and if you can explain it relatively succinctly, will come back with suggestions on how stuff can be improved. I guess my point is that excellent coders are required - but the "rockstar coder trope" overlooks the vast majority of people working in IT. e.g. If you've say spent a decade serving food in or running a restaurant, you've got a way better understanding of what the requirements of a POS system are, than the people creating it. If you want to move to IT, you need to learn the vocab and grammar, but you don't have to be fluent - bring in your experience. IT can only solve an understood problem, and being able to articulate that is a prerequisite to a solution.
        • leesec 4y ago
          Definitely. There needs to be QA's and Designers and PM's and all sorts of roles within tech. Even having a little technical experience in some of these roles will be a big advantage.
        • abledon 4y ago
          do you think Product Management works harder than devs from what you see?
          • goldcd 4y ago
            I can only speak for myself, but I think the answer is "No.. sortof.. it depends.. maybe?" Writing an epic and a dozen US is definitely a lot quicker for one person to do, than it is for a team to implement it. So from that side, PM does a lot less work. Plus there's dev work like platform architecture, upgrading, platform, change management, automated test-cases etc, that I don't even have to think about. There's a massive multiplier there. Maybe 1 day a week writing requirements can keep a team busy and another day for answering questions, sprint ceremonies etc (story review, signing off demos) - but I'd say less than half my time is dealing with the actual productive work. Dev team just functions on 2-week sprints and the commitments they've given - so hard for it to go too-sideways, and they're safely insulated. Majority of my time goes on the "meta-work" - trying to manage what goes into those sprints. Customer requirements/placation - they don't (and shouldn't) have to give a toss about our internal sprints - so somebody has to ensure they'll be happy/not-going-to-sue in 18 months. Also the budget side is a complete Pain-in-the-arse. Your Agile trainer imagines there's some single pot of money to splash about however you choose to spend most efficiently. Reality is you're fighting for little top-down piles on internal accounts and then trying to fit the work you've done to them.
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      Define 'code'. The difference between a complex spreadsheet and an application program isn't all that large, and with no-code / low-code platforms as a stepping stone lots of people who otherwise would never get into programming because the first level abstractions are too far away from what they want to accomplish now find themselves drawn into coding. Programming is difficult, possibly unnecessarily so. If we made programming easier more people could do it. To some extent there is gatekeeping, to some extent it really is a hard to acquire skill if you want to be able to do it at a very high level. But just like talking, everybody can program at some level, but not everybody has the interest to want to do so at the level of low level code.
    • MaximumYComb 4y ago
      I don't think so. Maybe 20-50% of people can learn to be decent at programming. Maybe less than 10% can be really good. The simple fact that you're on this website makes me think you can probably learn if you put in the effort.
      • formerkrogemp 4y ago
        Counterpoint, I've been on this site for over a decade now and am not a good programmer. But yes, I guess effort, experience, talent, and luck are the best cocktail for a really good programmer.
        • MaximumYComb 4y ago
          Not everybody on this site would make a good programmer but if I picked a random person here I would have better results than if I picked a random person from the rest of the population. Choosing to spend personal time somewhere like here indicates a few personality traits.
    • nicoburns 4y ago
      Like pretty much any skill, anyone can learn to do it, but some will have more natural aptitude than others. I find coding easy and improvised comedy nightmarishly difficult, for others it will be the other way around.
    • 65 4y ago
      Yes, but not everyone has the talent to learn quickly, get good enough to get a job, and to keep that job. I'll give a metaphor. I always wanted to learn how to kickflip as a kid, but I sucked at skateboarding. It took me 10 years, many pairs of shoes, and tens of thousands of tries later to land a kickflip. Can I kickflip? Yes, barely. But does that mean it would be worth my time to pursue skateboarding beyond doing kickflips? Probably not. I just don't have the talent for it. Other people learned to kickflip their first few months of skateboarding.
    • dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Pbd, can anyone really learn to code? Just as with writing, there's some disabilities that will make it impossible or impractical, but otherwise, with sufficient effort, yes. Also just as with writing, not everyone can be good enough to have a job centering the skill, especially on the strength of that skill alone (some will be able to leverage moderate skill in the target area plus skill in some other area.) Like writing, but perhaps somewhat less so than writing, it may be useful even in jobs that don't formally center the skills (subprofessional writing skills are useful in jobs that aren't “writer”, subprofessional programming skills in jobs that aren't “programmer”.)
  • sahyooni 4y ago
  • spupe 4y ago
    Thanks for the write-up. I would like to hear more about your experience in switching jobs so fast. When you started looking for a new position, did you try to maximize pay, or did you feel that you could really stay at each of these companies in the long run? I am currently thinking of switching jobs, but I don't know if I should be playing a numbers game or genuinely looking for a good fit, or somewhere I could grow internally.
    • leesec 4y ago
      I hopped to anywhere that would take me! It depends on how stable you are though. Fastest way to more money is hopping, but theres alot to be said for working at places you like/will be able to grow. I'll write another quick one on this topic later.
      • Valakas_ 4y ago
        Hey, and thanks for being available to answers questions. Here's one: Aren't you concerned that new employees will pickup that you're a job hopper and think that you're not to be trusted to stay at their company for long either?
        • leesec 4y ago
          Not really. It's an employee's market. On average tho I've stayed 1 year at each place though so which is standard.
          • Melatonic 4y ago
            I really really need to do this more - usually stay at least 2 or 3 because I am lazy - market is so hot right now I could see one or two hops getting me to a nice spot
• taurath 4y ago
  This is similar to my experience but without a bootcamp. My biggest problem when mentoring people that want to and are capable of learning to code is pointing them towards any avenue of someone who might hire them to code. It seems like the few companies that do "junior" positions only target new grads, and many companies don't even bother with junior devs. As a result, finding the first job can be a larger barrier than being able to code useful things. Wondering if anyone has any insight as to where I might be able to help people look for a first coding job, especially without a connection to a bootcamp.
  • frankbreetz 4y ago
    I would try to contribute to open source and put a volunteer section on your resume, if you contribute to an open source app used by a company, I would think getting an interview would be doable
  • encoderer 4y ago
    Over the last ~5 years many of the "New Grad" recruiting programs in tech companies have pivoted to "Early Career" programs that accept non-traditional candidates. This is partly in a response to diversity requirements. How these might work is that you come in at a lower level (Associate, "level 1", whatever, varies by company) and generally these are up-or-out roles where a person has a year or so to prove themselves or they would be let go.
    • MaximumYComb 4y ago
      Interesting that multiple people here have said that Early Career style programs are aimed at diversity requirements. I guess if you're male and white/asian, you should still make sure to go to university if you have the chance.
      • mplanchard 4y ago
        I think it’s less that these programs aren’t interested in people from typical backgrounds and more that the candidates from alternative paths are more likely to be of diverse backgrounds, so considering those alternative paths (in addition to the classical ones) is a good way to help diversify your hires. I.e they’re expanding the pool rather than pulling from just one source.
• ozzythecat 4y ago
  > But the main advantage of the bootcamp to me was not technical, it was the network. Apart from providing a friend group which will likely end up in referrals down the road, the best bootcamps will introduce you to companies and have relationships with them. I’d love to understand this in detail. When I was at Amazon, we didn’t take boot camp grads very seriously, and in recent years the company only looked into this to increase diversity hiring, specifically boot camps oriented towards either women or the LGBT community. I’m convinced there’s massive upside in bringing in more talent - people who learn in their own time or through boot camps. Unfortunately, senior leadership disagreed and preferred to bring in talent from India and other countries because their visa status gave us considerable leverage.
  • leesec 4y ago
    >I’d love to understand this in detail. Whatcha want to know? >When I was at Amazon, we didn’t take boot camp grads very seriously, and in recent years the company only looked into this to increase diversity hiring, specifically boot camps oriented towards either women or the LGBT community. I think because average candidate quality of bootcamp grad probably pretty low, due to shortness of the program and people thinking all they need to do is complete the bootcamp, when really you need to stay learning for years. Also Amazon is top tier, wouldn't expect someone with 3 months experience being able to keep up unless they were really top notch.
    • emodendroket 4y ago
      Well, the thing is, if you ever do student interviews you'll realize many people in CS programs appear not to be getting that much from the classes either.
      • ThrowawayR2 4y ago
        That's a problem with the students, not the CS program. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."
        • 4y ago
• nus07 4y ago
  Try to get a job at one of the Indian or foreign outsourcing companies as an entry level developer . Now I know a lot of people look down on them but these companies have done a good job of training entry level developers and given them projects to get a foothold in the industry . I know plenty of top coders at Google and Amazon who got their first break at an Indian outsourcing firm slinging contract code as an entry job at Infosys and Wipro before moving to US. For all their faults these companies offer training, apprenticeship and a breakthrough that American companies are often hesitant to offer .
  • Clubber 4y ago
    In my experience, they are hit or miss like everyone else. If you wanna pay high wages, you're more likely to get a great dev, like everyone else. Most companies buy the "top quality at cheap price," line that many of them pitch. That's when they get into trouble. I blame the companies for selling in bad faith and I blame the execs for falling for it because they are blinded by cost cutting bonuses. Those execs then go on to brag about it on their resume and get hired by another company for more money to cause the same type of disaster. Rinse repeat. Good for the outsourcing companies, good for the execs, bad for the existing dev team, bad for the hiring company. This has happened so many times over the last 20+ years, I'm amazed it still works. Here is a very egregious example but it's still funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47mfohGyeBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47mfohGyeBg
  • jimmaswell 4y ago
    I did this (within the US the whole time, seems like they were hiring a ton of domestic college grads) and it worked out great. They even flew me out to a paid training program for a month at the beginning, free hotel and breakfast. Worked there a few years then doubled my salary taking the next job.
• MaximumYComb 4y ago
  I was the 30 year old that went to night school to study a degree in Computer Science. I got my first real tech role (paying $85k) three years into my six years of study. I've just made my first job switch for a $40k payrise with six months left in my degree. I'll graduate late this year and I'll probably also be close to my next payrise which will put me at $140-150k. I cannot recommend enough making a switch like this. It isn't easy. In fact, it can be really difficult. My life and the life of my children are going to reap benefits from this. If you're reading this and thinking "Can I do this?" then I'd highly recommend you attempt to find a way to make it work.
  • raddan 4y ago
    I also went to night school to earn a bachelor’s degree in CS. It was hard. And to compound the hardness, I started a PhD program the year I turned 30. Definitely a late bloomer. But I am now a professor of CS, and I am satisfied with the choice to follow this path. Long hours, but no boss and great pay!
  • leesec 4y ago
    WGU is a school where you can go at your own pace, pay by the semester instead of credit hour, and test out of almost any class. Can get a full degree for like 7 grand, just a heads up.
    • client4 4y ago
      WGU is what colleges used to be: a third party validation of knowledge mastery (along with the teaching). Many traditional universities are debt traps for teenagers.
      • skeeter2020 4y ago
        > WGU is what colleges used to be: a third party validation of knowledge mastery This is a pretty selective and narrow idea of what a college did or does. Most try to build knowledge before just validating it.
    • 4y ago
• analyst74 4y ago
  Is it really that hard to get an entry level job these days? I graduated community college a few years after the dot com bubble burst, and was able to land a 30k job easily, it was less pay than my waiter job. Did those really low paying job go away? Or has it become really competitive to even get those?
  • paulpauper 4y ago
    30K... that is not what comes to mind when you think of tech job. more like 100k
    • exdsq 4y ago
      This is true for literally as little as 0.1% of the entire worlds tech entry level positions. Probably even less. The world is a little larger than the stops of the Caltrain. FWIW, based on Glassdoor, Salary.com, and a couple other sources they all suggest the average salary of an entry level role in the Bay Area is 90k, so not only is 100k not a reasonable global salary it's not even the expected rate unless you're above average in the Bay.
    • dgellow 4y ago
      That’s always so depressing to read from a European point of view.
  • leesec 4y ago
    I think several companies have gotten burned hiring bootcamp grads and are less willing to take risks on it, but I can't imagine all junior roles have gone away.
  • Bourget 4y ago
    YMMV but I recently earned a doctorate in mathematics with a perfect (4.0) GPA in all my degrees and I have only received rejections in the tech world due to 'lack of experience'. In fact I have not been invited to a single interview. This includes jobs for newcomers that indeed pay just 30k --- and it's worth noting just how low that salary is in these days: 25k of that goes to taxes, rent, and paying off debt. I'm turning towards finance instead as the entry barrier seems signifcantly lower.
• coder-3 4y ago
  Getting a tech job with no degree or relevant work experience just requires you to have skills and proof of those skills. Keep improving your skills and strengthening your proof until you land a job. The only cost is time and effort.
• jijji 4y ago
  I've been working in the computer industry for over 30 years and I never went to school I was self-taught and never took any boot camp and never went to a diploma mill either so I know that those resumes generally get thrown in the trash, but if you're going to talk the talk, you got to walk the walk too so the real test is on the interview(s)....if you can pass the interview(s) then generally you can get the job but you also have to be able to do the job so whatever it is that you're claiming that you're an expert in you should really try to be one. This goes with any trade, especially the ones that don't require licenses by law. Prior to the web in the 1990s I would say it was a lot harder than it is today to try to figure out and become the guru kind of person that you needed to be in the early 1990s and it was a lot of it was because the just there was not a lot of material about the subject matter like Unix and software engineering and just the web was not available there was no PDF so today it's a lot easier than it used to be for sure, I'm saying to become self-taught. anybody can download a PDF about some subject matter read it spend a lot of time and become an expert, compared to anything prior to the early 1990s. The way that I became an expert in the early 1990s was by reading source code and figuring things out because there was just no documentation for anything. as a matter of fact the reason why I got into software engineering in the first place was because so much stuff was broken and just never worked that I spent more time debugging software than I did actually using it... as far as experience, you can get experience just by volunteering or doing internships and then using that as leverage on your resume to get real jobs when you don't have experience. When I was in my early teens I volunteered at random internet/BBS providers to fix their broken systems, and this turns into experience that you can put on your resume.
• legerdemain 4y ago
  I monitor threads like this one every time they get to the front page, which is once a month or so. Whenever someone says "I am a hiring manager and we 100% hire self-taught and inexperienced candidates," I try to reach out to them. And almost every time I get a response, it turns out that the poster is located in a depressed market outside the US (like southern Europe or the Canadian prairies), and also not actively hiring.
  • moneywoes 4y ago
    I imagine they must pay poorly as well?
  • foobiekr 4y ago
    I can attest that I’ve personally hired low experience people as well as a small handful self taught. I will likely be hiring again in a few months. If you’re older your experience was that all really good coders were self-taught coders. They were people who learned by cracking or modifying software or working out how their computer worked the hard way in a very deep way. For awhile most really great coders were either out of a very small number of schools or were entirely self-taught. I think this dynamic died though by 2000 at the latest. I will say that a lot of self taught people that I have interviewed and not hired had this - well, attitude. But that’s the wrong word for it. Let me give an example. Not long ago I interviewed a self-taught python guy who spent part of the interview explaining how hard pointers are. I am a lifetime c programmer. Pointers are maybe hazardous but they are not hard, they are such a simple construct that people effectively reinvent them over and over and pointer-like objects show up over and over. It was just the weirdest interview, he was quite adamant about it, like he was confused that I wasn’t instantly agreeing, almost like visiting a forum for people who only know python. It was very off putting once I realized that most of it was bluster to explain that he knew python and only python and that was a kind of mantra that he’d learned made him sound more thoughtful than he was. I don’t think he knew. Another typical example is “I could learn the CS degree stuff if I wanted to but I don’t need to” aspect by candidates that don’t know basic algorithms or analysis. I’m not opposed to self-taught. I was, myself, a self-taught paid professional coder before I got my CS degree. I did discover a world of stuff I didn’t know doing the CS degree though and the dismissiveness is unfortunately common. A lot of CS has zero to do with industry but unfortunately not all of it. I guess my point here is that, unfortunately, interviewers build mental stereotypes due to experience that you’re unfortunately exposed to. I’m still game to hire self-taught coders but I now aggressively filter that set to avoid the kind of limited mentality I’m trying (and failing) to describe above.
• lesgobrandon 4y ago
• exdsq 4y ago
  I got my first entry level role in tech at 19 in a small city in England and currently have a decent life in the Bay Area at 28. No degree, although I've tried several before remembering I dislike school, and have also taken various certificates in my spare time. Made a good six-figure rate by 26 in the UK, and most importantly I've worked on projects I've found interesting in stacks I've found interesting. It's definitely possible to do but it's not a quick journey and I think you have to genuinely enjoy programming. As in, if you didn't work in tech, you'd still play with code for fun. Saying this if you do enjoy it I think it's fairly easy to do assuming you take the long slog of a route, focus on experience over salary, and have reasonable expectations at the beginning. Your first job may not be development - it could be IT support, or manual testing, but you start writing code to automate small bits and try move into a developer role after a year or twos experience. FWIW, my first full-time job in 2014 paid 13k GBP (around $16k I think).
• peter303 4y ago
• blank_fan_pill 4y ago
  I graduated my bootcamp in 2015 and had a jr developer job with a 50% pay bump within 6 weeks. I had a college degree but in a non-technical field and 0 experience coding before I started the program. In my cohort of ~20 people all but 1 had found gainful employment as software developers within a year, most within 3-6 months. I completely agree that the value of a bootcamp is having a community to encourage you through the process, everything they teach you can be found online. I also went to a bootcamp that had a good reputation around my city so I think it was legitimizing for someone with no experience and no stories of coding for fun as a teenager. Even back then hackernews was full of people saying how flooded the market was with bootcampers. 4 years later I grinded leetcode and got a job at a FANG and essentially 6x'd my income from 4 years earlier before I could code. I eventually left that job because I was miserable but thats a whole other story. Now with 7 years of experience I leave the bootcamp off my resume because of the stigma. I took the specific degree program off my linkedIn and just put "bachelors of science" and let people assume what they want. If anyone asks I just say I'm self taught. Point is, it's 100% possible.
  • lazyant 4y ago
    > I took the specific degree program off my linkedIn and just put "bachelors of science" and let people assume what they want. We had an offer rescinded for something like this when it showed up in their background check (person mislead about a university title). We didn't care about the education or title and we valued self-taught people but not being honest about something in the resume was cause for disqualification (what else should we trust?). Personally, I'd just leave it out, no need to embellish or anything.
  • ricardonunez 4y ago
    It is in the article that the hardest part is liking your job.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • blank_fan_pill 4y ago
• georgeoliver 4y ago
  I have a lot of respect and admiration for many programmers (I'm not one), but I'm genuinely troubled hearing some of the stories of people in this thread grinding jobs to a Nx times payout and a miserable endgame. Let me be clear I don't think this is true of most programmers. But it seems part of the software industry is following the history of the financial industry (and of course those two are intertwined going back decades) and I don't think this bodes well for society overall.
• tayo42 4y ago
  Two things I liked from this: > The hardest part of coding is not technical or even getting the job, it’s liking the job. If you do not enjoy the often stressful and thankless role of staring at the computer and doing frustrating logic puzzles, usually alone, eventually you will burn out and wonder why you ever got into the industry. I even enjoy coding sometimes, damn it does it get demoralizing sometimes > Important point here: Learning things by yourself is actually much of the job. This is what separates people that can make it and people who can't. Like when people are asking questions, how do I learn to code or whatever. I think you have already lost. Do people find this topic of getting into tech in abnormal ways interesting? Maybe ill share mine one day. I was kind of amused by the idea that I failed out of my engineering program, I got a D in my only comp sci class and now Im a sr engineer at a popular tech company lol.
  • Melatonic 4y ago
    The other problem I think is that "software engineer" is such a damn broad role. People try their hand at coding and try some specific niche and either don't love it or get frustrated and then don't really try much else. When in reality there are tons and tons of avenues and flavors and areas requiring more or less technical expertise and different kinds of technical expertise. Some of these people might make excellent QA or cybersecurity researchers, some might be interested in front end development of UI or oldschool low level chip stuff. Or maybe they are more broad, macro infrastructure type people. Without already working in "the industry", however, it is hard to know where to start and what to try.
  • shagie 4y ago
    A previous blog post - Find the Hard Work You're Willing to Do > Maybe this is what people mean when they tell us to "find our passion", but that phrase seems pretty abstract to me. Maybe instead we should encourage people to find the hard problems they like to work on. Which problems do you want to keep working on, even when they turn out to be harder than you expected? Which kinds of frustration do you enjoy, or at least are willing to endure while you figure things out? Answers to these very practical questions might help you find a place where you can build an interesting and rewarding life. http://www.cs.uni.edu/%7Ewallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2018-10.html#e2018-10-21T09_53_29.htm http://www.cs.uni.edu/%7Ewallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2018... // https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209541
• throwaway787544 4y ago
  I was an underachieving ADHD having bad-at-math kid with no prospects for the future. I dropped out of high school and taught myself programming and system administration, by reading two programming books and going through HOWTOs (remember those? Sorry kids they don't exist anymore, you'll have to make do with 1000 random blog posts) to set up server software and networks etc. Because of my unstructured learning and random hobby type direction it took me a couple years to get proficient, but eventually I knew more about systems admin than people who'd been doing it professionally for years. I got hired for peanuts by a startup, and networked through User Groups to a better job that paid more. My career's been nearly 20 years with no higher education or any other skillset whatsoever, bad at concentration and memorization, no bootcamps or teachers or mentors. I'm not a genius. If I can do it, you can do it. An unlimited amount of free information and learning is out there on the internet. Go and get it, learn it, practice it. Network and find someone who wants to pay you chump change and build that resume. Also remember there are a lot of roles today in tech. Many don't require a ton of technical chops. Figure out what they are and what they entail, and target your learning towards one. Even lower end roles pay better than most other jobs, and you can always pivot to another role later once you have some work on your resume.
  • Melatonic 4y ago
    I think you may not be appreciating your ADHD hyper focus (speaking from experience). It may be that sysadmin type work was interesting to you in a way that allowed you to use that to your advantage. Other people, however, may very well not have that same interest. Maybe what gets them hyper-focused is art or literature or who knows what. Not to say of course it is not possible but you may be smarter than you think.
  • fosk 4y ago
    It’s under appreciated what having a specific passion - and continuously exercising it over time - can do. It does wonders. It’s essentially finding reward in the journey itself. ADHD, dropping out, etc are all beliefs that society labels as “non-productive”, but when somebody has passion and determination and a lot of time doing what they enjoy doing with no reward other than feeding this passion, then that’s all it takes. Consider yourself lucky because in my experience a very small number of people can do this, nobody wants to put the time it takes. Sometimes it takes decades. Coincidentally my form of ADHD disappears once I am in the flow, makes me wonder if ADHD is just aka for “I just don’t fundamentally enjoy what I am doing therefore my brain needs to reward itself in other ways”. Even better if we end up pursuing a nice hobby in a booming field like technology. Reality is that most people give up, because ultimately they pursue fields they are not deeply interested in to begin with. The ultimate curse: to dedicate our life to something we don’t care because we didn’t spend enough time exploring what we really cared about.
• skeeter2020 4y ago
  > 4~ years and 4 jobs later I now make 175,000 dollars as a senior software engineer. We've seen such ridiculous "grade inflation" in tech and it's really going to hurt us all at some point. Software development struggles for credibility as real engineering work, and a boot camp, 4 years of experience and a couple of jobs is not a senior level engineer.
  • leesec 4y ago
    I believe they call stuff above me Staff, Senior Staff and Principal now, or architect etc. But I don't know what to tell you, that's my title.
  • nexuist 4y ago
    No, these people are being paid what they're worth. It's everyone below them that is getting stiffed for pay. If your company has >$100B market cap, there is literally no reason why you shouldn't be paying juniors $100k starting at least. If you work on a platform bringing in billions of dollars of revenue per quarter, you deserve to reap the rewards.
    • thundergolfer 4y ago
      The person you’re replying to seems to only take issue with the title, not the pay?
  • astura 4y ago
    This dude doesn't even have four years experience, he has more like one year experience four times. You're jumping ship well before you see the results of your architectural and technical decisions so you can't learn from them. I'm not trying to be mean... The title inflation is just absolutely amazing (not in a good way)
• bogota 4y ago
  This entire thread is a disgusting look at the elitism people see themselves with.
• thefourthchime 4y ago
  The last part was the most insightful. Most people, even if they have the aptitude for coding don’t like it. The ones that do are rare. It’s not really intelligence or grit, it’s just that you actually like staring at a cold unfeeling machine that tells you that you’ve fucked up over and over again.
  • spideymans 4y ago
    I'm so happy I actually enjoy programming. I would do it even if I never got paid for it. Enjoying programming feels like such a life hack, considering the generous financial compensations.
    • ge96 4y ago
      I like being able to want something, come up with a solution, do it and use it. Most of it isn't novel but that feeling when you get it to work is great.
    • mastersummoner 4y ago
      100% same. I absolutely love programming, and enjoy my job at least 9 out of 10 days (though my current has a whole lot more meetings than I'd prefer.) I consider myself immensely lucky.
    • asd88 4y ago
      Same. I struggle to understand how some engineers don’t like to code. It’s definitely my favorite part of the development process.
  • mellavora 4y ago
    > it’s just that you actually like staring at a cold unfeeling machine that tells you that you’ve fucked up over and over again. I found great comic relief in this characterization, and want to extend the joke, comments like "that sounds 100 times better than my ex" or creating a "YFU as a service" company Thanks for brightening my day. Disclosure- it was more often me who was the harsh/unfeeling partner, not the ex. And I like programming.
  • 4y ago
• bradlys 4y ago
  > The hardest part of coding is not technical or even getting the job, it’s liking the job. If you do not enjoy the often stressful and thankless role of staring at the computer and doing frustrating logic puzzles, usually alone, eventually you will burn out and wonder why you ever got into the industry. I really wish this was the thing that was most difficult about the jobs I’ve had. I really wish it was. Instead - I’d say the promise of autonomy, ownership, and craftsmanship but in reality none of that is what bothers me most about the industry. On top of this - extremely bad managers are not just common but the standard. This is talked to death on HN and elsewhere but it’s quite insane that people who make $500k+/yr cannot learn how to be slightly less of an asshole and more empathetic as a human being. It’s weird to me that most managers I’ve had are borderline sociopaths when it comes to the workplace. It’s a weird thing too because if they were just honest about why they did things - people wouldn’t be as upset with them. But most managers I guess think it’s better to lie to reports or maybe they’re too ashamed to say, “well we’re doing this because I might get a good perf review and a promo out of it.” It’s never said but it’s clearly the subtext for anyone noticing. I just dislike the dishonesty that is so rampant in the industry and the completely insane amount of mixed incentive structure going on that ultimately hinders many companies. I am not surprised that some of the companies I’ve worked at that have over 1000 engineers seem to get even less done than when they had 100. Mixed incentives causing roadblocks everywhere. I find the technical, the code, and other “programming” like aspects of software dev to be completely boring - and if I’m being honest - a bit below me. They’ve always been… busy work.
• polishdude20 4y ago
  I did a mechanical engineering bachelor's straight outta highschool, took 4 years, got a job doing CAD work, didn't like it, got a job teaching mech eng as an assistant instructor (fun and fulfilling but bad pay). Learned to code in my free time, made lots of unique projects (online codenames clone, vehicle sensor visualizer, android app) then worked on a website that got fairly popular and started making money with it. During this time I was actively applying to places, getting no responses. Then out of the blue, got an interview, went well, was hired. Now I'm a backend developer and have my foot in the door. But boy did it take time and work.
• naomiajacobs 4y ago
  +1 for the bootcamp route! I did a bootcamp in 2015 and never looked back - even though some are definitely scammy, when they work they work. If anyone's interested, I recently wrote up my experiences here https://naomiajacobs.com/Should-You-Go-To-A-Coding-Bootcamp/ https://naomiajacobs.com/Should-You-Go-To-A-Coding-Bootcamp/
• gcheong 4y ago
  Just gotta find a way to combine the best parts of a coding job with the best part of working on a boat in AK!
• jwmoz 4y ago
  That's a very nice start to finish. My first job circa 2008 was for £21,500 web dev at an e-commerce shop.
• jokethrowaway 4y ago
  I see tons of these people doing bootcamp because they essentially want tech compensation despite having previously chosen a different career. I think bootcamps are a suboptimal choice. You are investing months of hard work teaching yourself real world skills which at best will land you a decent junior developer job in some mid of the pack company (maybe 50-60k€ if you pick UK, Switzerland or one of the nordic countries - maybe something short of 100k$ in the US tech area?). I did exactly that when I was 15 and passioned about creating and it was hard; that also meant that by the time I was out of computer science I had already been working in senior capacity with a senior level salary (roughly 100k€, again, for mid of the pack company - which was roughly equivalent to fang junior total compensation). Given you are investing months and money is an important factor, I'd recommend you just grind leetcode without learning frontend programming or whatever is popular at the moment. After being good at leetcoding without knowing how to code, you can just go and ace fang interviews and land a much better starting salary. I know people who did the above and just learned web programming on the job at a fang while they were juniors and being paid to do so.
• Pete-Codes 4y ago
  Awesome job! I've actually been documenting stories of self-taught and bootcamp developers on my website for 3 years. It's amazing the variety of backgrounds that people have had before getting into programming. Just last week I interviewed a woman who was a Beauty Therapist until Covid hit and they wanted a career change. I also have a job board for self-taught and bootcamp-friendly positions: www.nocsdegree.com If anyone in this thread wants to be featured, let me know.
• mdmglr 4y ago
  > A mere 4~ years and 4 jobs later I now make 175,000 dollars as a senior software engineer. I'm in shock at just how underpaid I am as a gov't contractor. Is this 175k salary in a tech hub or the Midwest?
  • tylerhou 4y ago
    $175k is mid to low end of new grad at FAANG in Bay Area.
  • noahtallen 4y ago
    You do have to zoom in to a specific part of the economy to get these salaries. It’s jobs in the “tech” industry (places like startups, FAANGs, etc) rather than software dev in general. (So not programming stuff for an electric company.) And you have to have a few years experience; it’s not normal to get paid that much for entry level even at some of the biggest tech companies. So that excludes the Midwest for the most part, except remote tech companies are changing that. Places like Automattic or Airbnb (from their recent announcement) don’t pay based on location anymore, and won’t dock your pay if you move to the Midwest. These higher salaries are driven by VC money and demand for sure. In my personal experience and network, small startups, midsize startups, and massive tech companies are are all hiring as much as possible. Plus, the classic startup approach is to use VC money to fund product development by quickly increasing the number of devs, and then figuring out profitability down the road after you have tons of users. This leads to an environment where smaller startups don’t need to cut dev teams or hiring to increase profit margins — the main goal is to build the product asap and grow users. And that means hiring lots of decent devs. And then big companies like Amazon just have loads of money and tons of products that need constant improvement, which only happens with devs. So with significant competition and need to hire devs and lots of available money, developers have space to negotiate pretty great salaries. Again, this varies everywhere and maybe isn’t the same for “non-tech” companies quite as much (because that VC money and massive scale might not exist as much outside of tech).
    • barry-cotter 4y ago
      > And you have to have a few years experience; it’s not normal to get paid that much for entry level even at some of the biggest tech companies. There’s someone in Pittsburgh on L3 (entry level) at Google, earning $158K total compensation. https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/Pittsburgh-Area/ https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/Pittsburgh... That’s substantially below what Google usually pay for entry level, $195K but that’s the joy of living in the Midwest, right? https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...
• kgm 4y ago
  All right, behold my idiotic story about the time I got a job for one of the major tech companies. It's the late 00's. I am in my early 20s. I have an associate's degree from the local community college, and I have been messing around with programming since I was 8 years old. I am unemployed, having not long before been laid off from a minimum-wage job at a failing retail establishment. I am living at my parents' house, spending most of my time messing with code and hanging out on IRC. I am contacted on IRC, one day, by a recruiter for one of the major tech companies. He tells me that I sound like I know what I'm talking about, and would I like to interview for a job? Well, yes, of course I do. This major tech company has an office in a city a few hours' drive from where I live. I go there for the interview process, which is somewhat grueling. I don't get the job. I had a brain fart and whiffed some basic question about computational complexity; I'd forgotten what O(n log n) means. So it goes. Perhaps a week later, the recruiter calls me back, saying that, out of the blue, a different subsidiary of the major tech company would like to interview me. This subsidiary is an acquired startup, a major website in its own right, and would I be interested in interviewing there? Well, yes, of course I am. This subsidiary's office is located in the Bay Area, which is a somewhat greater journey, but I fly there and do the interview process again. I got the job, that time. I aced the interview, in fact. Pro tip: It is a good sign if you manage to blow through all of an interviewer's prepared questions, and force him to resort to asking riddles, and then manage to answer the riddle correctly, too. It was only later, after I started to work there, that I learned the full story. The website's ops team needed to hire someone. Although this subsidiary was owned by the major tech company, it was still in many ways a separate company, not yet assimilated into the greater corporate entity. Thus, they basically just walked over to HR, and asked to poke around in their resume database. They did a simple keyword search, and my resume popped up. It was a total coincidence. One of the keywords they used was the programming language they used, which I had also happened to use in some open-source stuff. Another keyword was related to the subject of the subsidiary's website, which, entirely unrelatedly, also happened to be a word used in the name of the retail job I had recently been laid off from. My resume was very nearly a blank sheet of paper, aside from these things. I was told that the site's lead architect, on seeing it, reacted along the lines of, "Oh, we have got to interview this guy." So they did, and I spent the next several years working there. This is an incredibly stupid story. There is absolutely no part of this process which I would point to as advice for other people. To the extent that this has led to my success, it was blind, stinking luck, and I doubt it would ever happen again. I'm not sure what moral you could take from this. "Know your shit" seems patronizing. I would like to think that possessing technical know-how with no relevant degree, certifications, or experience is still a state which can lead to success, but I suspect that such extraordinary luck is still a necessary component as well.
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  This person sounds like they have an outstanding work ethic, and the ability to quickly adapt, combined with the capacity to play the long game (sacrifice today, for gains tomorrow). That will buy you success, no matter the industry. It’s kind of amazing what self-discipline and delayed gratification buys you. As a hiring manager, I looked for exactly the type of thing this person did. They would have definitely been someone I would have hired. I had an interesting team. I have no opinions on bootcamps. I’m a high school dropout with a GED, along with a redneck technician school, and whole lot of short seminars and individual classes (but no college). I did OK. I did attend a one-week “bootcamp” for ObjC iOS programming, once (Big Nerd Ranch), but that was a very different thing from something like Flatiron School. It was a “springboard.” > I was a jazz pianist in a restaurant in my teens. I have known many musicians in the industry (I was one). I think musical aptitude is probably a good indicator of software development aptitude. Not to mention, working a tough gig, in your teens.
  • leesec 4y ago
    Thanks for your kind words friend
  • mxuribe 4y ago
    > ...As a hiring manager, I looked for exactly the type of thing this person did. They would have definitely been someone I would have hired... As did I when i was a hiring manager (I'm taking a several year break from leading people)...but, wow, those individuals are difficult to find...at least it was for me. In my own life i have been given a couple of chances by bosses who might otherwise not hire me (based on my resume at the time)...and i was always able to keep them happy. So thank you for whatever you do/have done by giving people that chance! Kudos to you!
• sdevonoes 4y ago
  > First jobs’ the hardest — once you’re in, you’re in. A mere 4~ years and 4 jobs later I now make 175,000 dollars as a senior software engineer. Congrats! You earn more than me after 10 years of experience and a bachelor and masters degree (Computer Science) in Western Europe (my current salary is: 95K eur gross/year)
  • Valakas_ 4y ago
    It only takes someone 4 years to be considered senior in sofrware...? In my field (mechanical engineering) senior starts at roughly 7.
• dt3ft 4y ago
  As a senior software engineer in Sweden (.net stack) working in finance, 175k sounds amazing. Here we make around 70k/year. Getting a remote job is starting to look very appealing…
  • rightbyte 4y ago
    Ye ... I wonder for how long this US developer wage gap is going to last. You don't have to look to Sweden for cheaper devs. You could settle for UK. Or Eastern Europe who have a totally different cost of living.
    • Psyladine 4y ago
      It's not going anywhere. Programming is becoming larger, and the problems it can reasonably (as well as unreasonably) solve are increasing in scope as business managers try to leverage a more socially-acceptable field. Additionally hybrid developer/business folk are becoming a thing, diversifying the demand as well as the skillset. To say nothing of the "CEO Compensation" halo effect Silicon Valley wages have on the industry. Next to sales it is increasingly becoming the most valuable aspect of many industries that are critical to modern western economies (finance, insurance, technology), and AI is 'always' on the horizon as a future cost cutter, so I expect the trend to stick around.
  • rr808 4y ago
    Honestly the market is crazy. I have a guy in my team who has a masters in CompSci from a great university and gets about 140k and I know is struggling to get a new job. 175k is probably average or above average for an experienced developer in normal companies here in NY. I see some specializations earn more but I dont understand how so many young people are earning multiples of that. I guess I'm out of touch.
• ge96 4y ago
  I was fortunate to make this jump too. I still remember mopping the floor at some restaurant listening to my podcasts (dev/entrepreneur related). Eventually made it. Still poor atm (personal choices) but definitely at a better place opportunity wise.
• gotbeans 4y ago
  > If you do not enjoy the often stressful and thankless role of staring at the computer and doing frustrating logic puzzles, usually alone, eventually you will burn out and wonder why you ever got into the industry. I'm happy to say I find coding extremely fun. I like everything in it, even the most irritating bugs ( some of these will turn into stories down the line, we all remember THAT bug). It was just surprised by the description. I never even considered there could be people in the computer engineering businees who'd legitimately could not like coding.
• corderop 4y ago
  I would like bootcamps if the people that course them were more passionate about technology. I see them as courses for people that want to get a job quickly and don't care much about technology. A computer-related job can be really burning for people that don't like technology. I don't see a technology-passionate person with technology and computers cursing a bootcamp instead of a degree when you are going to learn in a much deeper way.
  • dudeman13 4y ago
    Bootcamps don't ask for almost half a decade of their lives and what's possibly crippling debt (depending on circumstances). If it matters, I have a Computer Engineering BSc and I don't regret it. Although I might have if it had costed me a kidney.
• fellellor 4y ago
  >The hardest part of coding is not technical or even getting the job, it’s liking the job. You wouldn’t know you hate it until you really hate it.
• evnix 4y ago
  I used to teach at these so called coding bootcamps and I know it can be hard for students psychologically. I still remember the day when the best student there came up to me towards the end of the 6 month bootcamp and showed me his final bootcamp project with a lot of disappointment. I asked him why was he disappointed as he had actually built something nice with react and firebase. He pointed me towards his friend's(who was at a Uni.) assignment project which was built over the weekend and was basically a minimal working version of a react like library. He asked me why wasn't he able to do that and why wasn't he taught this at the bootcamp. I knew what his friend did in a weekend was probably a culmination of 3-4 years of rigourous learning of computer science concepts that he acquired at the Uni. Among bootcamp students, There is this constant unhealthy comparison going on in their minds with the people who graduated from a Uni., this is even after years of working in the industry. what doesn't help is, Apart from a few exceptions(students and companies), the way most recruiters and HRs treat them isn't something to talk about and the pay difference is visible. Also, It isn't easy for them to catch up. You had the privilege of being able to afford to study for 4 years while it is not the same story for most people at/from the bootcamps. To add to this, They also feel left out when you discuss about your days at the Uni or are discussing some computer science concepts. If you have a colleague or someone around who is self taught or from a bootcamp, be a bit more kind and explain or refer them to reading material on concepts in a subtle way, it doesn't take much to make them feel included.
  • posabsolute 4y ago
    Software Engineering bootcamps are probably the best cost/benefits ratio programs that exist. There is a reason why that is, this isn't a walk in the park. Should you be paid equal to someone coming out of uni? I don't think so, the ramp-up will be hard and longer for the bootcamps guys, but this will change as you gain experience, after 5 years the difference in pay should be negligible if you properly ramp up!
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • TrackerFF 4y ago
    The whole "grinding" mentality/culture has instilled unhealthy and unrealistic expectations into the minds of the typical boot camp "candidate". It is difficult to compare a 3-6 months boot camp, with consistent working / learning over 3-5 years. Sure, some students will learn very fast, but on average - there's more to it than just cramming. And the people that manage to "grind" for N months and land a FAANG job are few and far between, not to mention that they're essentially cramming a very, very small portion of the CS curriculum.
• pizzaknife 4y ago
  i make slightly less than the op, am self taught and have 15yrs of professional coding experience(only 7 i would classify as actual engineering - the rest being flash bang wiz prototype in production bc market cap potential - but hey, thats show business). the difference however is i work ablut 28hrs a week(i am not self employed). my point being is you can make as much as you want if you try - i like my time off and still consider myself one of the lucky few degenerates of the golden age
• psyc 4y ago
  I was super lucky to live near a call center that handled front line support for Microsoft. A few of my nerdier friends got jobs there before me. When I was 20, I applied for the Win32 MSDN group. Devs called with questions about anything Win32, I triaged them. I was hired on the strength of my C++ knowledge. I hopped from that job after 9 months, directly to my first app development job, and I’ve never had any trouble finding work. For the first ten years I had to settle for mildly interesting things, but for the next ten, I picked where I wanted to work and what I wanted to do. If I was compelled to summarize how I did it, 1) devoted enormous quantities of free time, from age 12 to mid-career, to getting good; 2) pretty smooth talker; 3) actually wanted to do #1, as in couldn’t drag myself away from it.
• jotadambalakiri 4y ago
  My experience doing the same: lying about my degree on my resume, apologizing later ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• mastersummoner 4y ago
  So, I'm sure I've posted my relevant experience before and will likely post it again. Graduated with a STEM (only partial comp-sci though) degree from a state school in NY. The uni prepared me zero for how to interview, as a result I bombed most of my coding ones (I remember being asked in one "Tell me about yourself", and having never heard of an elevator pitch before saying something like "Uhh, I think Buddhism is pretty cool..." and remember seeing the light go out of my interviewer's eyes.) Took some tech-adjacent contract jobs, and eventually ended up doing helpdesk for seven years. Hated it, knew I wanted to program, eventually left my job to attempt solo Android development but had no idea how to manage my own time. Finally heard about coding bootcamps from the friend of a friend, did some research, and joined one (was lucky to have enough money saved for tuition, something like 15k.) Was one of the only people in the cohort with any prior CS experience, but almost everybody was dedicated and did quite well. Was a great experience, though stressful (actually developed shingles midway through, which for someone in their early thirties generally indicates serious stress.) Graduated, and landed my first programming job in about three months. It was hard, and my entire team was remote which wasn't great, as I didn't really feel empowered to ask as many questions as I should have (which is extremely important.) Was a great experience though, and everyone there was fantastic. Was downsized out after about 13 months, landed another job six months after, and stayed there for almost three years before we were acquired. The tl;dr is that bootcamps worked amazingly well for me, and I've never been happier in my current job – it's night and day from what I was doing before, and pays a whole hell of a lot better. I keep hearing that the bootcamp ecosystem is different now, which is a damn shame because it worked a miracle for me. I was lucky too: our cohort lead instructor was a phenomenal teacher, which obviously isn't always the case. But it's a trade-type school which, in a perfect world, is available for people who want to attempt this transition. Oh, my school also provided something invaluable (as is mentioned in the article): they hustled to connect me with companies looking to hire new devs. Both of my positions originated through connections my bootcamp made for me (I did a lot of work to land interviews myself, but both times ended up taking positions the bootcamp facilitated.) A really good business development department (or whatever they call it) is incredibly important in a bootcamp, imo.
  • matwood 4y ago
    > The uni prepared me zero for how to interview Did you not have any jobs prior? Other than throwing in some coding questions, I have found interviews to be interviews. > Both of my positions originated through connections my bootcamp made for me I got my first part time programming job when I was a sophomore in undergrad through a friend I met in the CS program. He already worked at a small local company, needed help, and connected me with his boss. The importance of connections I think is missed by many. It's not about someone giving you a job (though that does happen), but giving you a chance to interview.
• jillesvangurp 4y ago
  The hardest part of learning a new skillset is deciding that you can do it and then finding the motivation to do it. The rest is just work. But it requires a certain attitude of "Of how hard could this be? Let's do it.". A lot of people chicken out of doing that work with some lame excuses about how they have better things to do, they are not good enough, etc. Too many people self select themselves out of things they could be doing by simply deciding that they could never do it. I studied computer science. I've taught myself lots of other stuff over the years including a lot of things that have nothing to do with computers. I'm a decent photographer. I can bake some nice sourdough breads. I'm not a bad cook and I definitely like eating my own food. I can repair stuff. Etc. Nobody ever taught me any of these things. I just started doing them and then figured out how to do them better. If I'm interested in it, I'll find a way. Professionally, anything you put your mind to you can be the world's leading expert in just a few years. But you have to dedicate yourself. That's a bit of wisdom my professor gave me when I started my phd. He was not wrong.
• SMAAART 4y ago
  Maybe this is the sign that I needed all along. My turn to follow on these footsteps.
• yobbo 4y ago
  The job itself is trivial. He became the right person to connect with the right network.
• j042 4y ago
  How do you guys stay motivated to stay in tech, in a corporate environment? At the end of the day its just you and a computer staring each other.
  • leesec 4y ago
    Memories of doing manual labor on a tugboat for 12 hours a day 30 days straight keeps me pretty motivated. Also a fat paycheck.
    • j042 4y ago
      That's interesting.
      • leesec 4y ago
        It's not always perfect though! I struggle with motivation occasionally like anyone. But mostly some innate work ethic keeps me from failing or quitting lol.
• randerp 4y ago
  how about adjacent tech roles? Product manager, solution architect, business analyst, etc? are those more willing to hire alternative background candidates? in the past ive had zero luck even getting interviews for dev jobs so ive thought about getting some AWS/Azure certificates to have some kind of proof I can put on paper and check boxes. otherwise i could grind leetcode but it'll be for nothing if I cant even get called back?
• beepbooptheory 4y ago
  I have an MA in humanities field, currently spend my days secretly coding at work where I am a receptionist. Was recently very close to being able to move over to the tech team to do some Angular/rails, finally get my feet wet after many years of just doing work on my own time (and a little work time). One day, I overheard the CTO talking about hiring more devs, and inquired with them about it just briefly. He set up a meeting and we talked shop and I told him my story, the kinds of things I made, what I liked. Already at this point I was elated: I could talk to a real person about technical stuff I am interested in, and they understood me, and even more, they wanted me to join the team! After so much emotional energy and hopes dashed by constant applications with no response, I didn't even care if I wasn't going to get a job, it was enough to just be seen. But I was going to get the job! Just found out though that it's not going to happen, because they couldn't clear hiring someone to replace my current position; it's a startup and we are not doing well now (home brokerage startup). Will hold on for now, but not too hopeful anymore. Just really really crazy to me how much I labored over applications and things for so long with just nothing at all back, and all it really took was being able to be in the same room as someone. Equal parts hopeful and frustrating honestly.
  • Melatonic 4y ago
    Sounds like you could very easily get a job somewhere else then. Given the current job market I bet you could have a job in a month! Also I bet they would be able to find someone to replace you a lot quicker if they thought you were leaving
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • nsv 4y ago
    It is said, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
• stonecharioteer 4y ago
  I did this. And I'm one of the more successful people in this endeavour. I studied mechanical engineering from a Tier 3 college in India. I wanted computer science but I didn't qualify for the program because of my scores in the exam. I joined mechanical engineering and kept coding as a hobby for the first year. I abandoned it in the second year. The only thing closely related to tech that I had going for me was that I'd just started using Linux in my second year. This was 2007 and I started using Linux Mint 7 Gloria. I completed my engineering with decent scores, but that didn't matter since I could only get a job at a motorcycle factory after some tarnished dreams of studying for my master's. I worked in a factory for 3 years and finally ended up working for a monster who made me loathe the field. I left that field and moved to an e-commerce website that needed a content writer. I had aspirations of being a published writer, having written 2 books, and I thought this was a fine way to segue into the field. I was hired as a content writer for the books team at Flipkart. I joined, and began to love my job. I was more computer savvy than most of my peers already. The others were struggling with some work related to Google Spreadsheets and I took it upon myself to improve the process. I didn't realize what an effect that would have on me. I learnt how to write Excel macros. But that didn't scale for the catalogue dumps we would get every 15 days. So i learnt Python after talking to a friend at IBM, and I built a smallish desktop application using PyQt4 and MySql. It was super fun and I learnt a lot. I left the company because they wouldn't give me a chance to be a real developer, and I worked for a mechanical engineering company called GKN where I began writing small tools for mechanical engineers to use. I stayed there for 3 years and worked myself to the bone. I was in a silo since I was the only developer there. I mostly did Python and React. I eventually moved out, and joined Visa, with a huge imposters syndrome. And as I joined Visa, I also started going to meetups and conferences. It was in this time that I discovered just how good a programmer I am. My salary today, 10 years later, is 400x my first salary. It has grown ridiculously to say the least. Yes it is possible. And no you do not need to pay a thing to pivot. All you need is time, and dedication. The only things going for me were an insatiable need to learn, and an interest in computers.