The entry pathways I know of (as a web dev): 1. Credentials & connections: You went somewhere (graduated from a good program) and/or know someone who gets your

The entry pathways I know of (as a web dev): 1. Credentials & connections: You went somewhere (graduated from a good program) and/or know someone who gets your foot in the door. Some FAANGs will hire this way through internships. 2. Horizontal transfers: You're in a company doing something that also has SWE roles, and you ask for a transfer into a team and gradually work your way up, maybe from some adjacent feel (QA, DevOps, UX, etc.) 3. Applications and interviews: It used to be possible to come from no real background except whatever you learned on your own / in school / online / at boot camp, pass some preliminary interviews, and get a job. #3 used to be very common for most of the people I knew, actually (in small-med local businesses, not big FAANGs), at least from the mid 2000s till during and just after COVID. Then the bubble burst and hundreds of thousands of layoffs happened and I don't think anyone is hiring junior SWEs right now =/ I'm not sure if that pathway will ever come back, since AI can do most of that now. (And yes, nobody knows how we're going to get new seniors if we cut off the pipeline of juniors... but I guess that's a tragedy of the commons situation that no one company wants to try to solve on their own.) If I were you, I'd try #1 or #2 instead. Does your uni have any IT/SWE-adjacent jobs? Usually they have some website hosting service etc. that they maintain for faculty to use; maybe there's some coding involved in there. Or do you have any connections you can reach out to? If not, I'm afraid this is very tough time to break in. Even for people with a lot of experience it's really tough. Maybe if you're going to try applying, having experience in academia could be helpful in verticals that particularly value that, namely government, consulting, R&D, science, pharma, etc.? Best of luck to you.