What’s up every body. I am Edson Philippe a software engineer whose mission is to share his experience with you. The topic of today’s short talk is: How to break into software engineering?

When you look at the type of salary that software engineers are earning and the level of education required to get at that income bracket, being paid to work as a software engineer might seems like a great deal. To be honnest, it is a great deal. However, getting that first software engineer role can be very difficult depending on the path you choose. My goal is to share my knowledge and experience with you to explain what it really take to land that first job.

Let me start by saying when a job says entry level software engineer, what they are really need is someone who have at least 2 to 4 years experience writting code on their own before even applying to be considered. This might be conter intuitive to most people, but I have to lay it down truthfully so that there is no mis-understanding. I know there is an allure when other people says they have been coding for 4 months and they have landed a software engineering role. Honestly, this is the exception. May be they landed a job at their uncle software shop. The opinion I am giving is based on my experience interviewing for entry level role.

Now, you may ask, how did those people who landed these job accumulated 2 years of experience before getting that first entry level job? So, here is what I have found out. First, many people started coding before they even started a computer science program. They would have taken programming courses during high school and have at least learn 1 programming languages on their own before even walking on a university campus. Then, during their 4 years of college, they would have taken classes here and there that require some type of programming ability. Maybe they took some math courses that required mathlab, or some other courses that require them to code some type of solution. By the time they finish college, they would have been exposed to many programming language and has taken many courses where they had the time to make a lot of silly mistakes and learn from them. On top of that, a lot of those students did summer internship. By the time they complete their undergraduate degree, eventhoug they might not have majored in computer science, they are qualified for an entry level softare engineering role. Or at least, they will be invited for an interview. Those are the people who get invited to interview for these roles and in my opinion, that is the easiest way to get an entry level software engineering role.

Now, let’s talk about a slightly more difficult way to get that entry level job. The next way would be to have completed a bachelor degree in something that is not related to computer science; however, after working for a while, you need to switch into software engineering because you realize that you started to develop some interest in the field and also, you see the salary that you could earn from swithching. If you are on that boat, honestly, you are better off going to a community college and take night courses or online courses to learn the basic of programming. This could take you between 1 to 2 years and once you have taken enough classes, enroll in an online master’s degree and start applying for jobs while doing your master’s degree in computer science. A good master’s degree program might be OMSCS from Georgia tech becasue it’s cheap, but any other online program would work. Going that path would take you at least 2 years to get the basic and once you are confident on your basic, you are more likely to get call for an interview once recruiter see you are doing a master’s degree.

Another way to also land a software engineering job would be to get a job in the engineering department of any company (not a software engineering one) and slowly create a name for yourself and build good relationship with the software engineer. Once you are in a company and you start interacting with other software engineer, try your best to show them things that you know how to do and talk to your manager about your interest in joining a software developper path. Some company has internal bootcamp that would train their employees to switch position into software engineering. An example of company to does that is The Home Depot. I have worked with people who started their carrer as a customer service telephone operator. Because they had spent a lot of time on their own learning how to code and has been so helpful in helping the engineer understanding pottential root cause of problem, If those people are interested in switching to software engineering, they can slowly work their way from help desk, then support, then SRE and eventually land a software engineering role where most of their time is spent coding. Even this path takes a couple of years and mostly rely on your soft skill. Usually, you will be assinged with a senior engineer that will slowly help you get up to speed.

Now, by far, the most difficult way to get into software engineering would be to take a 4 months bootcamp and feels entitiled for an entry level job. I have nothing against bootcamp and at the end of the day, they are provinding a service to many people who want to switch into the field. However, not every bootcamp candidates are the same. Let’s say you have an phd student in economy that want to switch VS an english undergraduate major that want to switch into software engineering. While they both attend the same bootcamp, the Phd student may have t he upper hand. So, most of the candidate the can easily switch from bootcamp probably already have some type of advanced degree or lucky. You are most likely going to hear the lucky one talking about them getting a job, but honestly, the vast majority takes a while after bootcamp to land that first job. Usually, if those candidate apply directly for jobs, they sometime don’t even get an interview. The easiest way I have seen candidate with bootcamp get hired was via a contracting company. The contracting company would place them into another company as contract to hire. If they perfom well for the first 6 months, usually they get hired by the host company. That has been my experience so far.

Getting the entry level job is just the begining, and once you get that first job, it gets easier to land the next job after working for a while. By that time, people would rely more on your experience then on the way you got your first job. While some path are harder than others, every one has their own journey and how you land to your destination is not really that important; the most important thing is that you have landed to your destination.

I hope this video was helpful and you have gained some perspective. I have to say this is just my opinion, and usually when I interviewing a candidate, I usually don’t really put that more emphasis on their education or how they landed the interview; as long as they can answer the basic questions that i am expecting them to know as an entry level, I alway give them a + .