Can you become a software engineer without a degree reddit

It's possible, but much, much harder.

Not saying you necessarily need a technical degree, like CS, EE, or Math, or whatever. Plenty of developers have degrees in English, Music, whatever. Doesn't really matter.

But you need a degree in something, or you will have an extremely hard time simply getting past the resume filters.

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Now, that's just for making sure your resume isn't just thrown away instantly.

It takes 2-3 years of dedicated full-time study and practice, depending on aptitude, personality, and temperament, to become competent enough for a junior software developer position. Most people take 4 years, but that's because getting a college degree is not a full-time effort.

The quickest way to become a professional developer is to major in CS at your local university. That is the easiest, fastest, most direct path. Supplement your education with 1-2 internships along with 1-2 personal projects, and you're pretty much set.

If you don't want to do a CS degree, that's fine, major in something else, but you're still going to need the CS knowledge anyways; you'll just have to teach yourself. Find any one of many free CS knowledge repositories like OSSU or MIT OpenCourseWare or Harvard's CS50 to get you started.

If you don't want any degree, well, it's still possible. You need to work really really hard, though, and get very lucky. I'm talking about having a fat portfolio of increasingly complex personal projects to show on your resume, as well as getting lucky enough to even get an interview in the first place. Remember, you're competing with people who may be just as skilled as you, but have degrees. The person with the degree gets preference.

The best coding bootcamp is freeCodeCamp, because it's free. Otherwise, coding bootcamps are not worth the investment. They charge an inordinate amount of money to teach you things that most developers just teach themselves. It is not worth the time or money. If you want to spend that kind of money, you might as well just go to college.

You've got a long road ahead of you. It takes a long time to learn this stuff, and breaking in at the entry level is very difficult, because junior positions are comparatively rare. Companies want experienced developers, not juniors. Make sure you're located near a tech hub where the junior jobs will be the most plentiful. Silicon Valley is obviously the best, but Seattle, Boston, New York, Southern California, and Austin are also great.

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Now, I'm guessing you haven't written a line of code at this point. That's your first step. Start. Google "coding getting started" or "java tutorial" or "intro to programming" or "c++ getting started" or "android apps getting started" or anything like that. Get started on learning how to program. If you decide to do this at all, the bulk of your learning, college or not, will be self-directed and on your own time, so best to get used to the self-teaching right away.

In doing this, you'll get a taste for it and decide if it's really for you. Additionally, taking an introductory programming class at a local community college can also be a great way to get a feel for whether you actually like this stuff.

Good luck.

Trying to keep it short....

Games like Fallout and GTA are what got me into programming and learning c++, because i'm more of a function person, than an artistic one. I've been learning programming for almost 2 years now, to get a webdev job, and get out of my current situation. Though my main objective right now is to get a webdev programming job, my ultimate goal is to get into the video game industry. Without a computer science degree, how hard would it be to get hired as programmer, to a triple A video game company?

One of the topics that comes up here a lot is how to make a career switch into software development without a CS degree or work experience. This post is about my personal experience making the switch, and my advice to others looking to get into development with no relevant degree or work experience.

My background: I graduated university with a degree in biology. My only work experience was an entry level customer service job. I live in one of the major US tech hubs. While I was in school I took the entry level computer science course, which was how I learned to code. I also did a bunch of online tutorials. After spending 2 years trying and failing to find a job relevant to my degree, I decided to change my focus to finding a career as a developer.

Learn to Code

This is a basic prerequisite for getting a job as a developer. There are tons of excellent resources on this topic all over the place. For the sake of this post, I'm going to assume that you already know how to code.

Build Some Demo-able Side Projects

People who have a CS degree or previous development experience have automatic "proof" that they know how to build software. An applicant with no degree or experience will need to provide tangible proof to their prospective employer that they know how to code. I did this by building a Tetris clone using Java, and put the code up on GitHub. I also followed this popular Ruby on Rails tutorial https://www.railstutorial.org/book, which will leave you with a fully functional Twitter clone. I put this up on GitHub as well. Making a mobile app and putting it on an app store, or building a small open source library and putting it on GitHub are also good ways of proving you can code. Basically build two or three small, fully functional pieces of software, and put the code on GitHub.

The Hiring Process

As a no degree/no experience applicant, I definitely felt that I was at a disadvantage. However, I felt confident that my coding skills were good enough to pass a technical interview. I also assumed that once I got to the technical interview my lack of experience wouldn't really be relevant, as long as I could prove that my technical skills were up to par. Based on this, I focused my strategy on trying to maximizing my odds of making it to a technical interview, then just following normal interview advice after that.

The way I looked at the hiring process was that I would have to get past 4 filters in order to get a job offer:

1. Automated resume keyword search

2. A non-technical HR screen

3. A technical interview

4. "Cultural fit"/likability/basic social skills

Here's my strategy on making it past each of these filters.

Automated Resume Keyword Search

This one is pretty simple. I packed my resume with as many technologies and buzzwords as possible. Every technology I ever touched, even if I only spent a couple hours on some random tutorial, got put on my resume. Most CS resumes have a section called "Technologies" or "Skills" that is just a thinly veiled excuse to list out every keyword that a resume search might be looking for. Include every language and framework you've ever used. Also include technologies that might seem silly to you, like "HTML", "Linux", "JSON", "database", "jQuery", "API", etc. Usually at this stage the person looking at your resume will be a recruiter or HR person with no technical knowledge, and will just be blindly copy and pasting buzzwords from the job description into a resume search.

Bear in mine that if you make it to a technical interview, you might be asked about any of the technologies on your resume. You should be able to at least give intelligible answers to very basic questions about any of these techs. Most technical interviewers, however, will understand that packing your resume with keywords is a normal part of the job search, and will be forgiving if you say "I've only used Technology X in some small side projects. Most of my experience is in Technology Y." You should have at least one technology that you can give in depth answers on.

Non-Technical HR Screen

I experienced a lot of variance on this step. Sometimes an HR person will look over your resume, rubber stamp it, and pass it directly to the technical interviewer. Sometimes you will have to do an in person interview with an HR person. Sometimes this step will be completely skipped.

I tried to lay out my resume as much as possible like the resumes of people that have actual development work experience. I laid it out in three sections, "Experience", "Skills", and "Work History". In the "Experience" section, instead of putting work experience, I put all my side projects, and described them with wording like

"Implemented a responsive microblogging service using Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL and JavaScript."

I put a lot of effort into making this section have the layout, formatting and phrasing that would be used to describe professional software development experience. The "Skills" section was a bullet point list of technologies I had used, as described above. And at the bottom, "Work History" was my actual, irrelevant job experience. I described my past work experience using generic resume filler like "team player", "self motivated", "excellent communicator", etc.

For in person HR interviews, I basically had to bullshit my way through. It was clear that my interviewers had no technical knowledge whatsoever, and were just going through the motions to make sure I wasn't a creep or crazy or whatever. I was sometimes asked nonsensical questions like "We are looking for an expert in Linux Database. Would you consider yourself an expert in Linux Database?" I just said "Yes", and moved on to the technical interview. My strategy here was just to be confident, say I was an expert in whatever tech they asked about, and hope to move on to a technical interview where my technical skills would actually be assessed.

Technical Interview

I'm not going to go into detail on this, since there are so many excellent resources out there for it already. I would say at a basic level be able to easily solve fizzbuzz or reverse-a-string type problems, be able to talk about data structures and algorithms and big-O analysis, be able to answer in depth questions about at least one programming language of your choice, and be able to talk about your side projects in a way that makes them seem interesting.

Once I made it to this stage, I felt I was more or less on equal footing with a candidate that had a CS degree but no experience. I just followed the normal technical interview advice.

"Cultural Fit"/Likability/Social Skills

Smile, be friendly, make eye contact, stand up straight, speak confidently, etc. If you have decent social skills this part is a no brainer. If you are awkward or have social anxiety, this part might be difficult for you and could be a make or break part of the interview process. I'm not going to go into too much detail here either since there is lots of generic advice out there for job interview social skills. Just be mindful of the fact that this is just as important as every other part of the process.

My Results

I didn't keep detailed records, but I probably applied to about 20 or so jobs, got at least an HR phone screen with about 15 of them, got in person technical interviews with about 5, and ended up taking the first job offer I got, which was a web development position, for $50k/year.

One more thing, apply to every job that interests you! There is literally no risk to applying for a job, even if you feel under qualified. Ignore the part of the job description that says "2 years minimum experience" or "CS degree required". If you feel you have the skills to bring value to the position, then apply! You have nothing to lose!

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