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Becoming a Software Developer Without a CS Degree According to hundreds of people who have done it
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A little while ago, I had a question for the internet:
Josh ✨
@JoshWComeau
If you work as a developer and don't have a college degree, I'd love to hear the story of how you got your first job! What convinced employers to take a chance on you?
1:45 PM
Jan 15, 2020
1200
955 people are talking about this
In a shocking and delightful twist, the tweet got a ton of responses—over 450 of them!—from some of the most wonderful folks I know on social media.
I went through each reply and grouped them into common themes. Today I'd like to dig into the data a bit, and see how folks actually got their start without a Computer Science or Software Engineering degree.
This is a personal thing to me since I'm a member of this club! I wasn't a great student, and none of my college applications were accepted. Now I work as a staff software engineer for Gatsby (opens in new tab), and I also work part-time at Concordia Bootcamps (opens in new tab) as an instructor and career coach.
If you're aspiring to work as a software dev, my hope is that this article gives you an inside look at how others have done it, and you come away feeling inspired and armed with a couple new strategies ✨
Overview
While going through the replies, I tagged each tweet with 1 or more broad categories. Here's a quick bird's eye view of the data:
| Category | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Started own business | 7% |
| Internship | 14% |
| Transitioned from an adjacent field | 17% |
| Referrals & community | 25% |
| Side Projects & Freelancing | 42% |
| Personality & Skillset | 15% |
A quick note on methodology:
The data collected is in no way a representative sample of programmers in general. Also, I took a fair amount of liberty in interpreting and categorizing folks' tweets. It's an interesting snapshot of a select group of developers, but it shouldn't be applied too broadly.
Also, it's important to acknowledge that race and gender can be a factor when it comes to getting hired. There is bias in the industry, and this means that the hill can be a steeper climb for some. This dataset doesn't take that into account, but I think it would be irresponsible not to acknowledge it.
Starting your own business
keith kurson
@keithkurson
i made a company and built my first job and then people had to hire me after because i had “years of experience”
5:17 PM
Jan 15, 2020
Matt Kane
@ascorbic
Started a company and hired myself. Nobody else would hire a 20 year old chef who left school at 16!
2:33 PM
Jan 15, 2020
7% of respondents got their start by employing themselves. This is a clever idea that honestly never even occurred to me. You get 100% valid work experience, and you're under no obligation to tell future employers that you were your own boss!
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Internships
Monica
@indigitalcolor
I had taken misc. CS classes and learning on my own. I did an internship and then transitioned to full-time. I felt like I was at a point in my learning where a a boot camp wouldn’t have been valuable but I didn’t have 3+ years of engineering work exp. to get my foot in the door”
7:46 PM
Jan 15, 2020
For developers who do go the traditional route with a CS degree, internships are a standard part of that deal. Amongst self-taught folks, though, only 14% got their start this way.
As a career coach, I've worked with a couple students who got their start this way. One student I worked with was offered a paid internship by her top choice, and she was able to parlay it into a permanent junior-dev role within a few months.
Because the first job is the hardest to land, an internship can provide a gentler on-ramp. In the ideal case, it can very quickly turn into a typical full-time dev role. And after that point, many more doors open up.
Companies hire interns for lots of different reasons. Good companies see it as a great way to bring in enthusiastic aspiring developers. The salary is lower because the company recognizes that interns will require mentorship, which can lower the output of senior team members. Unscrupulous employers aren't thinking in those terms, though. They're interested in hiring the highest number of developers for the lowest amount of money.
Sites like Glassdoor can help you figure out whether a company is hiring interns for the right reasons. Be very wary of any company with a pattern of bad reviews. If the company is a small start-up without much info on Glassdoor, you can try to sleuth out how solid the company is in the interview. Try asking questions like "What is the ratio of junior to senior developers?" and "How does the company ensure that interns receive mentorship?".
Unpaid internships
A company would have to be pretty devious to try and take advantage of aspiring developers by offering an unpaid internship. Anecdotally, it seems to me that these types of roles are becoming less common, but if you do come across one, I suggest you run the other way.
Even if you're comfortable enough financially to work for free, it's probably not worth it. A company that does one bad thing probably does lots of other bad things as well. You probably don't want a company like that on your resume.
Transitioning from a different field
Jay
@wpdevlife
I’d worked for the company doing technical support in Customer Experience and learned as much as I could hoping to one day get a dev role. I saw an opening online while looking for other jobs and figured I’d take a chance. I’m now almost 6 months in on a career I worked 5yrs for
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2:31 PM
Jan 15, 2020
Hans Kristian Graebener is stone toss
@_________siah
🤚no degree senior engineer here. My first job was working for an agency web design company doing phone technical support. Over time I increased the technical responsibilities and moved to new jobs doing more and more development. I am self-taught and spend all my time learning.
1:47 PM
Jan 15, 2020
Genna Matson (she/they) ✊
@gemliza
It was ‘07, I was an account manager at a direct mail house and my client wanted to start sending emails. I was dabbling in dev, had a site and played the hell out of notpron. So I showed the CEO my site and explained the table based code it was built with and he let me run 💌
5:29 AM
Jan 16, 2020
Jeff Matson 👾
@TheJeffMatson
I'm a high school dropout, developer, and documentation writer. Long story short, I got an entry-level job in hosting support. I moved up there, got more involved in open source, then moved on elsewhere. After getting the first gig, things just sort of fell into place.
4:57 PM
Jan 15, 2020
17% of folks said that their first developer job was for a company they were already working for in another capacity.
The thing I like about this path is that it shows that raw technical skills often aren't the most important thing to employers. Many will take an underqualified candidate that they know is a good worker over a qualified candidate they haven't worked with before.
In fact, I know at least 1 bootcamp student who got a free ride to the program from their employer. This student had previously worked in a non-technical role, and his company was willing to pay for him to go through the bootcamp to gain the foundational skills needed for a technical role!
If you currently work at a job with an engineering department, you might be surprised by what opportunities are already around you. Maybe it's worth talking with your manager!
Referrals & Community Involvement
Kara.
@KiraArghy
The biggest thing though was I had worked hard on my networking, I've never been the most extroverted person but by meeting people they could advocate for me. @RichardWestenra vouched for me and @Geek_Manager picked up my cv and passed it onto her recruiters.
2:00 PM
Jan 15, 2020
Brennen 🇨🇦
@bkd705
Was in college when I got my first job, a prof had referred me for a coop, turned into full time so I dropped out. ~3 months later decided to move to Toronto, and used meetups, slack communities etc to find a referral. Applications never lead to interviews, referrals
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
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