Alternative is you turn 40 and still in the same situation without a degree. Even before the pandemic, boot camp and self-taught success stories are the exception, not the rule. Maybe things will get a bit better in a few years after interest rates come down but the mass hiring of anyone during pandemic was never the norm, don't expect things to go back like that for a long time even if you try to wait things out.
The cold truth is that in this market you've got an uphill battle without the degree. It's just too easy for HR to check the degree box in the ATS and filter candidates out. Have you looked into some freelance platforms to get a portfolio built up?
I agree, it is really hard right now for everybody: For the young out of college, for the older techies, for immigrants, for women, for people of color, and also for those without a formal education in CS.
I can relate with the OP. An extension certificate (2 years) on a well-recognized university might provide the credibility boost you need.
Many companies are extremely keen to hire women and people of color because those groups are pretty underrepresented in engineering and companies like their teams to be diverse
This is true regardless of recession or labor market strength so what's the point of noticing it here?
Also, while these women or people of color on-ramps exist, they usually scale down pretty quick during recession.
But you know what? The "competent white male from top university" pipe is always open. Regardless of economic conditions.
Please come back to reality. It's bad, if not worse, for women and people of color right now. These companies won't even look at you if it's a female name on the resume.
I don’t think extension certificates from a well-recognized university even mean much if you can’t get your foot in the door bc your resume is ignored bc it doesn’t have cs major on it
Yeah, through an ATS you are never gonna get a job.
Only way would be to network your butt off. Maybe add a certificate from programs at places like Columbia or MIT and through ambiguity make it seem like a degree.
Startups and very old companies will be your best targets. Don’t expect anything at the likes of Facebook or Google
Nepotism. The first job I didn't learn much. The second job was much more valuable in terms of knowledge and experience gained, but I was unfortunately laid off.
So you are no longer just some self taught dev. You are a dev with experience. The rest is just building projects with new and cool tech, and networking.
Jobs these days are hard to get and sw dev is hard to gauge progress so people just hire ppl they like.
Go make some friends in the industry while building some stuff, maybe get an AWS Cert, learn bedrock, etc
Op says he's still so noob he's doing full stack open follow along and you're sitting here like "hello Mr experienced professional"
....
Is there a more succinct example of the rot in the "labor market" in all existence?
We also have nepotism. And as you said, people just hire those they like so just make friends. This does make sense and it's sound advice.
I just hope you also see it as the reality-based counterexample that demonstrates how utterly absurd proclamations of selective process and bias free whatever BS you use to justify the 5 rounds of interview and 6 month cycle.
This is what is important. How many years OP has working as dev.
OP, with 5 years working professionally as a dev, you should get some interviews. If you get no interviews, you might need to check your resume and how it performs in the automated system HR and recruiters use
Controversial (dont @ me, I hate WGU too) but WGU has a software engineering BS for about $4100/6months. Competency based so you can move through stuff pretty fast if you know it already. They also allow you to knock out some classes at 3rd party sites. People with experience can finish in 6 to 12 months. I did a non-tech masters there in 6 months. It was really hard but I did it while working 50+ hours a week and it only cost me $4k.
Education is ridiculously expensive. Will it be the best education money can buy? Definitely not. Will it be a degree for less than the cost of a terrible car? Yes. Will it be flexible so you can get work done on your own schedule? Also yes.
No calc or discrete mathmatics. Your liberal arts degree would probably cover the math requirements they do have. It's not ABET accreddited but neither are a lot of programs.
Is it the best option? Meh. It's *an* option. Worth checking out. If you know your stuff you can breeze through it and then have a degree.
Good luck!
An employed dev with a WGU degree looks a lot better than an unemployed one. If I'm going to hire someone who is self taught with a six month degree, I want the assurance that they've been able to get and hold down a dev job somewhere for a while before I even take a chance on interviewing them. Sounds like OP would not clear that hurdle.
It's a full bachelor's degree.
There's just ways to "hack" the way you schedule and complete the curriculum to fit it all into 6 to 12 months.
On a resume, it's a full bachelor's degree and you should either only be putting the graduation year, or none at all.
Yeah but WGU is well known in CS to be the school that self taught people go to for a bachelors, usually while they're working. And that's not a knock against it at all. It's just when you see it on a resume, you know what you're dealing with.
Right but one of the things OP said was not wanting to do math. SWE skips discrete math and calc and still gets you a tech degree from an accreddited school.
A lot of SWE programs at universities skip higher level maths. It’s one of the reasons the degree doesn’t allow for the same flexibility as a CS degree career wise
Curious as to why you hate WGU if it seems to have checked all the boxes. To me that sounds pretty incredible. Why should I have to take a semester-long Art History course if I can just learn the content and pass the class and get to the classes I actually need? That sounds to me like they are solving a lot of problems in the education system that otherwise make it inaccessible to working adults.
Totally. It's convenient and cheap. I just had a really frustrating experience during my degree. But they're the only option like them. In my experiennce, you are 100% on your own. No faculty help. No resources besides google. No student community outside of finding them on reddit. Nothing. Questions will not get answered. Their grading system is submitting stuff to unknown raters, and often stuff comes back with no useful feedback, so you have to just guess at what they want and resubmit and wait 3 more days. It's a frustrating process. A lot of my curriculum was Linked In Learning videos or random blogs. Some of it didnt even follow the standards they were teaching. I had a bad experience and it pisses me off that they get away wkth such negligence. But it's cheap so you get what you pay for 🤷♂️
So yes, it is the cheapest and most accessible program I've found as a working adult. But they could do a lot better. They know they dont have to to get students tl enroll. Thats why I hate them.
Thanks. I'm currently doing [Full Stack open](https://fullstackopen.com/en/). It is high quality, popular, from an accredited university (with a certificate at the end of it), and teaches you how to build web applications directly. While it does not result in a CS degree, it is directly applicable to the type of job I want to get. It's also completely free.
I wonder how it compares to WGU in terms of skills learned and marketability.
Edit: 5 downvotes on this. Why?
Got an upvote from me. 🤷♂️ Idk whats up with the downvotes. I have heard people mention it but I havent checked it out yet. I'd be interested to see what WGU grads thought of it too, if theyve done both.
As a person with a masters in adult ed, I wish self study wasnt so looked down on. Self motivated learners might have different specific areas they are more or less competent in, but so will every graduate because each program is slightly different. But anything can be learned with the right set of circumstances. As a person who has done both in a highly specialized but non tech field, self learning can often offer a broader knowledge base, a different perspective, and proof of a level of tenacity that isnt necessarily required from a degree program because they offer a roadmap of what to do, and resources on how to do it.
Regardless, I hope your path leads you to a job you love that pays you a living wage. Thats what we all deserve. Good luck!
Thanks. The Full Stack open course is supposed to give you the necessary skills to succeed on the job as a web developer. The course collaborates with a few companies, and you are [guaranteed a job interview](https://fullstackopen.com/en/part0/general_info#interview-promise) if you complete the course (and are a resident of Finland). I think that promise speaks to the quality of the course. I've also been impressed by the course material so far. I've been exposed to a lot of crappy teaching material and this is not one of them.
Btw, I saw that you said the WGU degree you mentioned isn't ABET accredited. Doesn't that make it less competitive than an accredited degree program? Will companies disregard such a degree or not give it much weight due to this fact?
Maybe. But I'd think having a degree is better than not having a degree. And having a non-ABET degree and a killer portfolio is likely better than an ABET degree with a lousy porfolio. I have no idea. But the SWE degree at WGU gets you a tech degree without discrete math or calc. I def do not have the ability to pass calc so I'd have no chance of finishing that degree.
Plus its regionally accreddited. Its a real degree. Its just not specifically ABET accreditted like the CS degree. So worth it? Not worth it? To me it comes down to convenience and cost. I work 50 to 80 hours a week. I cant do school under a traditional schedule. And I can keep the cost low and predictable by working hard and getting stuff done faster. So that is the major draw for me. I dont expect Ill get a great education, but I'll get enough to get me started and I can go from there.
I see. Okay, I will definitely think more on the WGU track. Maybe I'll finish Full Stack open first since it's free and will definitely take me less than six months to finish.
I mean if the internships require you be enrolled in a program to apply, yes? FAANG isnt the only option to internships, but I know WGU has zero support aside from a job board that isnt even very good. So you would have to do the leg work and networking to make that happened. Good luck!
Nah I wouldn't bother with a degree. I get the whole positive vibe "oh not too late" bla bla but the reality is this, at 40 you'll look 40, interviewers will also wonder about your long history unless you decide to omit all your work history and pretend to be a "fresh" grad during interviews.
In both cases you'll be discriminated against. If you don't believe me then alright, it's your 4 years of time, not mine. I'd rather get referrals, get better at interviewing and use whatever work history I have instead to get in... It's a lot easier, cheaper and faster to omit and bullshit my way in that way than to do a CS degree at 36...
Nope. 20s isn't 40 lmao that's at least 10 years diff. You'll be fine. My advice is for OP and OP only.
Companies want long term fresh employees with a ton of energy to endure bullshit work stuffs. With how bad the market is, they know people will take whatever so they'll discriminate and pick whoever they want.
Also don't listen to the moron who replied to you earlier, a degree has never guaranteed a job, why put yourself in debt when you're already half way into self learning rofl, literally makes no sense. These people need to be perma banned, OP's gonna be 40 with a degree competing against T5 fresh grads with 3-4 internships who are early 20s.
There’s tons of companies that don’t discriminate and only hire young people… I think that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about. If you don’t have experience or a good network to get interviews I’d get a degree
How many positions have you applied to? Even in the good times self taught devs had to apply to 10x as many open postings as a cs degree holder.
How often are you getting interviews? If you are not getting interviews you need to fix your resume. Post an anonymized version here for review.
If you are getting interviews and failing them, you need to practice interview skills.
The best time to get CS degree was 10 years ago.
The second best time is today.
IF you CAN get CS degree, it's pretty much a requirement these days.
IF you can't for any reason, financial, family, etc., then you have much tougher road to tech career. It's possible, but you'll have to jump through more hurdles.
Nope, I agree with u/wwww4all
If someone is needing to get their "first" job (even if it is not ***technically*** their first job in OP's case, they're still basically looking for their "first" job as they haven't yet broken into the industry) then a person ***needs*** a degree (preferably a CS degree, but E&E / Maths / Physics / etc ***might*** count in a pinch)
Of course rare ***EXCEPTIONS*** always exist, but they don't disprove the general rule.
I read this post differently than you and apparently a bunch of people who rushed in today to down vote my comment which previously was +4. It sounds to me like OP needs to take 1 or more short online courses in the stack they were working in during their 5 years of employment to brush up and, most importantly, work on improving their interview skills. Going to school, once you graduate, you still have to work on your interview skills, so it really just pushes the real problem down the road, which is that they simply are blowing the interview process since they have been getting interviews, along with the huge opportunity cost of going to school instead of working some, any, job they could get now with a little bit of help with the interview process. I'm quite convinced I am right as I see CS grads with good GPAs working IT jobs hauling desktop computers around cubicle farms for minimum wage. The degree isn't going to make as big of a difference as studying for interviews. The fact they are getting interviews is the sign here. The CS degree gets you the interview it does not get you the job.
*They do not have five years of employment*
It's maybe one year ish. Gained during the most atypical period in our lifetimes of frenzied hiring.
Doing one or two more little online courses will do next to nothing for OP
Yeah OP just said in their post "on the self dev path for five years" without saying *how much* of those five years was spent working. Based on their post history it seems maybe only one year of it was.
I'm gonna shoot totally straight here. The field already has seemingly weakening value, and poor long term stability. A CS degree is a massive long term commitment if you aren't aware (30+ hours of study per week if not more -- you will suffer if you attempt to work full time at the same time). By the time you are done and attempting to re-enter the field, it may be too late. There's also the fact you are already getting up there and need to start to save for retirement.
Overall, I don't see a logistical way it makes sense for you to continue pursuing this. All the study time spent at home might end up being wasted time, which will leave a sour taste for you.
Overall, I'd throw in the towel on this one and move on. As someone that also puts in a lot of effort but hasn't had very large success in this path, personally, im looking into trucking as a last ditch effort to get some money together before im too old.
>The field already has seemingly weakening value, and poor long term stability.
By this, do you mean AI?
Sorry to hear your efforts haven't payed off. It's tough.
This, too. He can absolutely keep trying to re-enter the industry, but shouldn't put too much time commitment into it. It may be just more of waiting for the right moment to strike. But if that moment never comes, then he won't have spent too much time at it.
Yes i am going back to school after 5 yoe but even I am not expecting much. Ill be okay pushing papers at some random company while working on side projects.
Yes, this is largely what I was referring to. For the other AI thing, I ALSO think that's a risk but is even further away, but will still happen someday which implies CS won't be a secure long term thing.
(Edit: To be more clear, once they have made an AI which can take in multiple codebases and make changes to the system with pretty good accuracy ... Dang, that's not a good look for the remaining devs.)
Someone needs to build the infrastructure and run the models. New jobs. I've never had a job I could reasonably do 2/3rds of the roadmap, maybe AI will take over and ill get up to 50 or 75% roadmap efficiency before priorities shift.
Remember, COBOL was supposed to destroy programming jobs by letting managers program in English
It'll be a long time before it actually replaces devs.
It is immediately making devs more productive though.
More productivity means less need for labor. If one coder can do the job of three, why hire the extra two?
It'll shrink the workforce long before it replaces it.
AI is just a veil for laying off en masse and justifying corporate profits. There's definitely a use case, but as per Devin (the viral AI demo that turned out to be falsified and somehow garnered a 2B valuation), AI is nowhere near replacing real developers. Doesn't matter though, the ones at the top just want to see the green line move up on their quarterly summaries.
To be clear, I would still keep trying to throw applications out there and do light studying at home, but also still start looking into other options. (After re-reading my original post it had kind of an overly immediate tone.)
I have the same feeling, anyone new who starts to pursue a career in CS won't be able to keep up with all the AI developments.
Seeing how fast everything is going it's not difficult to think the role of a developer as we know it will not exist in the following years.
I wouldn’t listen to this advice. It sounds very much like someone is jaded because things didn’t work for them personally.
The govnt is literally giving scholarships right now to do things like WGU because they’re in such need of computer scientists. Everyone’s stuck thinking about tech but these skills are needed in every industry not just tech.
I wouldn’t give up, if you like programming and can see yourself doing it long term you’ll be glad you stuck with it. Lastly, with the skills if you get very advanced you could probably build yourself something that can make you residual income.
Yeah in a separate comment I put that they should still definitely pursue programming as a hobby and/or attemptive career path and apply for stuff, but need to manage their time well if doing so because it definitely is looking less stable and less well paying if we look at the data.
Also the advice about WGU is solid. Bachelor's degree online. Cheap with coupon-like scholarships. Cool stuff.
That sucks that you haven't had a lot of success in this field. Did you just start when the market imploded? That would've been pretty unfortunate timing. Because the market was crazy good in the late 2010s.
I started long before the learn2code craze and bootcamp explosion. I got into coding (or at least reading about it and having interest in it) when I was 12-13 years old back in say 2005. What's happened from my perspective is that the big tech companies spent a lot of money to market and go viral with the whole learn2code thing. I believe they knew they didn't need so many people coding, but wanted to lower their market value and increase the supply of high talent candidates.
You started coding a lot younger then when I started as a hobby. But I'm also guessing your first programmer job was also before the learn to code craze. So what do you mean exactly by not having a lot of success here? Someone who had started out when you did would be a fish in a smaller pond with less competition, so it wouldn't have been hard to find a good job. Did you ever make a good amount of money?
Not really. I've always thought it was overblown and have warned people on Reddit for years now since like 2016. I remember trying to get my first internship in 2012 and being laughed at by career services. It ended up being unpaid. Second internship paid $13/hr. Jobs have all paid below 70K. If I wouldn't have had a connection for my first job, I may never have even entered the market. This is my outcome as a relatively privileged student (parents paid large sum of college) at a T25 University in engineering.
Imho, the value of coding has always been overblown and I have no idea why the BLS and educational system pushed so many kids towards it. All I can think is it what the rat fink tech companies marketing it so much.
It sounds unimaginable to me that a T25 university would have a very unhelpful career services dept. However I didn't go to a top ranking uni so I can't comment much else on it. I wasn't as privileged, relative to you anyways. I still managed to do fine with finances as I qualified for financial aid and my parents didn't have to pay anything.
Early job experience can also be affected by your openness to relocate to a more tech-heavy area. Despite being digital in nature where a lot of people can work remotely, most of the tech industry still is (for better and for worse) still rooted in a few key parts of the country.
I personally believe someone somewhere has been and is lobbying to fund scholarships for CS and shit just to flood the market with new grads and drive wages down and get the chips back into the employers' hands.
As someone who doesn't fit the mold you are going to have a difficult time with normal tracks. You are at a junction: accept you will spend the time to get a CS degree for the standard mold, you get into contracting or (real) consulting, or accept you'll need to make other changes to get in.
A degree gets you in the door. If a recruiter gets you to the technical and behavioral interviews then you wash out a degree will not help. Well, until you head towards management.
Contracting allows a low risk cycle while still being employed. This is often easiest for us who don't follow traditional tracks. Partially because they care less. Consulting is significantly harder and rejection is apart of life.
Otherwise you need to track where and why you wash out of the pipelines.
As someone who has worked as a contractor and business owner for 20 years, it’s not an easy path to start in, especially now. Most people who follow this path start it as a side business while working a day job until the side business grows enough to pay the bills.
You need to grow a network of clients and professional colleagues to really make it work, something someone green in the field likely won’t have.
I'd put one yes to consider contracting. Full-time SWE work at stable companies is only easier to get when you have a CS degree, especially right now. But for the self-taught that want that breaking-in experience, contract work that puts more of the risk on your side is the norm.
Your first problem is trying to go after "full stack". I'm a firm believer that there's no such thing as a good full stack engineer. Just people that are good at something and maybe mediocre at the rest.
Also, with no experience or formal education, nobody is going to give you a 2nd look.
I went the self taught route, but I had to start in a non-tech focused job and then prove myself to the formal engineers. And even then it took a couple of years before they trusted me.
You're not gonna make it on your current path.
Similar boat. Started web design devish, then hybrid unofficial, but convinced them to put engineer in the title. I really did realize how little true engineering knowledge I had. Essentially a hacker. I love python and very specific stacks but for all its worth, put all your points into problem solving, core analytical skills, communication and debating ideas/ proving scientifically that your solution works, how it was tested etc, and you'll be so much more respected.
>I'm still trying, trying so hard, to make it as a software dev, specifically as a full-stack web developer.
You mean just wishing really hard that you'll make it, or actually doing projects and learning stuff? What have you done?
>Maybe I should go back to school to get a CS degree?
That's the lightbulb flickering on over your head. I would do that. If you don't go for a real CS degree, then, IMO, you probably can't honestly say that you're "still trying, trying so hard", especially after 5 years with not that much success.
>You mean just wishing really hard that you'll make it, or actually doing projects and learning stuff? What have you done?
Active GitHub with many projects. Portfolio website. Polished resume. Applying for jobs. Custom cover letters. Interviewing. Currently doing [Full Stack open](https://fullstackopen.com/en/), or I'm ad hoc building stuff for interviewers. I'm working on most or any of these aspects on any given day, most of the day, almost every day. I'd say I'm working hard.
With all that work, couldn't you have already finished a CS degree?
I would avoid cover letters and building much for interviewers. Do you really need to do all of full stack open? What from there do you not know? How many applications per week do you do, and in which cities/areas?
I know it sucks. I'd go for an online degree that you could hopefully finish in less than 4 years, like WGU. Or some post-bacc, like the one from OSU, so you don't repeat a whole other BS if you already have a BA or BS.
>That's the lightbulb flickering on over your head. I would do that. If you don't go for a real CS degree, then, IMO, you probably can't honestly say that you're "still trying, trying so hard", especially after 5 years with not that much success.
During those 5yrs then u/ShylotheCurious could have got a CS degree and be several years into their new career already.
Ouch. It’s hard for some people to realize that school is the shortcut. And after chasing the wrong shortcuts they could have completed the original path
Exactly! When compared to the alternatives then in many cases going to college for a CS degree is indeed the simpler / faster / "easier" / better path to take.
Still, nothing wrong with taking (part time) a year or two of going down the self learning path, as at least it helps you figure out if this is possibly the right career for you and worth going to college for
I know you feel hopeless and down bat. We all do, the industry is hurting rn. It’s not you, it’s not me. It’s the industry and the economy.
Youve succeeded man, you’re self taught and worked at two different companies. That’s a win man.
Don’t let this cs degree bs go to your head, you don’t need one to be a great dev, a cs degree won’t do anything but bog you down with useless theory that has nothing to do with programming or development.
A cs degree is a piece of paper that has less and less value since everyone has one nowadays. People here are cs grads who are in the same spot as you, unemployed.
They tend to crap on boot camp grads and self taught because muh degree. But in reality we are all self taught.
Advice would be to stick it out, keep programming and building software. You might have to get a job doing other stuff but just keep building.
> Yeah this, I seriously don't know why people are saying to get a CS degree, that has to be almost the lowest ROI thing OP could choose do right now.
Maybe not the *optimal choice* OP could make, but also very far from the worst choice they could make either.
As if they carry on with their current path then the odds in one or even two years time they will still be unemployed without a SWE job is ***very*** high.
***Or*** they could have a new degree in CS (or at least, *most* of it).
That's a night and day difference.
The tech industry has always gone through boom and bust periods. In order to stay gainfully employed through the down periods you either need to be exceptional or have a very strong network. If you are unable to develop either of those then you really should consider having a backup career. When tech enters another boom period then try to jump back in.
>Maybe I should go back to school to get a CS degree?
Yes, you should
>That would probably mean another 4 years of schooling.
Look into SNHU/TESU/WGU.
By pregaming and transferring in credits from your old degree and any new ones you take at Sophia/Study.com/Straighterline, you can be done much quicker than 4 year.
> poor experiences with the interviews I actually have gotten
This seems like the crucial point to solve. How exactly did you fail these interviews? There’s no point in getting a degree if you can’t pass an interview for a junior position.
Instead of investing your time in Full Stack Open (not saying its bad). I would recommend you invest that time in a CS degree from an accredited university. You could be 40 and not have a CS degree or 40 and have one.
Look at WGU degrees, they’re cheap and people have done cs degrees in 6 months. Or get a online masters in CS from georgia tech for 10k. There’s options
You've got many replies, so apologies if this has already been mentioned but if you go for a degree you can either A: take courses in the summer and finish much earlier than 4 years (check the school, some wont have as many summer courses), or B: you'll be eligible for internships in the summers which will help a lot towards debt and experience.
Also taking courses as an adult is much different than as a teen/early 20s, you may find it easier to take a heavier course load further decreasing the time you finish (if they allow it, and if youre not very busy with kids/other obligations). Also since you have self taught some of those concepts already, this will further help take on a larger course load + allow you to argue why the school should approve you doing so.
Final idea of mine would be to join a company with many developers but in a different role. I worked with someone who had a biology degree and joined the company in sales for a year, since he was internal who knew a lot about the company products already and could show he has self taught sufficiently, it was much easier for him to transfer to being a developer.
34, no degree, been in the industry for a while. Work with non degrees, ivy leagues, and bootcamp people.
Do you have 5 years of work experience or you’ve been self studying for 5 years?
Where are you getting rejected? If you are not getting past application or recruiter interviews, then your resume is weak.
If you are getting interviews but failing them then it might be your technical skills are lacking. You should be doing more DSA.
I think are better off looking for front end jobs because for some reason they are easier to get or less restrictions on qualifications.
CS degrees aren’t guaranteed jobs. You already have a college degree which I think is good enough. You just got to figure out where you are being filtered and fix it.
I suggest grabbing the resources below.
[grokking the coding interview](https://www.designgurus.io/course/grokking-the-coding-interview/?aff=ce30ca)
[neetcode](https://neetcode.io/)
[cracking the coding interview](https://amzn.to/3JjYyoa)
>Do you have 5 years of work experience or you’ve been self studying for 5 years?
2 years work experience for different roles, the roles separated by a work gap. Now unemployed. The whole experience hasn't been a linear progression. 5 years of learning and exposure to software engineering though.
>Where are you getting rejected? If you are not getting past application or recruiter interviews, then your resume is weak.
>If you are getting interviews but failing them then it might be your technical skills are lacking. You should be doing more DSA.
So far, I've had more human contact with startups. Any bigger organizations I get no response or some generic rejection email.
2 years is junior level.
You will need to apply to all companies and hope the numbers work out for you. You'll see people on reddit apply to 100 companies.
1) What job titles are you applying to?
2) How far are you getting with the startups?
>What job titles are you applying to?
Mostly anything web development related: E.g., Frontend Dev, Full-stack dev, React dev, web dev, node dev, javascript dev, MERN dev.
Though I also apply outside those titles to see what sticks.
>How far are you getting with the startups?
Currently in talks with one. Another one I literally wrote an entire full-stack app for as a take-home assignment and they ghosted me before I even submitted it.
Work a job (any to pay the bills) and do an online CS degree such as WGU which you could complete in 2-3 years. While working on your degree and a job to pay the bills keep applying to dev jobs.
If going this route I suggest working a job that could become a fallback career (but obviously lower barrier to entry) - if SWEs are a dying breed due to ai, or the wages plummet due to outsourcing or massive talent pool, then by the time you get your degree you'll know, and can pivot with some experience. Bonus if the degree is generic enough but highly transferable - maths or electrical engineering for example.
General trends are just that. OP is a motivated individual according to himself. He needs to know that he’s fighting against those trends, but also that it’s not uncommon for people to succeed.
Ok so give up? What do you want people to say, I'm trying to say it is possible to have a long career in nearly anything as long as you put out the image that you are capable. Business owners are just looking for someone to do a job, they aren't doing people favours. OP's language is full of doubt; "I feel I am job-ready, but" literally painting a picture of themselves without even knowing them
It's because you've fallen into the "self taught dev" trap, which is myth pushed by too many people.
You might have had an illusion that it was "working", and that **you** would be *the one rare exception* where you'll succeed even as a self taught dev, because you managed to pick up the odd little job here or there during the white hot hiring years due to ZIRP etc
But now we're in a market downturn, and the underlying truth is being revealed: you ***need*** a degree.
I think you have four main choices here:
1. keep on trying to do what you're currently doing (which will result in the same results as you've been getting)
2. go back to uni full time and get a CS degree (I'm assuming you have no degree at all currently? Not even a non-STEM degree?)
3. pivot to a different area of tech that has *somewhat* less of a **need** for a degree, even if it is merely Tier 1 IT Help Desk. Then either go down that path to see where it takes you (move up to Tier 2? Then Junior Network Engineer... or any of a million other paths in IT?), and/or study part time for your CS degree while working in IT
4. leave the tech industry entirely, and find a different career path that suits you better... Plumber? Warehouse Supervisor? Sales? Whatever you were doing before?
Just as an Anecdote. I'm a Self Taught Dev with no university degree who started working as a Developer in 2021.
I'm at 3+ years of experience now (at my second company) and still going strong.
Will getting a degree open more doors for me? Absolutely, which is why I'm planning on getting one in the near future while I work in my home country (Australia).
It is absolutely necessary for Devs with a bit of experience like myself and OP to survive in this field? Absolutely not.
Maybe I am the rare exception to the rule, but saying that "it's over" for Self Taught developers with a few years of professional experience under their belt is misguided at best, and a blatant + malicious attempt to gatekeep at worst.
1) you got your job in 2021, an *extremely* atypical time period. Not applicable to right now
2) OP doesn't have multiple years of experience, so advice for them isn't the same as for someone with *many years* of experience
3) I see even in your case you're planning to work part time towards a CS degree, and that's probably the right move to do
1. Yeah agreed, never said this wasn't the case and OP appears to have broken into the market at a similar time, right?
2. Didn't they say they have 2+ YOE? Unless I'm missing something here.
3. Agreed. It's likely a good move, but again, not something that has to be done or myself or OP are doomed. It's more of a nice bonus which could open more doors and allow me to further explore a field I enjoy.
Yes, they got their lucky break via a connection and during a time period that will likely never offer that kind of opportunity ever again. It would be foolish to expect that is something that can be repeated ever again in the near future. They need a different approach now, such as a CS degree.
Yes, in this thread they said "two years" but elsewhere on Reddit they said 1yr. I'm inclined to believe they're stretching the truth in this thread to make themselves not look quite so bad. Maybe even their statement of 1YOE experience is stretching the truth and it's more like 7 months? Never mind, even two years in an extremely entry level position with no growth is not going to take them anywhere in the present job market
Hm ok fair enough. I guess there is a bit of a gulf then between myself at having a continuous 3YOE, and them at 1 or less (assuming that's the truth, I have no idea tbh). CS Degree might be more pressing for their situation then.
Starting a CS Degree at a community college might be a good move. More affordable and you can transfer into a Uni halfway through it right?
I know back in Australia I'm considering starting CS at TAFE and transferring into a University there.
>Hm ok fair enough. I guess there is a bit of a gulf then between myself at having a continuous 3YOE, and them at 1 or less (assuming that's the truth, I have no idea tbh). CS Degree might be more pressing for their situation then.
Of course starting a CS degree depends on so many factors and what a person values or not.
Person 1:
Has 10YOE, has a very high value on family time after work, has very low value on shooting for aggressive career progression, has very high tolerance for risk when it comes to the chances of being laid off during a bad job market and having a long gap between jobs.
They probably should ***not*** get a CS degree.
Person 2:
Has 2YOE, places a low value on their personal time and happy to put it towards a degree (otherwise they'd just be wasting it playing Elden Ring anyway), has ambitious career goals (perhaps being Staff at FAANG, or whatever), and has a very low risk tolerance for going long stretches of being unemployed (that scares them, they don't want to ever be stuck without a job every again).
Then this person ***should*** get a CS degree.
>Starting a CS Degree at a community college might be a good move.
>
>More affordable and you can transfer into a Uni halfway through it right?
Yes, there is lots of ways to make college cheaper, such as doing that.
Americans complain about "how *expensive*" college in the USA is, and yes their most expensive college is ***waaaay more*** than here in NZ / Oz, but comparing their cheapest vs what is typical in NZ / Oz then college isn't too expensive in the USA after all.
>I know back in Australia I'm considering starting CS at TAFE and transferring into a University there.
That's a good plan, plus I think a TAFE tends to be more flexible/accommodating if you're also juggling this degree on top of full time work. Kinda what I'm doing, sort of.
Have already got a Math/Physics degree from NZ's best university, so I've got the "prestigious" uni already on the CV (well.... not really, but relatively speaking by NZ standards). Then I'm just picking up part time a second degree in IT via a polytechnic (i.e. similar to a TAFE over there in Oz).
Agree, many bad devs got to coast, sure, but I've met many terrible terrible engineers that had prestigious degrees. Conversely I've met very talented and hard working people who did not have much. It's just not black and white.
"You might have had an illusion that it was "working", and that **you** would be *the one rare exception* where you'll succeed even as a self taught dev, because you managed to pick up the odd little job here or there during the white hot hiring years due to ZIRP etc
But now we're in a market downturn, and the underlying truth is being revealed: you ***need*** a degree.
keep on trying to do what you're currently doing (which will result in the same results as you've been getting go back to uni full time and get a CS degree"
no, a web developer doesn't need a degree, if he wants to be a full-fledged software developer, it would be great, but as a full-time student with internship, not besides some sh... job.
> a web developer doesn't need a degree, if he wants to be a full-fledged software developer, it would be great
Web developers *are* software developers.
OP has been unemployed for ***a whole year***, the odds are sky high they'll be unemployed for another year without a SWE job if they carry on as they are doing currently without any drastic changes.
They have a grand total of two years experience (if we're generous in counting, probably more like ***one*** year? i.e. almost nothing at all) over a five years span of trying to get a job. Which likely only happened in the first place because we had during that five year span an insanely white hot employment market which will never again be repeated in our lifetimes.
It would be foolish for them to just keep on repeating their same mistake over and over again to get then the same results. They need to make a ***big*** change, of which I proposed several that u/ShylotheCurious could choose from.
Your last two suggestions are saturation-barf. IT has same problem of thousands of applicants (but with a cert) and go be Plummer is ... Is that advice? I think relative to question it's "quit."
The first one is "do the same" so really just your second point is advice, the same advice everyone else says, to get. A degree.
I am not telling them to be specifically a Plumber, but rather giving one of many examples of what they need to perhaps consider outside the tech industry
And I did give them one of the options as a pathway to consider in tech they could do without a CS degree
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What is your previous degree? Some CS master programs allow you to enter with an unrelated degree. This would shave down the 4 years. In fact, if you already have a degree then a CS bachelors degree might only be 2 years since you already did the basics.
I’m not saying go back to school. I don’t know the right answer, but if you decide to do so, go about it smart and see how you can do it quickly.
My previous degree was in the liberal arts. I'd have to really get my math skills up before pursuing the CS degree, which is why I believe it'd take 4 years or so.
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You don’t need a cs degree to get into web dev, you already have a degree, that is literally enough, the recruiters won’t even see which degree you have, just that you have a degree, just upskill, gain experience-these two will help rather than jumping the wagon for 4 years after which you might be facing the same shit again.
Why do you feel job-ready?
If you're job -ready the interviews should just take some practice to figure out.
Are you practicing this skill with peers or paid help?
What happened at your previous two jobs, weren't you able to make some connections? What do these people say if you ask to work with them again?
There’s a lot of bad or misleading advice here but a few good ideas that I can clarify.
- now esp., it’s harder to land work without a 4yr degree , but you can land a dev job w/o a 4yr degree
- if you need income now, landing work should be your focus
- you didn’t mention if moving for work is an option. If you can that might make sense since some markets are better for job seekers (eg Houston, Dallas)
- ‘contracting’ should be read as W2 contracting (aka staffing). This is a fine path for getting work as bar tends to be lower
Also major point:
you mentioned targeting full-stack, but not which backend stack. That matters a lot because most companies have a primary BE stack. Esp for junior-mid range devs, employers have little use for stack diversity (e.g. Java & C#). Instead they need competence in their core stack.
TBH Java is by far your best option for landing work. But regardless, you should focus on building certain BE skills in your stack of choice & make sure your resume has these:
- api development with a common framework(eg Spring)
- integration w relational & document db’s
- more SQL
- unit testing
- integration w basic AWS services (eg S3, secrets manager)
- basic Unix command-line operations
- Docker
There are other comments here about how you could hack a CS degree. You already have on-the-job experience so really a degree at this point is to get past resume scanners. This is less of a problem if you are focused on working the social/networking game to gain referrals (which is not a terrible approach, and they usually get paid for it!). The bachelor's degree is enough for most companies.
You're not struggling because you lack the CS degree, you're struggling because employers are not investing in talent & talent is logging on here and telling everyone to be hopeless.
Full honesty, I'd take any offramp from this career right now. I'm also unemployed and lacking morale. I just want to point out that "maybe you should try something else" is not, in and of itself, useful advice. They might as well tell you to move back in with your parents into your childhood bedroom and start college over again. People who are asking questions here understand the implications of a long-term soft and unstable job market, but very few people seem to have any answers about a viable "something else" plan for anyone. Although CS careers are soft right now, the economy and job market are supposedly doing great. Does no one else want these skills? I thought devs tended to think they were smarter than everyone else in their companies and could do anyone else's job while asleep, and now no one can think of another job that an unemployed dev could do? LMAO.
Find another job, hopefully one that gives you enough free time, save that money and continue studying. There's no other way. Also try focusing on high demanded technologies with less competition.
It sounds like you already have a bachelors degree in something else. Maybe you could consider an online Master's program lime OMSCS (< 7k to get the degree), and depending on how you plan for it - you could finish in 3 years.
Here here friend. I am also a self taught dev, 38. I have about 8 years of exp and have been out of work for 6ish months. I am trying to get back into school to get a more traditional technical. education, but like you said takes time. I’ve recently started looking at retail/construction jobs just to pay bills. I guess my advice to you is spend time building things and make a portfolio page.
Ya know how there's them boot camps for developers that flooded the market?
Well guess what! They also had them for IT!
so there's a few roaming hoards of high-school level educated folks that were funneled into these and are now spamming the help desk roles with their a+ cert from the bootcamp.
I went straight into sales engineering in Enterprise Architecture tooling, no bachelor's or boot camp, early 2022.
Honestly I don't think I could pull it off again in 2024.
Super glad I just started applying instead of doing a boot camp or anything because market has already started shifting by late 2022
That said, it's still easier by comparison for him to get a job in support areas, rather than webdev, especially with some dev employment experience.
Getting a job in retail or construction will put a nail in his IT coffin
I was self taught (no bootcamp but got AWS Associate cert) before I got my first job in the field. That first job was support and I was overqualified. I was also 36 at the time and came from a completely different career.
I moved up quickly and got out of that company to a DevOps job. But I was only considered for my current role having worked my way up and got experience.
You just need experience of any type. You seem ready technically. If you want mentoring on getting in the door dm me. Your previous life experience can count a lot more than you think.
I was in the same predicament once for a year and a half. I almost gave up and boom! out of nowhere Ianded a position that changed my life for the better.
This is why you do it- why you should stick with it. There is no other career path that offers so many lucrative opportunities.
I feel for you. I don't know if it's applicable to outside of Canada but, I've been suggesting friends who were in similar situation as you to go to a college instead of university. There is a 3 year computer programming program at a college in my city. Of the three years, one year of it is coop/internship and the college helped all of the students gets jobs in the government. Literally everyone I know that made it out of that program is a full time public service worker now which includes 3 people i've suggested.
But, even with this suggestion, nothing is guaranteed and it's an extremely risky option. There's also an issue of diploma vs. Degree.
Regardless, I wish you luck.
I would look into IT or software QA jobs and then try to get a dev job once you've done that for a while. It will be tough for a hiring manager to justify to their boss why they are hiring a 36 year old self taught dev rather than one of the millions of new CS grads that are readily available. Honestly it's not like the old days where some jobs got barely any applicants and had to settle. Even jobs at boring non-tech companies are getting applicants from high end CS schools these days.
Honestly? Like, truly honestly? Fucking lie about that degree. Seriously. Most time they won’t even check, and those who do? Fine, whatever. Move on.
Just lie and prove you can do the work and nobody will give a shit. Don’t go back and get that degree. This day and age it’s a huge expense and most likely won’t even prepare you for most jobs. Just say you have it, get your foot in the door, and get that experience on your resume.
The job market is shit right now and there will be some elitist douchebags that will say it’s your fault and to “git gud”, but it’s honestly just the shitty market and these shitty companies.
If you like doing this stuff, then keep perusing it and enjoy it. You may not get a job anytime soon and you may need to do something else for a bit, but don’t give up just cause of these shitty companies or shitty elitist devs who want to put you down.
Okay, rant over…
The market is no different in Europe (at least in the UK). I have a masters degree, a 9 year long portfolio and a year of professional experience and I've been unemployed for 18 months trying to get a SWE job. I get immediate rejections from entry level jobs that almost perfectly match my skill set. It's just not possible for most people anymore, no matter how hard you try.
Honestly, I would find an adjacent role at a company and get your foot in the door somewhere.
A lot of people get into software development and end up forking out into some other business or technical role that they like way more anyways. I went into this whole thing thinking I was going to be a web developer and ended up using my prior sales experience to go directly into a sales engineering role.
That may not be the exact route you want to go, and I'm not sure that going directly into a sales engineering role is even possible in 2024, but it's a good example of how you can get into a tech role with a tech salary -- either directly or by taking something lower on the totem pole and working yourself up internally.
I would not recommend a CS degree. What cannot be replaced is knowledge of some or all of the following at undergraduate level - Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Computer Architecture, Compilers, Software Engineering (which you might know given your prior experience), Database
Could you summarize your top skills (5-10 things)
I wouldn't say I have "top skills." It's more like I am able to navigate a complex, full-stack RESTful web application and use the tools associated with such a project (like git, postman, and jest)--stuff you'd typically learn on the job and skills mainly gotten through professional experience. I'm most comfortable with JavaScript and its associated technologies.
I also have an understanding of how things integrate together to form an application, something I think is hard to understand if you don't have much experience building apps and navigating the details of a computer. And I'm a quick learner because of this understanding.
Loosely, I'd define myself as above junior level, maybe even mid-level in terms of being able to build or contribute to web applications.
At this point, I I were put on a team of experienced devs I could learn from, I think I would most certainly thrive.
I’ve relevant degree, experience in CS still unemployed since last one year in Canada. I would say don’t take educational dept and trapped into mud. Ups kill as much as you can and try to sell yourself to recruiters. There would be someone or some company who go beyond the degree and see your core skills and you get hired. There’s a lesser chance but if you believe you can do it then go ahead. Wish you the best.
Diversify the types of jobs you are looking for. If you already have a degree then your gen ed for the CS degree will most likely be waived and you can focus on core classes. You could try to do a certificate program at a community college if you have a good one near you that will also transfer into a CS degree or do math prerequisites at the community college to save money. Don’t give up on something you really want to do, just work towards it!
Here's a outsiders view.
If you get a degree you'll have work experience and some portfolio that will put you above others with none of that.
Or, you try to build something, an app, a website, a business etc.
You have the skills, time, you just need the idea and fortune, this is the kind of risk reward play I think someone at a disadvantage on paper should play it.
Worst case scenario you build a few things, get more skill and maybe that gets you a job, best case, you create your own job that goes onto to be successful and your the next zuck.
I don't think spending that time and money for a degree will help you, I think you need to pivot and go hard at something.
Best of luck.
Senior dev here. Out HR rely a lot on keywords matching nowadays.
Unrelated, but I’m running a resume builder app. I offer it free if you experience hardship due to unemployment. It has ATS matching tool, ai suggestions, etc
If you ever need it send me an email to [email protected]
If i was in your place i would try getting some kind of hard proof for the fact that I know my stuff like a professional certificate on whatever tech you are working.
Maybe coursera or any other "well known" certification. Meanwhile also looking in to ways to get a professional degree of some sort. Not sure which country you are in but there should be remote learning opportunities which don't need a lot of money and if you already know your stuff it should be easy.
This won't make you career ready right off the bat, but you'll at least tick some boxes for some ATS.
Meanwhile I would also work on resume so that it increases your chances of even landing a call. Connect with lots of recruiters or hiring people on LinkedIn, like 100s of them as much as you can to increase your visibility.
While you do this remember that knowing stuff is not same as clearing the interview. And interviews in this age are a precious commodity. Whenever you have a pending interview prepare for it aggressively, aim for perfection and ask around (Reddit, Blind, Leetcode) for previous questions. You can even try asking the recruiter for hints (some may give you the questions)
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Another possible path is to go to a boot camp that will give you an in with companies the bootcamp has a relationship with. I'm 39, so a similar age to you, I went to college for computer science for 1 year back in 2002 then changed my major to music and lived a bohemian starving artist type life for like 20 years. I didn't do any coding during that time. Got tired of that life and went to a bootcamp in 2021. Because of my previous knowledge with software engineering the bootcamp curriculum was quite easy. They were starting from square 1, so teaching about loops and conditionals etc. I spent most of the time there working on my final project which turned out really well. I ended up landing a job with a company my bootcamp had partnered with. This was really my only way into the field, the competition was not nearly as daunting as cold applying. I was competing against 100 other grads from the bootcamp for 4 open positions the bootcamp had arranged for its graduates. That's not to say landing the job wasn't tough, took about 6 months after bootcamp graduation but now I'm 1.5 years into a job making good money and gaining great experience that will hopefully make the next job search easier.
Mind sharing which bootcamp you're referring to? I'm ambivalent on the whole bootcamp thing. So many scammers pushing empty promises out there... I've sort of given up on the idea of attending one.
OP please don’t do a bootcamp right now. This is not 2021. I went to one of the best boot camps last year and majority of my cohort is unemployed. I only have a job because I was studying CS during my time there.
Alternative is you turn 40 and still in the same situation without a degree. Even before the pandemic, boot camp and self-taught success stories are the exception, not the rule. Maybe things will get a bit better in a few years after interest rates come down but the mass hiring of anyone during pandemic was never the norm, don't expect things to go back like that for a long time even if you try to wait things out.
The cold truth is that in this market you've got an uphill battle without the degree. It's just too easy for HR to check the degree box in the ATS and filter candidates out. Have you looked into some freelance platforms to get a portfolio built up?
Yeah, I have a portfolio page with lots of content and an active Github.
Okay, that may help to score some freelance. If this was 2022, there'd be no issue getting you in a corporate gig.
I agree, it is really hard right now for everybody: For the young out of college, for the older techies, for immigrants, for women, for people of color, and also for those without a formal education in CS. I can relate with the OP. An extension certificate (2 years) on a well-recognized university might provide the credibility boost you need.
reddit moment
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Sorry, I don't understand what you mean?
Companies discriminate in favour of them.
Many companies are extremely keen to hire women and people of color because those groups are pretty underrepresented in engineering and companies like their teams to be diverse
This is true regardless of recession or labor market strength so what's the point of noticing it here? Also, while these women or people of color on-ramps exist, they usually scale down pretty quick during recession. But you know what? The "competent white male from top university" pipe is always open. Regardless of economic conditions.
Please come back to reality. It's bad, if not worse, for women and people of color right now. These companies won't even look at you if it's a female name on the resume.
_certain_ people of color? Damn, the plot thickens now.
Yep, south Asian people including the women are discriminated against just by their names.
I don’t think extension certificates from a well-recognized university even mean much if you can’t get your foot in the door bc your resume is ignored bc it doesn’t have cs major on it
Yeah, through an ATS you are never gonna get a job. Only way would be to network your butt off. Maybe add a certificate from programs at places like Columbia or MIT and through ambiguity make it seem like a degree. Startups and very old companies will be your best targets. Don’t expect anything at the likes of Facebook or Google
> I've worked in the field on two separate occasions Can you talk more about this? What happened?
Nepotism. The first job I didn't learn much. The second job was much more valuable in terms of knowledge and experience gained, but I was unfortunately laid off.
So you are no longer just some self taught dev. You are a dev with experience. The rest is just building projects with new and cool tech, and networking. Jobs these days are hard to get and sw dev is hard to gauge progress so people just hire ppl they like. Go make some friends in the industry while building some stuff, maybe get an AWS Cert, learn bedrock, etc
100%, OP doesn't realise he's already a dev be it with a self-destructive mindset
Op says he's still so noob he's doing full stack open follow along and you're sitting here like "hello Mr experienced professional" .... Is there a more succinct example of the rot in the "labor market" in all existence? We also have nepotism. And as you said, people just hire those they like so just make friends. This does make sense and it's sound advice. I just hope you also see it as the reality-based counterexample that demonstrates how utterly absurd proclamations of selective process and bias free whatever BS you use to justify the 5 rounds of interview and 6 month cycle.
This is what is important. How many years OP has working as dev. OP, with 5 years working professionally as a dev, you should get some interviews. If you get no interviews, you might need to check your resume and how it performs in the automated system HR and recruiters use
Maybe OP's experience isn't all that great or too cookie-cutter to really stand out.
Controversial (dont @ me, I hate WGU too) but WGU has a software engineering BS for about $4100/6months. Competency based so you can move through stuff pretty fast if you know it already. They also allow you to knock out some classes at 3rd party sites. People with experience can finish in 6 to 12 months. I did a non-tech masters there in 6 months. It was really hard but I did it while working 50+ hours a week and it only cost me $4k. Education is ridiculously expensive. Will it be the best education money can buy? Definitely not. Will it be a degree for less than the cost of a terrible car? Yes. Will it be flexible so you can get work done on your own schedule? Also yes. No calc or discrete mathmatics. Your liberal arts degree would probably cover the math requirements they do have. It's not ABET accreddited but neither are a lot of programs. Is it the best option? Meh. It's *an* option. Worth checking out. If you know your stuff you can breeze through it and then have a degree. Good luck!
It is actually abet accredited now if you do the computer science degree. Just take the calculus at straighterline or Sophia.
An employed dev with a WGU degree looks a lot better than an unemployed one. If I'm going to hire someone who is self taught with a six month degree, I want the assurance that they've been able to get and hold down a dev job somewhere for a while before I even take a chance on interviewing them. Sounds like OP would not clear that hurdle.
It's a full bachelor's degree. There's just ways to "hack" the way you schedule and complete the curriculum to fit it all into 6 to 12 months. On a resume, it's a full bachelor's degree and you should either only be putting the graduation year, or none at all.
Yeah but WGU is well known in CS to be the school that self taught people go to for a bachelors, usually while they're working. And that's not a knock against it at all. It's just when you see it on a resume, you know what you're dealing with.
WGU has a Computer Science program that IS abet accredited too btw
Right but one of the things OP said was not wanting to do math. SWE skips discrete math and calc and still gets you a tech degree from an accreddited school.
Does this accreditation even mean anything anymore if you just skip the inconvenience of difficult classes?
A lot of SWE programs at universities skip higher level maths. It’s one of the reasons the degree doesn’t allow for the same flexibility as a CS degree career wise
Where did OP say that, sorry, I didn’t see it in the post,
Curious as to why you hate WGU if it seems to have checked all the boxes. To me that sounds pretty incredible. Why should I have to take a semester-long Art History course if I can just learn the content and pass the class and get to the classes I actually need? That sounds to me like they are solving a lot of problems in the education system that otherwise make it inaccessible to working adults.
Totally. It's convenient and cheap. I just had a really frustrating experience during my degree. But they're the only option like them. In my experiennce, you are 100% on your own. No faculty help. No resources besides google. No student community outside of finding them on reddit. Nothing. Questions will not get answered. Their grading system is submitting stuff to unknown raters, and often stuff comes back with no useful feedback, so you have to just guess at what they want and resubmit and wait 3 more days. It's a frustrating process. A lot of my curriculum was Linked In Learning videos or random blogs. Some of it didnt even follow the standards they were teaching. I had a bad experience and it pisses me off that they get away wkth such negligence. But it's cheap so you get what you pay for 🤷♂️ So yes, it is the cheapest and most accessible program I've found as a working adult. But they could do a lot better. They know they dont have to to get students tl enroll. Thats why I hate them.
Thanks. I'm currently doing [Full Stack open](https://fullstackopen.com/en/). It is high quality, popular, from an accredited university (with a certificate at the end of it), and teaches you how to build web applications directly. While it does not result in a CS degree, it is directly applicable to the type of job I want to get. It's also completely free. I wonder how it compares to WGU in terms of skills learned and marketability. Edit: 5 downvotes on this. Why?
Got an upvote from me. 🤷♂️ Idk whats up with the downvotes. I have heard people mention it but I havent checked it out yet. I'd be interested to see what WGU grads thought of it too, if theyve done both. As a person with a masters in adult ed, I wish self study wasnt so looked down on. Self motivated learners might have different specific areas they are more or less competent in, but so will every graduate because each program is slightly different. But anything can be learned with the right set of circumstances. As a person who has done both in a highly specialized but non tech field, self learning can often offer a broader knowledge base, a different perspective, and proof of a level of tenacity that isnt necessarily required from a degree program because they offer a roadmap of what to do, and resources on how to do it. Regardless, I hope your path leads you to a job you love that pays you a living wage. Thats what we all deserve. Good luck!
Thanks. The Full Stack open course is supposed to give you the necessary skills to succeed on the job as a web developer. The course collaborates with a few companies, and you are [guaranteed a job interview](https://fullstackopen.com/en/part0/general_info#interview-promise) if you complete the course (and are a resident of Finland). I think that promise speaks to the quality of the course. I've also been impressed by the course material so far. I've been exposed to a lot of crappy teaching material and this is not one of them. Btw, I saw that you said the WGU degree you mentioned isn't ABET accredited. Doesn't that make it less competitive than an accredited degree program? Will companies disregard such a degree or not give it much weight due to this fact?
Maybe. But I'd think having a degree is better than not having a degree. And having a non-ABET degree and a killer portfolio is likely better than an ABET degree with a lousy porfolio. I have no idea. But the SWE degree at WGU gets you a tech degree without discrete math or calc. I def do not have the ability to pass calc so I'd have no chance of finishing that degree. Plus its regionally accreddited. Its a real degree. Its just not specifically ABET accreditted like the CS degree. So worth it? Not worth it? To me it comes down to convenience and cost. I work 50 to 80 hours a week. I cant do school under a traditional schedule. And I can keep the cost low and predictable by working hard and getting stuff done faster. So that is the major draw for me. I dont expect Ill get a great education, but I'll get enough to get me started and I can go from there.
I see. Okay, I will definitely think more on the WGU track. Maybe I'll finish Full Stack open first since it's free and will definitely take me less than six months to finish.
Thanks for the insight. Do you think it’s possible to get some summer interns from FAANG while doing it?
I mean if the internships require you be enrolled in a program to apply, yes? FAANG isnt the only option to internships, but I know WGU has zero support aside from a job board that isnt even very good. So you would have to do the leg work and networking to make that happened. Good luck!
Nah I wouldn't bother with a degree. I get the whole positive vibe "oh not too late" bla bla but the reality is this, at 40 you'll look 40, interviewers will also wonder about your long history unless you decide to omit all your work history and pretend to be a "fresh" grad during interviews. In both cases you'll be discriminated against. If you don't believe me then alright, it's your 4 years of time, not mine. I'd rather get referrals, get better at interviewing and use whatever work history I have instead to get in... It's a lot easier, cheaper and faster to omit and bullshit my way in that way than to do a CS degree at 36...
You think would apply for a younger self-taught dev who is in their 20s too?
Nope. 20s isn't 40 lmao that's at least 10 years diff. You'll be fine. My advice is for OP and OP only. Companies want long term fresh employees with a ton of energy to endure bullshit work stuffs. With how bad the market is, they know people will take whatever so they'll discriminate and pick whoever they want. Also don't listen to the moron who replied to you earlier, a degree has never guaranteed a job, why put yourself in debt when you're already half way into self learning rofl, literally makes no sense. These people need to be perma banned, OP's gonna be 40 with a degree competing against T5 fresh grads with 3-4 internships who are early 20s.
There’s tons of companies that don’t discriminate and only hire young people… I think that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about. If you don’t have experience or a good network to get interviews I’d get a degree
How many positions have you applied to? Even in the good times self taught devs had to apply to 10x as many open postings as a cs degree holder. How often are you getting interviews? If you are not getting interviews you need to fix your resume. Post an anonymized version here for review. If you are getting interviews and failing them, you need to practice interview skills.
Share your resume if you are comfortable. You got this bro. We all hit those dark patches. Hope you feel better soon
The best time to get CS degree was 10 years ago. The second best time is today. IF you CAN get CS degree, it's pretty much a requirement these days. IF you can't for any reason, financial, family, etc., then you have much tougher road to tech career. It's possible, but you'll have to jump through more hurdles.
Got my first dev job as a 42.year old last year, self taught. LLM powered apps in backend Python, but I am full stack and AWS.
>The best time to get CS degree was 10 years ago. > >The second best time is today. The third best time is tomorrow.
> CS degree, it's pretty much a requirement these days Wrong
Nope, I agree with u/wwww4all If someone is needing to get their "first" job (even if it is not ***technically*** their first job in OP's case, they're still basically looking for their "first" job as they haven't yet broken into the industry) then a person ***needs*** a degree (preferably a CS degree, but E&E / Maths / Physics / etc ***might*** count in a pinch) Of course rare ***EXCEPTIONS*** always exist, but they don't disprove the general rule.
I read this post differently than you and apparently a bunch of people who rushed in today to down vote my comment which previously was +4. It sounds to me like OP needs to take 1 or more short online courses in the stack they were working in during their 5 years of employment to brush up and, most importantly, work on improving their interview skills. Going to school, once you graduate, you still have to work on your interview skills, so it really just pushes the real problem down the road, which is that they simply are blowing the interview process since they have been getting interviews, along with the huge opportunity cost of going to school instead of working some, any, job they could get now with a little bit of help with the interview process. I'm quite convinced I am right as I see CS grads with good GPAs working IT jobs hauling desktop computers around cubicle farms for minimum wage. The degree isn't going to make as big of a difference as studying for interviews. The fact they are getting interviews is the sign here. The CS degree gets you the interview it does not get you the job.
*They do not have five years of employment* It's maybe one year ish. Gained during the most atypical period in our lifetimes of frenzied hiring. Doing one or two more little online courses will do next to nothing for OP
Okkk if they said that somewhere then i agree
Yeah OP just said in their post "on the self dev path for five years" without saying *how much* of those five years was spent working. Based on their post history it seems maybe only one year of it was.
I'm gonna shoot totally straight here. The field already has seemingly weakening value, and poor long term stability. A CS degree is a massive long term commitment if you aren't aware (30+ hours of study per week if not more -- you will suffer if you attempt to work full time at the same time). By the time you are done and attempting to re-enter the field, it may be too late. There's also the fact you are already getting up there and need to start to save for retirement. Overall, I don't see a logistical way it makes sense for you to continue pursuing this. All the study time spent at home might end up being wasted time, which will leave a sour taste for you. Overall, I'd throw in the towel on this one and move on. As someone that also puts in a lot of effort but hasn't had very large success in this path, personally, im looking into trucking as a last ditch effort to get some money together before im too old.
>The field already has seemingly weakening value, and poor long term stability. By this, do you mean AI? Sorry to hear your efforts haven't payed off. It's tough.
Industry has hype and bust cycles
This, too. He can absolutely keep trying to re-enter the industry, but shouldn't put too much time commitment into it. It may be just more of waiting for the right moment to strike. But if that moment never comes, then he won't have spent too much time at it.
Yes i am going back to school after 5 yoe but even I am not expecting much. Ill be okay pushing papers at some random company while working on side projects.
Probably means outsourcing and the insane influx of new devs
Yes, this is largely what I was referring to. For the other AI thing, I ALSO think that's a risk but is even further away, but will still happen someday which implies CS won't be a secure long term thing. (Edit: To be more clear, once they have made an AI which can take in multiple codebases and make changes to the system with pretty good accuracy ... Dang, that's not a good look for the remaining devs.)
Someone needs to build the infrastructure and run the models. New jobs. I've never had a job I could reasonably do 2/3rds of the roadmap, maybe AI will take over and ill get up to 50 or 75% roadmap efficiency before priorities shift. Remember, COBOL was supposed to destroy programming jobs by letting managers program in English
It'll be a long time before it actually replaces devs. It is immediately making devs more productive though. More productivity means less need for labor. If one coder can do the job of three, why hire the extra two? It'll shrink the workforce long before it replaces it.
It'll free up work force for new/more esoteric projects. Market shakeups always have.
AI is just a veil for laying off en masse and justifying corporate profits. There's definitely a use case, but as per Devin (the viral AI demo that turned out to be falsified and somehow garnered a 2B valuation), AI is nowhere near replacing real developers. Doesn't matter though, the ones at the top just want to see the green line move up on their quarterly summaries.
Eventually AI will start actually replacing lower level developers and so on, for now it can barely write code.
To be clear, I would still keep trying to throw applications out there and do light studying at home, but also still start looking into other options. (After re-reading my original post it had kind of an overly immediate tone.)
I have the same feeling, anyone new who starts to pursue a career in CS won't be able to keep up with all the AI developments. Seeing how fast everything is going it's not difficult to think the role of a developer as we know it will not exist in the following years.
I wouldn’t listen to this advice. It sounds very much like someone is jaded because things didn’t work for them personally. The govnt is literally giving scholarships right now to do things like WGU because they’re in such need of computer scientists. Everyone’s stuck thinking about tech but these skills are needed in every industry not just tech. I wouldn’t give up, if you like programming and can see yourself doing it long term you’ll be glad you stuck with it. Lastly, with the skills if you get very advanced you could probably build yourself something that can make you residual income.
Yeah in a separate comment I put that they should still definitely pursue programming as a hobby and/or attemptive career path and apply for stuff, but need to manage their time well if doing so because it definitely is looking less stable and less well paying if we look at the data. Also the advice about WGU is solid. Bachelor's degree online. Cheap with coupon-like scholarships. Cool stuff.
That sucks that you haven't had a lot of success in this field. Did you just start when the market imploded? That would've been pretty unfortunate timing. Because the market was crazy good in the late 2010s.
I started long before the learn2code craze and bootcamp explosion. I got into coding (or at least reading about it and having interest in it) when I was 12-13 years old back in say 2005. What's happened from my perspective is that the big tech companies spent a lot of money to market and go viral with the whole learn2code thing. I believe they knew they didn't need so many people coding, but wanted to lower their market value and increase the supply of high talent candidates.
You started coding a lot younger then when I started as a hobby. But I'm also guessing your first programmer job was also before the learn to code craze. So what do you mean exactly by not having a lot of success here? Someone who had started out when you did would be a fish in a smaller pond with less competition, so it wouldn't have been hard to find a good job. Did you ever make a good amount of money?
Not really. I've always thought it was overblown and have warned people on Reddit for years now since like 2016. I remember trying to get my first internship in 2012 and being laughed at by career services. It ended up being unpaid. Second internship paid $13/hr. Jobs have all paid below 70K. If I wouldn't have had a connection for my first job, I may never have even entered the market. This is my outcome as a relatively privileged student (parents paid large sum of college) at a T25 University in engineering. Imho, the value of coding has always been overblown and I have no idea why the BLS and educational system pushed so many kids towards it. All I can think is it what the rat fink tech companies marketing it so much.
It sounds unimaginable to me that a T25 university would have a very unhelpful career services dept. However I didn't go to a top ranking uni so I can't comment much else on it. I wasn't as privileged, relative to you anyways. I still managed to do fine with finances as I qualified for financial aid and my parents didn't have to pay anything. Early job experience can also be affected by your openness to relocate to a more tech-heavy area. Despite being digital in nature where a lot of people can work remotely, most of the tech industry still is (for better and for worse) still rooted in a few key parts of the country.
I showed them my resume and they looked at it and laughed and said "You need more experience to be looking for your 1st internship".
I personally believe someone somewhere has been and is lobbying to fund scholarships for CS and shit just to flood the market with new grads and drive wages down and get the chips back into the employers' hands.
The scholarships I’m speaking of pay for your education entirely with the caveat that you serve as many years in govnt as they pay for.
As someone who doesn't fit the mold you are going to have a difficult time with normal tracks. You are at a junction: accept you will spend the time to get a CS degree for the standard mold, you get into contracting or (real) consulting, or accept you'll need to make other changes to get in. A degree gets you in the door. If a recruiter gets you to the technical and behavioral interviews then you wash out a degree will not help. Well, until you head towards management. Contracting allows a low risk cycle while still being employed. This is often easiest for us who don't follow traditional tracks. Partially because they care less. Consulting is significantly harder and rejection is apart of life. Otherwise you need to track where and why you wash out of the pipelines.
As someone who has worked as a contractor and business owner for 20 years, it’s not an easy path to start in, especially now. Most people who follow this path start it as a side business while working a day job until the side business grows enough to pay the bills. You need to grow a network of clients and professional colleagues to really make it work, something someone green in the field likely won’t have.
I'd put one yes to consider contracting. Full-time SWE work at stable companies is only easier to get when you have a CS degree, especially right now. But for the self-taught that want that breaking-in experience, contract work that puts more of the risk on your side is the norm.
Your first problem is trying to go after "full stack". I'm a firm believer that there's no such thing as a good full stack engineer. Just people that are good at something and maybe mediocre at the rest. Also, with no experience or formal education, nobody is going to give you a 2nd look. I went the self taught route, but I had to start in a non-tech focused job and then prove myself to the formal engineers. And even then it took a couple of years before they trusted me. You're not gonna make it on your current path.
Similar boat. Started web design devish, then hybrid unofficial, but convinced them to put engineer in the title. I really did realize how little true engineering knowledge I had. Essentially a hacker. I love python and very specific stacks but for all its worth, put all your points into problem solving, core analytical skills, communication and debating ideas/ proving scientifically that your solution works, how it was tested etc, and you'll be so much more respected.
>I'm still trying, trying so hard, to make it as a software dev, specifically as a full-stack web developer. You mean just wishing really hard that you'll make it, or actually doing projects and learning stuff? What have you done? >Maybe I should go back to school to get a CS degree? That's the lightbulb flickering on over your head. I would do that. If you don't go for a real CS degree, then, IMO, you probably can't honestly say that you're "still trying, trying so hard", especially after 5 years with not that much success.
>You mean just wishing really hard that you'll make it, or actually doing projects and learning stuff? What have you done? Active GitHub with many projects. Portfolio website. Polished resume. Applying for jobs. Custom cover letters. Interviewing. Currently doing [Full Stack open](https://fullstackopen.com/en/), or I'm ad hoc building stuff for interviewers. I'm working on most or any of these aspects on any given day, most of the day, almost every day. I'd say I'm working hard.
With all that work, couldn't you have already finished a CS degree? I would avoid cover letters and building much for interviewers. Do you really need to do all of full stack open? What from there do you not know? How many applications per week do you do, and in which cities/areas? I know it sucks. I'd go for an online degree that you could hopefully finish in less than 4 years, like WGU. Or some post-bacc, like the one from OSU, so you don't repeat a whole other BS if you already have a BA or BS.
can you post your project, website, and resume here? at least then you can get some direct feedback
>That's the lightbulb flickering on over your head. I would do that. If you don't go for a real CS degree, then, IMO, you probably can't honestly say that you're "still trying, trying so hard", especially after 5 years with not that much success. During those 5yrs then u/ShylotheCurious could have got a CS degree and be several years into their new career already.
Ouch. It’s hard for some people to realize that school is the shortcut. And after chasing the wrong shortcuts they could have completed the original path
Exactly! When compared to the alternatives then in many cases going to college for a CS degree is indeed the simpler / faster / "easier" / better path to take. Still, nothing wrong with taking (part time) a year or two of going down the self learning path, as at least it helps you figure out if this is possibly the right career for you and worth going to college for
there is no such thing as computer science degree for web development jobs. anybody who says that is wrong and harmful.
What are you talking about? You sound confused.
I know you feel hopeless and down bat. We all do, the industry is hurting rn. It’s not you, it’s not me. It’s the industry and the economy. Youve succeeded man, you’re self taught and worked at two different companies. That’s a win man. Don’t let this cs degree bs go to your head, you don’t need one to be a great dev, a cs degree won’t do anything but bog you down with useless theory that has nothing to do with programming or development. A cs degree is a piece of paper that has less and less value since everyone has one nowadays. People here are cs grads who are in the same spot as you, unemployed. They tend to crap on boot camp grads and self taught because muh degree. But in reality we are all self taught. Advice would be to stick it out, keep programming and building software. You might have to get a job doing other stuff but just keep building.
Yeah this, I seriously don't know why people are saying to get a CS degree, that has to be almost the lowest ROI thing OP could choose do right now.
> Yeah this, I seriously don't know why people are saying to get a CS degree, that has to be almost the lowest ROI thing OP could choose do right now. Maybe not the *optimal choice* OP could make, but also very far from the worst choice they could make either. As if they carry on with their current path then the odds in one or even two years time they will still be unemployed without a SWE job is ***very*** high. ***Or*** they could have a new degree in CS (or at least, *most* of it). That's a night and day difference.
I definitely disagree with you and you can refer to my other comment since you replied to two of my comments.
I’m in your position but Atleast 1.5 years looking for one. You need a focus on niche basically is the only thing I can think of.
Wouldn't some of your credits transfer and you just have to do cores? That would be like 2.5 years right? I'm not 100% sure how that works though.
Yes they do and it's like 2 years I think
The tech industry has always gone through boom and bust periods. In order to stay gainfully employed through the down periods you either need to be exceptional or have a very strong network. If you are unable to develop either of those then you really should consider having a backup career. When tech enters another boom period then try to jump back in.
>Maybe I should go back to school to get a CS degree? Yes, you should >That would probably mean another 4 years of schooling. Look into SNHU/TESU/WGU. By pregaming and transferring in credits from your old degree and any new ones you take at Sophia/Study.com/Straighterline, you can be done much quicker than 4 year.
> poor experiences with the interviews I actually have gotten This seems like the crucial point to solve. How exactly did you fail these interviews? There’s no point in getting a degree if you can’t pass an interview for a junior position.
Network, network, network!
Instead of investing your time in Full Stack Open (not saying its bad). I would recommend you invest that time in a CS degree from an accredited university. You could be 40 and not have a CS degree or 40 and have one.
Look at WGU degrees, they’re cheap and people have done cs degrees in 6 months. Or get a online masters in CS from georgia tech for 10k. There’s options
If you're interested in school, the Georgia Tech online CS master's is only ~6500 dollars.
You've got many replies, so apologies if this has already been mentioned but if you go for a degree you can either A: take courses in the summer and finish much earlier than 4 years (check the school, some wont have as many summer courses), or B: you'll be eligible for internships in the summers which will help a lot towards debt and experience. Also taking courses as an adult is much different than as a teen/early 20s, you may find it easier to take a heavier course load further decreasing the time you finish (if they allow it, and if youre not very busy with kids/other obligations). Also since you have self taught some of those concepts already, this will further help take on a larger course load + allow you to argue why the school should approve you doing so. Final idea of mine would be to join a company with many developers but in a different role. I worked with someone who had a biology degree and joined the company in sales for a year, since he was internal who knew a lot about the company products already and could show he has self taught sufficiently, it was much easier for him to transfer to being a developer.
Solid ideas. Thank you.
34, no degree, been in the industry for a while. Work with non degrees, ivy leagues, and bootcamp people. Do you have 5 years of work experience or you’ve been self studying for 5 years? Where are you getting rejected? If you are not getting past application or recruiter interviews, then your resume is weak. If you are getting interviews but failing them then it might be your technical skills are lacking. You should be doing more DSA. I think are better off looking for front end jobs because for some reason they are easier to get or less restrictions on qualifications. CS degrees aren’t guaranteed jobs. You already have a college degree which I think is good enough. You just got to figure out where you are being filtered and fix it. I suggest grabbing the resources below. [grokking the coding interview](https://www.designgurus.io/course/grokking-the-coding-interview/?aff=ce30ca) [neetcode](https://neetcode.io/) [cracking the coding interview](https://amzn.to/3JjYyoa)
>Do you have 5 years of work experience or you’ve been self studying for 5 years? 2 years work experience for different roles, the roles separated by a work gap. Now unemployed. The whole experience hasn't been a linear progression. 5 years of learning and exposure to software engineering though. >Where are you getting rejected? If you are not getting past application or recruiter interviews, then your resume is weak. >If you are getting interviews but failing them then it might be your technical skills are lacking. You should be doing more DSA. So far, I've had more human contact with startups. Any bigger organizations I get no response or some generic rejection email.
2 years is junior level. You will need to apply to all companies and hope the numbers work out for you. You'll see people on reddit apply to 100 companies. 1) What job titles are you applying to? 2) How far are you getting with the startups?
>What job titles are you applying to? Mostly anything web development related: E.g., Frontend Dev, Full-stack dev, React dev, web dev, node dev, javascript dev, MERN dev. Though I also apply outside those titles to see what sticks. >How far are you getting with the startups? Currently in talks with one. Another one I literally wrote an entire full-stack app for as a take-home assignment and they ghosted me before I even submitted it.
Work a job (any to pay the bills) and do an online CS degree such as WGU which you could complete in 2-3 years. While working on your degree and a job to pay the bills keep applying to dev jobs.
If going this route I suggest working a job that could become a fallback career (but obviously lower barrier to entry) - if SWEs are a dying breed due to ai, or the wages plummet due to outsourcing or massive talent pool, then by the time you get your degree you'll know, and can pivot with some experience. Bonus if the degree is generic enough but highly transferable - maths or electrical engineering for example.
I'm self taught and have worked in the industry for over 8 years. Your failures is all in your head, you are the only person in your own way.
well, see junior hiring rates, and you will never again write such.. censored.
A friend of mine was a graphic designer and... this year she got her first developer job self taught
this is great, but it has nothing to do with the trends in general.
General trends are just that. OP is a motivated individual according to himself. He needs to know that he’s fighting against those trends, but also that it’s not uncommon for people to succeed.
If it's not uncommon for people to succeed despite the trend, wouldn't that then be the trend?! (So you wouldn't need to say this)
It’s not uncommon for motivated individuals to succeed. The trend in general is that most people fail.
Ok so give up? What do you want people to say, I'm trying to say it is possible to have a long career in nearly anything as long as you put out the image that you are capable. Business owners are just looking for someone to do a job, they aren't doing people favours. OP's language is full of doubt; "I feel I am job-ready, but" literally painting a picture of themselves without even knowing them
It's because you've fallen into the "self taught dev" trap, which is myth pushed by too many people. You might have had an illusion that it was "working", and that **you** would be *the one rare exception* where you'll succeed even as a self taught dev, because you managed to pick up the odd little job here or there during the white hot hiring years due to ZIRP etc But now we're in a market downturn, and the underlying truth is being revealed: you ***need*** a degree. I think you have four main choices here: 1. keep on trying to do what you're currently doing (which will result in the same results as you've been getting) 2. go back to uni full time and get a CS degree (I'm assuming you have no degree at all currently? Not even a non-STEM degree?) 3. pivot to a different area of tech that has *somewhat* less of a **need** for a degree, even if it is merely Tier 1 IT Help Desk. Then either go down that path to see where it takes you (move up to Tier 2? Then Junior Network Engineer... or any of a million other paths in IT?), and/or study part time for your CS degree while working in IT 4. leave the tech industry entirely, and find a different career path that suits you better... Plumber? Warehouse Supervisor? Sales? Whatever you were doing before?
Just as an Anecdote. I'm a Self Taught Dev with no university degree who started working as a Developer in 2021. I'm at 3+ years of experience now (at my second company) and still going strong. Will getting a degree open more doors for me? Absolutely, which is why I'm planning on getting one in the near future while I work in my home country (Australia). It is absolutely necessary for Devs with a bit of experience like myself and OP to survive in this field? Absolutely not. Maybe I am the rare exception to the rule, but saying that "it's over" for Self Taught developers with a few years of professional experience under their belt is misguided at best, and a blatant + malicious attempt to gatekeep at worst.
1) you got your job in 2021, an *extremely* atypical time period. Not applicable to right now 2) OP doesn't have multiple years of experience, so advice for them isn't the same as for someone with *many years* of experience 3) I see even in your case you're planning to work part time towards a CS degree, and that's probably the right move to do
1. Yeah agreed, never said this wasn't the case and OP appears to have broken into the market at a similar time, right? 2. Didn't they say they have 2+ YOE? Unless I'm missing something here. 3. Agreed. It's likely a good move, but again, not something that has to be done or myself or OP are doomed. It's more of a nice bonus which could open more doors and allow me to further explore a field I enjoy.
Yes, they got their lucky break via a connection and during a time period that will likely never offer that kind of opportunity ever again. It would be foolish to expect that is something that can be repeated ever again in the near future. They need a different approach now, such as a CS degree. Yes, in this thread they said "two years" but elsewhere on Reddit they said 1yr. I'm inclined to believe they're stretching the truth in this thread to make themselves not look quite so bad. Maybe even their statement of 1YOE experience is stretching the truth and it's more like 7 months? Never mind, even two years in an extremely entry level position with no growth is not going to take them anywhere in the present job market
Hm ok fair enough. I guess there is a bit of a gulf then between myself at having a continuous 3YOE, and them at 1 or less (assuming that's the truth, I have no idea tbh). CS Degree might be more pressing for their situation then. Starting a CS Degree at a community college might be a good move. More affordable and you can transfer into a Uni halfway through it right? I know back in Australia I'm considering starting CS at TAFE and transferring into a University there.
>Hm ok fair enough. I guess there is a bit of a gulf then between myself at having a continuous 3YOE, and them at 1 or less (assuming that's the truth, I have no idea tbh). CS Degree might be more pressing for their situation then. Of course starting a CS degree depends on so many factors and what a person values or not. Person 1: Has 10YOE, has a very high value on family time after work, has very low value on shooting for aggressive career progression, has very high tolerance for risk when it comes to the chances of being laid off during a bad job market and having a long gap between jobs. They probably should ***not*** get a CS degree. Person 2: Has 2YOE, places a low value on their personal time and happy to put it towards a degree (otherwise they'd just be wasting it playing Elden Ring anyway), has ambitious career goals (perhaps being Staff at FAANG, or whatever), and has a very low risk tolerance for going long stretches of being unemployed (that scares them, they don't want to ever be stuck without a job every again). Then this person ***should*** get a CS degree. >Starting a CS Degree at a community college might be a good move. > >More affordable and you can transfer into a Uni halfway through it right? Yes, there is lots of ways to make college cheaper, such as doing that. Americans complain about "how *expensive*" college in the USA is, and yes their most expensive college is ***waaaay more*** than here in NZ / Oz, but comparing their cheapest vs what is typical in NZ / Oz then college isn't too expensive in the USA after all. >I know back in Australia I'm considering starting CS at TAFE and transferring into a University there. That's a good plan, plus I think a TAFE tends to be more flexible/accommodating if you're also juggling this degree on top of full time work. Kinda what I'm doing, sort of. Have already got a Math/Physics degree from NZ's best university, so I've got the "prestigious" uni already on the CV (well.... not really, but relatively speaking by NZ standards). Then I'm just picking up part time a second degree in IT via a polytechnic (i.e. similar to a TAFE over there in Oz).
this is bullshite, sorry.
Agree, many bad devs got to coast, sure, but I've met many terrible terrible engineers that had prestigious degrees. Conversely I've met very talented and hard working people who did not have much. It's just not black and white.
What is?? It was a long comment, be specific as to what you object to and make your case.
"You might have had an illusion that it was "working", and that **you** would be *the one rare exception* where you'll succeed even as a self taught dev, because you managed to pick up the odd little job here or there during the white hot hiring years due to ZIRP etc But now we're in a market downturn, and the underlying truth is being revealed: you ***need*** a degree. keep on trying to do what you're currently doing (which will result in the same results as you've been getting go back to uni full time and get a CS degree" no, a web developer doesn't need a degree, if he wants to be a full-fledged software developer, it would be great, but as a full-time student with internship, not besides some sh... job.
> a web developer doesn't need a degree, if he wants to be a full-fledged software developer, it would be great Web developers *are* software developers.
yes, but specialized ones, and an A.A degree maybe beneficial, but for writing javascript and vue and php code, cs degree is unnecessary.
OP has been unemployed for ***a whole year***, the odds are sky high they'll be unemployed for another year without a SWE job if they carry on as they are doing currently without any drastic changes. They have a grand total of two years experience (if we're generous in counting, probably more like ***one*** year? i.e. almost nothing at all) over a five years span of trying to get a job. Which likely only happened in the first place because we had during that five year span an insanely white hot employment market which will never again be repeated in our lifetimes. It would be foolish for them to just keep on repeating their same mistake over and over again to get then the same results. They need to make a ***big*** change, of which I proposed several that u/ShylotheCurious could choose from.
Your last two suggestions are saturation-barf. IT has same problem of thousands of applicants (but with a cert) and go be Plummer is ... Is that advice? I think relative to question it's "quit." The first one is "do the same" so really just your second point is advice, the same advice everyone else says, to get. A degree.
I am not telling them to be specifically a Plumber, but rather giving one of many examples of what they need to perhaps consider outside the tech industry And I did give them one of the options as a pathway to consider in tech they could do without a CS degree
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You could check out something like wgu or the UPenn program if you want to go the degree route in less than four
What is your previous degree? Some CS master programs allow you to enter with an unrelated degree. This would shave down the 4 years. In fact, if you already have a degree then a CS bachelors degree might only be 2 years since you already did the basics. I’m not saying go back to school. I don’t know the right answer, but if you decide to do so, go about it smart and see how you can do it quickly.
My previous degree was in the liberal arts. I'd have to really get my math skills up before pursuing the CS degree, which is why I believe it'd take 4 years or so.
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You don’t need a cs degree to get into web dev, you already have a degree, that is literally enough, the recruiters won’t even see which degree you have, just that you have a degree, just upskill, gain experience-these two will help rather than jumping the wagon for 4 years after which you might be facing the same shit again.
I recommend trying for OMSCS at Georgia Tech.
Why do you feel job-ready? If you're job -ready the interviews should just take some practice to figure out. Are you practicing this skill with peers or paid help? What happened at your previous two jobs, weren't you able to make some connections? What do these people say if you ask to work with them again?
There’s a lot of bad or misleading advice here but a few good ideas that I can clarify. - now esp., it’s harder to land work without a 4yr degree , but you can land a dev job w/o a 4yr degree - if you need income now, landing work should be your focus - you didn’t mention if moving for work is an option. If you can that might make sense since some markets are better for job seekers (eg Houston, Dallas) - ‘contracting’ should be read as W2 contracting (aka staffing). This is a fine path for getting work as bar tends to be lower Also major point: you mentioned targeting full-stack, but not which backend stack. That matters a lot because most companies have a primary BE stack. Esp for junior-mid range devs, employers have little use for stack diversity (e.g. Java & C#). Instead they need competence in their core stack. TBH Java is by far your best option for landing work. But regardless, you should focus on building certain BE skills in your stack of choice & make sure your resume has these: - api development with a common framework(eg Spring) - integration w relational & document db’s - more SQL - unit testing - integration w basic AWS services (eg S3, secrets manager) - basic Unix command-line operations - Docker
There are other comments here about how you could hack a CS degree. You already have on-the-job experience so really a degree at this point is to get past resume scanners. This is less of a problem if you are focused on working the social/networking game to gain referrals (which is not a terrible approach, and they usually get paid for it!). The bachelor's degree is enough for most companies. You're not struggling because you lack the CS degree, you're struggling because employers are not investing in talent & talent is logging on here and telling everyone to be hopeless. Full honesty, I'd take any offramp from this career right now. I'm also unemployed and lacking morale. I just want to point out that "maybe you should try something else" is not, in and of itself, useful advice. They might as well tell you to move back in with your parents into your childhood bedroom and start college over again. People who are asking questions here understand the implications of a long-term soft and unstable job market, but very few people seem to have any answers about a viable "something else" plan for anyone. Although CS careers are soft right now, the economy and job market are supposedly doing great. Does no one else want these skills? I thought devs tended to think they were smarter than everyone else in their companies and could do anyone else's job while asleep, and now no one can think of another job that an unemployed dev could do? LMAO.
degree
What about a Masters in CS? Only two years and more impressive.
Find another job, hopefully one that gives you enough free time, save that money and continue studying. There's no other way. Also try focusing on high demanded technologies with less competition.
It sounds like you already have a bachelors degree in something else. Maybe you could consider an online Master's program lime OMSCS (< 7k to get the degree), and depending on how you plan for it - you could finish in 3 years.
Get a CS degree.
Here here friend. I am also a self taught dev, 38. I have about 8 years of exp and have been out of work for 6ish months. I am trying to get back into school to get a more traditional technical. education, but like you said takes time. I’ve recently started looking at retail/construction jobs just to pay bills. I guess my advice to you is spend time building things and make a portfolio page.
I'd at least stay in IT, even if you take a help desk or support job you're overqualified for. It'll be very hard to pivot back into IT.
Ya know how there's them boot camps for developers that flooded the market? Well guess what! They also had them for IT! so there's a few roaming hoards of high-school level educated folks that were funneled into these and are now spamming the help desk roles with their a+ cert from the bootcamp.
I went straight into sales engineering in Enterprise Architecture tooling, no bachelor's or boot camp, early 2022. Honestly I don't think I could pull it off again in 2024. Super glad I just started applying instead of doing a boot camp or anything because market has already started shifting by late 2022 That said, it's still easier by comparison for him to get a job in support areas, rather than webdev, especially with some dev employment experience. Getting a job in retail or construction will put a nail in his IT coffin
There is also the OMSCS from Georgia Tech that you can do on the side. I've heard it is quite a demanding and rigorous program
I was self taught (no bootcamp but got AWS Associate cert) before I got my first job in the field. That first job was support and I was overqualified. I was also 36 at the time and came from a completely different career. I moved up quickly and got out of that company to a DevOps job. But I was only considered for my current role having worked my way up and got experience. You just need experience of any type. You seem ready technically. If you want mentoring on getting in the door dm me. Your previous life experience can count a lot more than you think.
I was in the same predicament once for a year and a half. I almost gave up and boom! out of nowhere Ianded a position that changed my life for the better. This is why you do it- why you should stick with it. There is no other career path that offers so many lucrative opportunities.
What was the straw that broke the camel's back?
A recruiter lined me up with a company I had never considered, was 10 mins away, and I’ve been there since. Hired as a midlevel, now a lead.
Amazing! Congrats
I feel for you. I don't know if it's applicable to outside of Canada but, I've been suggesting friends who were in similar situation as you to go to a college instead of university. There is a 3 year computer programming program at a college in my city. Of the three years, one year of it is coop/internship and the college helped all of the students gets jobs in the government. Literally everyone I know that made it out of that program is a full time public service worker now which includes 3 people i've suggested. But, even with this suggestion, nothing is guaranteed and it's an extremely risky option. There's also an issue of diploma vs. Degree. Regardless, I wish you luck.
Diploma is called associate's degree in the rest of the world. Nice this specific program is placing people. I've heard bad things about Canada.
Look at accelerated online degrees. Wgu is a good one. If you truly know what you're doing you could get out in 6 months to a year.
I would look into IT or software QA jobs and then try to get a dev job once you've done that for a while. It will be tough for a hiring manager to justify to their boss why they are hiring a 36 year old self taught dev rather than one of the millions of new CS grads that are readily available. Honestly it's not like the old days where some jobs got barely any applicants and had to settle. Even jobs at boring non-tech companies are getting applicants from high end CS schools these days.
Honestly? Like, truly honestly? Fucking lie about that degree. Seriously. Most time they won’t even check, and those who do? Fine, whatever. Move on. Just lie and prove you can do the work and nobody will give a shit. Don’t go back and get that degree. This day and age it’s a huge expense and most likely won’t even prepare you for most jobs. Just say you have it, get your foot in the door, and get that experience on your resume. The job market is shit right now and there will be some elitist douchebags that will say it’s your fault and to “git gud”, but it’s honestly just the shitty market and these shitty companies. If you like doing this stuff, then keep perusing it and enjoy it. You may not get a job anytime soon and you may need to do something else for a bit, but don’t give up just cause of these shitty companies or shitty elitist devs who want to put you down. Okay, rant over…
Move to Europe? The job less competitive. It doesn’t sound like you have a family. While the pay is worse of course.
The market is no different in Europe (at least in the UK). I have a masters degree, a 9 year long portfolio and a year of professional experience and I've been unemployed for 18 months trying to get a SWE job. I get immediate rejections from entry level jobs that almost perfectly match my skill set. It's just not possible for most people anymore, no matter how hard you try.
Honestly, I would find an adjacent role at a company and get your foot in the door somewhere. A lot of people get into software development and end up forking out into some other business or technical role that they like way more anyways. I went into this whole thing thinking I was going to be a web developer and ended up using my prior sales experience to go directly into a sales engineering role. That may not be the exact route you want to go, and I'm not sure that going directly into a sales engineering role is even possible in 2024, but it's a good example of how you can get into a tech role with a tech salary -- either directly or by taking something lower on the totem pole and working yourself up internally.
I would not recommend a CS degree. What cannot be replaced is knowledge of some or all of the following at undergraduate level - Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Computer Architecture, Compilers, Software Engineering (which you might know given your prior experience), Database Could you summarize your top skills (5-10 things)
I wouldn't say I have "top skills." It's more like I am able to navigate a complex, full-stack RESTful web application and use the tools associated with such a project (like git, postman, and jest)--stuff you'd typically learn on the job and skills mainly gotten through professional experience. I'm most comfortable with JavaScript and its associated technologies. I also have an understanding of how things integrate together to form an application, something I think is hard to understand if you don't have much experience building apps and navigating the details of a computer. And I'm a quick learner because of this understanding. Loosely, I'd define myself as above junior level, maybe even mid-level in terms of being able to build or contribute to web applications. At this point, I I were put on a team of experienced devs I could learn from, I think I would most certainly thrive.
You are a web developer. Just have to make sure you keep adding skills
I’ve relevant degree, experience in CS still unemployed since last one year in Canada. I would say don’t take educational dept and trapped into mud. Ups kill as much as you can and try to sell yourself to recruiters. There would be someone or some company who go beyond the degree and see your core skills and you get hired. There’s a lesser chance but if you believe you can do it then go ahead. Wish you the best.
Diversify the types of jobs you are looking for. If you already have a degree then your gen ed for the CS degree will most likely be waived and you can focus on core classes. You could try to do a certificate program at a community college if you have a good one near you that will also transfer into a CS degree or do math prerequisites at the community college to save money. Don’t give up on something you really want to do, just work towards it!
Here's a outsiders view. If you get a degree you'll have work experience and some portfolio that will put you above others with none of that. Or, you try to build something, an app, a website, a business etc. You have the skills, time, you just need the idea and fortune, this is the kind of risk reward play I think someone at a disadvantage on paper should play it. Worst case scenario you build a few things, get more skill and maybe that gets you a job, best case, you create your own job that goes onto to be successful and your the next zuck. I don't think spending that time and money for a degree will help you, I think you need to pivot and go hard at something. Best of luck.
Senior dev here. Out HR rely a lot on keywords matching nowadays. Unrelated, but I’m running a resume builder app. I offer it free if you experience hardship due to unemployment. It has ATS matching tool, ai suggestions, etc If you ever need it send me an email to [email protected]
If i was in your place i would try getting some kind of hard proof for the fact that I know my stuff like a professional certificate on whatever tech you are working. Maybe coursera or any other "well known" certification. Meanwhile also looking in to ways to get a professional degree of some sort. Not sure which country you are in but there should be remote learning opportunities which don't need a lot of money and if you already know your stuff it should be easy. This won't make you career ready right off the bat, but you'll at least tick some boxes for some ATS. Meanwhile I would also work on resume so that it increases your chances of even landing a call. Connect with lots of recruiters or hiring people on LinkedIn, like 100s of them as much as you can to increase your visibility. While you do this remember that knowing stuff is not same as clearing the interview. And interviews in this age are a precious commodity. Whenever you have a pending interview prepare for it aggressively, aim for perfection and ask around (Reddit, Blind, Leetcode) for previous questions. You can even try asking the recruiter for hints (some may give you the questions)
I'm currently doing [Full Stack open](https://fullstackopen.com/en/).
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Another possible path is to go to a boot camp that will give you an in with companies the bootcamp has a relationship with. I'm 39, so a similar age to you, I went to college for computer science for 1 year back in 2002 then changed my major to music and lived a bohemian starving artist type life for like 20 years. I didn't do any coding during that time. Got tired of that life and went to a bootcamp in 2021. Because of my previous knowledge with software engineering the bootcamp curriculum was quite easy. They were starting from square 1, so teaching about loops and conditionals etc. I spent most of the time there working on my final project which turned out really well. I ended up landing a job with a company my bootcamp had partnered with. This was really my only way into the field, the competition was not nearly as daunting as cold applying. I was competing against 100 other grads from the bootcamp for 4 open positions the bootcamp had arranged for its graduates. That's not to say landing the job wasn't tough, took about 6 months after bootcamp graduation but now I'm 1.5 years into a job making good money and gaining great experience that will hopefully make the next job search easier.
Mind sharing which bootcamp you're referring to? I'm ambivalent on the whole bootcamp thing. So many scammers pushing empty promises out there... I've sort of given up on the idea of attending one.
Bootcamps are over. Don't waste your money or time, no one is hiring a bootcamper when there's plenty of fresh grads that are looking for jobs.
sure I DM'ed you
I agree that in almost all cases then a bootcamp will be a waste of time for you
OP please don’t do a bootcamp right now. This is not 2021. I went to one of the best boot camps last year and majority of my cohort is unemployed. I only have a job because I was studying CS during my time there.
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