How I became a Software Engineer with no experience or degree | my experience + tips

hi everyone i'm valerie and in today's video i'm going to be talking about how i became a software engineer without any experience or a college degree there are three main things i'm going to cover in this video first is my background and career journey second is what you need in order to become a software engineer and three the resources that i found most helpful let's talk a bit about my background i studied managerial economics in college and in june 2018 i decided to drop out why did i drop out three main reasons first i would say my classes were mostly lectures like any other university and it taught me a lot of theory but it didn't give me the hands-on close-knit learning experience that i'm best suited for the second thing is that it was really hard finding a job or internship as an econ finance major i had lots of struggles doing this i was rejected in all of my applications to any finance internship any econ business internship so it was a tough major to be in when there's not that many jobs available to me and thirdly i was actually dismissed from college because i had a really low gpa and after a year i came back to take summer classes to get back on track but everything felt the same i was as clueless as ever and uh uninterested in my classes this was when i realized that maybe i should change careers i wanted to switch my major into computer science because i thought it would be really cool to work in tech but that meant that i would have to stay longer in college to complete more prerequisites so eventually i made the decision to drop out in june 2018 and just directly move to a city that i loved san francisco and do whatever it takes to make a living and be in this city i also wanted to see if maybe there were careers outside of my current awareness that maybe i could discover in this big city one of the first steps for me was getting a job as a barista at blue bottle coffee while i was working in the city i made lots of friends plenty of friends with software engineers when i was with them one day they mentioned this ios coding bootcamp that was free told me maybe i should try it out i thought you know what did i have to lose nothing so i decided to apply and i did a couple of interview rounds with them and i was accepted into the program by this point i left blue bottle to pursue this four-month coding bootcamp leaving my current barista job at the time was risky for me because i was scraping by as a barista and had very little savings i didn't think that there were a lot of things possible for me as someone without a college degree the boot camp was four months so it was quite a stretch for not having a job during that time after dropping out i tried to learn to code on my own for a little bit i tried treehouse linda codecadme and any other online resources you can find to learn how to code but there was so much to learn i didn't know which direction to take the good thing about going to a coding bootcamp was that they gave me a direction during this time i learned how to build ios apps for iphone which was so cool and uncommon because most developers are web full stack engineers and there's not as many mobile developers this was one thing that set me apart from a lot of the other candidates in the job pool so another cool thing about going to the coding bootcamp that i went to was that we got to work on real projects that the boot camps clients paid for and so we got to build features for real apps on the app store that would add to my resume and i even got to work on an app that was for a yc company besides having a resume that stood out the four months of the coding bootcamp was intense i struggled to pick up concepts and everyone in my cohort had some sort of coding experience already i didn't have any experience at all so oftentimes i felt like the idiot in the class but i saw it as a good thing because i told myself what do i have to lose if i'm an idiot in the class then that means that i'm surrounded by people who are much smarter than me people who are more experienced than me which means that this is the perfect place for me to learn so i would ask lots of questions in class and ask questions that people already knew the answers to and i was always the last to leave the class staying late at night with maybe one to two people left in class trying to catch up on the things i was lacking one thing i loved was that my cohort was very small it was eight students and so my learning accelerated the coding boot camp i went to was free at the time but i know that not everyone can find a free coding bootcamp i would recommend trying out app academy's online coding bootcamp um it's like they give you the whole course and it's free and it's online if you want more direction and guidance and help with interviews i'd say try to look for a coding bootcamp if you can afford it like any other aspiring software developer i failed a lot rejected a lot overlooked a lot but you just have to accept that sometimes failure is part of the process whether you want to become a software developer or any other goal you have in mind it took me two months to land my first software engineering position i landed a software engineer internship at poshmark going to this internship was a great stepping stone for me in my career now it was smooth sailing right wrong so um at the end of my poshmark internship i was told that i would not be getting a return full-time offer and this is something that i really wanted i worked so hard did my absolute best they didn't want to give me a full-time offer for the next four months it was back on the grind job hunting and i landed another internship at a yc company it's called ride cell it's a car ride sharing platform and i found them through angel list which is you may or may not know is like a website for startups to hire anyone they need at this ride cell internship i was a lot smarter i continued interviewing at other companies while working at ride cell because i was going to leverage an offer with this company so that i would be able to get a full-time offer side note tech companies take you a lot more seriously when you have multiple offers so had i told poshmark that i had another offer they might have extended me an offer so interviewing while working at ride cell at this internship i landed a full-time offer at a la tech company i shared this information with my team at ride cell and they took like a week to get back to me and they said they haven't exactly allocated a budget for a full-time role so the best they can do right now was give me an internship extension and in a few months they would have a full-time opportunity open for me at this point i was pissed but i didn't want to move to los angeles i want to stay in san francisco i have already built a network here so let's take that chance and let's do the internship extension and maybe keep job hunting and look for a role in san francisco or hopefully get the full-time offer from rydell at the end of the internship extension so i did that and then guess what happened 2020 happened so there were layoffs in every company every industry ride cell was laying people off and my instincts told me that they probably weren't going to be able to extend a full-time offer so in june of 2020 my ride cell internship ended and i did not get the full-time offer that i was told months before at this point disappointed again but i realized that you know i can only focus on the things that i can control so i started looking for another job again finding a job during the height of kovid was one of the biggest challenges i faced running out of money while living in an expensive city and not having a job was not ideal if i didn't make it here i would have to move out of the city and this wasn't an option for me so during the height of covid when there were mass layoffs and a difficult job market i told myself i had to get a full-time software engineering role so i reached out to a bunch of engineers on linkedin engineers who i saw were laid off by airbnb uber lyft these top tech companies in the bay area and i asked them to do mock interviews with me they were looking for their next role and they were the perfect candidates so this was definitely a huge advantage for me i did mock interviews every day ios practice every day and just interview practice and learning and growing and four months later i landed not one not two but three full-time software engineering offers and i made it finally an engineer with multiple offers so i knew that if i could get through this i could get through anything if i can do that you can find a job right now so one of the offers was from paypal which was great because paypal is a well-known tech company that everyone knows and love so i decided to go with paypal oh i spent a little over a year at paypal learning a lot doing full-time software engineer stuff i'm learning the ins and outs of sdk development accomplishing a lot of things working on crypto team things like that and it was a great learning experience for me but i knew that you know i eventually wanted to work at a fang company i think fang is the epitome of every software engineer's career during my time at paypal i saw my full-time role as a stepping stone to the next best opportunity so i started interviewing again and this time it only took me about a month to get multiple full-time offers including some from fang so now i'm pleased to say that i'm now working at my dream job at a fang company i decided not to include too much information about how i got into fang because this video is already pretty long but if you want a video on how to get into fang let me know in the comments below let's talk about what you need in order to become a software engineer i'd say two things one is experience or projects on your resume so being able to build apps like either web or ios android backend etc choose one and two is doing well in your technical interviews these two things are an oversimplification i will be creating more content on acing your technical interviews because there is a whole world to it but here's the gist there's two ways you can gain experience and do well in your technical interviews one is enroll in a coding bootcamp like the route that i took make sure that the bootcamp is teaching you the kind of stuff that you want to do for work so what kind of developer do you want to be and look for a coding bootcamp that specializes in that also make sure that the bootcamp teaches you data structures and algorithms and does interview prep with you because it's a very important part of the interview process the second thing is to create personal projects and self-study if you want to go that route side note if you apply to a bunch of positions already and you're not having success finding a job either you haven't applied to enough positions i know that i apply to like a hundred job positions a week for a few months when i was initially starting out or you need to have better interviewing skills now let's talk about resources that i found really helpful on my journey first thing is if you are looking to do better at your technical interviews or behavioral look for peers to do mock interviews with i suggest using pram or interviewing.io because they match you with someone in the system to pair you and you take turns interviewing each other pram is mainly free interviewing.io will give you some free mock interviews if you interview more people than you actually do interviews if you're like me and you did so many mock interviews on pram that they ran out of questions for you to do or if you prefer not to pay for a mock interview like on interviewing io go on linkedin find people who look like they're looking to job switch use this template that i will show here that i created to reach out to people to practice do mock interviews with if you're not passing your technical interviews then take a look at this youtube video that really helped me i know when i was starting out i wouldn't talk when i was trying to solve a problem and that itself is an issue you need to be able to communicate what you're thinking to the interviewer while you're solving the problem so that they can help guide you in the right direction another resource was the app academy online bootcamp that i mentioned all the links will be in the description box below if you're having bad luck trying to find a full-time engineering role try out for an internship or an apprenticeship this site on ramp.i o i would apply to their apprenticeships a lot i almost landed one but you know i'm glad that i did more internships because they're paid more another site that i love is builtin.com they have a bunch of tech job listings in every major tech city in the u.s so i'd apply to a bunch of positions there another resource is angelus.com this i mentioned earlier is a site for startups to list their startup and what they need and what they do angellist is a site i highly recommend for those starting out because startups are always looking for help building software you can find positions on here for anything and you know if you don't have any experience you can reach out message real people at the companies and tell them like hey do you need any help with anything and maybe they'd give you an internship like how i found one i will show a little template of what i use to message these companies on angellist i'd say the last resource that most people know about is fleet code you should use leetco to practice mock interviews with your peers ask a peer like the one you found on linkedin to hop on a zoom call and you'll both take turns 30 to 40 minutes per person to interview each other and you grab a leak code question and you share your screen and try to help the other person solve it vice versa one thing i want to mention is that a lot of people say you just need to do a couple hundred leak code questions and you're good on technical interviews i don't think so i don't believe in like a set number of lead code questions to do so that you can get a job there's no amount and you can see that on some forums you'll see people complaining like i did 400 leco questions and i still got rejected from saying well yeah because you either need great communication skills or you need a more efficient solution practice enough lead code questions to be able to solve the problem and get through your interviews if you found this video helpful please hit the like and subscribe button follow me on instagram message me any questions you have and i might make a video on them in future content thank you so much for watching i'll see you guys next time

Channel: BABE ENGINEER

Views: 1,494,448

Keywords: My journey becoming a software engineer without a computer science degree, How I became a software engineer without a computer science degree, How to become a software engineer without a CS degree, How to become a software engineer with no technical background, How to become a software engineer with no experience, My software engineering journey from a no coding background, Everything I've learned on my journey becoming a software engineer, College Dropout to Software Engineer

Id: V7Mt6Z30eaY

Length: 18min 13sec (1093 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022