From Finance To Software Engineer - What's The Best Path?

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

Hey folks, it has been a little bit quiet for me this week just because I'm on call and I'm not driving to work. So, I'm not commuting at all. Uh, I have a bunch of questions and stuff that have come in though, so I'm going to try to catch up on that. Some of these next videos I'll do will be pretty quick just because I want to get through some and get them out this week. Um, I think that's fair to be able to do that for folks. It's just a little different than me driving for 40 minutes and sitting in traffic. So, anyway, this one is from LinkedIn. This individual said um they their current job requires them to do some Python and SQL to do some automation and stuff like that. Uh they're pretty young. They have a degree in finance and then they're kind of asking like any advice to transition into more of an engineering based role for someone who doesn't have like that full-on tech background.

So they're asking like do they need to go back at a mast's just do projects like that kind of stuff. So I give you my opinion on on this for this person's situation. Uh friendly reminder if you uh are new to the channel. It's all about questions that you have uh related to software engineering career development. So send them in, leave them in the comments or message Dev Leader on social media. This person messaged me Nick Cosantino on LinkedIn. So that works too. It's a premium profile so you should just be able to message me I think. So, um, my thought on this for this person actually is probably to find a way in their current, uh, position, if possible, to transition over to it. So, it sounds like they're already getting exposed to some type of automation and programming. Um, they mentioned their degree in finance and, um, I'm assuming based on everything they're saying here, they're not actually working in like a software development role, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation.

So, it sounds like they have some type of development opportunities. Um, my like I think there's a million ways that you could do this. There's no right or wrong way. I think right now there's a lot of competition. So, I think that anyone who is interested and wants to should absolutely go take the right steps that they think would help them be a successful developer. Um, does that mean you have to go to college or university? No. Does that mean you have to go to a boot camp? No. Do those things help improve the odds? I'm sure they do. Um, some places, for example, they will only hire you if you have a college or university degree. So, they list it. If that's how they operate, that's how they operate. So, if you want to improve the odds, then I would say sure, those things help.

But, are they required? No. So, none none of those things are required. But, do they improve your odds? Sure. And when I say odds, I just mean in terms of like the surface area of jobs that you're able to apply to. So, um it's like uh I was having a discussion on LinkedIn today related to projects. I was when I'm doing resume reviews on my main uh channel, Dev Leader, uh I I mentioned side projects a lot and someone was saying, "Hey, like I don't know, like I've never when I've hired people, I've never found that they're required thing." And I said, "No, no, no. I'm not saying they're required. I am saying if you're looking for a way to add more experience onto your resume or to showcase that you're learning things that aren't part of your core job, absolutely try to showcase with projects.

Does that make them required? No. So I think that you know the super highlevel advice for anyone that's interested in getting into software development is just that it's very competitive especially right now. No, I don't think software development jobs are going away but it's very competitive right now. So, it's all about how do you stand out? And when I talk about stand out, I mean at the time when you're applying because if just to give you a scenario to walk through, if a job position opens up and there's a thousand applicants and someone has to screen a thousand applications, what makes you stand out? Because if you don't stand out even at that point, then you're not going to be even selected to go on to the interviewing. And then how do you stand out in the interview, right? So what I'm thinking for this person is they're getting exposed to some software type of things like they're getting to do some programming and automation in their job.

Okay. So what my thought process is and I don't know enough about their role like I was saying is there an opportunity where they can lean more and more into that. My approach here is like can we actually bypass a lot of like the the job application stuff like going through like interview rounds and like like basically starting from scratch from the perspective of recruiting in a career like can we make this a career transition perhaps within a company to give you another example I have worked with people that are uh in like a dedicated testing role okay and in that dedicated testing role they're like hey I want to be a developer like I want to be able to change my title to do that. Okay, what do we have to do? Well, we have to start giving that person some tasks that a developer would do.

Let them try it. Let them get exposed to it. And then we've transitioned them over, right? I've done this with some other roles too, not just like tester like tester or QA, but with some other individuals. Um it's it's just about giving people that opportunity and then saying like, "Hey, expectations are that you're going to be starting junior in this field. If you're okay with that, that's that's fine." Like, but you have to put in the effort and if we're enabling it internally at a company, not all places will do this, but if we're going to enable it, we have to start giving you some of those tasks and seeing like, can you do this? Can we can we ramp you up? So, I almost think that that might be a better opportunity for this person than me saying, you know what, like just go do college behind the scenes for, you know, x number of years or like I'm not saying you can't do that.

Um, I would be I would be sort of being untruthful if I said that like I didn't think that was a good idea because I I went to university. Like I to me it made sense that path. But everyone's going to be different, right? So I think it will depend on what this person's after. But um you know to to be explicit based on their question, no you don't have to go back and get a mast's. Do I think that if you have the sort of the time and and when I say time I mean from like your career goal perspective like if you would like to over a few years start you know getting into software development on your own like building projects exploring it doing this kind of thing and while you're doing that also part-time doing school because you're working that could be great if that's your time horizon nothing wrong with that but I don't I I don't know what this person's after.

I think it could potentially move quicker potentially if they're in an organization that will allow them to sort of transition into that kind of thing. If they're not, then my whole argument kind of falls apart. Then you might have to like switch companies that have something that's going to allow that kind of transition. It's it gets a little messier that way. But I I think that I would just tell this person have a you know, have a good time horizon on this, right? don't expect that it's going to happen overnight. Um, but I I will always sit here and say like I think that if you're interested in something, you got to go chase it. You may very well find that you're not interested in it or you don't enjoy it after you've tried, which is totally cool, but you will not know unless you go for it.

So, hell yeah, go for it. So, hope that helps. Thanks for the question. Uh, if you would like me to clarify that for the person that sent this in, feel free to follow up on LinkedIn. I'm happy to try and add more color um and or create another follow-up. So, friendly reminder, send in your questions. Happy to answer. See you in the next one.