From an Unrelated Career To IT/Programming?

An anonymous reader writes "I hate my career of the past few years. For a long time I've wondered what I'd do after I broke even and could get into something new, and I keep coming back to computers. I'd like to get into software, since I always enjoyed coding. I have some background with C++ so I'm not starting entirely from scratch. My problem is my degrees and past employment have no practical application to the field. Where should I start? I have friends in both IT and software development who might be able to pull some strings and get me an interview or two for entry-level positions, but what can I do to make myself hireable in a short period of time? Is it possible to pick up enough of what I'd need within a couple months? If so, what and how?"

Comments

Be Proactive

[alain94040]

Having been a hiring manager for a couple of years, I got used to scanning resumes and deciding within 10 seconds whether to read further or not. Guess what: the one thing that matters is relevant experience.

How can you get relevant experience in a few months? Contribute to an Open Source project. Join one of the Fair projects listed on my site.

Contribute. Learn. Then put this fresh experience on your resume. Then you'll be hired (at least you would have a year ago - in this new economy, even Bill Gates would be jobless).

Re:Be Proactive

[CannonballHead]

Hm. I'm not a hiring manager, but was recently hired by a hiring manager (and interviewed by several people from the team I now work with). I was hired for a testing role of a product that involved UNIX (e.g., AIX) as well as Linux. I was freshly out of college with two Bachelor degrees - computer science and music. A few commented on the music thing and asked about it. One thought it was fairly related (e.g., creative thinking and programming SHOULD go together, but often don't). I had NO experience AT ALL with UNIX. I had self-taught experience with most computer stuff, including Linux and all programming (my computer science coursework was mostly review for me).

I got hired not because of relevant experience, but because I apparently could show that I was hard working and diligent, fairly intelligent, creative [music], familiar with a lot of programming languages (but only "good" with one or two, since I primarily did scripting stuff in the past few years), and able to teach myself (that was a big resume item for me).

Relevant experience is good, but maybe not for an entry level position? If anything, my manager was more interested in my attitude, willingness to learn, willingness to work hard, etc.

Re:Be Proactive

[endikos]

But then how does a person break into the industry?

Freelance. Absolutely work on open source projects in your spare time to hone your skills, but then do some paid work for people that know and trust you. Then you have real-world open source volunteer experience as well as paid experience. Lots of small businesses need small utilities or enhancements to existing products they had custom built.

Hard field to transfer into

[SpuriousLogic]

Programming can be very hard to transfer into, given the demand for experience and specific knowledge in the field (the US Dept of Labor sites this as one of the reasons less people enter into the field over others for second jobs). It would be almost impossible for you to get into anything other than an entry level support job (think helpdesk). Getting a job as a full developer will be a very difficult proposition. You might be able to get a job doing some "simple" development in a small shop though (think perl, php, that kind of stuff). Compare yourself to a college grad with a degree in Comp Sci (or similar degree) - graduates in this years class are seeing a very tough job market, even though software engineering is comparably untouched by the ongoing depression. These grads would have a level of experience similar to yours, but most likely be willing to work for less, and have been formally trained in the field. My suggestion would be to spend a significant amount of time learning the field, not just a language syntax. Go to a college website, see the books that are used for the classes, and start in on them. There is MUCH MUCH more to programming that just knowing a language syntax.

Re:Strategy

[microTodd]

Then, some day, if you put in a hero's effort, you might be able to be an entry-level programmer.

Peter, I understand why you are being negative (as with most of the replies here). Programming is not an easy field to succeed in. But neither is any other field. And besides, why are we discouraging someone to do what he loves?

You probably already know more about that domain than most programmers already working in it

This advice you give in the beginning is very good, and something that I tell all wanna-be programmers, whether they are CS grads or something else. There are very few "pure" programming jobs, maybe just Google, Microsoft, and Apple. But in the world today, every field requires software somewhere in it.

You ask the right question...what is it you are doing now? Because its is 99% likely that his current career has some niche need for software.

Car mechanic - Parts inventory and job tracking
Musician - MIDI interfaces
Lawn mower - Job scheduling and business backend (bookkeeping)
Restaurant manager - Server scheduling, inventory, POS, (wireless handheld order entry?)
Truck driver - Log management

and so forth.

I've always thought, its easier to get an expert in some knowledge domain and teach them to program, than it is to take a programmer and try to teach them some knowledge domain.