Being a software engineer myself, I have noticed that these days people from many different fields are taking bootcamps and online courses to switch their careers. But that is not what makes me fascinated, the majority of these people are really experienced professionals in their respective fields, with many years of experience, and despite of that, they choose to take a big U-turn, and switch from what they were doing to make their living, to becoming software engineers, with a junior title.
So, this made me think:
Let me begin with answering the first question, what is the reason that pushes people to switch their careers and become software engineers.
Some had enough of their jobs, yeah, I have met many persons that were telling me they choose to make this big change. They think that software engineering is more comfy than other jobs, some do not like wake up early to go and monitor a team of technicians on a construction site, others had enough of doing paperwork and calculations everyday, and some people, without even a high school degree, found it easy to pay for a few months on a bootcamp and have this well respected title.
For the second question, which is: 'is it easy to take the risk?', well it depends on the person, if you are single, living with your parents and have no bills to pay at the end of the month, yeah it will be easier for you to take the risk. But, for persons with family members to feed, and mortgages to pay, taking this risk is not something I would recommend, unless you have a big amount of dollars sitting at your bank account. From my perspective, as a software engineer with a degree of computer science, I can say that people I have met, coming from bootcamps are more of technicians who have learned to throw code without analysis. I would highly prefer to recruit people who think about what they will be doing and analyzing a problem before thinking of the solution directly.
Also, most of the bootcamps today are teaching people to become web developers but without knowledge in other fields like networking and security, this make it hard for us to collaborate and trying to explain solutions to them if they are part of our teams.
And let me finish this article by answering the last question, is it worth it?
Depends on you, if you are in the USA, where people are hired based on their skills and not their degree, I would really encourage you to follow this path, because it may be very rewarding (software engineers salaries are really high in the USA). If not, please study the market and do not be a Kamikaze, most of the companies around the world are still believing in degrees and they hire people based on that, so the decision is yours.
See you on the next article.
So, this made me think:
- why would they do that?
- is it easy to take this risk?
- and finally, is it worth it?
Let me begin with answering the first question, what is the reason that pushes people to switch their careers and become software engineers.
Some had enough of their jobs, yeah, I have met many persons that were telling me they choose to make this big change. They think that software engineering is more comfy than other jobs, some do not like wake up early to go and monitor a team of technicians on a construction site, others had enough of doing paperwork and calculations everyday, and some people, without even a high school degree, found it easy to pay for a few months on a bootcamp and have this well respected title.
For the second question, which is: 'is it easy to take the risk?', well it depends on the person, if you are single, living with your parents and have no bills to pay at the end of the month, yeah it will be easier for you to take the risk. But, for persons with family members to feed, and mortgages to pay, taking this risk is not something I would recommend, unless you have a big amount of dollars sitting at your bank account. From my perspective, as a software engineer with a degree of computer science, I can say that people I have met, coming from bootcamps are more of technicians who have learned to throw code without analysis. I would highly prefer to recruit people who think about what they will be doing and analyzing a problem before thinking of the solution directly.
Also, most of the bootcamps today are teaching people to become web developers but without knowledge in other fields like networking and security, this make it hard for us to collaborate and trying to explain solutions to them if they are part of our teams.
And let me finish this article by answering the last question, is it worth it?
Depends on you, if you are in the USA, where people are hired based on their skills and not their degree, I would really encourage you to follow this path, because it may be very rewarding (software engineers salaries are really high in the USA). If not, please study the market and do not be a Kamikaze, most of the companies around the world are still believing in degrees and they hire people based on that, so the decision is yours.
See you on the next article.
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