Ask HN: What's the fastest way to become employable in tech

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889090

by OliverGilan • 5 years ago

25 77 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hello HN,

I have quite a few friends who didn't study CS and don't know anything about programming but they hate their fields and want to switch.

What's the best book, course, etc. that can take someone from zero knowledge to somewhat employable in tech? Employable is a vague term but when I think about most online college courses I imagine they teach more theory than practical skills used in most tech jobs to me.

I'd imagine learning web development is probably the fastest track to becoming employable today but I'm curious what your recommendations are for how to learn that in the fastest way.

toomuchtodo• 5 years ago

A bootcamp with a good reputation. Fastest way from zero to entry level SWE.

atatatat2• 5 years ago

Name one?

weatherlight4• 5 years ago

app academy

brianwawok2• 5 years ago

As someone who hires, I have no idea how to tell a good bootcamp from a bad bootcamp. So they are all the same to me. I hope the applicant has projects / something outside of school homework to demo,

yuppie_scum• 5 years ago

If it was easy, the salaries wouldn’t be so high

badrabbit6• 5 years ago

In my experience, the easier the work the higher the salary. No one gets paid for working hard, they get paid for demand of their skill and expetience relative to supply.

kongolongo2• 5 years ago

I think there can be truth to both. Consider the fact that it may seem easy to you because it's almost second nature in a sense where you're unaware consciously of how much it would take an average person to learn what you're doing from scratch.

No one gets paid for working hard, they get paid for demand of their skill and expetience relative to supply.

I think that's generally true, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take a lot of initial hard work to gain the skills and experience necessary to work "easily" ofcourse there's some people where those skills came easily first anyways but I think those are generally at the tail end of the curve.

paxys2• 5 years ago

Only because what's "easy" to some is mind bogglingly impossible to others.

hammock• 5 years ago

You kind of missed the point. The high paid work is easy for the people who have the skills and experience. But getting those skills and experience isn't easy.

MathYouF• 5 years ago

Then what they really mean is: "If it was easy, there would already be a larger supply."

ineedasername3• 5 years ago

That seems like an odd interpretation of supply & demand, or you mean the word easier in some other way than the work is simple/easy to do.

Because if the work is easy, and there's high demand and high salaries as a result, tons of people will flock to that easy work and the increased supply of workers would drive down wages.

new_guy• 5 years ago

Why do people insist on trivialising our profession so much?

You don't get bootcamps for doctors or airline pilots. But people think they can go on some course, shit out a few lines of javascript/ruby/whatever and go get a job.

badrabbit6• 5 years ago

Because those professions have different requirements. Why did you pick doctors and pilots specifically? Why not carpenters and plumbers or electricians.

jstx12• 5 years ago

It's a bit more nuanced - being self-taught is a thing especially since you already have access to world class resources online. You might be missing a bit of structure or access to professors but the best learning materials are already out there and they're fairly accessible. So it's definitely possible to make it without formal education but it takes a lot of time and effort. I think that's the part that trivialises it - looking for the fastest way often means that you make compromises with how well you learn.

The other part is that even the people with formal education have learned most of the stuff that they know through self-studying and real-world experience - very often you hear people in their first job saying that university didn't really prepare them for an actual job in software. And the skills that you leave university with are just a starting point - you have to keep learning throughout your entire career anyway.

the_only_law2• 5 years ago

Well, you have kids that can blow away long time professionals and people who make it in the industry right out of high school. You don’t hear of as many kids who as teenagers can perform medical procedures or fly planes (if any for the former).

I think part of it is the accessibility of both the tools and the knowledge compared to other fields. The two aforementioned professions are both gatekept behind expensive credentials as well (pillows don’t need a degree, but iirc the process to get licensed isn’t cheap). Additionally:

shit out a few lines of javascript/ruby/whatever and go get a job.

Actually seems fine for a number of roles out there. There are plenty of jobs where it’s enough to shit out code that just works, while you probably won’t be commanding the salaries people gush over in more tech centric communities such as this, you can certainly make more money that you would in the typical roles that many people find available post-education. I’ve argued about this before here, but in my experience, you don’t have to be that great of a developer to maintain some form of employment in the industry.

When you have a field, that pays well, even in some of the lower windows, has a vast amount of learning resources readily available, is not locked behind time and money expensive credentials and has all the tools needed to learn do the job for free, it seems almost stupid not to consider it.

paxys2• 5 years ago

That's because you literally can do that.

rsj_hn3• 5 years ago

If you are highly talented, sure. There are also piano prodigies, whereas everyone else has to study for many years to reach that level of proficiency and may never reach it.

Some can pick it up mind-boggingly quickly because their brains are naturally good at formal thinking, keeping many variables in their head, and being extremely precise and logical in their thoughts without much training. But again, that's such a small share of the population that "be a prodigy" is not really useful life advice.

kongolongo2• 5 years ago

It's interesting you say that because South Korea had scandals where unlicensed nurses, office managers, and receptionists were performing surgery, not to say it isn't difficult to perform surgery, but I think it was doable at all because the core skills you need aren't difficult to pick up for the majority of cases, but the breadth and depth of knowledge you need to deal with more complicated surgeries is why there's a lot of gatekeeping and licensing for professions like surgery or airline pilots.

In fact being licensed for small aircraft in the us isn't much different from a bootcamp in terms of time and effort, but that jump from personal to commercial airplanes is largely in more flight time and some specifics related to larger aircraft, but largely the skills are very similar.

I think the same is true of most software jobs.

codegeek• 5 years ago

Because it has the lowest barrier to entry with highest potential to make a lot more money than a lot of shitty jobs. I don't necessarily disgree with you but just explaining the reason behind the gold rush with "learn to code and make six figures".

I don't really blame someone who is stuck in a shitty low paying job with no job guarantee. They have nothing to lose but try the whole coding thing and see if they can hit it big. The only issue with that is that if they don't enjoy learning how to code and are just doing it for quick money, they wouldn't be able to sustain that for a long period of time. I know a few people who tried bootcamps and then never got anywhere.

If you have a mid level IQ and are willing to put the work in and can self learn, coding is one of the best things you can try to get to six figure income. It literally costs nothing except your time for the most part.

throwawayboise• 5 years ago

There are only a relatively few places where you can make six figures writing code, and they aren't places everyone would be happy living. So you need to consider what kind of non-work life you want to live. Also nobody is making six figures with only boot-camp experience.

short12• 5 years ago

Because 90 percent of the profession is trivial?

qualudeheart3• 5 years ago

I think we’re heading for programming as 80% a job program for INTJ/P and aspergers people and 20% as a technical profession.

You can mass throw neets at le epic coding bootcamp and hire those that perform decently. Like a repeat of the outsourcing trend during the 2000s.

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

Because our profession is a lot less like “medical doctor” or “airline pilot” and a lot more like an amalgam of various specialized medical technicians, levels of nursing, and medical doctors all in one “profession”, without hard boundaries, and with hiring processes that can probably reliably distinguish the equivalent of a phlebotomist from a the equivalent of a cardiac surgeon, but not super reliably distinguish lots of other qualification differences that would be distinctly different professional qualifications if the industry was like medicine.

And there are programs for the lower levels of that amalgamated medical grouping that are much less involved than typical coding bootcamps.

EdSharkey2• 5 years ago

Unserious and lazy thinking devs give off the impression that we are unprofessional. No institutional barriers into the trade reinforce that. If we didn't have such a demand for workers, maybe those barriers could be erected.

Zababa• 5 years ago

It's because we don't have a strict distinction between worker, technician, engineer, architect. People tend to assume all kind of roles, informally. There are also lots of flat hierarchies, with everyone contributing to decisions. Sometimes the job is just shitting out a few lines of Javascript/ruby/whatever, there's no need to know about theorical stuff.

Another thing is that since you have almost all the necessary info online, and that open source is a very big thing, there is way less gatekeeping compared to other industries.

walshemj• 5 years ago

You do for pilots - its just a lot longer and more expensive

toast02• 5 years ago

You don't get bootcamps for doctors or airline pilots.

There are essentially bootcamp programs to get pilot licenses. Most people I know who have or were pursing a license would do a couple hour class once a week or so, but you can also sign up for bootcamp style courses where you do a focused, 8ish hours a day, 5 day a week program for a month or so and assuming all goes well, end up with a pilot license. Of course, a license doesn't get you a airline job, you'll need to do additional training and acquire flight hours.

Software jobs don't have hours requirements like many professional fields (usually through license requirements), so that makes it a lot easier to get in.

speedgoose• 5 years ago

Why the fastest way ? Usually people ask for the best way.

sushsjsuauahab• 5 years ago

If you already have a college degree, just write your own program that does something. That's the best way to learn and gain marketable xp at the same time.

jstx12• 5 years ago

- When you try to do things as quickly as possible you often end up cutting corners, sometimes too many corners.

- There's a lot of people trying to fast-track their learning and get into software and it's not an easy position to be in. It's a saturated market.

- It might turn out that software isn't for your friends either - personal preference, interests, aptitude etc.

I would point them to some beginner resources and let them explore it for a while in their spare time before jumping in and committing seriously.

noman-land2• 5 years ago

Start in tech support. You'll learn an insane amount and be right near the people you want to become.

jc_8112• 5 years ago

This so much. I’ve had friends wanting to make the switch from totally non-technical industries, who only want to be hired as a full stack developer after a taking some online classes.

In my opinion, the absolute best way to make the switch is to start in tech support. It’s the same concept of the only true way to learn a 2nd language is immersion by living in the country. The only true way to make the switch to tech is to be immersed in it.

Starting in tech support at a small-to-mid-size startup is such a strong and viable path, it’s a shame most people don’t realize that.

shmde• 5 years ago

Tech support is just saying people to switch on off stuff and troubleshoot things which already have pre-made solutions. How can a person switch from this to a full blown career in tech ? My advice would be to start from being a manual test engineer move to automation test engineer work closely with devs in this position and slowly switch to a software dev. I say start with manual test engineer, because the entry barrier is very low and you can work your way up to become a software engineer. Will definitely take time ( years easily ) but its achievable this way I feel.

jc_8112• 5 years ago

Respectfully, I couldn’t disagree more. I’m not referring to the traditional call center “is it plugged in?” Tech support.

I mean working as a “support engineer” for a start-up SaaS company whose users can be fairly technical themselves. For example, working on the support team of a B2B SaaS company who makes a tool for IT teams.

These types of roles can be filled by just about anyone, and there is so much to learn just by being around the environment. Lots of things we (people already in tech) take for granted is just how much one can learn by being around devs, sales, success, QA, devops, etc teams on a daily basis.

toast02• 5 years ago

If you're doing call center tech support, sure.

If you're doing tech support for a smaller org, you're also going to do system setup and delivery, and you're probably going to touch provisioning systems and your boss or your bosses boss is going to be managing people that run the corporate IT systems. There's a path to developer there, usually by doing some automation on the day to day work and being recognized and asked to help out with more things and eventually a job title. Or at least, working with people who do what you want to do, and asking them what it would take to get there.

Manual test -> automatrd test -> writing the things that need testing is also a valid way though.

isbvhodnvemrwvn• 5 years ago

Really? I don't treat tech support as anywhere closer to developers than scrum masters or IT project managers.

noman-land2• 5 years ago

It's infinitely closer than being out on the street. It's a foot in the door.

brian_spiering• 5 years ago

Related to starting in tech support, try to get an entry-level job in quality assurance (QA) / quality control (QC). You'll get exposure to software engineering and software engineers, then make more an informed decision about the field.

kgeist• 5 years ago

That's how some of our engineers started.

qualudeheart3• 5 years ago

6 month cyber security study and then go blue team. Don’t bother with penetration testing.

boppo1• 5 years ago

Why not bother with pentesting?

qualudeheart3• 5 years ago

Pentesting is much more saturated than defensive security is. Everyone wants to be a hacker.

sebisebi• 5 years ago

Bootcamp.

Friend of mine did a bootcamp recently, and had three offers two weeks after finishing. It was pretty intense at 6 days a week 10h each. They seemed to cover a lot of ground. There are bootcamp comparison sites that show how the people landed after a few month. The market is pretty hot right now which seems to translate into easier entry for new people, which was usually the hardest part.

rognjen• 5 years ago

The market is also full of less-than-ethical companies exploiting exactly the type of people OP described.

hartator• 5 years ago

Unpopular view here, but if they want to do code just because they hear it pays well, steer them away.

Coding is not easy. And it requires a lot of fiddling with things and a lot alone time trying to figure things out. Transcribe your own solutions in working code and communicate elegantly about them is also an art form by itself and it’s not accessible to many.

tlackemann• 5 years ago

This. Please, we don't need any more wage slaves in this industry. I already work with a bunch of people who don't have any interest in correct solutions but would rather just ship code. Feedback is non-existent or unwelcome. If their code is wrong, it's not, you're wrong. I'm 10-years professional and I have never met such a rude and entitled generation of bootcampers who think they deserve six-figures for figuring how how to return an array,

Rant over.

Please join tech or engineering because it genuinely excites or interests you. Not because the wages are higher.

arvigeus• 5 years ago

I have 10 years of experience. I can say with authority that I know very little. The only thing I learned is to recognise faster when my code sucks (I still struggle to write a good code)

apohn• 5 years ago

One thing to remember is that a lot of people who start out coding end up somewhere else in a Tech company.

I've worked with a lot of people with Engineering and CS degrees who worked as developers writing code for 2-3 years and didn't enjoy coding full time. Then they moved to other teams where they coded only a little bit (e.g. PreSales) or didn't code at all (Product Management, Project Management, Marketing, Sales, Education, etc).

Sometimes learning to code is the easiest entry point into a "Tech" job.

edanm• 5 years ago

I dislike this take, for many reasons.

1. Software development isn't some magic field that is different from anything else. People do it mostly because it's good money. Sure, some genuinely enjoy it, but almost no one would do the kind of work they do full time if they weren't getting paid well.

2. Even people who start off with a "love of the craft",so to speak, are usually doing it "for the money" after 5, 10, 20 years.

3. People might not realize whether or not they enjoy coding without trying. Filtering people before they even start because they don't realize whether they like it or not is not a good idea.

4. Most importantly, people are the judge of their own lives. Development might be hard (though arguably a easier than other fields), but people can decide for themselves whether, given their current circumstances, it's worth the hard work in order to earn more money.

Shadonototra• 5 years ago

tech?

what do you mean exactly?

EdSharkey2• 5 years ago

Are they intelligent and conscientious? Look for DevOps engineering jobs. Great, low risk way to gradually become tech savvy that can lead to more technical, higher paying gigs over time. Fake it till you make it, just like any other career.

chefkoch• 5 years ago

Since when is DevOps a junior position?

Who is going to let some one new to the game learn in their infra?

winkelwagen• 5 years ago

I would invest learning to develop for enterprise tools. Things like episerver, sitecore adobe cms, Shopify or sap stuff. Definitely would say it’s the most interesting way to develop software but companies are willing to shelve out the big bucks after buying some of these obscenely expensive license’s. Pretty well paid cushy jobs

justaj• 5 years ago

Definitely would say it’s the most interesting way to develop software but companies are willing to shelve out the big bucks after buying some of these obscenely expensive license’s.

This does make it sound pretty appealing. What makes developing enterprise software interesting to you?

sovietmudkipz3• 5 years ago

I suspect it’s a typo. Either that or the commenter is really stoked about integrating platforms.

weatherlight4• 5 years ago

First get a job in Customer Operations, Technical Support, Manual QA or Platform Configuration Management.

Then try to find a mentor in your work place that will champion you and help you grow into the area of tech that you want to do, whether that product, data, engineering or what ever.

Side note: Software engineers never graduate. The moment an engineer at any level decides to stop learning because "they know it all," their career will go into a death spiral. I state this because there's no fast and easy way to do something. Any corners you cut upfront you'll need to figure out later on in order to move your career forward.

sovietmudkipz3• 5 years ago

Hmm… Google “top frameworks for JavaScript,” go get a book that teaches the hottest framework, and then demonstrate that knowledge by building something with it. Host on GitHub pages.

See if that framework has a local meetup group. Attend to network. Being associated with a meetup helps.

At that point, find a job posting or a recruiter looking for people who know that framework and try to land the gig.

In my experience, the barrier of entry of dramatically less for front end roles than other roles. Once you’re in, it’s easier to move away from front end if that’s what you want.

Be nice and enthusiastic in the interview to make an impression.

I think that’s the fastest way?

Warning: programming is challenging work and not everyone is cut out for it. It can be miserable work.

sys_64738• 5 years ago

Steer non-CS people away from software development. In the python world the number of people who don't know the basics are terrifying.

brianwawok2• 5 years ago

I don’t think Python is any worse than say JS, which is what most bootcamps push.

Cyberthal• 5 years ago

I imagine there are always opportunities around to solve technical problems, and pursuing those opportunities builds momentum towards a tech career. Most businesses interact with databases, personal computers and the Internet, for example.

Small org tech support appears to be the best answer. It fits with my suspicions that a willingness to be humble about doing ops or support entry-level work gains one valuable exposure.

mrtrombone• 5 years ago

The right starting point is probably "what are their skills and interests" and based on that what is the simplest thing to segue into. Obviously this forum is mostly focused on developers but there is a while world of business analysts, technical writers, testers etc out there and these are often pretty convenient to get into if a person comes from a more 'liberal arts' / soft skills type job.

Ask HN: What's the fastest way to become employable in tech

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