Ask HN: How to pivot into Software development from Economics?

2 points by lightveil 3 years ago | 2 comments

I'm a college student, currently in the last year of my Economics degree. I followed the typical hacker path (found computers super neat when I was young, was messing around with things like Haskell and Prolog at 15 (not that I understood them completely, they were just really interesting), made small tools to optimize things I was doing). I very much wanted to study CS in university, but was blocked academically (long story, Tl;DR is I'm blind and live in India and our education system is relatively draconian w.r.t. allowing visually impaired students to study science and science-adjacent fields).

I'll be done with college next year, but I really don't want to go forward professionally in Economics. I don't have a formal CS education,, but I've gained some sort of gestalt by programming for a while and going through blog articles and following up on interesting things. I'd love to get into software development professionally, but I don't have a formal degree. What should I do?

WheelsAtLarge 3 years ago |

You don't need a CS degree to get into software development. But knowing how to develop software is imperative. I would get a software development(engineering) certificate from you local college while looking at the actual job listings to make sure you are meeting the needs. Try not to fall into the trendy languages. You can do that later as you develop your career.

Developers are hired for what they know not the certificates they have so make sure you learn the subjects.

As soon as you can, start interviewing for jobs. Even if you feel you are not ready. You need to understand the process and you might even get lucky with a job offer that will help you get the job you want. It will probably take you 1 to 2 years to get a job once you start your training.

Unless you have super self discipline don't try to do it on your own. You'll fall into a cycle of starting and not finishing. Also, talk to a career advisor to help you with resources. You need to define what you want, your goals. Don't go there thinking they will tell you what to do. Good luck.

neodypsis 3 years ago |

Does your training include econometrics and statistics? In that case, maybe you could move (with further training) into data science and machine learning?