Ask HN: How to get a non-technical friend into tech?

6 points by yesitcan 49 days ago | 7 comments

My friend wants to learn software engineering and eventually land a job at FAANG / big corp.

Trouble is, they have zero engineering or leetcode experience.

They also dropped out of their bachelors degree a decade ago.

Do I point them to a intro Python book? Something else?

Edit: big corp job would be a dream end goal. They just want to know how to take their first steps.

bigyabai 49 days ago |

> and eventually land a job at FAANG / big corp.

Help them temper their expectations. Many people study programming their entire life and get rejected for the lowest-pay L1/L2 engineering positions open at FAANG. These are not easy jobs to land (even in the AI age) and they have to be self-motivated to land one of those seats.

al_borland 49 days ago |

What steps have they taken so far? What have they been doing for the past decade since dropping out of their bachelors degree?

Do they actually like coding? There are a lot of tech adjacent jobs that have a lower barrier to entry, like a scrum master or PM, which could get them in the door. There are also support roles that don’t require coding, or less coding than a full on dev role.

Harvard makes their CS50 class available to the public. That would probably be a good foundation to build on and give them enough information to know if they want to keep going.

speedgoose 49 days ago |

If your friend can’t figure this out by themselves, it’s going to be challenging.

If they has a very good network, perhaps they can get a MBA and get recommended.

khurs 48 days ago | |

>If your friend can’t figure this out by themselves, it’s going to be challenging.

Yes.

Blackstrat 48 days ago |

If they are actually interested in the profession, and not just the money, find a smaller company in the area that’s hiring for a less specialized role, one a generalist has a chance of performing, eg a customer support role somewhere that maintains some development efforts. Even this will be difficult if the last ten years or so hasn’t afforded them some basic people and business skills. In other words, regardless of the role, they have to bring something to the job. Assuming they do and can get hired, then it’s about learning that business, technical space, etc. It will be a lot of work regardless. Is FAANG a possibility? Yes, perhaps, but not a probable one. However, there thousands of commercial companies uilding and deploying interesting projects and paying very good salaries.

palata 49 days ago |

Do they want to get into tech because it sounds like it will make a lot of money, or do they want to learn how to code?

If they want to learn how to code... honestly there is infinite resource on the Internet: books, videos, tutorials, games, ... It's all about finding what works for oneself, and spend enough time and effort studying.

It's like learning an instrument or a new language: it's not about "finding the good book", it's about spending a lot of effort learning.

VirusNewbie 49 days ago |

>rouble is, they have zero engineering or leetcode experience.

Sounds like they want the perks of working at FAANG, and not that they want the job, right?