Right now, just changing a job is hard.
While waiting out the downturn you can work on some personal project, just to have something to show. I hope in a year or two it will be easier to change domain as the market recovers.
Ask HN: How to switch software engineering domains
11–20 of 44 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to switch software engineering domains
#12Is your company's product a web application? While looking for jobs, maybe try looking into WebGL or WASM to see if you can apply your interests in a way that you cab still do graphics work at your company in the meantime.
Re: Ask HN: How to switch software engineering domains
#13I would recommend dabbling in different fields and writing open source stuff. If you like the work, you’ll probably build something cool that may get you hired. If you don’t like it, drip the project and try something else.
I got really into options trading and built a paper trading site that eventually got acquired (for actual money!), and that’s been the talking point of every interview since I sold it.
If you decide you like robotics and you build a library that does fast matrix multiplication leveraging webgl or something, I think a lot of people would be very interested in at least having a conversation with you at that point. People who can “get things done” are always valuable.
Re: Ask HN: How to switch software engineering domains
#14I assume you are trying to break into the game industry? I applied as a intern and a tool developer once at two pretty famous AAA studios (due to friends, both actually didnt work out) and trust me when I say the bar is MUCH higher than a average backend job. I do not want to discourage you, but if you have zero credits on MobyGames expect that they DO want to see proof that you can develop something like a fully wor…
> I assume you are trying to break into the game industry? Curious what lead you to this assumption.
You mentioned computer graphics and C language, so game development strikes me as a reasonable guess.
Re: Ask HN: How to switch software engineering domains
#15Find a company that does both, and that will hire you for your experience in one. Maybe that's a Python company that needs to do Rust stuff, or occasionally has performance constraints that mean they need to use C?
Re: Ask HN: How to switch software engineering domains
#16Find a company that does both, and that will hire you for your experience in one. Maybe that's a Python company that needs to do Rust stuff, or occasionally has performance constraints that mean they need to use C?
Yeah. Companies hire you to do A, but they let you do B, and then you find a new company that will hire you to do B, but you end up doing C, etc. Your job title is always the thing you were doing at your previous job, not the thing you do now.
Re: Ask HN: How to switch software engineering domains
#17I've switched domains four or five times now. I started with gamedev, went to finance, then pentesting, then machine learning.
The key is to have a strong portfolio. Every successful switch was based on that. Even in areas where you can't really show a portfolio, like pentesting, I was good at it and was able to demonstrate it.
It's really that simple. Be good, and show that you're good. Don't wait for someone to show you what to do.
Oh, as for the mechanics of getting the job, it's the same as any other: Forget the resume process. Find someone in the industry you want to work at, flatter them (everyone likes to be flattered, and you should lean on this tool as much as possible) and show them you can be useful.
Re: Ask HN: How to switch software engineering domains
#18It may be easier if you wait till you have exactly five years experience. I suddenly got a bunch of recruiting emails when I crossed that threshold.
It tends to be much easier changing around what you work on within a company. I started doing embedded and server software in my first job by just helping out on bug fixes without asking.
Re: Ask HN: How to switch software engineering domains
#19I made this exact career transition, the first ~10 years of my career were doing backend development at web companies (mostly Python, but later Go) and I switched to working in C++ in the autonomous vehicles industry.
The key is really just to apply to these jobs, even if you don't have direct work experience. I had a blog on my website that had a lot of C/C++ stuff which I think helped a bit, but in the end I just applied to a bunch of jobs and eventually got a technical phone screen. I described some of the C/C++ projects I had worked on in the past (mostly personal projects). I got grilled fairly hard on C++ stuff in that interview because the company knew that I wasn't coming from a professional C++ background, but I knew my stuff so it ended up not being a problem.
The other way to do this would be to try to get a job at a company like Google or Facebook. Typically you're just another person in their recruiting funnel and whether or not you know C++ doesn't actually affect how their hiring pipeline works. At both companies you're typically not applying for a spot on a specific team at the time of your interview, so you don't even necessarily have to write C++ in your interview to end up getting matched to a C++ team.
Re: Ask HN: How to switch software engineering domains
#20I've switched domains four or five times now. I started with gamedev, went to finance, then pentesting, then machine learning. The key is to have a strong portfolio. Every successful switch was based on that. Even in areas where you can't really show a portfolio, like pentesting, I was good at it and was able to demonstrate it. It's really that simple. Be good, and show that you're good. Don't wait for someone to sho…
Nice. I've worked for awhile in backend dev and infrastructure/cloudops, and thought about trying to transition to pentesting to try something new. What did you like about it? What did you not like? What made you decide to leave the domain for ML?