Ask HN: Mechanical engineer that wants to work in the programming field

I am a 27 years old PhD in computational mechanics (finite element method, elasticity ...) who should be graduating in around 6 months. I have been tempted for quite some time by the idea of trying to get a job in the US and work as a programmer. A personal dream, I really would like to experience the life in the west coast for a few years. What are my odds of achieving that? Any advices on what I should try to learn or do in the next 6 months? During my PhD, I have been coding in Matlab, Python and mostly in C++ (I have read Effective C++, Modern Effective C++). I have learned OpenMP, MPI and Cuda (though, I don't consider myself very experienced in them) and I have taken an introduction course in algorithms.

Edit: Since some people have asked, right now I am in UK and I have an EU passport. Thanks for the very encouraging answers.

I think in general the field (maybe not HR departments) is pretty accepting of people with alternative majors even outside of engineering - I know some great folks who had music or art history degrees.

Your challenge I think is to show initial work for job acquisition purposes, so being able to point to a very technical side project on your GitHub (and of course resume) for your chosen language will be a very good idea.

What language you choose depends on what field you want to get into, specially. Python is used in various places including web and database applications, but ultimately I'd say shoot for something you like. If you can find enough companies you like that work in X language, that can be a good way to go.

Good companies will assume smart folks can pick up other tools, but I think your main hurdle is going to be showing something that counts as sufficient "equivalent experience" -- and that should be possible to do.

College is highly valuable, but all of college C.S. is not always directly applicable.

The main thing you need to do is convince HR and then a hiring manager that you have the skills to do the work. The best way you can do that is to have projects on Github that demonstrate your skill, and if you can get a little paid work using the toolset you're targeting, that would be great as well.

You have six months, so you can't be too ambitious on the size of your projects. Maybe target three interesting projects that demonstrate the skills you're interested in, each set to take two months of your time.

If you really throw yourself into this, you should be doing a lot of hard work, the kind of work a professional programmer does every day. After six months of that, I think you'll be well-positioned for a programming interview, and you'll have some nice projects on Github that will demonstrate your capabilities.

Good luck!

Also, a few years down the road, the relevant experience you have will weight orders of magnitude more than your degree or PhD.

Right now, your decision should be based mainly on what you would like to do be doing in your professional life, don't sweat too much on your initial salary (which even as a junior developer, it should be at the very least decent).

Just keep practicing (hint, read "How to crack the coding interview"), and you should be fine.

What country are you currently in? If you can get a job at a worldwide software company and then do a placement in the US you'll have a much higher chance of getting a visa. If you can handle continuing to work in Engineering there must be a lot of options involving coding. Look at adverts for big engineering companies (in that area) and look for software jobs, that way you'll have lots of relevant experience.