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How I left a 4 year career in finance and became a software engineer in 5 months

gulnara.svbtle.com

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Re: How I left a 4 year career in finance and became a software engineer in 5 months

#31

Post by oijaf888 »

noir_lord wrote: post #21
jonny_eh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you saying? We should stop training and hiring new programmers?

I think in his condescending way he is implying that 5 months is just enough time to teach someone enough programming to be dangerous. The hard part is I think he might have a point, there is a lot more to been a professional software engineer than I think can reasonably be taught in 5 months (even if you spend that 5 months learning 20 hours a day 7 days a week). Of course this is all entirely my own opinion, I've s…

Your list seems very targeted towards website development and not so much towards a lot of other parts of software engineering. I doubt many software engineers who focus on embedded systems would know much JS or those who focus on trading software, etc.

Re: How I left a 4 year career in finance and became a software engineer in 5 months

#32

Post by kiddz »

Nice post Gulnara :) As one of the first people you interviewed back when you had the webcast, I think it's also clear that you have an infectious personality that now pairs well with your new skills. Quite brave too, to not stay in SF and come back to DC when your transitioning into a cs career. Kudos, some more.

Re: How I left a 4 year career in finance and became a software engineer in 5 months

#33

Post by oijaf888 »

aristomc wrote: post #26
hnrandom wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you can call yourself whatever you want. A janitor can call himself a "custodial engineer". You're probably thinking of the "P. Eng." designation beside your name.

Ash is right, in Canada, you can't state that you're an "engineer" without being accredited by a provincial body, at least in Quebec it's pretty strict. However, it doesn't matter in the context of this article and it shouldn't detract from it either. Really great stuff and nice hear about a career move that made you happier :)

What are locomotive/train engineers called in Canada? Like the guy driving the train.

Re: How I left a 4 year career in finance and became a software engineer in 5 months

#34

Post by March_Hare »

noir_lord wrote: post #21
jonny_eh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you saying? We should stop training and hiring new programmers?

I think in his condescending way he is implying that 5 months is just enough time to teach someone enough programming to be dangerous. The hard part is I think he might have a point, there is a lot more to been a professional software engineer than I think can reasonably be taught in 5 months (even if you spend that 5 months learning 20 hours a day 7 days a week). Of course this is all entirely my own opinion, I've s…

I agree excluding the HTML, CSS and Javascript bit. Lots of great engineers out there that don't ever deal in this bit of software.

Re: How I left a 4 year career in finance and became a software engineer in 5 months

#36

Post by noir_lord »

oijaf888 wrote: post #31
noir_lord wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in his condescending way he is implying that 5 months is just enough time to teach someone enough programming to be dangerous. The hard part is I think he might have a point, there is a lot more to been a professional software engineer than I think can reasonably be taught in 5 months (even if you spend that 5 months learning 20 hours a day 7 days a week). Of course this is all entirely my own opinion, I've s…

Your list seems very targeted towards website development and not so much towards a lot of other parts of software engineering. I doubt many software engineers who focus on embedded systems would know much JS or those who focus on trading software, etc.

I specifically say in my post "lets say a web developer".

That is where my area is, I've no idea what I'd want for an embedded developer but I suspect the list is no less complex.

Re: How I left a 4 year career in finance and became a software engineer in 5 months

#37

Post by kcbanner »

oijaf888 wrote: post #33
aristomc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ash is right, in Canada, you can't state that you're an "engineer" without being accredited by a provincial body, at least in Quebec it's pretty strict. However, it doesn't matter in the context of this article and it shouldn't detract from it either. Really great stuff and nice hear about a career move that made you happier :)

What are locomotive/train engineers called in Canada? Like the guy driving the train.

Conductor

Re: How I left a 4 year career in finance and became a software engineer in 5 months

#39

Post by tenpoundhammer »

This is interesting, I immediately thought wow this couldn't possibly give you enough training to be a software developer. However, now I'm wondering if most of my college education was worthless.

Seriously maybe this program condensed all the necessary experience into 5 months, while the traditional academic path is poor at creating career coders in 4 years. I would totally believe it. There should be some head to head competitions.

Re: How I left a 4 year career in finance and became a software engineer in 5 months

#40

Post by yxhuvud »

a3voices wrote: post #2

>Once I realized that I enjoy staring at hundreds lines of code trying to figure out where the bug is I agree it's fun at first, but once you do it for a few years on a daily basis, it gets old. I suppose most things in life are like this though. Maintaining enthusiasm about work is difficult, for me at least.

That may get old, but what doesn't get old for me is the journey to discover how something can be improved, in structure (to avoid staring at hundreds of lines) or performance.
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