Becoming a software engineer even without a degree is no more a myth. As long as you’re consistent with hard and smart work, you can become a highly paid software engineer.
Now you can become a software development or engineer without CS, SE, or IT degree and get a high paying job in US or remotely. It’s not that hard even for those who doesn’t have an IT background.
According to US News, software developers have a median salary of $103,620 per year, and an unemployment rate of 1.6%, making it one of the most lucrative technology careers. Additionally, the profession offers an above-average work-life balance.
Learn to Code with Me
Computer science is the top paying college degree and computer programming jobs are growing 2x the national verge in US.
Software engineering, development, or consultancy jobs bring you a stable career. Most companies even offer such jobs from home as well. Software developer just needs to be proactive, hard worker while learning, and smart worker on the job.
These questions may come to your mind:-
How to acquire software development skills that pays you in lacs of dollars every year?
Well, learning from the right and easier resources and having a good internet can help you to get a quick start. There are tons of Youtube, Udemy, Coursera, EDX, and a lot more resources to get started.
Practical Steps to Become a Software Developer
Following 12 steps are practically actionable steps to become a software developer without a degree and getting a job with self-learning:-
#1 Define your software engineer goal
Decide your future goal i-e: I want to work for a large-scale organization like enterprises or I want to build my own small to scale-able software products.
Based on your goal, you may have to work harder in the beginner or by the time.
#2 Choose software language
There are different combinations of languages and frameworks in the software and computing industry. Decide whether you want to go for a web or mobile or server-side.
Once decided, spend some time to understand different combinations like what is PHP, Ruby, Python, Java, Apache Royale, Android, and more.
Learn what are the frameworks that are currently trending and rising in the market like Laravel, React JS, Node JS, VueJS, Angular, & so on.
#3 Plan your learning schedule, mode, and development tools
Pick up the books, videos, and bookmark the major sites that can help you with your chosen language and frameworks. Plan your learning period or timing. Ensure that you’re going to spend enough time and attention like a learner.
Obviously you wouldn’t need to accumulate everything but, exploring the opportunities, resources, and downloading helpful tools like programming IDEs, documenting tools, and more can help you.
#4 Start practicing software engineering
Think of a product that you want to build. Another idea is to find something that you do manually or someone you know, and you want to automate that activity with enhancements.
Follow the software engineering practices and notes to prepare requirement analysis documents for users & system. Learn the language side by side and even more whatever it takes to code, build, and run that system.
For example, you might need to learn how to set up a local server to run PHP on a local system, etc.
#5 Learn related technologies and concepts
Just learning one thing is not enough. In Information & Technology, there are many things interlinked and a good software engineer must be able to work on cross-domains.
What if you coded something in PHP but it needs some data from Google APIs which outputs in JSON? At this point, you might need to understand JSON too.
How JSON works in PHP? How to convert responses to make them compatible with the native language?
What are APIs? How to connect APIs that are build using different languages?
#6 Learn more software engineering and development terms
- What are different forms of APIs like REST, SOAP, & Restful?
- What is cloud computing vs. shared hosting or computing?
- What are the different forms of servers?
- Which language is better in what case?
- How to interlink devices or how to code with quality like enterprises do?
- What are CLIs and what tools are used and when?
#7 Try Reverse engineering to learn software development
Once you’re at the stage of understanding the concepts and can get an idea of what could have been done in the background, try reading the code by other software engineers and developers. Try to figure out what they have done and why.
Try to build similar small apps or components like if you found something different in someone’s code, try learning it, and then build it in your system.
Try to crack the logic behind the normal processes or features offered in regular tools, websites, servers, or software you use.
#8 Connect with software developers and relevant community
There are hundreds of software engineers, software developers, programming, or computer science technology groups, communities, and portals or forums that can help you find resources, answer your programming issues, clear your concepts, and more.
Go to meetups, events, and seminars and make notes.
#9 Grow your professionalism as a software developer
Learn the ethics, attitude, and personality of a software developer. Understand what it takes to be a professional in this field.
What things might incur like you must understand how the team works, how software developer interacts with other teams, how they report or request for reports, and so on.
What level of communication, terms, and jargon are required?
#10 Complete your profiles as a software developer
Sign up or complete your Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Github, and work profiles.
Check the profiles of different levels of software engineers. Write your ‘about me’ and experience fields.
Your qualification could be the certificates from Coursera, Edx, and Udemy while experiences may include the projects that you built while learning, contributions you made to different open-source software repositories online, and similar.
#11 Master your interview questions and get ready for a job
Read tens and hundreds of interview questions for software engineering. Prepare your answers. You will discover some missing terms. You will also get an idea of what’s in and what you can add to those answers.
Besides this, also consider HR questions i-e: tell me about yourself, your 5 years plan, your short-term and long-term goals, your salary expectation, your personality, and how to avoid criticism on anything you actually want to criticize.
#12 Get ready for the job
Understand how to respond to interviewers after the interview, what are follow-up emails, when to expect a response, what is job cover letter and how to insert in in the email, how to write job acceptance email response, and more.
Is software engineer and software developer same?
Nope. A slight line is there sometimes. Software engineer engineers A to Z of the software i-e: from requirements to analysis to planning to what to code, and where to end.
On the other hand, the developer most of the time refers to the person who does the code part i-e: he receives multiple documents like user and system requirement specification from the engineer and code it as per the defined scope. Later on, he passed the code to the testing team and so on. Sometimes, in some companies or as per the situation, both are referred to the same person.
So whenever you look for a software engineering job, you may also want to glance through software development jobs as well.
Takeaway
I’ve intentionally skipped some tools, frameworks, processes, methodologies, and languages names for you to spend sometime in learning them. This increases your learnability and productivity later on.
Stay consistent with learning. It’s not that hard. Once you understand concepts, you just have to learn the syntax or ABC of that language. Like learn what are loops and then, implement loops in multiple languages. Your engineering mindset and logic must be cleared first and then, syntax obviously. Coding a wrong and pathetic logic is useless.
Build a habit of backing up your favorite tricks, ideas, and your own hacks. Grow your own library and assets in your system.
Spend more time in understanding then skipping the books or videos quickly.
Don’t hesitate to make attempts. Failure is the way to success! Believe it.
