Entering the Tech Industry
Entering the tech industry hinges on building up your technology knowledge. To that end, technologists have four options:
College
For years, many companies would only consider hiring job candidates with a bachelor’s degree or higher. But that’s beginning to change. The Great Resignation and the nationwide hunger for tech talent has led many organizations to drop the college requirements from their job postings. “Multiple technology companies have publicly announced their commitment to prioritize skills over degrees in IT occupations,” stated one report by Emsi Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School. “Several, most notably Accenture and IBM, have made material changes in job requirements across their organizations.”
However, taking college courses focused on computer science or a related field can still provide longer-lasting benefits. From examining the fundamentals and concepts that underlie modern computing to empowering abstract problem solving, the skills learned in college courses can help in virtually any career.
In addition, many recruiters and hiring managers view a degree as a sure sign that you have what it takes to succeed in a particular job. Data from Lightcast (formerly Emsi Burning Glass) and other sources indicate that a college degree can translate into a significant salary. For example, according to Lightcast, a software developer/engineer with a bachelor’s degree can expect to earn a median salary of $98,300; a colleague with a high school education, by contrast, has a median salary of $78,500. While education isn’t the only factor impacting salary (experience and skills are key), it can have a significant influence.
BOTTOM LINE: Many companies still require a college degree, and colleges will teach you valuable skills... but it takes time to earn a degree, and organizations are beginning to drop degree requirements in hiring technologists.
According to the 2020 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, professional developers often chose to major in the following:
Developers’ Most Common Majors
Plus, Stack Overflow broke down how much education most developers managed to attain:
Developers’ Educational Attainment
Bootcamps
Not all technologists want to spend years at a college or university. Instead, they might opt to join a bootcamp, in which instructors dive deep into a subject over a few weeks or months.
A 2021 analysis by Course Report suggested that the average starting salary for bootcamp graduates is around $69,000 per year. However, bootcamps cost an average of $14,000 and run for 14 weeks; you’re essentially paying around $1,000 per week to rapidly accelerate your tech skills.
Keep in mind that attending a bootcamp is no guarantee of finding immediate employment. So, if you’re interested in a bootcamp as an educational route, first do your homework.
- Study the bootcamp’s statistics to see how many students graduate and find jobs.
- Be wary of any bootcamp that makes a hard sell for you to sign up.
- Read up on the offered courses to make sure the bootcamp will teach you the skills you want for your career. Try to talk to graduates about their experiences. According to Course Report, the most popular bootcamp course is full-stack web development, but there are lots of options.
- Read online reviews on sites such as Reddit, where you’ll find insights from current and former students.
BOTTOM LINE: Bootcamps can rapidly teach you practical skills, but research is critical!
You can also take a DIY approach.
You can also take a DIY approach.
Hacking It (Self-Learning)
When it comes to succeeding within the technology industry, there’s no one educational path that’s superior to the others. Even within cutting-edge industries like artificial intelligence (A.I.), many employers are more interested in your skills than where you might have gone to school.
This might provide some comfort to aspiring technologists who don’t necessarily have years to commit to a full-fledged degree. But how do you know which skills to even pursue?
The key is to read the job postings for the kinds of positions you want and take note of the required skills. If you’re intent on a web developer career, for example, you’ll see that entry-level roles might ask for programming languages, tools and platforms such as JavaScript, SQL and jQuery. Technologists can pursue these in a variety of ways.
- Massive open online courses (MOOCs), such as Udacity and Coursera, offer quite a bit of skills training.
- Companies like Apple and Google that push certain skills and programming languages (such as Swift and Kotlin) offer free documentation and tutorials online.
- Colleges and universities (MIT, for example) will sometimes post coursework online, complete with videos.
If you want an additional advantage over the applicant pool, consider using your new skills to build a portfolio of independent projects (even simple games or websites) that you can show off to a hiring manager.
It’s true that, over the past few years, more companies have dropped their degree requirements for jobs. However, that also means testing candidates’ skills has assumed far more importance in the hiring process. Whatever skills you learn on your own, you’ll likely face a vigorous battery of tests as part of the job interview.
BOTTOM LINE: Many people have built successful careers off “just hacking it.” That is, however, far from easy, and requires a clear sense of your goals, as well as a dedication to continuously learning skills and engaging in personal projects.
Internships can be a critical part of a young technologist’s career.
Internships can be a critical part of a young technologist’s career.
Internships
Internships can be a critical part of a newly-minted technologist’s career. And despite the pervasive stereotype of the lowly intern who primarily fetches coffee, interns are often entrusted with a variety of important tasks, from cleaning up data to checking code. Using an internship as a springboard to a full-time position is a natural step for technologists, and often critical for a career. If you’re in school, career counselors and teachers can potentially alert you to opportunities; companies also advertise upcoming internships.
If you’re concerned that a lack of formal experience will harm your chances of landing one of these internships, relax; when submitting your résumé, you can highlight anything from the classes you’ve taken to the projects you’ve built for fun. Anything that shows off your love of technology and willingness to work will come in handy.
Once you’ve earned your internship, here’s how to make the most of it.
- Volunteer for tasks and seek out mentors who can answer your technology and career questions.
- Worry less about failing and focus more on working hard and learning as much as you possibly can.
- If you manage your internship well and build a collection of internal advocates and mentors, the organization may consider you for a full-time role or even create a new one just for you (if that’s something you’re interested in).
BOTTOM LINE: Internships are a great way to figure out what kinds of roles will potentially appeal to you. Be prepared to compete heavily for internship slots at prominent companies, and remember that internships at less high-profile firms can still provide you with great value.
