| Keep at it and evaluate every few weeks if you feel ready to throw yourself into the arena and take some interviews. You may never feel ready due to the sheer amount of languages and knowledge you think you'll be checked on, that means you need to narrow your focus and specialize in a popular stack that you personally enjoy working with to get your foot in the door. It is absolutely reachable. A personal path for reference: 2012: Graduated college with a non-comp sci degree (although had tinkered with tech, software, linux, etc since a teen) 2012-2013: Took comp sci MOOCs.. Obsessively learned python and built throwaway projects. Took code challenges weekly. 2013-2015: Got a job as a manual test analyst. Used python to automate testing, got promoted to test lead. 2015-2017: Took a job as Lead QA Engineer. Learned C# for the job. On the side picked up React and Django/DRF for building out SPA/microservices. Began getting serious about clean projects on github and kind of branding myself as a developer (personal landing page, etc). I couldn't keep recruiters off me from my linkedin, stackoverflow and github profiles. Was like ok.. I'm ready... it's time. 2017 (mid): Studied the hell out of algorithms and data structures. Did tons of whiteboarding practice and began taking interviews. Signed up for some tech recruiting apps like hired and opened the recruiter floodgate. I had 2-3 phone interviews a day for 3 weeks. Then a few in persons per week. Not one whiteboard session. Some would send code challenges. The rest asked if I could send them a github project that we'd review during the interview. 2017 (mid)-Present: Now a Software Engineer at an established startup working with brilliant peers and some of my favorite stack.. A massive kubernetes cluster built on Python, Go, React, and ElasticSearch services. So from 2012-2017 there were many points where I doubted I'd land that dream... and then boom! As soon as I got the balls to throw myself into some interviews for the position I wanted I found it and now I no longer feel like I have to grind away every evening to stay sharp since my job is doing that for me now. |