| Repeat after me: programming is not computer science. Got it? Good. Now, for actual advice. Contrary to the prevailing sentiment, there actually is a career path in engineering that starts at the bottom and takes you to the top, all classical-like. It goes something like this:
Customer Support/QA -> QA Engineer -> Support Engineer -> Junior Developer QA is very easy to get into. If you play your cards right, you can get into QA at a place that encourages automation and whitebox testing, which will expose you to a lot of the fundamental skills. From there, it's a short hop to QA Engineer, which is exactly the same as what I just said, except they expect you to be more than a warm body clicking on things till they break. You'll be required to write code here. A support engineer is someone who's midway between dev, QA, and customer support. Here, your customers are developers, so the discourse is a little bit more elevated than a normal customer support role. Support engineers are often asked to produce sample code for customers learning to use the product. Take this opportunity to write it yourself rather than sending canned samples. (Optional) Dev Evangelist: This is much like the previous role, except you spend all your time at hackathons being cool and showing off how cool your API is. Do well at these, and it'll be a little more straightforward landing that junior dev job. Congratulations, you're a programmer. |
If you want to program, start doing that and don't accept a job doing anything else. Doctors don't accept nursing jobs and civil engineers don't dig holes. I have never employed people who have been 'happy' to start in QA or whatever other role. Why would you accept anything else other than what you really want to do, and are capable of? If you can't land a job as a junior developer, then perhaps you are not cut out to be a programmer?
Also, being a good QA person or customer support person is valuable in itself, and isn't just a 'starting point' for a programming career. I have several friends who have been dedicated QA people for their entire careers, and definitely do not see their role as being 'less' than being a developer.