🔀 Career SwitchersSoftware Engineer2 min read

How I Went from Marketing Intern to Full-Time Engineer (No Degree)

A self-taught programmer with two years of an economics degree landed a marketing internship at a startup, then slowly shifted responsibilities toward coding over six months until the team offered a full-time engineering role. He dropped out of college to take the offer and has since found that one engineering job title erases most questions about formal education. He shares candid lessons about the fundamentals gap self-taught developers still need to close.

Key takeaways

  • →Start in any role at a company you want to code for, then gradually take on coding tasks until you shift the job title organically.
  • →One legitimate engineering job on your resume largely neutralizes the lack of a CS degree for future applications.
  • →Study CS fundamentals -- Big O notation especially -- even if you never use them day-to-day; interviewers will test you on them.
  • →Use niche job boards like HN 'Who's Hiring' to find startups that evaluate ability over credentials.
  • →Demonstrate value incrementally rather than asking for a coding role outright; let the work speak.

I have two years of a BA in Economics. I started teaching myself programming at 18, the summer before undergrad.

I got an internship at a startup as a 'Biz Dev/Marketing intern' and mostly produced content -- but I did a lot of data-driven blog posts, which got me into their codebase and database at a very slow pace. I started filling in on small programming tasks, like adding Google Analytics event tracking to a button.

I kept creeping away from Marketing and toward Code. After six months I was 100% a 'programming intern.' I was still a beginner, but I was providing real value. Four months after that my boss said, 'If you want to work here full time, you can.'

Two weeks later I was bored in class and dropped out to take him up on it.

After that, smooth sailing. Once you have one job as a software engineer, people don't pay much attention to the education section of your resume. Your perceived quality is based almost entirely on past projects -- open source work and employment history.

During interviews, employers will be more skeptical of your fundamentals than they would be with a CS grad, and they will push harder. Even though everyone admits 'implement a sort function' isn't real-world work, they ask it because they want to know you understand O Notation and can think about performance -- most self-taught programmers don't.

I've only been rejected by one company. During that coding interview I admitted I had no idea how to write a proper sort function and had almost no knowledge of Big O. They said they were 'looking for someone more senior' -- and they were right.

I found my first internship through HN's 'Who's Hiring' thread. Those startups are the right targets: they hire on demonstrated ability, not credentials.

Adapted from a public post by heynk on Hacker News. Read the original →