How to become a software development engineer?
How do I become a software developer? — I have heard this question a lot since the boom for software engineers started a few years ago. This guide takes you through the process of becoming a professional software engineer. If you are an experienced software development engineer already, feel free to save your time and stop reading this article here. Otherwise, read on.
Although many people with completely different backgrounds are starting programming — unfortunately, it is not for everyone. Many people new to software engineering, myself included at one point, instantly rush out looking for new opportunities for a job before they have sat down and really figured out exactly what they do, what they are good at and how this can all actually come together to help them to change their career path.
Being a professional software developer isn’t an easy job but although it has many upsides, it’s not without its downsides. It’s challenging to tackle them all immediately. What is more, the learning list is long and never ends as a software engineer has to learn all his life, otherwise, he should be considering something else. There are a lot of places to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others. For instance, relying on a network of IT specialists combined with a list of resources that a learner can follow closely, gives an opportunity to stay up to date as a developer. Many people used to be active members of a few or even many technological communities. At some point, when people start learning new skills, they get involved in a community which is focused on the main topic. There are certain major trends that you should not miss! When the design-thinking approach became a thing, everyone kept talking or writing about it. Same goes for programming languages: Node, React or IDEs. Those are good examples of experiments for testing something new out and deciding whether it is worth investing your personal time into it.
If you want a job including the word “software” in the title but don’t have a degree in computer science or years of experience delivering software products, you have got a long road ahead of you. In 2016, 56% of software engineers did not have a CS degree but succeeded at their work. At the same time, kids as young as a primary school are learning to code, building websites and apps. One day when they grow up, they will look at software development as a career. So it’s natural that as the current Gen Z (generation Z) comes of age, they would ask themselves the same question as we do now: Do I need a college degree to be a developer? Despite the popular myth, you can become a software developer without a college degree.
The truth is that outside the government-backed jobs like law, academia or medicine, no company has ever actually required a degree. As CNBC revealed in their article in May 2018, companies such as IBM, Google, and Apple no longer require employees to have a college degree. The main reason for this decision was today’s labor market which benefits job seekers. For instance, in 2017 the vice president of IBM — Joanna Daley — said that about 15 percent of her company’s employees don’t have a four or five-year degree. Instead of looking exclusively at candidates who went to university, IBM started looking at people who have hands-on experience via coding boot camps (a more and more popular way to quickly learn to code) or industry-related experience.
Before moving to the most interesting part of this brief, let’s talk about some basic statistics regarding the financial benefits of being a software engineer. According to the US statistics, the median salary of a software developer hovers around $101,790[4] yearly (May 2017) and the unemployment rate in this field is below 2.5% making it one of the most lucrative technology careers. Additionally, to this, the profession offers an above-average work-life balance. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting that employment of software developers will grow 24 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations. The need for new applications on smart devices including phones and tablets will help increase the demand for application software developers. By 2020, there will be 1.4 million computing jobs versus 400,000 computer science students in the US. A similar challenge is within other sectors (e.g. mining, oil & gas, medicine) were to ensure safe operations, the industry has to acquire skilled people and keep them long term. Work in those sectors can bring more financial security as well as flexibility for people. The traditional software development engineering sector is much smaller than the aforementioned statistics and common opinion would lead people to believe.
Basic skills which a software engineer should have
The previous paragraph was about the fact that companies just want to know you can create more value or additional value than you take in your monthly salary and they don’t give a damn what your background is as long as you can prove it some other way. If you have always thought of programming as a kind of superpower that could give you the ability to conjure new products and ideas built with nothing but a simple code, this brief is for you.
First of all, in the technology industry, new skills and roles emerge faster than the traditional education system can keep up with. The first touch is arguably the most important step in the IT industry which can make your future career success. As many people, including me, decided to learn the skills and start working in the software industry, it would be really useful to have some past experience in working closely with teams of software engineers. Based on this, you can be a little bit familiar with their work style, tasks, and specific software language. The amount of technical skills required to be an effective software engineer is greatly debated. Some argue that deep science knowledge is required, while others say that a large part of the analysis and coding are carried out via programming libraries and code templates. In interviews with software engineers, some of the things recruiters ask are as follows:
· Mathematical mind and skills,
· Programming tools, languages, and techniques,
· Enthusiasm,
· Others not mentioned before.
Although you probably began your journey in software engineering by enrolling in an immersive programming course organized by one of many boot camp companies, some professionals recommend a different course of action. The standard learning curve for engineers and, of course, software engineers is like stairs — start by learning how to think like a developer and how to create the structure of programming languages. In the beginning, you have never written a line of code and your timesheet equals zero hours. You should sit down and start quickly absorbing the knowledge about basic programming rules. It would be recommended learning Python or C# first. From there, you can learn Java, Javascript, Ruby, HTML, CSS, and SQL. Put your newly acquired programming skills to work right away — it would be another valuable piece of advice. Build small projects such as a website, mobile app or SaaS program (cloud-based application). You will not only get hands-on experience with various frameworks but also you can start creating your own portfolio of products which can be used as examples in the future.
One of the most useful experiences would be to work in testing or technical support in a software development environment. Many companies, mostly corporations, are building their technical support teams close to software development groups because a close cooperation is needed between those teams. In addition, you will have the opportunity to observe and develop soft skills such as teamwork, collaboration and problem-solving that improve your market appeal. Moving right on the timeline you are called a hacker after 4,000–5,000 hours. You can build simple apps from the conception to production stages. After 5,000 hours of work, you become a tinker — a poorly skilled, clumsy developer with a portfolio of a few personal projects. But don’t worry, your journey is just starting — after 10,000 hours (on average) of work you become a developer — a job ready engineer who understands engineering best practices and has a portfolio of 6–7 projects.
Being comfortable with different languages is ideal, as each coding language and its associated libraries and phrases have different strengths and weaknesses. The main reasoning is that the coding language is just a tool to solve a problem. If you figure out how to solve a problem using a code, you have probably already succeeded.
Learning by doing is another way to enter the IT industry. Software development has one of the smallest barriers to entry of any market field — it’s not unexpected as many people can jump in there easily. This is because the knowledge is being shared widely on the Internet and opened for everyone. An enormous number of content shared by developers and hobbyists as well as communities which store a lot of information about programming projects are the main sources which can be used during the learning stage. Open source platforms are another, more advanced way to get a deeper understanding of IT once you have learned the basics.
Future of software engineering
Current trends in the software development industry, such as SaaS, DevOps or IT architecture, emphasize the need for more agility to deliver products faster without compromising the quality of software. It means that technology is evolving faster than ever before. Business owners and entrepreneurs have to adopt those changes created by IT progress in their business processes if they want to stay competitive. To achieve that, businessmen have to pay attention to the latest trends. One of the most interesting trends in the IT industry is containerization — it would be a great opportunity for junior developers to focus on this, too. Application containerization is an OS-level virtualization method which is used to deploy and run software without launching an entire virtual machine. There is a significant trend forecasting that more and more companies will jump on this solution in the following years. Automatically, they will start looking for new employees specialized in those technologies. Of course, the entire IT world has become more and more developer-friendly where building a new website or even a mobile app can already be done without having any coding knowledge. The wide migration from a monolithic software product to serverless microservices is the path a lot of IT companies are taking to better suitable software development. Part of this spreading out is due to the fact that technology startups and businesses are now able to deliver their services wherever in the world, creating a more competitive global market. Technologies may eliminate some jobs but will create whole new professions as well. Now, Industrial Revolution 4.0 propelled by artificial intelligence is upon the world. It will also have a strong impact on changing the traditional business process models into new highly advanced digital processes where software developers can find a place for working as well. Comprised of many different methodologies, this new generation of software development brings together best practices such as agile and scrum management and continuous integration to quickly deliver a high-quality user experience that can make digital transformation a reality.
Looking to the immediate future, knowing the basics of those project management frameworks can move you up and actually, create a chance to become a software project manager. Project managers are always in demand. No matter what the industry is or what is the company size, there will be always a need for qualified engineers who are able to schedule the work effectively. Some even claim that this is a great alternative way for career development of experienced software engineers as they know a lot about the work and software in general. Close cooperation in dedicated and small teams to focus exclusively on specific parts of software can give a good background for future career development as those teams are usually managed and led by project managers.
Of course, there are also some downsides of being a software developer. Coding is not the fundamental skill. What matters is being able to model problems and use computers to solve them. The market doesn’t need people forced to care about the toolkits only and people who don’t know how to effectively cope with a problem which a customer has. As the world moves to a data-driven world where business delivers an additional value to customers and learn and iterate from those results, it’s more important to have generalists on the board than only specialists. However, this doesn’t mean there will no longer be a need for professionals. There will be. However, the need for generalists who are a jack of all trades of work will be much bigger.
Summary
Software development engineering is one of the most challenging sectors in the market. The high tech solutions are used widely to monitor many significant processes in different industries. Based on this, national agencies are immediately notified if any safety, security or emergency functions have been penetrated by anyone. For instance, of the 26 nations around the world that are building nuclear power plants, 23 have or had a nuclear weapon. It requires a rigorous and systematic approach that doesn’t leave anything to chance in the safety systems. A software engineer has to know exactly what goes on at every stage of development and deployment of a new software product and knows how to ensure that no accidents occur.
Computer science is a top paying college degree. An alternative learning path for a software engineer is to learn yourself. It is possible to get hired with another degree or even with nothing but self-taught experience. According to US statistics, the job market for software developers will grow until 2026 creating a gap which will be even bigger in the following years. Pursuing a software developer job, you should have a strong collection of functional projects demonstrating your skills on the Internet. Finding an open source project with a welcoming community can give you a great acceleration of your skills after you establish a baseline skillset. Software engineering is not always focused on coding, but you need to know at least a few languages and have a deeper understanding of how they function. As a software developer, you need to understand that some languages are better at solving some problems than others.
Heavy industries will require more and more skilled software developers to keep the infrastructure safe and optimized effectively. The demand for keeping top positions on the market will even continue to raise the bar on workplace innovation creating more and more benefits for employees. According to international consulting companies, countries such as the US, Canada or China will stay on their roadmaps to establish new, advanced, high-tech facilities. As a safe, reliable and low-carbon source of producers, it can give an assumption that there is a huge potential within software engineering, not only for people who want to get hired but also for information technology companies.
The final comment would be that in some points you don’t have to follow standard careers or project paths however it would be even better for you having a college degree. Being a software engineer gives an opportunity to get really unusual expertise which could be in demand in the future. Investing in good developers is a very good bet at the moment that can give returns in the near future.
Written by Lukasz Kudlak
