Having kids in 3 years - Do I need to become a software engineer?

former ms and google engineer here. Peak bootcamp is over and you will be passed over for interviews for entry-level SDE jobs in favour of the scads of new grads from CS programs. The startup scene in Seattle is not nearly as large as the Bay Area and there's not huge demand for full stack people. I'd sooner do a post-bacc at UW Bothell and try and get an interview at Amazon - unless things have changed, they'll give anyone with a pulse a shot at a phone screen.

However, Diversity & Inclusion efforts means your wife might be able to get into the hiring pipeline. Microsoft had what was essentially an apprenticeship / probationary hiring period program for diverse engineering candidates. It seemed to mostly be bootcamp grads.

If she's set on staying in teaching and you're set on rolling the dice on finding an engineering gig before the economy blows up, I highly recommend you look into Lambda School. They have great industry connections and are very, very serious about giving people a grounding in the CS fundamentals you'll need to get through entry level interviews these days. Also:

* Get familiar with AWS, host your own static site on S3, build your projects on Fargate or EKS, learn about Route53, VPCs, RDS, etc

* If you pick up an RDBMS, learn Postgres. It's far and away the most common you'll see. People still using MySQL are doing much larger deployments than your avg startup

* Learn vim or emacs from the start

* Read SICP

* Start Leetcoding as soon as you know the basics of coding.

You will find it hard to get your foot in the door without either a useful degree such as CS or actual experience. What sort of degree do your have?

Boot camps will gladly take your money, but you will not find a job. As someone in marketing have you considered that you would probably hate the day to day requirements of being a full stack developer? If you are somewhat extroverted it is probably not for you.

Thanks for the input. I'm not married to software development - I just feel it's the only way I can really scale my income without loading up on another pricey 4 year degree. Also my good friend (also an Arts grad in his 30s) took a 1 year intensive diploma program and got a 60k job out the gate so I feel I could still get an interview.

I've got no idea what the bottom end of the market is like, so that may be true. Just saying you'll have a hard time breaking into the lucrative part of the field that is likely to have better job security and longevity. good luck to you and your family.

Hey, Thanks for the feedback! I would say I am on the introverted side of the scale to be honest. My favourite part of the job is configuring the scripts for Google Tag Manager/ Analytics and creating report dashboards and data visualizations. If there was a way to do that all day, and make 100k, and with only 1-2 years additional education - I would do it in a second. I agree I would find it hard without a useful degree - that's why my main consideration at the moment is a 1 year intensive Full Stack diploma from tech college.

full stack jack wrote:

You will find it hard to get your foot in the door without either a useful degree such as CS or actual experience. What sort of degree do your have?

Boot camps will gladly take your money, but you will not find a job. As someone in marketing have you considered that you would probably hate the day to day requirements of being a full stack developer? If you are somewhat extroverted it is probably not for you.

Thanks for the advice, Entry level starting at 60k doesn't seem too low end to me (since my overall goal would be to make 70-90k) My friend seems to be having a lot of success with only a 1 year intensive Full Stack diploma. Do you think he'll top out soon because he doesn't have a 4 year CS degree?

exfaang wrote:

I've got no idea what the bottom end of the market is like, so that may be true. Just saying you'll have a hard time breaking into the lucrative part of the field that is likely to have better job security and longevity. good luck to you and your family.

Exfaang is wrong (I myself am a former FB engineer)

1) Don't do coding for money. You won't last more than a year on the job and hate your life, hop from one shitty one to another.

2) Don't do Lambda school. Income sharing agreements are a scam and they come at a 20%+ usurious interest rate embedded in their slave contracts.

Thanks for a different take on things - but I'm a little skeptical for the following reasons: 1 - I need to do SOMETHING for money, and every job has it's struggles 2 - Software Development is frequently ranked #1 for job opportunity and satisfaction so for just this reason alone it seems a good fit 3 - I can get into it off a 1-2 year diploma rather than engineering/law etc. where I would need another 4 year degree 4 - I already have some technical chops at work and enjoy working on our companies website 5 - I have seen my friend have a lot of success (60k entry level job, enjoys his work and lifestyle) and he went into software job for $ / career.

dfa wrote:

Exfaang is wrong (I myself am a former FB engineer)

1) Don't do coding for money. You won't last more than a year on the job and hate your life, hop from one shitty one to another.

2) Don't do Lambda school. Income sharing agreements are a scam and they come at a 20%+ usurious interest rate embedded in their slave contracts.

Your friend will always be at a disadvantage when switching jobs. Depends a lot on the hiring manager/committee. The best way to get a jump in pay is to job hop every 2-4 years. There is a certain tipping point with experience though. In general a 4 year BS degree is way more likely to have the skills and aptitude to get and hold higher end jobs.

If you think you can get your foot in the door with a 1 year program, go for it. In most cases you will learn way more in the first year of work then 4 years in school anyway.

That's what I figure. I knew way more than him about software 2 years ago and he got 3 job offers right off the get go so confused when people talk about a tight job market. Seems to be a ton of demand for high quality jobs. However all perspective I suppose. To me, an entry level job paying 60k (15k more than I currently get) straight off a 1-year diploma speaks to high demand - maybe only a plumber or electrician would do better straight out of school.

full stack jack wrote:

Your friend will always be at a disadvantage when switching jobs. Depends a lot on the hiring manager/committee. The best way to get a jump in pay is to job hop every 2-4 years. There is a certain tipping point with experience though. In general a 4 year BS degree is way more likely to have the skills and aptitude to get and hold higher end jobs.

If you think you can get your foot in the door with a 1 year program, go for it. In most cases you will learn way more in the first year of work then 4 years in school anyway.

You don't need to be wealthy to have children. That is just something they tell white people so that they can make white people become a minority as quickly as possible.

Don't quit your job, don't go back to school, just become an expert at cutting your expenses and living frugally.

You don't owe your children a $200,000 college education. You don't even owe them a $10,000 education. You can teach your children how to self-educate, and you can even raise them to get good grades and get academic scholarships if you want.

You should get busy having kids right now, and you shouldn't worry about your kid not having the latest iPhone or designer jeans in school.

You could even raise a family in that 2 bedroom apartment you're in. Very easily. And your rent is great right now.

And if you get priced out to the suburbs some day, you can still find a small 2 bedroom or 3 bedroom house and commute to your same jobs in Seattle.

OP, you're already in your early 30s. Turn off your shallow, materialistic mentality and get busy working on the important things in life: Family, and instilling traditional values and excellence in your children.

And your kids will grow up more self-sufficient if they're not wealthy. Seeing their classmates have things and do things that they can't have and do will make them tough, and motivated, and maybe they'll even see that life is about love and family, not stuff.

Thanks for the feedback! I would say my wife and I are not materialistic at all and are pretty frugal. I also do think that we need more money, even continuing to live in our 2 bedroom, to raise 2 kids. I'm not intending to pay for their college or buy them fancy phones etc. either. But on 45k each it will be hard. I still want to be able to travel and show them a bit of the world when they are kids/teens. I want to travel as well and not live a life confined to the US for 18 years.

2) lambda school is a yc company and their contract is fair as far as income sharing goes. I think them and recurse center (targeting a very different market) are really the only two in the space worth talking about. Bootcamps are otherwise a scam – just teach yourself. I got an English lit degree for funsies while keeping up on leetcode and IOI problems and had zero issues getting SWE internships and then transitioning those into APM/RPM/PM FTE roles. CS fundamentals are interesting and can be tricky to wrap your head around before you develop some intuition for them, but it's not like you have to be a rocket surgeon by any means.

1) jobs are for money. If you're content with mediocrity you can easily get to L4 at Google or 64 at MSFT and coast to retirement making more than 99% of America for 30-40/hrs a week. By the time you get to Sr+ most of your time is going to be spent talking to people, not coding, and you can always become a manager if you decide you want a career change but don't want to give up tech compensation

60k is considered pretty low end for the field. Median salary in the US is more like 120k, probably more than that in the Seattle area.

It''s not for everyone and takes a certain type of person to do it and do it well. If you are just doing it for the money you are probably going to be unhappy. As the other poster noted, you don't have to make more money to have kids. It doesn't hurt, but families do it all the time on your current salary.

Not sure what Lambda school is but will look into that. Yes I agree that jobs are for money. I am perfectly content with mediocrity if it doubles my current salary!

On the salary thing, I recommend you check out levels.fyi to get a better idea of the gulf between what your friend is earning and what there's the potential to earn with only slightly more work. New grad offers of 160-200k are not unheard of, and mid-career comp of 250-350k/yr is very, very achievable in the current market (when the bull market stops we'll see, but money earned isn't going to turn any less green).

That's precisely why I'm looking at this field. I can be pretty average and still far exceed my current salary so that's great news! I will be doing any job for money and I don't have a "passion" that can be monitized so why not aim for a higher salary? It will allow me to retire earlier. If I'm going to have to work anyway why not make more money doing it?

full stack jack wrote:

60k is considered pretty low end for the field. Median salary in the US is more like 120k, probably more than that in the Seattle area.

It''s not for everyone and takes a certain type of person to do it and do it well. If you are just doing it for the money you are probably going to be unhappy. As the other poster noted, you don't have to make more money to have kids. It doesn't hurt, but families do it all the time on your current salary.

To be totally clear I only really think I'll need in the 70-90k range, and that's 5 years from now when the first child comes along. Maybe 70k 5 years from now growing to 90k a decade from now. Not concerned with making 200k+. If 70-90k is achievable with some hard work over the next 3 years that doubles my current salary.

exfaang wrote:

On the salary thing, I recommend you check out levels.fyi to get a better idea of the gulf between what your friend is earning and what there's the potential to earn with only slightly more work. New grad offers of 160-200k are not unheard of, and mid-career comp of 250-350k/yr is very, very achievable in the current market (when the bull market stops we'll see, but money earned isn't going to turn any less green).

Yeah, as a I said go for it. Just realize you aren't going to get in the door of Google or MSFT and most likely limiting the upper end even long term. Sounds like that is not a big deal though.