Former psych major new to coding wants to be a software developer

[slptobe92]

Hey guys!

This post isn't 100% about grad school but I thought maybe some of you all could help me out.

So, I just graduated with a B.S. in Psychology and realized before I even graduated that I didn't want a career in Psychology at all (but it was too late to change majors). I just recently got into coding and even though I'm a newbie I absolutely love it. I think I would love being a software developer (obviously with more experience) but I'm wondering if I need a new degree for that. Is it worth getting a CS degree or should I just keep teaching myself and creating a portfolio?

I think I would like software developing because I'm pretty introverted and would rather deal with computers most days than people. Plus I've been addicted to coding since I started and the idea of creating my own apps and software and all kinds of stuff is so exciting to me!

Anyway, if anyone has any words of wisdom please let me know!

 

Thanks guys

[mariposa2]

I am certain there are some employers who consider applicants without CS degrees, provided they have a technical repertoire and the right personality for the company's environment. Software dev is very likely to involve team work on large-scale projects, so you will probably have to interact with clients, project managers, sales and marketing folks, and teammates in this vocation too! Perhaps you could hone your skills with courses from lynda, Coursera, edX (those are the first ones that come to mind) work on open-source projects, and offer your services to a nonprofit (they will probably be quite patient with a beginner and grateful for any contribution you can make). I think that you may want to look into design principles (called "patterns") as well as computer science theory and algorithms as you consider this job. Even if these do not seem relevant to the technical skills you seek to acquire, in my opinion a software developer benefits from foundations in design and theory, in addition to the mechanics of programming. All the best to you!

[.letmeinplz//]

A little confused because your other posts are about you applying to SLP...

 

Anyway... first of all CS is not SWE, or more elegantly put by maybe Dijkstra (or maybe not but it still applies ) "Computer Science is no more about computers than Astronomy is about telescopes".

The importance of a CS degree is not in you coding your projects, it is merely a tool to help you further and apply your knowledge. So it is possible to be a SWE without a CS degree, during my undergrad I had a few classmates that had been developers for years but were getting their BS finally for promotions (and their companies are paying).

But you will have some issues...

1. Most job postings include the sentence "A BS/4 Year Degree in Computer Science or related field (Electrical/Computer Engineering, Computation, etc.)".

Now I had an undergrad professor and his PhD was in Psychology but he was an AI professor which falls in the cognitive science realm.

2. You will be competing for jobs with people who do have CS degrees. These are people who have been coding for at least 4 years. They have coded at least one major project (capstone/senior design/whatever you want to call it) in a team of other developers (I will address this in a later point as it applies to your assumption developers only work with computers and not people). For places like Google you are working against people with CS degrees from Stanford/CMU/MIT/GaTech, for lesser desired companies you are working against every other Top 100 university CS graduate. 

Now if you are a great developer and you don't get filtered out (you get a tech screening) you can beat the above mentioned people during the interview and snag the job, but understand you are already at an experience disadvantage and a perception disadvantage.

3. Software developers work with people. A lot.

You aren't dealing with computers, you are dealing with people who have wants, needs, desires and your job is to gather them and produce a product that satisfies them. We don't sit in moms basement, we have group meetings everyday and sit in each others cubes/offices/desks while working on problems. If you cannot deal with people you cannot work in development (other than making your own software by yourself).

 Before grad school I worked at a large tech company in development. I had to work with other developers, with managers, and with "the business" (or the client depending if your system is meant for external or internal use) daily.

Edited September 20, 2015 by <ian>