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The noob guide for entering the software engineering world.

Before you read further…
The article is for those who are trying to get into the Software Engineering industry. Even though I have a couple of years of experience in the Sri Lanka software engineering industry, I believe it can vary from country to country.
So if you want to get an idea about what it takes to get into the industry, I believe I have covered most of the necessary things that need to considered.
However, please take these bits of advice as a grain of salt and do your own research. Then you can decide what you want to do with your life. Because if you are not ready to stare at a monitor for more than 8 hours a day, this might not be the job for you.
Stay hungry. Stay foolish. ― Steve Jobs
If you search this term in a search engine, you’ll get many definitions for this term. So I don’t want to add another one to that list, but I’ll explain what we do regularly.
Most of the industries in the world run on software right now. Stock markets, communication, education, transportation, the list goes on. So, to help those businesses do their day-to-day tasks, someone needs to build software based on their requirements. Not only that, it needs to function appropriately under the agreed hardware configurations.
So, as software engineers, what most of us do is translation. This means we translate business requirements into instructions that can execute on a silicon chip. To do that translation, you need to have specific sets of skills. That translation, we can call “Software Engineering”.
So, what are the things that you need to get your foot in the door?
Before you consider signing up for an education program, it’s better to have a somewhat clear understanding of your goal of learning these subjects. You can ask yourself;
Where I want to be in ___ years, and will this program help me to reach it?
Because now the software engineering industry is getting bigger and bigger, it’s better to learn matching subjects related to your goal. Some common job roles in the software engineering world,
When it comes to education, we can categorize it into two groups.
Even though some people rant about college/university education, most companies (except Tesla) require some kind of paper qualification. And recruiters also love to hire some candidates from top universities with higher grades.
But that doesn’t mean once you complete your program, your job is guaranteed. Of course, having good grades is best for your resume, but if you can’t apply those theories in the real world, that doesn’t have any value to the industry. So my opinion is having practical knowledge essential much crucial as theoretical knowledge.
In Sri Lanka, we have two different types of Universities.
Especially if you are planning to follow a private institute’s degree program, you might need to check out some things about the institute and the program. You can find those below.
I think this topic is still on the fence when you are applying for your first job without a paper qualification(Diploma, Higher Diploma, Bachelors). I believe most of the software companies in Sri Lanka require some kind of paper qualification when you apply for your first job. After that, it’s mostly your experience. If you did well in your current position, you don’t have to apply for a different company; they will contact you.
However, after you got your first job, it’s all self-study until you retire. Most of the time there won’t be anyone who can help your work. Because you might be working on entirely new technology and there is no one who know about that technology. So it’s fair to say, programming is a life long learning process.
Just like the carpenters, mechanics have their own toolsets, as an engineer, you also should have some tools in your inventory. In this case, virtual inventory.
When you get ready to apply for a job, you can find many software companies nowadays. But we can categorize those into 3 main types.
This can vary from company to company. For example, some companies might have 2 or 3 interviews, some might have 5 or 6, and the questions are also based on the person going to conduct the interview. So my advice is, do some online research(Glassdoor, Indeed, etc..) about interview questions, company culture. Reach out to some employees who already work there (but don’t be a pain in the butt).
But I can say one thing for sure, DON’T LIE. If you don’t know something, just say you don’t know it, but you would love to learn it. That shows your honesty and openness to new things.
And finally, think the interview is like you are going to meet your partner’s parents. So you don’t want to undersell or oversell yourself.
Programming is hard, much like all other jobs in the world. But how it differs from person to person is, based on their knowledge, interests, dedication, and most importantly, how quickly you can recover when sh** hit the fan. If you are a person, easily gets offended or discouraged when something bad happens on the job, I don’t think it’s a good place or industry for you to succeed in life. But who am I to judge you? I’m just a guy from a small island called Sri Lanka and lucky enough to work in the tech.
So if you reach this far, I really appreciate your time, and please let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
Thank you…
This is my GitHub repo that I created for this post. You can find more resources getting into tech. (Currently, it doesn’t have much., but I’ll update in the future. )
Developer roadmaps — This is a good resource to visualize the basic things that you need.
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