I'm considering a career change, but the job market for software development has me confused.
On the one hand, it's very common to hear about some supposed shortage of programmers. Yet on the other, few companies seem to have more than a couple openings at any point in time. And it seems every CS uni student or bootcamp grad complains about having to send out 300+ applications in hopes of landing 2-3 interviews.
WTF? That's easily an order of magnitude worse odds than when I applied to medical schools. How can it be that hard to land a job if the market is supposedly desperate for talent?
Or is it only _experienced_ coders that are in demand? Are employers just lamenting how the majority of applicants have barely any experience and little depth of knowledge?
If that's the case, encouraging people to go into the field on the pretense of a "hot job market" seems disingenuous. I don't want to spend years of my life and who knows how much money learning a new skillset only to discover I've joined an ocean of low-skilled coders who won't have any serious job prospects for 5+ more years. :/
It's possible to get in, but you need to be above-average in both technical and personal skills. Luckily, in my experience, the average level of both for the lowest level job seekers are not that high of a barrier to overcome.
>encouraging people to go into the field on the pretense of a "hot job market" seems disingenuous.
Take anyone who doles out this advice with a grain of salt. They likely stand to benefit in some way.
>I don't want to spend years of my life and who knows how much money learning a new skillset only to discover I've joined an ocean of low-skilled coders who won't have any serious job prospects for 5+ more years.
Be honest with your self about why you want to switch careers. If it's just for a quick salary bump, there's probably smarter ways to do so. If you really are interested in the field, then start self-teaching and go from there. Spending money on boot-camps or a second undergrad degree is a poor investment right now imo.
I believe that if you have a) decent real-life work experience in any industry, b) the ability to self teach well, c) patience, and d) realistic expectations (e.g. not 100k off the bat in a big-n), there's still a good chance you can break into the field.