What's the best way to get a job in software development with no previous experience?

It's entirely possible to get programming jobs without a degree, especially at smaller companies and for contract work.* (Lately, I've been throwing out resumes with only degrees but no experience. I've been horrified too often by the work that only a CS degree has provided.) But you must must be able to show their work if they want a chance at it. Here are a few ideas. The more of these the better: - GitHub resume. Let me look at your code–-And your documentation. It doesn't have to be the cleanest code in the world, but it needs to be readable. And it lets me see what kind of problems you like to solve. - Link to StackOverflow account. I want to see what kind of questions you're asking and what kind of questions you're answering. How a person answers questions is also incredibly valuable. Are you a snob or are you gracious? Contentious or generous? - Open Source software contributions. You don't need a lot of contributions but if you've contributed a feature or fixed a bug in software that I use, you're on the top of the pile. - Blog. Do you love programming? Love solving problems or working in a specific environment or with a specific toolset? Blog about it. If you're passionate enough to go and chase down problems on your own I want to get a closer look at you. In once case I found out I was interviewing someone who's blog I had read before. - Cheat Sheets and quick references. Research a list of common problems and solutions in a niche and post 'em on your site. I know someone who gets headhunted regularly because he simply posted a quick FAQ on HTML5 audio. *It somewhat depends where you are. If you're near Silicon Valley right now and you can't find a job you're probably not trying hard enough.

http://ask.metafilter.com/204405/Whats-the-best-way-to-get-a-job-in-software-development-with-no-previous-experience#2946347: "I guess my question from here is, can you really go into an interview and say, "No, I've got no formal education - but here's some code that I've written. I used X, Y and Z to do it" and really get a position over someone who has gone through the rigors of a university degree?" I've done it. The problem is, you can give a fantastic interview, but if your skills aren't up to the level that the company is expecting, a lot of stress is sure to follow. It helps a lot to be an expert in a domain that the other developers at the company aren't.

It is possible to get a job w/o an education. You need a portfolio of real work though. Get an account on github, fork an existing project of interest, and start working on it and feeding them patches. It's like "unpaid interning" at other white collar jobs. Not glamorous but it's how you learn your way around. Also work through the exercises of a basic CS curriculum as found online. You have to know data structures and algorithms. At least the 1st + 2nd year versions.

How well does he know the field of study? If he can find a scratch to itch and build a software tool that is useful in the field of Biology he may have a platform to pitch himself in that domain. It is entirely possible to get a career in programming with out formal training. I know successful programmers with degrees in humanities and plenty who didn't go to college (as well as unsuccessful ones who did).

With his background and the current labor market, he would be lucky to get a low paid junior web developer job, and he will have trouble getting new jobs until he has 10 to 15 years of experience. Programmers in general are ten-a-penny, but programmers with domain knowledge in a difficult science like biology are much harder to find. I'd advise him to use his biology knowledge to get a job in something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics. the best way of doing this, if he's willing to spend a little more time in school, he should get a Bioinformatics Masters degree.

I would advise him to consider obtaining proficiency with .NET or some other Microsoft-oriented stack (not to derail, but anything associated with Azure, which includes stuff like Node.js). Of course there are other companies in Seattle, but the MS family tree is pretty dominant and a lot of the smaller companies are going to have former employees or other ties. It's hard to say whether it's an interview thing or not. The bar for getting an interview if you come in through a recruiter is very low sometimes, in some cases it's even automatic. Is he making it past phone screens? Since a recruiter has been involved I would also be wary of them misrepresenting experience or skill set. I probably would avoid recruiters unless there's a pre-existing personal relationship.

First off, he's in Seattle. Certainly the companies up there already have a decent flow of people from schools like UW, which is why I'm thinking he's at a disadvantage right off the bad. I hadn't really considered the possibility that he's not doing well at interviewing. I'm not really good at judging that sort of thing, I guess. He's very articulate in social and academic situations, but maybe not when it comes to interviews..

The above advice is correct, to be sure, but also: don't forget to network! I am 10 weeks into a new career in software development, with no CS degree and very little prior work experience in development. I met my current manager through a local Python interest group, and he looked at some code I'd thrown on Github. He pushed hard for his company to hire me despite my lack of experience, and gave me my big break, so to speak. My interest in the community group indicated a kind of passion that not everyone with a CS degree happens to have; and while I certainly have a lot to learn, my manager believed strongly enough that I had the chops for it, that he not only convinced his company to hire me, but also persuaded me to leave my previous career so that I could give this a try -- and so far, I'm really glad he did! At this stage, my job is sort of like an apprenticeship, and I'm learning SO MUCH now that I can spend a full work day thinking about code, and of course I'm building up experience as I go. The best way to get better is by working on projects and making things (and then throwing them on GitHub!)

I am a professional software developer, and I don't have a CS degree, although I did study CS in college (I have most of a CS degree by courses completed). If he's getting interviews (which you say he is), then he's not failing for lack of experience, but lack of skill. If a company's willing to bring you in to interview after seeing your resume, then the content of your resume, which would indicate your lack of experience, is not the blocker, or they wouldn't bring you in. Could he answer the following interview question? A) Describe to me what a linked list is. B) Implement "insert" for a linked list. C) Assuming your list is a list of integers, implement "getListTotal()" that returns the sum of all the integers in the list. D) Do part C again, but recursively (or iteratively, if the original answer was recursive). This is a real interview question that I have been given, it is not a particularly difficult question. It is the type of thing he'll have to be able to answer to get jobs in this field. Really, software companies care a lot more about experience than degrees. I could get an interview pretty much anywhere probably, and I don't have a degree, but do have a dozen years of experience. Once you've gotten an interview, your qualifications don't matter anymore, just your interview performance. I actually just accepted a new job recently, and so the interview process is fresh in my mind, and it can be difficult. An interview at Google, for example, is essentially a five hour comprehensive final exam for a whole Computer Science program. Being moderately passable at PHP does you little good, especially since (in Google's case) they're going to ask you to work in C++ or Java anyway (I didn't get an offer from Google). Also, I live in the San Francisco area, and so that's me benchmark for "lots of software companies". If he's somewhere else, just say the actual metro area so that we know what we're dealing with.