Best Path to Software Engineer?

Yep the conversion course would be a good bet. Be sure to consider courses from other universities, some may offer an integrated work placement which would be a huge benefit. Some companies hugely prefer graduates with full undergrad degrees over conversion courses but you would still have a pretty good chance. You could go for internships first either. I know someone who got an internship after graduating from a conversion course last year and is now on a very generous salary.

The MSc would be good, DCU do a graduate diploma in Comp Science that, if you do well, you can then use as the basis for an MSc.

Also look for programming tasks that you can do in your current role, I know a number of people who started out that way while studying part-time. (Excel macros are an easy win at the beginning), maybe you could move over to your IT department if you prove that your good.

The Smurfitt business school did MSc's that are very good and reasonably priced, but aren't listed on their website anymore though.

people are thinking they can be a software engineer after few months? gosh thats where all security holes comes from

Don't pay 10K for a coding bootcamp under the assumption it'll make you a good software engineer.

There's lots of great material online, start off with coursera or udacity courses, and start writing some programs.

If you want to do a conversion course later do that. Start slow, learn building blocks one piece at a time, and expect it to take a few years, if you actually want to know what you are doing, and do good stuff.

Peck3277 wrote: »

A bit of a side question: I come from an Electronic Engineering background so I have very little formal education in CS. I have a couple of years experience with PHP and Java. In interviews in the past I've found myself tripping up on what I presume would be fairly trivial questions on algorithms and data structures.

What would be the best way to bridge the gap of these fundamentals? Can you recommend courses in Dublin, online courses or books and which would be the best to do. I wouldn't be opposed to doing a conversion course if it would be worth the time?

I would recommend becomming an Oracle certified Java programmer. Then obtain Java Developer certification. It will teach you the basics and doesn't cost much. Learn from your mistakes. If you get a question wrong in an interview then make sure you find out the right answer.

I dont know much about the US boot camps apart from a couple of videos ive watched on them but 10,000 for a 3-month course and then money for flights and living over there...not cheap and a bit risky. Depends if you want to live and work in the US after that..

If I were you I would definitely go for the Conversion course option. If you qualify for a Springboard Conversion course then there will be no fee. Not sure if that UCD one is a Springboard course. Money aside though, I think a conversion course would be the better option anyway.

In my opinion one of the main things about the conversion courses is the access that it gives you to employers that you might never get outside of the college environment. On campus talks from companies (with on-campus interviews in some cases), graduate jobs being emailed to you regularly etc.

syklops wrote: »

Start getting involved in some open source projects. Get a githib account and add some projects. As UCDvet says its good to fatten up the CV. A hiring manager for a software company will love being able to see code you have written and put you ahead of the pack who have degrees. It will show you actually love to code, which is what they want to see.

Is there really many open source projects that have people working on them who have only a few months programming experience?

I wouldn't touch the boot camps: they may well teach you stuff, but the qualification would not be taken seriously by an Irish employer.

The conversion course is a good route. If you have the time, do that, and follow on with a masters. NUIG do a H.Dip. in computing which can be extended into another year for a Masters - I imagine that the Dublin colleges do something similar.

Hi Guys,

I've come here in search of similar advice myself.

Basically, I graduated with a Business degree (level 8) last year and have been working in an entry level role in an office for the past 6 months. I'm 23 years old.

The company I work for can be a little "stuck in its ways". Most of the managers have been there since Italia 90. I enjoy business and have always had an entrepreneurial mindset. My job is a lot of paper work, emails, meeting etc... which I don't mind but I really want to make things, develop solutions etc... There isn't a lot of scope in my role to do so.

I have "coded" since I was 13 or 14. What I mean by that is that I have always been interested in building fun little websites. I was pretty decent with HTML and CSS by the time I was 15 or 16. Right now I run my own website on the side which earns me a few hundred euros a month. It's based on wordpress and woocommerce but I customize it by hacking together code. I'm always tinkering away at something. I customize plugins and the like. I'm by no means an expert in any language - I've learned everything I know from forums and YouTube.

To tell you the truth I'm a lot happier tinkering away with code than I am doing my 'real' job.

The other week I was delegated a task. It was to be my responsibility from here on in. It was very repetitive and boring. Mostly data entry. It was torture. I thought that there simply must be a better way. I did some googling and discovered VBA for MS Office. I watched some YouTube videos and pieced together code at home and on my lunch break.

I got it to work which condensed two hours of work into about 20 minutes by automating most of the task. I got such a thrill from my script actually working. Not only that but I could actually calculate how much time and money it would save over 1 year, 2 years etc... Anyways it got me thinking about how much I love coding and how much experience I actually have. I pick things up pretty quick and although I'm not "fluent" in any language I can always figure things out with enough googling and YouTube to create a solution or workaround to problems.

I've started to learn JavaScript using Codecademy. I love it. I feel like it's the missing piece from my puzzle seeing as I'm already pretty handy with HTML and CSS.

I've decided I want to switch careers and enter IT. I was thinking of doing an ICT conversion course in the National College of Ireland - perhaps specializing in the Web Technologies stream.

I have a few questions:

1. Are these conversion courses actually respected by employers?

2. In a head to head job hunt who would win? Me (Level 8 in Business, runs own small online business, 2 years in a business entry level role, few years retail, ICT conversion course done, a few personal projects in my portfolio, decent in Adobe illustrator and After Effects and maybe an internship done) versus IT Grad (Level 8 in computer science, a few personal projects, internship, retail experience too).

3. I like web development (and design). Would HTML, CSS and Javascript be enough? Maybe add in some Ruby on Rails knowledge?

4. If I got the ICT conversion and did the internship as part of the course, what kind of salary would I be looking at? Business grads are thanking their lucky stars if they get €25k at the minute. Would ICT grads get more?

5. What languages have the most employment prospects in Ireland right now?

6. Are there any other realistic routes? Would it be possible to self teach and enter an IT role based on a self-taught knowledge-base and a portfolio?

7. Any other advice or criticism?

Cheers guy. I'd really appreciate any info at all.

- Fukuyama

I can answer one of the questions by saying that I did a conversion course in programming. My undergrad was in languages and in September I started a conversion course, and I'm due to start working in a graduate role as a software developer in a few weeks, so these courses are definitely respected by employers.

LilRedDorcha, that's good to hear. My own background is that I have a company that I worked on in College and luckily it meant full time employment once I finished Quantity Surveying course in 2010. Currently the company sells online and also distributes to stores so I'm looking at doing a conversion course that would both help my current business and also looking at working in the IT industry in the future. Signed up for the NCI Post Grad Dip in Web Technologies so working my way through the Codecademy courses before it starts in 6 weeks. So all feedback on Conversion Courses greatly accepted!!

I don't know what's in these conversion courses but a 4 year bachelor's will always be the base, at least in the absence of real world experience. That matters when sending CVs to non-technical HR drones that'll just bin your CV if it hasn't got a Bsc on it (if the conversion course partners with companies, u won't have to worry about this).

But this doesn't mean u have to do a 4 year Bsc. I contacted the head of IT in the local college and had a chat. Based on my prior experience, he let me go straight to year 3. I think he said i could even go to 4th year but I'd been out of the game for a long time so opted for 3rd year.

If people have written a few lines of code, that might be enough to skip the start of the 4 year Bsc, if even just the first year. But whatever gets u the piece of paper the quickest!!

Incidentally, after about 2 jobs, i was never so much as even asked about my degree, so really its just to get into your first job, or passed a HR filter.