Tech jobs were unusually easy to obtain for newcomers to the field between 2020 and 2022. Now they are unusually difficult to obtain. If I was to start all over again - here’s how I would do it.

1. Get a Job
2. Learn
3. Pivot

N.B. This applies to any tech career track; eng, program, product, design, etc.

Step 1: Get a Job

Note I didn’t say tech job. The amount of people I regularly see on /r/cscareerquestions that are “waiting for their big break into tech” is baffling. Does that happen to a select and highly-upvoted few? Yes. Will it happen to you? The odds are severly against it. The mentality that you will suddenly win the golden ticket is a 2020 paradigm that is now invalid.

What job to get then? Look for a gig with the following criteria:

• small to mid-sized company
• employs programmers (even if just a handful)
• position you are applying for is an office gig, even if menial!

Step 2: Learn

We’ll assume for the scope of this article that you are already pursuing a highly disciplined study plan for your tech field of interest in the evening and weekend hours. Outside of that you want to learn about what the programmers are doing at your current job, even if you don’t work immediately side-by-side with them. Figure out who they are and chat them up at the water cooler or have lunch with them. Be curious. Figure out what problems they’re trying to solve and how they’re trying to solve them. Talk about the obstacles you’re encountering in your position. An example will help:

You are working an entry level sales role for Vandelay Industries. You primarily focus on the imports side of the business (although the company also handles exports). The role hinges on the strength of your relationships with exporters that you import from. The CRM system that you use doesn’t have any kind of way to notify you to contact the exporters regularly, say after a set number of days. You explain your problem to George who is an engineer at the company.

George has his own motives. He’s eyeing a promotion. The Sales Director and the CTO are childhood friends (go figure) and it’s well known that the Sales Director has huge influence over the CTO’s decisions. George pitches the idea to his manager, citing you as the source and proposing his own simple technical implementation of the feature.

The feature is built, the Sales Director gets huge value out of it for his team, George gets his promotion, George’s manager socializes that you came up with the idea, and you get a problem solved.

Step 3: Pivot

You now have connections in the engineering department. Be transparent with them. Mention that you’re trying to transition into product/program/design/eng/etc. Assuming the company is doing reasonably well and scaling (even if slowly) you might find that they create a role for you. There’s a myriad of reasons why this might not happen (it’s an ideal outcome) but even if it doesn’t you will have put yourself on the right path. Tech people like to hang out with tech people. If George’s manager doesn’t have headcount to hire, George might have a friend at J. Peterman Catalog that’s looking for a well-vetted junior engineer. The possibilities are endless and all positive.

Why does this work?

Your initial reaction might be to label this “schmoozing” but it is not so. Schmoozing implies that one party is extracting a benefit from another. You have to remember that you also have value. What many don’t do is market this value correctly. In the above example, the value you provide is that you are close to a problem set. Tech organizations solve problems in a way that’s easily scalable. The example is one of an equal exchange.

One of the biggest issues with hiring a junior engineer is that they are a liability to the codebase. If value is highly scalable in engineering, so is error! If you are a “known quantity” you are far more likely to obtain an entry level role. Doubly so if you have real world experience. If you are a brand-new college grad without any professional work experience, additional unknowns are introduced. Make yourself known and market your value accurately and the path becomes much easier.

I am not justifying any of the hiring practices or biases I have detailed here. It has been my observation that this is often times (not always!) how things work across the industry. We should all strive to eliminate these old ways of doing things in favor of a more meritocratic system, however, the purpose of my essays is to provide actionable advice.