Hey everyone,
I haven’t had that great of luck landing a new-grad/entry-level role since I graduated 9 months ago (May 2023). I’m thinking of changing my career focus and possibly pivoting out of tech.
For context, I have almost 6 months of mediocre internship experience as an Embedded Software Engineer. I also have experience being a coding team lead for a project as part of a club activity at my uni for two semesters, to which I actually I enjoyed. As for roles, I’ve been applying to Embedded SWE, general SWE, hardware SWE, and systems engineering roles.
While this experience looks okay on my resume as a new-grad, it’s been a struggle for me in searching for a job, and getting through the technical interviews. There’s this element of dread in looking for jobs, preparation for job interviews, doing leetcode and even while working on personal projects.
Recently I’ve been thinking of looking into becoming an accountant or something similar since I like crunching numbers and since credit card churning, and FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) plans interest me a lot. So I’d have to go back to school and prepare for the CPA Exam.
If I were to stay in tech though, I would consider going into IT by getting the CCNA certification, maybe.
I could use some advice from those with experience, and I could also use advice from people who have pivoted in or out of tech and how you handled executing a career change.
As long as you’re thinking about grad school, let me give you one more tip.
It’s often easier to get grad school paid for if you go into one of the hard sciences (eg physics, chemistry, biology). Where I taught, we gave every bio grad student a tuition waiver, room and board, and a (small) stipend.
You may be required to take a position as a teaching assistant (these suck, avoid if there are other options) or research assistant (this is what you want although they can suck in their own way). You’ll also have to come up with a song and dance about how your undergrad work puts you in a particularly good spot for research in [area] even though that wasn’t your major, and you will end up having to be able to pass the basic undergrad coursework in that area at some point.
CS grad programs (and many engineering programs in general) have a long list of applicants with checks in hand, and don’t need to grant stipends and such. You may still be competitive for them and should apply, but I’ll tell you that a candidate with an undergrad degree in CS with a PhD in astrophysics applying for a job as a data scientist is going to the front of the line.
