How Long It Really Takes To Land That First Dev Job

If I Study For 10 Hours A Day, How Long Will It Take To Get a Programming Job

This is by far the most common question people have when switching careers to software engineering. And it matters. If youre going to invest time and money into a new skill you want to know when the payback on that will be. Heres how Id think about it.

Defining The Role

To dig in we need to first understand what a first role might look like. Usually the job titles youre looking for will be Associate Software Engineer or Junior Software Engineer if youre trying to land a first job. There are some exceptions to this but its a good rule of thumb when exploring.

So if you search for these kinds of roles in your local market youll probably see something like the following:

• 1-2 years software development experience

• Proficiency with insert specific technology here

• Can communicate professionally

• etc

1-2 years of software experience often means professional experience, but usually these roles will have exceptions for people with a bootcamp certificate or college degree. You can still land these jobs without either but its a little harder to make it through the resume screen.

Okay lets work backward assuming that 1 year of software experience includes self-directed projects. Now lets assume youre starting from scratch. It will take you at least 1-2 months to wrap your head around the basics and pick up a first programming language. The goal is to get to a point where youre comfortable enough to take on a moderately-sized project - you will need to do several.

Now if we take that 1 year minimum at face-value and add 1 month of getting up to speed, then, at minimum, you'd be ready to apply to a role like this in 13 months.

How Long It Really Takes

I have no doubt that a sufficiently dedicated person that had multiple hours of time per day to devote to programming and had no gaps in their learning could land a job inside of a year. It would take a little bit of luck, some networking, and a hell of a lot of dedication but its possible.

A more realistic scenario, if youre like most people, is that if youre going this journey alone itll probably be closer to 18-24 months before youre job-ready and then it may take a few months to actually get a job.

Summary

So all-in, youre probably looking at 2-3 years from starting your programming journey to getting a job. Depending on how you look at it this can be a very short amount of time (less time than college to break into a highly, in-demand, well-paying field) or a long time (2 years of dedication is a lot).

A few things that may help you shortcut this:

• Boot camps can be hit-or-miss. If you do your research well and find a good one it can significantly decrease the amount of time itll take.

• Apprenticeships, if you can find them, are a great option. This is what I did. The premise is to join a company that pays you to learn and in return you usually make a commitment to work for that company in an underpaid role (relative to the rest of the market) for a fixed amount of time. Even when the role is underpaid, youre usually getting paid pretty well and can continue learning on the job.

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