this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Pivot Out of Tech? New Grad Seeking Advice (iusearchlinux.fyi)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by november@iusearchlinux.fyi to c/cs_career_questions@programming.dev
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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.

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[–] jeremyparker@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What would you recommend to make that pivot? Security+ cert?

[–] navigatron@beehaw.org 4 points 8 months ago

I’m skeptical of certs, they don’t represent much more than a shallow baseline of knowledge and a minimum initiative to go get them. That being said, they’re much better than nothing.

Imo understanding networking fundamentals is huge. If you google “overthewire banditlabs”, there’s a series of challenges that test / teach you important skills.

Personally, I would rather see banditlabs over a cert, a cert over nothing, and tbh enthusiasm / teachability over everything.