What Would I Do Without College: Software Engineer

What would I do if I wanted to be a software engineer without going to college? I would simply just make an app that makes me a billion dollars. Okay, no, I'm joking. That's like not realistic unless you're some super genius. Alright, step one, I would do the Harvard CS50x course. Why? Because it's not only important to learn how to actually code and type words on a screen, but it's important to think about how to code. And that's exactly what this course teaches. It gives you the tools and learn other things. It's a very strong foundation to start building your coding house. Step two, I would make a GitHub and do the Odin Project or a another web development intro. Why? Because web development is very easy and intuitive to pick up at first, but also it's one of the most marketable skills right now and these projects are designed to actually help people build these skills fairly quickly. Like on finishing this, I would go to a portfolio site for myself and upload it to my personal GitHub and start tracking projects as well on both my GitHub and my portfolio. This also shows you know what version control is, which if you do the Odin Project, it will explain that as well. Step three, I would continue my learning into different areas of tech and kind of figure out what I want to do in the field. Maybe I want to make websites or maybe I want to build back-end servers and whatnot. Really just anything to expand my skills and see what type of jobs I want to apply to. Step four, I would start grinding LeetCode and like algorithm videos on YouTube, interview techniques and like how to pass behavioral questions that these tech companies may ask me. And around this time, I would actually start to network as well. Networking without a degree is a little bit harder because you don't have career fairs or anything, but there are a million different Discords out there that have tons of people with amazing knowledge and are offering referrals as well. And lastly, on a whim if I can find any like events near me, I'd probably try to go to those, but my main focus would be Discord and building meaningful relationships within those communities. Step five, lastly, I would acclimate myself to what it means to actually be an engineer and code in a professional sense. A big part of this is Agile development, as well as like cloud conventions. What I mean by cloud conventions is like containerizing applications, maybe learning about Docker, Kubernetes or EC2. I probably wouldn't master it by any means, but I would definitely know what it is and if somebody asked me, I could give you like a very high level overview. And then once I do all these steps, I would just start applying for programs that are actually targeting my skill set and demographic. I'm going to pop a few up on the screen, but the one that comes to mind is the Airbnb Connect Engineering Apprenticeship 2022. And if I didn't go to college, those are the steps I would take to become a software engineer. My timeline, probably anywhere from a year to a year and a half. So yeah, hope this helps somebody. Keep coding.