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.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
    8·
    9 months ago

    I used this book. “Discover What You Are Best At” by Linda Gail. It’s a series of self tests that let you know where your aptitudes lie, and a list of jobs that use them. The book pointed me at a career I’d never considered.

  • Toes♀@ani.social
    5·
    9 months ago

    IT can be cutthroat and saturated, especially if you plan on going into administration and networking.

    I’d suggest database or leaning on your embedded experience and do that if you’re looking to get into something that’s in demand.

    • november@iusearchlinux.fyiOP
      3·
      9 months ago

      That’s a fair point of saturation in IT, I feel like it might be harder to break into because of that. I’ll look into database-oriented roles too.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    5·
    9 months ago

    I’ve been in tech for a long time. I don’t even have a high school degree (fucked up family life). Ride it out. You have qualifications. You’ll get there.

  • navigatron@beehaw.org
    4·
    9 months ago

    How do you feel about cybersecurity? It’s a much larger field than it appears on the surface, and to my recollection the unemployment rate has never been positive - we have always had more jobs than people.

    • november@iusearchlinux.fyiOP
      3·
      9 months ago

      Cybersecurity is actually a great suggestion! I’ve been applying to some roles but I haven’t thought too much about it. I’ve been thinking of participating in CTF events before but just haven’t cause of lack of drive/knowledge. It’s something I’ll consider now though

      • navigatron@beehaw.org
        3·
        9 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.

  • half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world
    3·
    9 months ago

    Data science might be a good fit. I’ve been looking into changing careers and taking classes. Data sci is a mix of stats, crisp-dm, programming, and presentation. It isn’t strictly accounting, but there is a lot if of overlap. Throw in a few ai buzzwords and you’ll land something.

    • november@iusearchlinux.fyiOP
      2·
      9 months ago

      Thank you for your suggestion of looking into Data Science. I have some machine learning experience from uni classes, I can maybe expand my domain by looking at some certs.

      • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
        2·
        9 months ago

        I was also going to recommend looking at data science. You can go multiple directions with it. There’s Business Intelligence (Tableau, Thoughtspot, Qlik, Looker, etc). You can look at work in those companies or their customers. There’s also more general areas of data analytics where knowing SQL, Snowflake, and Python can help a lot - definite overlap with DB admin/engineer type work. And that’s also the current hotness of AI/ML, which may be promising, if you have a good base of knowledge and can keep up with what’s constantly changing.