Member-only story

How I Became a Self-Taught Software Engineer at a Major Tech Company

…and how you can too.

Lexis Hanson
Code Like A Girl
16 min readMay 31, 2018

Up until now I’ve been working in non-technical role. After studying for many months, I just got my first engineering job at a major Bay Area tech company. This journey has been rewarding but incredibly difficult. For any of you hoping to do the same, here’s how you can land your coveted software engineering job too.

A little background…

Why engineering?

I’ve always been interested in logic, numbers, and critical thinking. I loved “whodunit” puzzles as a kid. While studying for my undergraduate degree in Finance, I built some pretty gnarly things in Excel using Visual Basic. That experience was my first exposure to how frustrating syntax errors could be, and how rewarding it is when something you write finally works! I took pride in thinking, “these hands built this!”

When I made this career change, I was a Customer Success Manager at Salesforce. My career to this point has been working with customers and products, but much less so on the technical side.

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

Published in Code Like A Girl

Welcome to Code Like A Girl, a space that celebrates redefining society's perceptions of women in technology. Share your story with us!

Written by Lexis Hanson

Self-taught software engineer, life-long learner, finance aficionado, most comfortable at a temperature between 68–78 degrees.

Responses (7)

What are your thoughts?

Hi Lexis, thank you for the article. It’s very informative and helpful. I really appreciate you.

--

Great story Lexis, I really inspired from your story to become a professional software engineer, thanks for sharing it, wishing you more success in your career.
Cheers

--