My Career Transition Journey - From Humanities Grad to Software Engineer

As the first post on my blog, I would like to share my journey of transitioning into the software engineering industry as a humanities graduate.
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During my college years, I majored in social sciences, and the only exposure I had to programming was through a compulsory course in Microsoft Excel. After graduation, I took on a clerical job that involved a lot of paperwork. Every day, I found myself spending a significant amount of time on repetitive tasks, and this led me to start thinking about improving work efficiency through programming.

To learn programming, I bought a book called Automate the Boring Stuff with Python . In my spare time, I began self-studying programming following the content of the book and wrote some Python scripts to help myself with paperwork. During this process, I discovered my interest in programming and I further watched programming-related tutorial videos on YouTube, including the renowned Harvard University's CS50 course.

I spent close to six months completing the CS50 course, learning more about computer science and programming, including algorithms and data structures, web development, SQL databases, and more. This knowledge deepened my interest in programming, and I began planning to transition into a software engineer role. However, I understood that my knowledge and experience might not be sufficient to directly enter the software engineering industry, so I decided to enroll in a computer science-related program to supplement my knowledge and skills.

I subsequently spent two years studying a 2-year computer science-related program in Canada. During my studies, I completed two internships, the first being an 8-month internship at a SaaS company and the second being a 3-month summer internship at a FAANG+ company. The internship experiences provided me with valuable exposures in frontend development, backend development, database management, cloud computing, and more.

After graduation, I successfully received a return offer from the second internship company and embarked on my career as a full-time software engineer.

This blog will document my learning and growth process in the software engineering industry, hoping to provide some help and inspiration to friends who are transitioning or aspiring to transition into software engineering roles.