Ask HN: What is the quickest path to a new career in tech?

The question as it stands is like asking "What's the shortest path to being a scientist?".

Certainly the quickest way is to actually do something, build a website or an app, learn Python and solve some problems. Pick a small personal problem and tackle it.

There are some software dev companies that will hire without any coding experience because they would rather teach you themselves. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but maybe it's for some people.

Would she consider a programming boot camp? Those are often targeted at getting new developers jobs post-completion.

If she's the right kind of thinker, parlaying a polisci background into infosec isn't that hard -- there's a LOT of activity around the infosec policy specialties right now. I'm a hacker by trade, but one of the two coworkers I work most closely with is an attourney. Having the "dynamic duo" of technologically-literate lawyer and legally-literate technologist on hand can be extremely useful.

OTOH, if she actually wants to go into technology rather than policy-around-technology, the fast track is to build things, work with experienced teams, and read a lot. I don't have or particularly feel I need a degree. The only place that not having one has ever caused me problems is academia, and even there it is just a political problem.

I've spent my life building, learning, and working with bright people. Some strategy highlights:

* Don't confine yourself to teams of fellow newbies. It may feel safer for your ego, but you won't learn as fast.

* Be willing to do scut work -- i.e. boring, repetitive tasks -- to endear yourself to projects you want to learn on. Showing you will do work is the best way to demonstrate to others that it's worth it to them to teach you. Show up and start cleaning up documentation. Give support on IRC. Do issue queue triage. Fix small bugs, then work your way up.

* Read. Constantly. Ask hackers you respect what they are reading.

* Try many things and figure out what your strengths are, then build on those strengths, rather than just trying for what others say is easy.

* If you are serious about programming, don't just learn one programming language. There's a skill ceiling that (as far as I can tell) cannot be broken until one has worked in several programming languages built on different paradigms.

* If you are serious about infosec, don't just spend your time around people who've learned to go through checklists or use tools by rote. Find people building and analyzing from first principles, and get in with them.

* Find a project that needs a volunteer to do the things you want to ultimately do for pay, then volunteer. Do an amazing job. You'll learn a lot (often scrambling to learn on the job), and you'll end up with some work to show up and some good references.

* Spend time networking (the social kind) and use it. Nobody knows everything. But, if you know enough people, you probably know how to find out just about anything. Be helpful to others and you'll always have people ready to help you when you need it.

* If your urge to get into the industry really outweighs other concerns, consider low-barrier jobs like NOC Monkey (sit at a datacenter during off-hours, stare at screens, call admins if there's an emergency) or Hell Desk (aka Help Desk or Tech Support) just to get into companies and see how they work, then work your way up or job hop. These jobs don't usually pay much, but they do give a lot of insight and usually aren't demanding enough that you can't also work the other strategies while you have them.

I recommend web development. It exposes you to many concepts along the way and can help give your friend a feel of what she would enjoy. That's what I did and now I find myself really loving backend work and fraud detection. She can take a focus on security during her learning and at least start to absorb general security practices, get into the right mindset to be good at it, and probably network within the security community easily enough.