Build a strong portfolio on GitHub and a record of lots of contributions to open source projects.
To be honest with you, DBA's no longer exist at many companies. Most modern databases are easy enough to use that all you need is developers. My current company has a single DBA for 7 development teams.
If you want to break into software dev the low hanging fruit is usually web development with something like PHP.
You're going to be competing with a ton of people that have degrees and experience so try not to get disappointed about your search. If you can't land a developer job straight away, I know many who have gotten into dev by starting as testers and building their knowledge laterally within the company.
It take the average candidate with experience and a degree maybe 4 interviews to get an offer, you will probably have to do at least triple that.
Fortune 500 companies are always hiring data analysts, business analysts, ETL (extract-transform-load) developers, etc. Anyone who knows their way around SQL and Excel will be able to get one of these jobs.
If you don't have those skills, get them. Consider an associate degree at a community college or something, because those F500 companies don't give a crap about GitHub portfolios nearly as much as they do about a piece of paper that says you can show up on time enough to get the piece of paper.
These companies also use contracting and consulting firms to staff three- and six- month projects, often for data migration, decommissioning legacy systems, and other data-heavy tasks. Ask around in the tech community in your area about which firms treat people fairly, help professional development, etc. and make contact with some of them. Many sponsor "boot camps" or other training activities.
After you have that actual job under your belt (and the 40-hours-a-week of real-life experience with the systems) it will be much easier to pivot into something that adds up to more than just monkeying around with data loads and report generation.
There are always exceptions in tech, but in my experience companies don't care about the pedigree of the school once you've been out for a while. They do care that you have a degree. So much so that many companies don't even consider people without a degree, even for entry level positions.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 26.7 ms ] threadTo be honest with you, DBA's no longer exist at many companies. Most modern databases are easy enough to use that all you need is developers. My current company has a single DBA for 7 development teams.
If you want to break into software dev the low hanging fruit is usually web development with something like PHP.
You're going to be competing with a ton of people that have degrees and experience so try not to get disappointed about your search. If you can't land a developer job straight away, I know many who have gotten into dev by starting as testers and building their knowledge laterally within the company.
It take the average candidate with experience and a degree maybe 4 interviews to get an offer, you will probably have to do at least triple that.
If you don't have those skills, get them. Consider an associate degree at a community college or something, because those F500 companies don't give a crap about GitHub portfolios nearly as much as they do about a piece of paper that says you can show up on time enough to get the piece of paper.
These companies also use contracting and consulting firms to staff three- and six- month projects, often for data migration, decommissioning legacy systems, and other data-heavy tasks. Ask around in the tech community in your area about which firms treat people fairly, help professional development, etc. and make contact with some of them. Many sponsor "boot camps" or other training activities.
After you have that actual job under your belt (and the 40-hours-a-week of real-life experience with the systems) it will be much easier to pivot into something that adds up to more than just monkeying around with data loads and report generation.