Ask HN: Starting out as a programmer in the UK
Long time lurker here - HN is a fantastic community. Thank you all!
Background: I have a bachelor's degree in Physics from a prestigious university in the UK. My work history (internships and current position) has primarily been geared towards finding employment in the more traditional careers - finance and so forth. It seems to me that the UK is a difficult place to come of age in nowadays - housing costs in particular are astronomical - at times I have felt that my hand is forced if I wish to ever provide myself and my family with a decent standard of living.
I would like to change direction and pursue a programming career. As many here can hopefully relate with I've spent my youth tinkering with computers and producing the odd tool here and there to deal with personal needs. I am increasingly starting to realise that in order to succeed one must find a job that they are truly passionate about - and also to be surrounded by colleagues who are similarly minded.
My question to you all is how I could go about achieving such a transition. US centric advice can only go so far, unfortunately.
My focus at present is on finding employment that will allow me enough flexibility / free time to contribute to open source projects in my downtime.
The question then - how does a beginner pursue a career in programming? Are there companies still willing to train new starters, or is the best approach to produce a solid portfolio of OSS projects/contributions?
Many thanks for any advice.
3 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 15.3 ms ] threadHowever have you considered a move towards technical programming given your background CFD or get into ML and Data Science - I take it you know some fortran?
There is a place near me Bedfordshire that still trying to find people to convert cfd from fortran to C++ I suspect its ARA
Traditional in the sense that it seemed like the only way to pull off buying a home in the UK, building towards starting a family, etc.
I think I'm starting to realise that this is not really feasible in the current environment and that I'll have to wait for my 30s in order to achieve that sort of stability. I'd much rather spend those years doing something I enjoy rather than bending myself to fit in to a career that's not for me.
Ideally I'd go back and study CS but that's not an option due to funding unfortunately.
I've heard that banks are very willing to hire graduates as interns even without any programming experience and train them up from people that went that route, but from everything else I've heard you'll be better off elsewhere in every respect. As a junior developer elsewhere you'd hopefully be surrounded by people that can mentor you and you should learn a lot anyway.
As you said I'd build up an OSS portfolio if possible, working on side projects and such when possible as a way to learn and experiment as well as have something to show employers.