Getting a job in software

It took me over a year to get my first software job. Looking back, I think what I could have done to get a job more quickly is to restrict your search to a particular industry, then find out what software they use in that industry, and then learn that software.

For example, if you wanted a job working with financial software, you would look at a job description like this:

https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=dba93096e1d2b7cb&from=native

And then you would see this line:

"At least 4 years of quant/risk software development work experience that leveraged packages such as FINCAD, QuantLib, etc."

If after looking at a lot of job descriptions for financial software jobs, you find they keep mentioning "FINCAD" and "Quantlib", this would tell you to learn FINCAD and Quantlib.

Or perhaps you find that the job descriptions you look at keep mentioning Lucene, in which you should learn Lucene.

I think being familiar with the software they use in a particular industry/company is much, much more valuable to the company than general C++ knowledge, or general Python knowledge, or general Java knowledge.

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have read this thread and would like to thank you for sharing your journey & your insights on how to shorten others hunt for a software job!

This is a very nice post. I came to a similar realization. That’s why I’m doing more Vulkan and Unreal Engine now