Can I ask how you got started in the field? I actually began my career in Accounting (my undergrad is in it), and still find the world of finance pretty interesting. Somewhere along the line I ended up in Engineering and have been a Software Dev ever since. But I do still think about getting into trading at some point, but not sure how to transition.

I spent about 2 years reading in my spare time, learning, trying to understand the world and markets in general. All the while applying for jobs. You end up getting a good feel for the job market, what you're actually lacking, what people are actually looking for.

I would have properly applied for every job that appeared in the country over that time.

Surprisingly a lot of people enter the field laterally, not everyone goes through the investment banking angle.

Edit to my own thread - I actually did go back to college for a Master's in Software Engineering. It was neither quick nor easy for me, but in the end I did get a degree and have had a pretty successful career for some years now. However, I agree with all the other comments that a degree isn't necessarily required and sometimes wonder if it was even worth the effort.

Malcolm Gladwell's much contested principle that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice can make anyone world-class in a field, aside.

Software engineering is incredibly high in demand, there are countless free resources and courses available online, and there are a lot of people out there with the capacity to teach themselves. Software engineering is probably the single most enabling thing one could teach themselves in today's world.

There are people who learned how to code, tossed an app in the App Store and made millions. Or someone who started a wordpress blog, dabbled in some customization and discovered a passion for writing code that they never knew existed. It's like teaching yourself how to read, it enables you to learn and understand more.

It's probably one of the few professions where Malcolm Gladwell's contentious principle holds true. Do it religiously for 5-6 years and absorb everything you learn like a sponge, and you are probably more of an expert in your field than someone graduating from a University because you're on the cutting edge whereas they're just figuring out where they fit into the picture.

You know, not everyone needs to do a degree to be good in a field.

There is such thing as a traineeship. Yes, they lose out on a lot of the concepts and focused study, but I'd take sharp trainee over a hand pressed graduate any day.

Universities have a vested self interest in controlling who can join a profession, they would prefer it if every worker everywhere needed a degree. Just look at the slow assimilation of vocational studies into uni courses (stuff like wine making, nursing, etc.)

It is needed in some cases, you want people to be properly educated, but that's only when the tuition is necessary for that education.

Engineering (software) probably doesn't for the most part, and I think most people resent the hoops they have to jump through because a university wants to stay relevant, hence the down votes.

Let me guess, you're Canadian and your next post is going to be how without that ring or whatever you're not real engineer rollseyes.

Ha. When my career started I was one of the first in the office with a relevant degree. Everyone else had started as an accountant. Which, if you think about the evolution of business computing, makes perfect sense.

Tangentially, presumably for the same reasons, both genders were evenly represented.

Condescending? Please explain why you see it like that.

When you go to a doctor, you expect that they completed training and are certified to practice medicine. It is the same for the engineering profession. Would you want to work in a high rise building that was designed and built some self-titled engineers who have never been appropriately trained?

> It is the same for the engineering profession.

In some countries it is that way. I know Canada is very strict about who can be called an engineer.

In the US, it is not that way. AFAIK, there's no legal definition of an engineer, and anybody can call themselves an engineer.

That's incorrect. In the US, you take the Engineer In Training (EIT) exam when you graduate university, then require 4 years of industry experience before you can sit the PE (Professional Engineer) exam. If you pass that, you can call yourself an Engineer.

But that's only for actual Engineering disciplines. We in software don't need to take an "Engineer" test for the same reason we don't need to take a "Rock Star" test or "Ninja" test. We use the title as a courtesy, not an indication of qualification.

> In the US, you take the Engineer In Training (EIT) exam when you graduate university, then require 4 years of industry experience before you can sit the PE (Professional Engineer) exam. If you pass that, you can call yourself an Engineer.

I believe you that this is the requirement for some fields of engineering. However, there are thousands of people reading HN with the job title 'software engineer' who did not take those exams.

What would you call someone who's self-taught and mentored in the typical engineering practices (construction, repairs, engines, etc)?

Why would some national laws about certifications prevent you from referring to such a person as an engineer?

For four years, my business cards read "engineering". As in, does engineering work but cannot sign off on documents and thus is not an Engineer.

I left for software before sitting the PE, so they'd read the same were I to return to doing Mechanical Engineering work.

But of course it's silly to stand on principal on such things, so I've never taken offense to anybody calling themselves whatever they like. If the janitor can be an engineer, certainly anybody else can too.

I imagine Architects feel the same way. And Cardiologists will as well, when we start appropriating their title.

You don't need a PE to call yourself an "engineer". Every working engineer calls himself an "engineer" on his resume. What you people are forgetting is the Industrial Exemption. Companies are allowed to call their employees engineers and use that word in their job titles because of the exemption.

The PE thing really only applies to stuff like civil engineering projects.

Well there are certifications and licenses for civil engineers. But not other forms of engineering, and 'engineer', unqualified, is not a protected word. In fact for the most part we don't really have protected words (1st amendment and all that).

"Doctor", "Professor", "Judge", etc.

I can call myself any of those things without getting into legal trouble. If the context is that I misrepresent myself to have credentials I do not, that could be a crime yes. But saying I'm a doctor, professor, or even judge doesn't automatically get me in trouble as it would in other countries.

Interesting. I actually had the opposite experience. I majored in Economics and worked in commercial banking for a number of years, then moved to Chicago and took a job at a proprietary trading firm, mostly trading Grain contracts intra-exchange. It was incredibly fun, extremely lucrative, but also pretty stressful. That being said, it was great trading from 9:30 am to 1:15 PM, then calling it a day, heading to a ball game, taking in sun. Then of course, 2009 came along, I and a bunch of my peers were laid off by 2010, some of us (including myself) were actually profitable on the year. The firm as a whole really took it on the chin, and a few years later I found out they closed shop. Probably some errant trades in Treasuries or Eurodollars.

In any case, I'd already moved on. I started dabbling in web development in 2008, but by 2010 the Chicago startup scene was taking hold. I got involved, taught myself how to code mostly in Ruby. I had learned QBasic and VBA when I was a kid, and plenty of Matlab at the trading firm, so you could say I had some knowledge, but nothing career worthy at the time. I did the Michael Hartl tutorial for Rails. Started working on an overly ambitious startup idea that went no where. At some point I stopped applying for trading jobs. It occurred to me that I've never been so passionate about anything in my life. I could spend 24 hours straight trying to solve a problem like it was some kind of puzzle that needed to be solved. I redid my resume and quickly went from getting 1-2 hits on my resume a week for trading, to 6-7 hits a day for programming. Ruby on Rails had taken off and demand was soaring. I took a bunch of contract jobs, making $40 an hour. I still remember reporting that I worked on something for 4 hours even though it really took me 12 hours or more. I faked it until I made it. And it worked. Now, I know some 6-7 different languages quite well, and I'm respected by all of my peers.

The thrill of solving a problem still hasn't gotten old for me. Maybe some of the juvenile bro-ish culture has, but the challenges are getting more and more exciting by the day. I'm experimenting with home automation and AWS lambda on my free time, dabbling in hardware.

Now, 6+ years later I have the title of Senior Software Engineer. I've been a lead, I've mentored other developers. I work from home, have the flexibility to live and travel anywhere I please. I couldn't ask for a better career. I've made it a point to learn as much about all the little things that graduate students like to lord over us non CS wielding engineers' heads. I can hold my own and I'm proud of the choices and dumb luck that got me here. To me it is an incredibly rewarding and creative endeavor and I'm still as curious to learn as I was when I started some 6-7 years ago.

Are you still contracting or working full-time?

I work full-time right now, but my dream is to have total geographic flexibility like you.

I work full-time for adhocteam.us, a government contractor. I'm active on vets.gov and we're hiring. Tag me on something you're proud of on Github and I'll take a peak, I'm saneshark on there too.

That's really cool. Could you describe what work in equities is? What's a day-to-day like?

Buying and selling shares of companies, I work in a team of 10 and we manage roughly $10b (equivalent in USD).

Every day we will discuss new developments and how they affect our valuations for these businesses. These decisions are then factored into a portfolio model, which is then implemented by the dealer.

All in all, you have a lot of freedom, you aren't accountable for your time. I could be gone for the week and nobody would bat an eyelid, but the work is honestly so interesting you wouldn't squander your time like that.

You make it sound rather easy here. Can you speak to the sources of stress and the baseline knowledge required to the job?

Did you have to get a degree to do this?