Building a Tech Career Change Community
An inclusive community for all who are looking to break into tech and consider it as an alternative career.
✨Find us on Discord: https://discord.gg/96rkQyC5rX ✨
Hello 👋! I’m currently building a community called Tech Career Change!
This is a community for all those looking to break into tech and considering it as an alternative career.
We are open to all, including: bootcampers, individuals with a second degree in tech, prospective changers, transitioning to any tech role, ui/ux/design, or interested in tech job as an alternative career path. Together, we will level up through events, career advice, and mentorship.
This article is a call for community builders and those that are currently looking to transition to tech. It is also a call for those currently in the process or who have successfully swapped over!
I do encourage checking it out here: https://discord.gg/96rkQyC5rX
Why are you building this?
In 2019, I’ve been at the crossroads where I wasn’t sure if I was going to commit to a second degree or not. There were limited resources available and many individuals looked down on a second degree as an unconventional route. But now, I’ve realized that my journey is no longer an unconventional route. Just a longer path.
I struggled to find community and resources, but at the time, there was no focused and dedicated space for individuals like us — we were scattered across many larger communities in the tech space and left to browse for hours on end on Reddit to find answers.
To try to fill up this gap, I wrote a massive guide on my experience breaking into tech and into the second-degree program (BCS) at UBC.
✨ Transition from biochem to cs
✨ Ultimate guide to the UBC BCS program
After numerous calls helping students that were also in my shoes, the gap in the community still remained.
With this in mind, before the end of the year, Eric Kim (fellow career changer + UBC BCSer) and I decided to embark on an adventure to create a community and fill this gap.
I would love to continue to give back as a proud biochemist turned software engineer career transition.
Community Resources
Our focus is to provide resources and a community dedicated to those interested in transitioning to tech, are in the process, or already have.
We are currently building a robust page of resources for anyone looking / interested to transition to tech!
You can find it on our Tech Career Change Notion Page: https://techcareerchange.notion.site/Tech-Career-Change-bb08c69ef37148ee90af7c0389911d5d
Some highlights would be the following:
- Career Change Programs A career change program comparison table showing a lot of information pertaining to second degree programs in CS. It currently only covers NA but we are working on supporting other regions!
- Early Career Student Programs A curated list of early career student programs targeted towards students that are in their 1st/2nd year of their Bachelor’s degree. As a second-degree student, you are also eligible for these programs.
- Bootcamps Comparison Table A curated list of boot camps in NA targeted towards individuals that are considering taking a boot camp/diploma route. Bootcamps usually support full-time or part-time and are offered as remote or in-person.
- Tech Internships/New Grad Job Search Handbook A compilation of the job search experience, process, and opinions for securing tech internships/co-ops. New grad follows a similar process. Some parts of the process are applicable to non-technical positions.
Numerous resources are in the works and we are excited to continue to support those that also are at the crossroads.
What’s in the works?
We have a variety of goals we are trying to achieve. We always keep our plans transparent through the #under-construction Discord channel if you are a server member!
Now for some sneak peeks:
- Mentor lists where we encourage an active 1:1 culture.
- Professional development events
- A variety of aggregated recommended resources for career change programs, self learning resources, professional growth, bootcamps, and more.
- Incredibly events / panel sessions of alumni / successful career changers.
Interested? Come join us! ✨
We are open to everyone. Our resources have a lot of overlap with other communities, but we are welcome to everyone.
Discord: https://discord.gg/96rkQyC5rX
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techcareerchange/
Tech Career Change Notion: https://techcareerchange.notion.site/Tech-Career-Change-bb08c69ef37148ee90af7c0389911d5d
