Very inspiring story, I enjoyed reading your thought process and how you adjusted the goal as you went. More interesting work -> Higher impact & pay -> Big tech in Europe -> Big tech in Europe with comparable pay to US (interesting work implied). Well deserved to be where you are today 🔥
Sometimes i've doubted myself for adjusting my goal (i.e. wondering if i was just lacking discipline), but this story makes me realize that for the right reasons, it can be worth it! Thanks for sharing your journey 🙌
Me - as I believe everyone else in this world - I am not in a position to give advice or tell you what is good or bad.
But there's nothing wrong in changing your mind and adjusting your goals. There is an advantage and a cost associated to it. I'm sure with time you'll find out what works best for you. But don't beat yourself too hard with regards to discipline etc, you need to be your nr.1 fan :)
Pros: young company and young, “fun” people, easy to get leadership role exposure on small projects, variety of tasks and projects so possibility to try out different tech stacks etc, “smaller” projects thus possibility to see and build products end to end.
Cons: many clients weren’t exactly “high performance organisations”, so you could feel that the environment would slow you down or you wouldn’t have many opportunities for learning, projects are usually not as technical and large scale as in big techs (you don’t get exposed to a similar level of complexity), sometimes you also have to take on non-technical type of work (in case the clients problem is more about project management etc than actually about executing on a technical roadmap).
Really liked the last part. If you are carrer oriented making your way in Europe is not much different than in any other country, you have to do the same, to come up with a plan, execute it and move forward.
I enjoyed reading this article. Thanks for detailing your experience in a very clear manner. I am in a similar boat trying to navigate the next part of my career. I have a masters in Energy systems but i've been looking for a way to cross into tech. I started out with data analytics course as i think if i combine data with my domain knowledge of energy i could be on top of the pile, but i'm worried there's more oppourtunities on the software engineering side of tech so i might be wasting time. I'll be happy to hear your thoughts on this. Also if you can share links to communities of learners like me that would be helpful to keep the motivation going!
Learning data engineering and analytics and combining it with an energy systems background can be effective. Check out Climeworks: it's a swiss company in the climate tech field and they often hire people with some IT background.
If you want to switch to software engineering, it could be worth it doing a more radical change right away and learning some web development.
If I were you, I would probably try to dive deep in data engineering. Which is close enough to regular backend software engineering and also leverageable if you want a software/data position in climate tech companies.
Unfortunately, I don't know any community of learners that I can recommend. Although I'm sure there are many out there. You could check leetcode.com or teamblind.com.
In the near future I plan to launch a paid coaching service that will have a community aspect to it as well.
good article Nicola. i am 32 and just like you, i had not done a computer science bachelors degree, but i have done a Masters in computer science and graduated in 2015, both in UK. Without a computer science bachelors degree, I really had to go extra mile to master leetcode questions and data structure questions. also you feel less enjoyable as you are learning alone rather than learning with others in university (where passionate tech savy students exchange ideas). nevertheless, I was accepted into a graduate program in 2016 in an investment bank in London, it seems good but the first few years being a junior and mid-level dev, recruiters ghost me, and i need to manually apply to jobs myself filling out multiple questions like " what is your greatest achievement" in investment banking job applications. And then there were multiple rounds of interviews and case studies which were gruesome. Brexit did help UK programmers a bit as many European programmers left the UK before/during covid so nowadays less competition here in the UK, but Brexit also prevented British people to easily apply for jobs in Switzerland. And I agree with your approach of picking the right role role for yourself where you can make some business impact or learn new skills, because although i was a Java dev in investment bank, there are lots of times i was asked to do some non-dev work like pushing SQL scripts to onboard clients or spend way more time talking to stakeholders because theres a lack of BA/PM resource to do the requirement gathering. what this results is you will slowly de-skill yourself and decrease your chances getting next job when asked "what is the impactful thing you did in your current/last job", and when you work on non-dev work, the business would value you less because you are expected to be correct 99% of the time, whereas cool/greenfield projects theres more room for error during initial phases and you will still get valued. anyway, good stuff here and keep posting more!
I knew some German both when I got my first Swiss job in 2018 and when I got my other one in 2021. But it was never required by the job, I think in both cases I did the entire interview process in English and just had a quick chat in German at some point with one of the people in the company when asked about my German. Probably it was treated as a "nice to have". For the big tech jobs, it plays zero role unless you're in some customer facing/consulting role.
Very inspiring story, I enjoyed reading your thought process and how you adjusted the goal as you went. More interesting work -> Higher impact & pay -> Big tech in Europe -> Big tech in Europe with comparable pay to US (interesting work implied). Well deserved to be where you are today 🔥
Sometimes i've doubted myself for adjusting my goal (i.e. wondering if i was just lacking discipline), but this story makes me realize that for the right reasons, it can be worth it! Thanks for sharing your journey 🙌
Thanks man!
Me - as I believe everyone else in this world - I am not in a position to give advice or tell you what is good or bad.
But there's nothing wrong in changing your mind and adjusting your goals. There is an advantage and a cost associated to it. I'm sure with time you'll find out what works best for you. But don't beat yourself too hard with regards to discipline etc, you need to be your nr.1 fan :)
Cool article. Keep up the good job.
How was your consulting shop experience?
Thanks Dan!
My consulting experience was alright.
Pros: young company and young, “fun” people, easy to get leadership role exposure on small projects, variety of tasks and projects so possibility to try out different tech stacks etc, “smaller” projects thus possibility to see and build products end to end.
Cons: many clients weren’t exactly “high performance organisations”, so you could feel that the environment would slow you down or you wouldn’t have many opportunities for learning, projects are usually not as technical and large scale as in big techs (you don’t get exposed to a similar level of complexity), sometimes you also have to take on non-technical type of work (in case the clients problem is more about project management etc than actually about executing on a technical roadmap).
Really liked the last part. If you are carrer oriented making your way in Europe is not much different than in any other country, you have to do the same, to come up with a plan, execute it and move forward.
Yes. If you are interested, I talk a bit more on how to balance having a strategy while being flexible as a Software Engineer building their career, in this other newsletter article -> https://theeuropeanengineer.substack.com/p/3-tips-for-early-career-software
I enjoyed reading this article. Thanks for detailing your experience in a very clear manner. I am in a similar boat trying to navigate the next part of my career. I have a masters in Energy systems but i've been looking for a way to cross into tech. I started out with data analytics course as i think if i combine data with my domain knowledge of energy i could be on top of the pile, but i'm worried there's more oppourtunities on the software engineering side of tech so i might be wasting time. I'll be happy to hear your thoughts on this. Also if you can share links to communities of learners like me that would be helpful to keep the motivation going!
Hi there!
Learning data engineering and analytics and combining it with an energy systems background can be effective. Check out Climeworks: it's a swiss company in the climate tech field and they often hire people with some IT background.
If you want to switch to software engineering, it could be worth it doing a more radical change right away and learning some web development.
If I were you, I would probably try to dive deep in data engineering. Which is close enough to regular backend software engineering and also leverageable if you want a software/data position in climate tech companies.
Unfortunately, I don't know any community of learners that I can recommend. Although I'm sure there are many out there. You could check leetcode.com or teamblind.com.
In the near future I plan to launch a paid coaching service that will have a community aspect to it as well.
Good luck!
good article Nicola. i am 32 and just like you, i had not done a computer science bachelors degree, but i have done a Masters in computer science and graduated in 2015, both in UK. Without a computer science bachelors degree, I really had to go extra mile to master leetcode questions and data structure questions. also you feel less enjoyable as you are learning alone rather than learning with others in university (where passionate tech savy students exchange ideas). nevertheless, I was accepted into a graduate program in 2016 in an investment bank in London, it seems good but the first few years being a junior and mid-level dev, recruiters ghost me, and i need to manually apply to jobs myself filling out multiple questions like " what is your greatest achievement" in investment banking job applications. And then there were multiple rounds of interviews and case studies which were gruesome. Brexit did help UK programmers a bit as many European programmers left the UK before/during covid so nowadays less competition here in the UK, but Brexit also prevented British people to easily apply for jobs in Switzerland. And I agree with your approach of picking the right role role for yourself where you can make some business impact or learn new skills, because although i was a Java dev in investment bank, there are lots of times i was asked to do some non-dev work like pushing SQL scripts to onboard clients or spend way more time talking to stakeholders because theres a lack of BA/PM resource to do the requirement gathering. what this results is you will slowly de-skill yourself and decrease your chances getting next job when asked "what is the impactful thing you did in your current/last job", and when you work on non-dev work, the business would value you less because you are expected to be correct 99% of the time, whereas cool/greenfield projects theres more room for error during initial phases and you will still get valued. anyway, good stuff here and keep posting more!
Well done Justin! I know how it can be challenging to start out without a bachelor in CS.
About leveraging suboptimal jobs, you might like article here https://theeuropeanengineer.substack.com/p/3-tips-for-early-career-software where I share a few thoughts about it.
But how was your knowledge of German when you decided to go to Zurich? How did the language influence your path
I knew some German both when I got my first Swiss job in 2018 and when I got my other one in 2021. But it was never required by the job, I think in both cases I did the entire interview process in English and just had a quick chat in German at some point with one of the people in the company when asked about my German. Probably it was treated as a "nice to have". For the big tech jobs, it plays zero role unless you're in some customer facing/consulting role.