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Deleted member 67144 scul
Guest
What you say is largely true but you'd be surprised there's tons of exceptions. I can't speak for other industries, but in the tech industry, companies ironically seem to be more liberal with who they hire to be developers than other industries (SW devs are needed practically everywhere these days). GPA and major aren't as often considered as in other industries. So you'll see tons of non-CS/non-STEM people who went to a "coding boot camp" get hired. I've also seen lots of people who completed BA's in social sciences complete a dozen courses in a Master's mostly involving reading publications (as grad school basically is) and a few very basic undergraduate courses to learn how to code and get hired at top companies despite having no experience, little formal education, and understandably subpar development skills. Then there's people who did neither of these things and frankly it comes down to "who you know", which plays a huge role. As crazy as it sounds, lots of companies and teams are willing to overlook a lack of proper education in the science and theory of CS and proper engineering abilities if you can "code". Race-based hiring practices by hiring managers who tend to be very ethnic in their hiring decisions is also extremely common, but that's another can of worms.
In general, if you can pass nervewracking whiteboard interviews asking you to write some code for some problems and riddles, you're in. PO2 can get interviews, and if he can pass some whiteboard shenanigans decently, he'll most certainly get a job. However, the flip-side is they are seldom easy, and depending on the individuals/teams interviewing you, they can be insanely difficult even with dozens of hours of dedicated preparation. Overall, you'll find them to be harder than interviews for other engineering fields.
Also there's tons of testing, validation, and other work that requires no development skills and they'll pretty much pick up anyone. I work at a major tech corporation and in my first team, I was the only one who had any SW development skills and frankly the only person who had any engineering skills in general, yet everyone on the team had CS degrees. It also meant I had the most work by far.
With all of that said, you typically should study CS if you want to be a software dev, whether it's script kiddie stuff or proper heavy-duty software engineering. It will just make everything a whole lot easier.
PO2, worst case scenario, kick ass at what is a top 10 law school by any measure and come in as a JAG, and honestly I have to commend you on your dedication and resolve especially if you decide to go active duty as lawyers (especially in some of the more lucrative areas) make far too much money for military service to be a practical decision.
