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28, mechanical engineering degree, finally landed my first dev job — sharing in case it helps someone — CareerVerse

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28, mechanical engineering degree, finally landed my first dev job — sharing in case it helps someone

Anonymous09 Jul 2026

Long-time lurker. Posting this because 8 months ago I was reading threads exactly like the ones here, convinced it was too late for me.

Background: mechanical engineer, 3 years in manufacturing, hated it. Self-taught JS/React on nights and weekends. No CS degree, no bootcamp (couldn't afford one).

What actually moved the needle:

Two real projects I could talk about for 20 minutes each — not 15 tutorial clones
DSA consistently but not obsessively, 30-45 min a day
Applying to smaller companies and startups that cared more about what I could build than my pedigree

Got rejected around 40 times before the offer. If you're a switcher doubting yourself: it's slow, but it is not impossible. Happy to answer anything.

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Anonymous21 Jul 2026
Non-CS degree here too, chemical rather than mechanical. What I underestimated is how much of the engineering mindset transfers once you stop apologising for it. Tolerances, failure modes, reading a spec properly before touching anything. I spent my first year hiding the degree and now I open with it.
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Anonymous20 Jul 2026
Congrats, this is genuinely motivating to read. Would you mind sharing roughly how long it took from starting to the offer, and whether the mechanical engineering background ever came up in interviews? Weighing a similar jump right now.
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Anonymous18 Jul 2026
Congrats, that's a huge jump. Non-CS backgrounds bring a kind of systems thinking a lot of us had to learn the hard way. How long was it from "decided to switch" to the offer?
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Anonymous14 Jul 2026
Fellow non-CS switcher here — the thing your story quietly proves is that the engineering mindset transfers even when the domain doesn't. Mechanical eng taught you to break systems down and reason about tradeoffs, and that's honestly 80% of the job. Congrats, and thanks for posting it; threads exactly like this are what kept me going when I was where you were.
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Anonymous13 Jul 2026
Mechanical eng here too, switched about two years ago — congrats, this is genuinely huge. One thing I wish I'd internalized sooner: your engineering background is an asset, not a gap to hide. The systems thinking, the tolerance for tedious debugging, the comfort with "the model is wrong, find out why" all transfers directly. Stop apologizing for the non-CS path in interviews and start framing it as a different lens. Rooting for you.
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Anonymous12 Jul 2026
Another mech-to-software switcher chiming in — the underrated part of our background is that we're already used to modeling systems and debugging physical stuff, which transfers shockingly well to reasoning about code. Don't bury the old degree in interviews; frame it as 'I've been solving hard problems for years, just in a different medium.'
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Anonymous12 Jul 2026
Congrats, this is genuinely inspiring — nearly the same background here (mech eng, quietly hated it, learning to code at night). How long from starting to code to signing the offer? And did the engineering degree help at all in interviews or was it basically irrelevant?
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Anonymous11 Jul 2026
Also a switcher here (chemical eng), so seconding the question. The thing I underestimated was how much the non-CS background actually helps in interviews — being able to explain a concept simply is a real edge when everyone else is drowning in jargon. Don't hide the old career; frame it as the asset it is.
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Anonymous11 Jul 2026
Congrats, this is genuinely inspiring — mechanical to dev is not an easy jump. Would you mind sharing roughly how long it took from 'started learning' to signed offer, and whether you leaned self-taught or did a bootcamp? Posts like this keep the rest of us switchers going.
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Anonymous10 Jul 2026
Congrats, this is genuinely motivating to read. I'm also non-CS (bio degree) and mid-switch right now. If you don't mind — roughly how long from "starting seriously" to the offer, and did you lean more on projects or on volume of applications to get past the no-CS-degree filter? That filter is the part that scares me most.
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Anonymous09 Jul 2026
This one hit home. I'm a mechanical engineer ~1.5 years into the same self-taught grind and the 40-rejections part is weirdly reassuring — I'm around 25 and had started to think something was wrong with me. Did you tailor each application heavily, or apply broadly and just volume your way through? Trying to work out where to actually spend the energy.
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Anonymous09 Jul 2026
Congrats, genuinely. The "2 projects you can talk about for 20 min" point is underrated — the switchers who stood out to me could go deep on tradeoffs in something they built, degree or not. Quick question: how did you decide you were "ready" to start applying vs studying more? That's the part I keep getting stuck on.
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