How To Get a Full Time Software Job During College (5-Step Roadmap)
I worked full time in data science during my last 2 years of undergrad and I'm pretty sure the process to pull this off is reproducible.
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I worked full time in data science during my last 2 years of undergrad while putting a minimum effective dose of effort into classes. Getting that experience (and building a financial safety net) was a big level-up career-wise.
I’m pretty sure this is reproducible. 5 steps:
Step 1. Learn a lot of foundational math/coding ahead of time. Basically, pre-learn your major.
Step 2. Demonstrate your skills through a handful of interesting projects that you can talk about.
You want to be able to talk about specific problems that you faced and how you overcame them. And the problems should be sophisticated, not stuff that’s made trivial by foundational knowledge (hence step 1).
Ideally, these would include some months-long intern/research projects.
Step 3. Get an internship with a company that’s located near your campus or supports remote work and absolutely knock their socks off.
Everyone knows that doing great as an intern is a backdoor to getting a job when you graduate, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that there is some level of really great work that can get you a job before you graduate.
The best way I can describe that level is by relaying a memory that really stood out to me in my own experience. I interned over the summer, and the month before school started back up, I gave an analytics presentation to some execs including the CEO. He paused me in the middle and exclaimed “More than 3 out of 4 analysts I’ve met in my life could not do what you just did. How old are you, 20? … What, 19?! Jesus.”
When you perform at that level, doors open up for you that everyone else perceives to be solid concrete walls.
(And it’s not just that everyone else “perceives” them to be solid concrete walls – they really ARE solid concrete walls if you don’t have the skills. Skills cause doors to open up for you in places that are solid concrete walls for everybody else.)
Step 4. Ask to keep the internship going full-time into the school year.
They’ll probably be surprised that you want to do this, and they might be skeptical that you can balance the workload, so you frame it as “I’m really enjoying this and my classes are super easy, can I just keep doing what I’ve been doing with you guys? Otherwise I’ll just end up going back to my own projects which aren’t quite as fun/productive.”
Just be chill about it, don’t make it sound like a big deal, and for the love of god DO NOT ask for an official job offer letter or whatever. Your goal is to make it seem like nothing is really changing, the current setup is just continuing as usual.
And when they say “Sure, you can keep working with us if you think you can balance it with your classes, but you have to finish school and you can’t be failing your classes” just say “Awesome, thanks!” and get your ass back to work.
Step 5. Continue kicking ass at your internship during the school year and be present at work whenever possible. Try to make it seem like nothing has really changed in your situation. Just blend in.
After several months of this (i.e., a semester) it’s obvious that you’re handling the situation fine, and by this point you’ve done so much work that you are basically functioning like a full-fledged non-intern employee in terms of workload and responsibilities.
You’re now at a point where you can reasonably ask for an official job title and offer letter if you want, just to put an official stamp on things, but you’re also at a point where it doesn’t really matter.
Follow-Up Questions
Don’t you think you could have benefitted from learning even more math than transitioning to focus on work at that age?
I’m not advocating to skip fundamentals.
My math knowledge was pretty outsized for my age – e.g., my first year courses included senior-level topology my first year and I took some grad courses my second year. I was already at the level of knowledge where mathy people tend to start specializing.
It just came way early for me because I self-studied the fundamentals way ahead of traditional schedule. I self-studied a large portion of MIT OpenCourseWare while still in high school. As a result, this gave me more latitude to operate when I got to university.
When you upskill way ahead of traditional schedule for people your age, doors open up for you in places that are solid concrete walls for everybody else.
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