Currently in my second year studying International Relations – I’d like to become a software engineer but I’m not getting a cs degree so I don’t know how hard it’ll be. Is it possible to pass new grad interviews at Line or Rakuten by self studying cs and programming?
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If you can build a good coding portfolio, show you can do some leetcode problems and answer their interview questions, I don’t see why not.
You can’t change majors or double major? It’s only your second year. Could you take summer classes to make up for lost time?
You should be able to easily change your major at this point. Or maybe pick up some classes as an elective, if you’re not committed, to see if you like it.
The cold hard truth is that you should change your major. Not only so that you have a reasonable of getting a software engineering job, but also because your International Relations degree does not give you any advantage in landing a job at all, other than the fact that it’s a college degree.
While not impossible from my understanding, I’ve been told from multiple companies that they wouldn’t sponsor my work visa with a humanities/BA degree because I didn’t have an IT related degree. Even with IT certifications and years of experience. The government is pretty strict with work visas. I straight up asked if they would hire me if I had a spouse visa and they said they would. So hope that helps you.
I have a BA degree and have been working in Tokyo for the last 5 years in I.T with an engineering visa. When I started I only had 1 years experience in I.T with no I.T qualifications/certs. I had no issues getting the Visa.
That being said like others have mentioned if you can still change your major I definitely recommend it. Not necessarily for the Visa but just for your future career/education 🙂
Hope that helps
Yup, I was engineer manager ring at top Japanese software company, I don’t have degree and I enter as senior engineer . My manager before also didn’t. Actually the people I have worked that are top engineer don’t have cs degree at all. All self learning.
I have a BA in Business and got work in Software no problem. Though, I could sell my Business acumen as an extra incentive over other devs as knowing business can work well with engineering.
A lot of the engineers I know have linguistics degrees.
I have a BA and an MA in International Relations from an elite American university. I work in software, though as a product manager rather than a SWE.
At 35 now, I would easily be 20% richer if I had gotten a CS degree and become a software engineer instead, and then made roughly the same career moves.
Yeah, I got started in America, which helps accelerate salary a lot compared to starting in Japan, but the point stands.
If you want to be a SWE, or if you want to maximize future income, the correct thing to do is to get a CS degree, even if it means delaying graduation.