Freshers' guide to becoming a Software Engineer (without a CS degree)

In this article I want to talk about how a non-CS engineer can prepare for a software engineering role, along with the must-do CS topics for interviews. I made this switch myself: I'm an electronics engineer from VIT Vellore who moved into software.

Why become a software engineer?

• You enjoy problem-solving, logical thinking, and coding.
• You want to contribute to software used by millions.
• There's more scope than almost any other field, if you do it right. The software industry is booming, and homegrown tech startups keep creating opportunities for engineers.

What it takes

Many want to become good software engineers, but only a few succeed, because it demands:

• Constantly upskilling yourself and learning new tech.
• Developing logical thinking and a problem-solving attitude.
• Solid data structures and algorithms knowledge, which is the must-have to crack interviews, the gateway to the industry.

Which CS subjects to cover

Data structures and algorithms. Arrays, maps, sets, trees, graphs, and dynamic programming. GeeksforGeeks and LeetCode are great for practice, and "Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy" by Narasimha Karumanchi is a solid book.

Database management systems. I learned to write SQL on the job, but you're expected to know joins, SQL queries, and indexing. Practice with LeetCode's database problems.

Operating systems. Concurrency, threads and processes, race conditions, deadlocks, semaphores, and scheduling algorithms. Galvin's "Operating System Principles" is the classic reference.

High-level design. Gaurav Sen's system design videos and "Grokking the System Design Interview" are good starting points.

Must-do coding questions

A few interviewer favourites worth mastering:

• Detect and remove a loop in a linked list
• Number of islands, and maximum sum path in a matrix
• Find a triplet that sums to a value, and 4Sum
• Stock buy and sell, and house robber
• Trapping rain water, and container with most water
• Search in a rotated sorted array, and jump game
• Edit distance, and climbing stairs
• Lowest common ancestor and zigzag level-order traversal of a binary tree

There's no shortcut to interview preparation. As a non-CS engineer you have to bring yourself on par with CS engineers applying for the same role, so invest the time. Beyond this list, solve many more problems so you can find optimized solutions to unseen questions during interviews.

I may have missed some important topics; feel free to suggest resources and I'll happily update this. I'm still a newbie at tech blogging and would love your feedback.