Are you or someone you know trying to move into the engineering department from a position that’s unrelated to software engineering at a company?

…I wanted to pursue computer engineering. I’d been at Artsy for a bit less than two years at that point, first as a marketing intern working on SEO and then as a coordinator on the CRM (read: email) team. I’d consistently been working on small technical projects; first doing some work on a tool for SEO optimization for our Editorial team, then building emails with MJML, and a few other bits and bobs. But I didn’t think of it as a serious pursuit.

It was Artsy’s Engineering team that convinced me that programming was something that I both wanted to and could do. Our engineers have always welcomed learners and been happy to answer questions and empower other teams to do technical work. I eventually realized that the parts of my work where I was coding were the parts I enjoyed the most, and that I would likely feel more fulfilled if I made programming my full-time occupation.

(Gosh, that opening sounds like the first line of a pharmaceutical commercial. Sorry about that!)