u/SlowestTriathlete wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Hold on, I think you need to clarify what you mean by "work experience". Almost everyone in my cohort were career changers (several xyz-engineers, etc), including the non-degree holding person (me) but I had +15 years of white-collar career progression ending in a managerial role
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
That sounds like you had a solid interview experience where they took the time to get to know you and your code, and that's not what people typically do. Phil at Codesmith repeatedly tells residents that "no one looks at your code" in a way to justify the exaggerations.
But I'm specifically talking about SWE work experience and canonical top tier tech roles. There could be tech jobs where you leverage former backgrounds to get a better offer or better fit, **if you have zero SWE experience you are a junior engineer no matter what your title is and recognizing that is important for your career growth and trajectory.**
More importantly, I'm speaking about trends at the level of dozens/hundreds/low thousands of people AND over one's entire career, and not individuals at a point in time. There are always exceptions and one offs and everyone's journey is unique.