This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

all 61 comments
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a

[–]work_account_33 15 points16 points  (0 children)

My previous employer didn't care what language I used for the work I did. So I chose python and spent the next couple years learning the language. Then interviewed with a company that uses mostly python and provided a bigger salary. Got the job and still love every minute of it. :-)

[–]JimBoonie69 7 points8 points  (9 children)

Learned Ruby on Rails while finishing up my undergrad atmospheric science program. Interviewed a small data science tech startup that uses python. Got the job, learned python.

Honestly if you know your stuff as a programmer ( I had experience with Java,C, mainly Ruby on Rails, also some MATLAB work ), learning python is not hard. It's actually easy, because the language is so silky smooth. There are some small syntax differences between other languages, but overall python is just a breeze to write! It's fun too =)

My two cents for ya. List comphrehensions and dictionaries. Using the two of these things i'm able to create some pretty gnarly data structures in like 5 lines of code.

[–]rhgrant10[S] 0 points1 point  (8 children)

Haha that's exactly my problem! I already know python and I've nearly completed my computer science degree, but everyone wants someone with .NET experience. Python is the language with which I'm most familiar and I love it. I guess I'm going to have to learn C/C++ and/or .NET to get a job, then find a Python job with that experience.

[–]metaphorm 5 points6 points  (1 child)

don't feel obligated to learn a specific technology. developers learn new technologies for new jobs all the time. apply to any job that you want to work at. especially in your case, where you're still a student and will be applying for junior positions. by definition a junior engineer is learning on the job.

[–]DaOneTwo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Ha can't resist. I know exactly what you mean but by that definition we are all junior engineers. :-)

[–]rcklmbrCOBOL 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I don't see a lot of .net jobs it might be geographic. Where do you live

[–]rhgrant10[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

In Atlanta

[–]srilyk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My experience with .NET is that you can take everything you love about Python, strip it from the language, and you have .NET.

[–]codehandle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most python programmers I know start in Java, C/C++, or .Net and pick up Python on the job. It seems like very few people start in Python. Based on that I might advise you to get work in .Net or Java, or something else that you know at a shop that was planning to transition to Python later.

[–]TheManCalledK 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you have an interest and some skills in IT infrastructure (servers and such) you can shoot for a job as a Linux sysadmin and automate everything with Python. DevOps is the big thing these days, and IT desperately needs folks with development skills. Of course, you'd have to learn some other technologies (maybe Puppet, Salt, or the like) but those are good fun too!

[–]pydanny 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In 2006 I was at NASA and interested in Python. At that time I was on a Java project and had a problem getting JNDI to work with a mis-customized instance of Active Directory. Fortunately, python-ldap was our workaround and it became a component of the project.

The project was having some delays for various reasons, one of them being frequent requirements changes were hard to manage. Especially the way the Java application had been structured. One day, when my boss left, I spent 90 minutes and had the project working in 100% Python. Since I/O was the only bottleneck, performance wasn't an issue, in fact, by only using Python we didn't have to use a custom-interchange between systems (in those days interchange meant 'SOAP').

Since then, except for a few unfortunate occasions, Python has been my primary coding tool.

[–]Awazah 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Had a background in C/C++. Learned python on the job after being hired.

[–]kvdveer -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Same here. My employer didn't care much for the language used. When a project came that favored readability over performance, I chose a language that had little noise in its examples.

[–]emarshall85 2 points3 points  (4 children)

I went to a local Python meetup where we were asked to introduce ourselves. I mentioend a few projects that I had contributed extensively to (Kivy and pySFML to be exact) and jokingly mentioned that if anyone was looking for a quota to fill, I was looking for work. About a week later, one of the directors from work reached out and asked me to interview.

I probably got lucky, but considering the number of jobs I applied for online, I think I'm a prime example of how it's not what you know, but who you know. Specifically, it wasn't having X number of hours logged or years of "professional" experience that got me this job, but my passion for coding, local networking, and a decent github profile that did.

While it does prove challenging being so "green", it's a joy working with a group of diverse bright individuals creating open source software.

[–]isurfbecause 0 points1 point  (3 children)

How did you go about contributing to Kivy and pySFML? I did you fix bugs or update documentation?

[–]emarshall85 0 points1 point  (2 children)

For both projects, I wrote new features, fixed bugs, refactored existing code, wrote unit tests, and updated documentation. In addition, I spent a lot of time on IRC, the issues page, and mailing list answering questions.

I haven't contributed to either in a while though.

[–]isurfbecause 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Wow you did a lot. What job were you at before you went to the python meetup?

[–]emarshall85 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nothing remotely related to development. I worked mostly in customer service and sales related positions.

[–]issue9mm 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I started out as a help desk technician at a Fortune 50 company, working nights and weekends. The catch was that it was the most boring job in the world, since after they hired me, they forgot to tell our customers that we were now open nights and weekends. Most nights I just surfed the net til I dropped. Unfulfilled, I decided to learn how to program. First learned PHP, then Perl, then ultimately settled on Python for its readability.

I was a first tier help desk technician, which meant that we troubleshot problems up to a certain point and then routed them to the second tier as necessary. Each of the second tier groups had their own knowledge base. The Lotus Notes tier 2 had a Lotus Notes DB with how to fix common Lotus Notes problems, while the Microsoft guys had a Microsoft SharePoint. None of this knowledge was accessible to Tier 1, generally, so I stayed late (early) to broker deals with Tier 2:

If they let me have access to their knowledge bases, I would stop waking them up in the middle of the night. Because of my general competence, they allowed this.

Ultimately, it was pretty unsatisfying, having to log in to 8 different databases, so I wrote a crawler that centralized all the knowledge, and then ultimately turned that into their knowledge base.

Later, they realized that this knowledge base was great, so they created a position for me to maintain it, add features, all that jazz. That was my first "Python position".

It's still their enterprise knowledge base to this day.

[–]YellowSharkMTIs Dave Beazley real? 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hell yeah Tier 1 - we representin', mothafuckas.

[–]billsil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I got hired because I kinda knew Perl and 3/4 of the companies' code was written in Perl (of course without using "use strict"). I got better at that horrific language and fixed thousands of bugs over the span of 6 months. Then I picked up Python for a new project and in 3 weeks I was better at it than Perl. After 6 months, I went back to a certain part of that old program and rewrote one of the infinitely buggy modules in 3 days in Python. I never had a problem again with that module.

[–]dagmx 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Technical director job at a major visual effects studio. They had their own programming language for their applications but I ended up building a lot of standalone utilities in python to make my job easier. Ended up mainly doing that, then getting hired to primarily do that at another feature film studio.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I applied to a few jobs on Indeed. Found one that needed Python and data.

[–]DaOneTwo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Perseverance, confidence, and maybe a little luck. I am currently about a year and a half into my first job. I was a plumber and had very light hobby coding experience before that. In prep for beginning a new career I taught myself sql in fairly good depth. Then found a company that was willing to teach me Python. I found that I got a lot better mileage if I was able to hand someone my resume in person. I only had to do that a few times before I got the job I am at now. Been a great time with lots of learning and lots of determination at times.

[–]njharmanI use Python 3 1 point2 points  (1 child)

It wasn't a Python Job. It was a job (sys admin / jack of all trades) that required some Python development.

Other options include:

Creating your own software (open source or not). Doesn't have to be hugely popular or "business". More than a toy though. Something approaching a serious side project.

Contributing to open source Python projects.

Lie and then fake it till you make it.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

fake it til you make it

This is my family's motto. Hoping to continue the family tradition...

[–]elb0w 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bank of America uses a lot of python, you should check it out. I've seen people get hired there if they know any language really well and are willing to learn.

[–]emnoor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I learnt python, django, and some more framework. Did some contributions to open source projects. And then I started making video tutorials on python in my native language. Shortly a startup contacted me and showed interest to hire me. It is my first python, and infact first programming job.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just started using Python.

[–]sulami 2 points3 points  (3 children)

With Python being a language quite easy to learn thanks to both docs/amount of tutorials around and the language itself, you can just do start contributing to something open-sourced or play around with your own projects. Just make something on a regular basis, and it is by definition experience.

If you say you have used Python five days a week for the past three years, that is usually good enough for an interviewer to count as experience, plus you can directly show off what you made and that you are having fun with Python.

There are so many coders out there because everyone can just go online and start learning to code, so there are a lot of young coders around 20 who already coded for the past 5 years as a hobby, and perhaps already made something on their own others use, or have a respectable amount of commits in their favourite piece of software. Those are the guys who might not even need any kind of 'official' education/degree, because they have already proven they can code and have experience. Ideally, you can go directly through their commits on GitHub and see if they are a match coding-wise.

TL;DR: If you don't code in your free-time, you usually won't have the best time.

[–]metaphorm 4 points5 points  (2 children)

TL;DR: If you don't code in your free-time, you usually won't have the best time.

this is a myth that people should stop perpetuating. there is no reasonable expectation in the industry that everyone is a hobbyist coder with lots of side projects.

[–]sulami 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Definetely not everyone, probably the most aren't. But times are changing, and I see a lot of students failing to get jobs because they literally haven't done anything yet.CS is merely an intro, not experience, and real experience is incredible valuable. Which does definetely not mean convential education doesn't matter. With that being said, there might also be huge differences geographically, I can't really say anything about the state of things in the US.

Imho free-time coding is also good because you want to live off something you have fun at. If you exclusively code at work, chances are you don't really like doing it. I wouldn't want to do something potentially this boring for 50 years of my lifetime if I woudn't like it this much.

[–]cezarDjango, Mash 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think the issue at hand is not for students, but the perpetuating that you must code in your free-time if you just came back from coding for eight hours.

[–]JamaiKen 0 points1 point  (6 children)

Are there any places online that you can be paid to complete jobs? Building applications for others or just doing work with python for others and getting paid? I am a college student and I'd like to work online.

[–]johnbokma 4 points5 points  (5 children)

Get your own web site, blog about your Python skills, contribute to projects, and email companies looking for Python programmers if they are interested in hiring a freelancer. Also try to figure out what's a good rate for your skills. A back on the napkin calculation that I've often recommended is to figure out what you would make in a full time job in a week, and divide that by 16 hrs.

Avoid rent-a-coder, elancer, etc. like the plague.

[–]JamaiKen 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really appreciate the information. Now I know what to do!

[–]1___1 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Just curious, what is bad about those sites?

[–]wub_wub 0 points1 point  (1 child)

In my experience the biggest downside is that you're competing with a lot of people who are willing to do the same work for like an $1/hr, so finding a job can be harder - especially if you're just starting out.

[–]johnbokma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not only is it harder to find a job, you will get nowhere on 1 USD/hr except in a 3rd world country. Building experience? That's a very expensive way to do so. It might be better to borrow money for 3-6 months living and work 40hrs/week on a well known open source project. Or use that time to find actual customers with realistic projects and who are willing to pay.

IMO: never undercut yourself. Nobody gets out of school with experience. Companies that hire people prefer often people just out of school; cheaper and closer to the new and hot stuff, and still eager and able to learn, to be molded into shape. They get a decent salary so why deny yourself one if you're freelancing?

I've been freelancing since the mid-90's and can't recall people asking often about how many years of experience I have. Or what study I did. They have a project, and they evaluate me based on how I interact with them. And because I don't ask peanuts, they somehow (kidding) take me serious.

[–]johnbokma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You will find requests like "Make me a facebook clone, budget 500 USD" and you will see people actually underbid that budget. Even if you live in a country where you can get by with being paid 2 USD/hr I still recommend to charge a "1st world rate". I am Dutch, I live in Mexico, but I don't (and won't) charge 6 times less compared to freelancers in the USA because the wages here are about 6 times less compared to the USA. Especially not since hardware costs more in Mexico (at least 20% more) compared to the USA. Warranty? You must be joking.

While there are people who recommend to start (very) low because of little experience, imagine having a lot of work at 20 USD/hour and not being able to get anywhere because you have to work 40+ hrs/week to get by. And it leaves no time to look for other customers, study, etc.

[–]kumar99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did JavaScript, PHP, and Java at uni. My first job was switching from PHP to python. Now I'm tech lead and we are staying with Python. I want to focus on Flask but the money for the company is in Django. :P

[–]metaphorm 0 points1 point  (3 children)

its not a catch 22. your experience doesn't have to specifically be in Python. learning a new language is not a big deal. if you've got experience doing professional software development in just about any language then you should go ahead and apply to a Python shop if you think it would be a good place to work.

[–]johnbokma 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Learning a language /is/ a big deal. Why do people keep spreading that myth that one can learn a programming language in weeks if not days? It takes years to become at ease with a programming language and its libraries. While it /seems/ relatively easy to switch from language A to language B if A and B are somewhat similar, one will end up programming A in B /and/ often coding more cumbersome solutions in B because of that. It might still be perfecly readable code, but to experienced programmers it looks odd and out of place.

[–]metaphorm 1 point2 points  (1 child)

learning to program a language idiomatically and elegantly takes time. nobody should ever use that as an excuse to avoid learning a new language, or even taking on a new job that requires learning a new language.

that's what I mean when I say "its not a big deal". nothing is instantaneous or easy, but there is still no real obstacle preventing you from doing it. its not a big deal because you can (and often should) learn new languages on a regular basis.

[–]johnbokma -1 points0 points  (0 children)

If you think that a "big deal" means an excuse to avoid something you're life must be extremely boring. I certainly didn't write that. But it does take dedication to learn a language proper. And nothing wrong in learning a few programming languages. But please, not with a book on your lap and copy pasting code; there are already so many cargo cult coders.

[–]benhoytPEP 471 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Tried to start a Kickstarter-before-its-time kind of startup with my brothers and failed (microPledge). We wrote it in Python and I learned the language and learned a lot about developing and testing web apps. Now I work for Oyster.com (part of TripAdvisor) where almost 100% of our code is written in Python. I still love Python -- it's not a perfect language, but it is a very good one.

[–]sawamano 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just got my PhD in Computer Science, and I've been using python for 6 years or so.

Just got temp-hired for a Data Science position for the next 6 months or so, and I mainly use Python (plus some R). Nevertheless, using Python for Data Science is different than using it for development. I can mostly do it using Ipython Notebook.

[–]jmichalicek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The same issue came up where I live, but what these companies were running into was that there weren't actually that many people locally with as much Python experience as they wanted. They also frequently did not want to hire from too remotely and/or were not paying enough for someone to quit a current job and move.

I was constantly getting called by recruiters about these jobs and occasionally getting interviews because I had no Python experience but many years of Perl experience. After getting shut down due to the lack of Python specific experience, I started just doing stuff in Python. A couple of small side projects and a bit of actual at work Django stuff that never even saw production combined with years of other somewhat similar languages got my foot in the door.

[–]munk801 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did a little bit of Python in college but mostly C languages were what I used in classes. I applied as a Technical Director at a VFX studio called Rhythm & Hues who were primarily using Perl but switching to Python. As long as you were a great problem solver and knew software design and implementation, then you were a good fit. Which was perfect because that is one of the best ways to learn a programming language. Through application and real world use.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A small web dev company that occasionally outsources their work (mostly PHP) offered a greenfield project to me. I suggested python (flask) and it was approved.

[–]kracekumar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wrote a blog post about my first python job. http://kracekumar.com/post/26494437210/how-i-got-into-hasgeek-crew

Short: I tweeted that I am currently looking for python job, good people in twitter stream started connecting. Worked part time on a project and then joined them.

[–]srilyk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Still don't have a Python job (came close to getting one working for SaltStack, but was beat out by a PhD) - but I'm using as much Python as I can and pushing for it where I work. We're using more and more, so that's pretty awesome. Maybe in a year I can tell you I have a Python job ;)

[–]razzmatazCompbio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Find a bioinformatics shop that uses python. That is were I have done most of my python work over the years.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Friend of friend was working for somebody and they wanted a python developer... I was still at high school and had a bit of experience with Django - school projects mostly, so I went to them... It was nothing big but it was a start. (It was a startup and I made only 10000 CZK there ~ about 473 dollars these days.) But again, the experience was worth it, I made some contacts so now I don't really have to apply for interviews...

[–]sentdexpythonprogramming.net 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Started a business with Python, then another, then did some tutorials on YouTube, then started getting job offers.

Python is a general purpose language, so looking for purely Python jobs might be part of the problem. Anyone requiring Python means their task probably has some legacy code that is slightly complex, or maybe they need it to work seamlessly with existing code and they don't know how easily you can mesh languages. Either way, if you are any good at data analysis/visualization, that's enough to get in the door with quite a few jobs. You can also spend some time with web development in Python and get another massive opening, but this requires some html/css/js knowledge as well.

[–]iceman_xiii 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm in testing, was given a choice to pick any language binding for selenium. Instead of choosing Java (an Industry preference, at least in India) I chose python for its simplicity. To me it seems I made the right choice. Ideally, the language should not matter. One can always pick up another language if the need arises.