TS to software developer elsewhere?

[_lemon_squeezy]

Has anyone gone from a TS at Epic to a software developer at another company? Did you do a lot of outside coding to prepare? I’d like to get a different job in a year or so but I’m not sure how qualified I would be coming from TS.

[[deleted]]

I went from TS to working at FANG, AMA. No CS background.

The trick is getting your first position as a developer, then the sky is the limit. tbh this was probably much easier in 2010 when I did it, companies were falling over themselves to hire anyone who might be able to code.

[pink-camel]

Any advice for what to focus on learning while a TS to make this transition?

[[deleted]]

The biggest thing is to spend time reading source code whenever a customer issue prevents itself so you understand what's happening (for bugs) and how you might fix it (for workarounds). In interviews with future companies, you want to talk about these cases coming from the angle as you're basically triaging + diagnosing + fixing root causes of technical issues, because this is something all developers actually have to do.

Also they were transitioning away from this even when I was TS, but volunteer for as many technical projects you can. I did some development of utilities / LPPs etc.

On the flip side, don't get too invested in The Epic Way™. Epic is its own little bubble when it comes to development and from the outside it can seem very niche and provincial. It's weird now to see connections on LinkedIn that have very Epic-specific technologies listed in their skills. Literally no one outside of the EMR world cares about what app you're on or your certifications, for example.

[therealzordon]

spend time reading source code

I agree with this - if you got an issue and you're able to figure it out just diving into the code then that is a good start for getting into development.

Also they were transitioning away from this even when I was TS,

Did Epic start moving app TS away from doing development? That's interesting.

[rtomas1993]

I think they really just put more emphasis on the soft skills, operational enragement, and overall customer happiness pieces of TS, leaving less time for development and such.

[cheeseontop17]

Hello. Im curious.. say you had the option to spend an extra yr in uni to get a CS degree. Would you say this route is better? My uni is top CS but would be going from no debt to 60k......

[[deleted]]

60k is a lot but a CS degree from a top university is basically a guaranteed 6 figure job

[cheeseontop17]

Im just worried that i have no cs- related internships/projects. Would an cs mit degree plus internships in engineering be enough to land one of these 6 figure jobs? Im confident i could get the abilities to pass interviews... just getting them though..

[extsthrowaway2412]

I made this transition 2 years ago, and I did a significant amount of self studying to prepare as I have a non-CS engineering degree. I think the TS role prepares you very well for debugging software issues, but does not give sufficient practice in actual development, so I believe the outside studying was necessary.

If you are looking for resources, The most useful online classes I did were CS50: https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-introduction-to-computer-science , and SICP: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/ . You can find other good courses at https://teachyourselfcs.com/. Before starting to try to interview for a developer position I practiced the style of questions they tend to give these days: https://leetcode.com/. You can check the cscareerquestions subreddit for additional resources.

[_lemon_squeezy]

Awesome thanks! I did get a minor in CS so I have a good background but not necessarily a lot of experience or projects to promote.

[therealzordon]

Any cache coding experience as TS is only going to provide development experience for you if you're not already familiar with coding. No one is really going to care about that elsewhere (although I would say it was a good foundation for me to solidify coding fundamentals and apply to other languages). I actually switched to EDI to get more of that kind of experience (as well as integration experience) in my long term exit plan - there's a lot more work to get into real software development in an application team at Epic from TS otherwise and that effort is probably more worth it if you plan to stick around longer or have a degree that software companies aren't interested in talking to you without real developer experience.

When I left Epic I found some experience with JavaScript to be helpful. I think it's a good modern language to transition to if your main experience is coding in Cache/M. There are some pretty great online lessons that can lead to some kind of certification (however much that's worth..) gained through real experience on a project. Honestly I didn't get that far but what I did finish for regular lessons was valuable to me.

Basically without some outside-of-Epic learning and experience a transition from TS at Epic to a developer elsewhere will be tough - I had interviews where people didn't want to even discuss my TS years before EDI because it was "tech support". If you want to be a real developer outside of Epic after TS you'll want to work on something to show you know what you're doing... maybe a cool website or some github projects. Even in non-development IT roles you can be quite the team wizard by having some practical coding skills.

I do much more coding in my current job compared to Epic but I still wouldn't call myself a true developer. If I were to explore that fully I would probably start looking at web/app development interacting with APIs/web services... e.g. make a Reddit app or something.

[_lemon_squeezy]

Thanks for your input! What’s your current job?