Revature Discusses How Software Engineering Can be a Good Career Option for English Majors

While looking for employment, English majors hardly consider software engineering. There is a widely known misconception that English majors are right-brained and software engineers are left-brained. This assumption has scared several knowledgeable and competent English majors away from lucrative tech careers. It is important to understand that English majors can effectively thrive in the field of tech. Moreover, even tech teams have a lot to gain from hiring such non-traditional job candidates. Companies like Revature provide tech training to people from diverse backgrounds, and makes them equipped with the skills needed to join the tech industry.

Revature shares insight into the factors that make software engineering a fitting career for English Majors

English majors have a number of transferable skills that can help them to flourish in the tech industry. It is understandable for these individuals to worry about how they can qualify for software engineer jobs, if they do not have the right educational background in the subject. After all, most colleges do not teach students to think about transferrable skills. Many English majors tend to posses a varied range of transferable skills that are required in the field of software engineering, such as critical thinking and analytical mindset.

English majors spend years in learning grammar and syntax properly, and examining complex texts, which helps them to develop an analytical mindset. The hours spend learning past perfect verb tenses, as well as poring over gerunds, set candidates up perfectly for jobs in software engineering. They are able to take a look at a line of code and find bugs with relative ease, much like they identify subject-verb disagreements in books or news articles.

English majors often have to properly read chunks of text, analyze it, and communicate their meaning properly to someone who may not understand its nuances. This skill comes as an asset in software engineering. Software engineer commonly has to translate an extremely technical concept and explain it to a non-technical audience. This translation can be verbal, for instance, when explaining a project to a potential investor. It can also be written, such as when sending a description of a product to the marketing department. English majors have the capacity to bridge the gap between the non-technical and technical spheres, which makes them a valuable part of a tech team.

Irrespective of what people may think, software engineering roles are both creative and logical. Being inventive and thinking outside the box is important for developing new solutions to complex problems. Software engineers with a non-traditional background are likely to look at problems with a different, unique perspective. They often are able to identify the solutions no one else has even considered.

There are several individuals across the world who has gained success in the field of tech, despite having a degree in some other field. AnnMarie Bemberry is one such individual.  She graduated from the English program at the City University of New York Medgar Evers College, and later on launched her tech career with Revature. She is currently an assistant vice president and software engineer for Bank of America.