Abstract
The traditional path to a software engineering career usually involves a post-secondary diploma in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field. However, many individuals working as software engineers take a non-traditional path to their careers, starting from other industries or fields of study. This paper explores the barriers that individuals with non-traditional educational and occupational backgrounds face when pursuing a software engineering career and potential strategies to overcome those barriers. A two-stage methodology was used, consisting of an exploratory study followed by a follow-up survey. The exploratory study consisted of a grounded-theory-based qualitative analysis of relevant Reddit data to yield a framework around the barriers and possible mitigation strategies. These findings were then supplemented through a follow-up survey. Understanding these barriers and what strategies could be effective is an important step towards making software engineering more accessible to individuals with non-traditional backgrounds. In addition to fostering functional diversity, this might also serve to tackle labor shortages within the software engineering industry.
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Data Availability
Data used in the exploratory study will be anonymized through the removal of usernames and made privately available for any future researchers interested in replicating or building off of this work. Sharing this data publicly is unethical since it is logistically impossible to get consent from all Reddit users whose comments were analyzed for this work, as explained in Section 3.1. On the other hand, the data collected through the follow-up survey could not be made available due to its consent form, which prohibited the sharing of the data, particularly due to the relatively granular nature of the questions asked (e.g., past and current careers, educational backgrounds). However, a copy of the survey and the educational backgrounds of survey participants are available on https://zenodo.org/records/10511167
Notes
The source code of the search engine is available at https://github.com/tavianator/pheddit
Please refer to https://zenodo.org/records/10511167 for the final survey used in this study.
Please refer to https://zenodo.org/records/10511167
Sub-strategies were listed as separate strategies in the survey to get more granular results.
One of the two groups failed to pass the Shapiro-Wilk’s normality test (\(W =.85, p < 0.01)\)), hence the use of a Mann-Whitney test instead of an unpaired one-sample T-test.
Please refer to https://zenodo.org/records/10511167
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The three first authors (Tavian Barnes, Ken Jen Lee and Cristina Tavares) contributed to the study conception, and all authors contributed to the study design. For the exploratory study, data collection was performed by Tavian Barnes, and coding and analysis were performed by the first authors. For the follow-up survey, the survey was prepared by the first authors, and the ethics application, data analysis and visualization were prepared and performed by Ken Jen Lee. The ethics application was submitted by Meiyappan Nagappan. The first draft of the manuscript was written by the first authors, and iteratively improved on with comments and guidance from Gema Rodríguez-Pérez and Meiyappan Nagappan. Throughout the entire process of the research, Cristina Tavares also helped out with scheduling meetings (e.g., to discuss coding disagreements) and pushing the project along.
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This work involved human participants for a follow-up survey and has been reviewed and received ethics clearance through the University of Waterloo Research Ethics Board (ORE #43447).
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Each survey participant provided consent before participating in the online survey, which was administered through Qualtrics. On the other hand, obtaining informed consent from Reddit users whose content was analysed in the exploratory study is logistically impossible, as such, extra care was used when handling the data, as explained in more detail in Section 3.1.
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Communicated by: Jin L.C. Guo and Raula Gaikovina Kula.
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Barnes, T., Lee, K.J., Tavares, C. et al. Towards understanding barriers and mitigation strategies of software engineers with non-traditional educational and occupational backgrounds. Empir Software Eng 29, 82 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-024-10493-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-024-10493-1