What steps have they taken so far? What have they been doing for the past decade since dropping out of their bachelors degree?

Do they actually like coding? There are a lot of tech adjacent jobs that have a lower barrier to entry, like a scrum master or PM, which could get them in the door. There are also support roles that don’t require coding, or less coding than a full on dev role.

Harvard makes their CS50 class available to the public. That would probably be a good foundation to build on and give them enough information to know if they want to keep going.

Do they want to get into tech because it sounds like it will make a lot of money, or do they want to learn how to code?

If they want to learn how to code... honestly there is infinite resource on the Internet: books, videos, tutorials, games, ... It's all about finding what works for oneself, and spend enough time and effort studying.

It's like learning an instrument or a new language: it's not about "finding the good book", it's about spending a lot of effort learning.

If your friend can’t figure this out by themselves, it’s going to be challenging.

If they has a very good network, perhaps they can get a MBA and get recommended.

> and eventually land a job at FAANG / big corp.

Help them temper their expectations. Many people study programming their entire life and get rejected for the lowest-pay L1/L2 engineering positions open at FAANG. These are not easy jobs to land (even in the AI age) and they have to be self-motivated to land one of those seats.

>rouble is, they have zero engineering or leetcode experience.

Sounds like they want the perks of working at FAANG, and not that they want the job, right?

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