How hard is it to get an internship with a non-CS but STEM degree + ~2 years experience doing bioinformatics?

i would say it also depends on your location. being in a tech city like SF definitely helps as there is heavier demand here.

here's another data point for you. take with it what you will, but i'll try to be honest and transparent about my experience which i have concluded to be a combination of luck and preparation/determination:

i graduated with a BS and MS in bio-engineering. afterward, moved to SF and started working at a biotech consulting firm as an analyst for 3 years. i was making about 90k salary by the time i left, and hadn't done any type of 'programming' work besides SAS. from then, i took a 6 month break from work to learn programming. i was lucky enough to have some funds saved up to stay in SF during this time while jobless. afterwards, i was also lucky enough to have a programming friend refer me for an 'internship' opportunity at a medium-size software consulting firm. they looked at my resume and saw i had no professional programming experience whatsoever and they were a bit, 'uuh...', but i did send them a coding sample of some personal projects i had been working on over the past 5 months and they seemed a bit more comfortable after that. after an interview (mostly behavioral, a little bit technical), they decided to take me on for 3 months at $25/hour. i learned a lot during this time, but also prepared for more interviewing during this time. at the end of the 3 month period, they decided to give me a full-time offer with a starting salary of 70k. however, at the same time, i had successfully interviewed through a technical interview (though not as difficult as a 'big 4' style technical interview) at a larger company and they were offering $40/hour for another 3 month 'internship' -- i even brazenly negotiated this to $50/hour and i was stunned to find out that they were fine with it.

i decided to pass on the full-time opportunity to pursue this second internship to see where it went. this was another huge learning opportunity as the codebase and environment i was working with was at a much larger scale. at the end of it, i was given a full-time offer with a base salary of $105k + benefits comparable to a decent software company in SF. i managed to negotiate up to a base salary of $110k (a 5-minute call can get you an additional 5k per year. remember this..). at this point, 1 year after leaving my biotech consulting job, i was making noticeably more. i was a bit stunned to be honest. i stayed for about a year, and then decided to go backpacking for a couple months and take a break from the working world.

six months later, i was back in the job market. i decided i wanted to try my luck at finding remote work. i had a sense that media firms may have development work from their clients that they could subcontract to remote contractors so i basically googled 'media firms' and went through 10 pages of listings collecting contact emails that i could 'cold e-mail'. i got mixed results. however, one person replied back to me and referred me to someone working at an early stage startup. after a relatively informal interview process, i was able to land a part-time (20 hours/week) remote position at $50/hour + 2.0% equity. this was at a seed stage startup based in SF. shortly afterward, i was contacted by another startup (this time, a post series A startup) based in SF and i decided to interview there as well. the interview went well, and i decided to accept a full-time offer there. my compensation was $120k + 1.0% equity. i decided to work both jobs during this time. i was single at the time so it worked okay overall. however, there were a few times where both jobs were on crunch time. once, i worked from 9am - 9pm at my full-time job because of crunch time; then, i went home and worked from 11pm - 8am at the part-time job because of another crunch time; took a shower, then went back to work at my full-time job. that was not a good day. this went on for about a year until i decided to leave my part-time work and continue with my full-time work.

i stayed for about 2.5 years at my full-time work until, unfortunately, the startup ran out of runway. we were given a warning about 6 months before we were laid off to potentially look for other opportunities. so, about 6 months before we ran out of runway, i decided to look for some other remote work. through some networking connections, i was able to land some part-time remote work at $90/hour. this company overlapped for about 6 months with my full-time company (until my full-time ran out of runway...). i continued to work -- only part-time -- for another 6 months as i started to brainstorm what my next steps should be. as grateful as i was with all the opportunities i had hoped that my startup work would pan out, but it didn't. i felt a bit lost.

at this time, a former colleague who was now at a 'big 4' tech company reached out to me and offered to refer me. the behavior interview was easy enough to pass, and since i was referred, i was able to skip the phone interview. i prepped for the onsite interview (which was all day, four 45-minute interviews...). in total, i spent a total of about 80 hours over a period of 4 weeks hitting the books and practicing whiteboard coding. after a few more weeks, and through some miracle, i was notified that i had passed the onsite interview and was offered a base salary of 140k with total compensation at 200k. again, i brazenly asked for total compensation at 230k and they got back to me the next day with the updated offer (in retrospect, maybe i should have asked for more... i don't understand...).

anyways, i'm about a year into this latest opportunity. i won't say this is the norm as i feel very grateful for my current situation, but i would say it is definitely possible to transition into a CS job as a non-CS major with little to no programming experience. i would attribute it to a combination of luck getting that first internship opportunity, networking as i've made a number of friends in the software industry throughout the years, and living in a good tech city like SF that has a steady demand for software people.

hope that helped. feel free to message me if you have any questions.

/r/cscareerquestions Thread