Most paths into software start with a computer science degree. Mine started in an economics program in Freiburg, in the middle of Covid.
That is not a detour story. The economics degree is where the software career began.
The wrong degree
I moved to Freiburg in 2019 to study economics. Two years later I had the bachelor’s, a 1.2 average, and no plan to work in economics.
Covid did that. Not because it gave me time, everyone had time. Because it removed everything else. The degree could be finished faster than it was designed for, so I finished it in two years, and the hours that freed up went somewhere I had not planned.
They went into code. First a UIKit prototype, then a rebuild in SwiftUI, then an app people could actually install. Smokes. Then KeepinOn. Nobody assigned them. There was no course, no grade, no one to say the architecture was wrong. Just the App Store review process, which is its own kind of feedback.
So by the time the economics degree was finished, the thing I was actually good at had nothing to do with it.
First practical work in tech
The first practical work in tech came in 2022, at MaibornWolff. Not on the strength of a CS degree, there was none. On the strength of being able to build iOS apps, which was enough for that.
Late 2023, back from an exchange in New Zealand and starting at Capgemini, I began catching up on computer science courses at Uni Hamburg. Alongside the job, not instead of it. Autumn 2024, the master’s proper.
None of that was a sequence. There was never a phase of only working or only studying. The economics degree ran alongside the first apps. The CS courses ran alongside Capgemini. The master’s ran alongside freelance work and an exchange in Finland. The credential and the work were never in order. They were always at the same time.
Why the master’s at all
Part of it was the paper. People kept saying it is easier to get hired with a computer science degree than without one, and I believed them. Mostly I still do. I am not going to pretend that did not count.
But I was also interested in computer science. As a subject, not only as a credential. I wanted the rest of it, not just the title at the end.
And the two years gave me things I would not have had otherwise. An exchange semester in Jyväskylä that was fantastic. A thesis, Vigil, one hard problem taken from a vague idea to a defended result in spring 2026, the kind of work no job or side project forces you through. A lot of experience that was valuable in its own right.
The Zeugnis has arrived. The degree is done.
Closing
The usual story is that the degree comes first and the work follows.
Mine started in the wrong degree. The work ran alongside every degree after it. And the right one came last, partly for the paper, partly because I wanted it.
Both reasons held up.
