Advice on changing careers, programming

The Lounge General Discussion
#21

One other thought is if you learn HTML/CSS/JS and maybe how to work with WordPress, you can easily start a side business making websites. I have made hundreds of thousands over the years building websites for people. I don’t even advertise anymore, people just hit me up through referrals.

You can even charge recurring monthly fees to clients you do lots of work for. This can help bridge the gap of making money while you continue to teach while learning, and gives you experience. You will also have a portfolio of sites to show off when you interview.

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#22

The best guys I worked with after a day of work would go home and code some more. For fun.

This !
I have a family, i LOVE making music, reading books, have a good time with friends, etc. i mean just having a life imo.

I cant compete with some of my coworkers who dont really have other interest in life, computer nerds coding when they have any spare time.
I’m sorry but i dont think this is very healthy. Mind you , its not everyone but this profession attracts lots of workaholics.

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#23

aye aye!
my first year of teaching i was taking work home to grade and also going into work at crazy early hours to plan. i’ve since stopped all that and find ways to cut corners at any possible point…and you know what? i’ve actually been praised this year in how much better of a teacher i am, even though i’m taking no work home and not coming in any earlier or staying any later.

[b]EarthquakeLogic

[/b]One other thought is if you learn HTML/CSS/JS and maybe how to work with WordPress, you can easily start a side business making websites. I have made hundreds of thousands over the years building websites for people. I don’t even advertise anymore, people just hit me up through referrals.

You can even charge recurring monthly fees to clients you do lots of work for. This can help bridge the gap of making money while you continue to teach while learning, and gives you experience. You will also have a portfolio of sites to show off when you interview.

Ah, yes. I think I’m going to just take it slowly and start to do it as a hobby instead of just going head first into a bootcamp. Thanks for all the advice, really do appreciate it.

#24

I never thanked you for your helpful response to my question 2 years ago. I’ve since changed jobs (Academic Tech Coach in San Antonio,TX), though still under the umbrella of education. My family and I are looking to move to Atlanta (she has family there), and so, I’m starting to work through tutorials to see if I can manage a career change into web development by the time we move in the next year.

Anyhoo, thanks again for taking the time to write that!

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#25

just to chime in for an update:

we relocated to Atlanta in the summer of 2018 where i took a 16wk web dev bootcamp and shortly thereafter secured a position at a software company that builds network tools for telecom companies. sadly, i didn’t do a whole lot of software development, but instead a lot of devopsy type work like build, maintain and monitor their student lab environment (for new customers and internal new hires) with docker, ansible, zabbix etc.

i felt i had hit the ceiling in terms of growth there, so i jumped ship and began working for a tiny fintech startup where i learned a bunch (e.g. kubernetes, aws, bash scripting, and a variety of SaaS/PaaS monitoring tools).

anyhoo, due to deep budget cuts i was let go last month, but managed to secure a new job that pays $30K more. i’m hoping that in this position i’ll get to improve my coding chops and go further down this cloud/sre/devops path.

as for any one else thinking of making the jump, i’m happy to answer anyone’s questions about my experience and things i would have done differently.

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#26

Congrats to this! Excellent. It’s like the old saying: “you loose all the battles you don’t try”.

I used to program games (Rockstar) for six years, before studying fine arts. I’m self-employed as artist now, for several years, and also code for some of my projects.

Changing careers isn’t easy, but it’s possible. We’re rarely locked into our fates!

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#27

aye, i’m 37 with 2 kiddos…so it can definitely be done especially if you’re surrounded by people who support you.

ps thanks wifey for pushing me to do it and keeping the kids fed/alive.

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#28

EDIT: I didn’t read the update either. Congrats on the new job!

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#32

Excellent update! I got into software development along a more traditional path - 4-year university degree, internship, etc. So I was a bit curious as to how those coding camps work out for students.

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#33

Congratulations on the job. Software development can be extremely frustrating but if you like it, you’ll know. There’s a lot of BS in movies and TV which makes people think they want to be a “rockstar developer” but that isn’t a real thing. Once you spend at least a year of 6+ hours a day staring at code and the other 2 hours in meetings with other parts of the business where they want you to hurry up and add the “one more feature” that they need, you’ll know if it’s for you. It can be hard to keep up with fast-paced change when you start getting older and there is a drop-off at a certain age but, in my experience after 15 years (ish), good people do recognise the value of age/experience and the value that has over being 20 and willing to work stupidly long hours because you get free beers in a start-up.

If you do web development (which I do) just remember that you’re ultimately building things for real people to use. The technology can be fascinating but the end user doesn’t give a sh*t what language or stack you use, they just want something that works. Don’t get caught in a trap of always trying to learn the latest “buzz” framework or language. If you can learn some fundamentals then you can adapt and pick up new languages and tools. That doesn’t mean you have to become great at maths or learn every data-processing algorithm (both myths) but just get used to reading and tweaking other people’s code (you’ll spend a lot of time fixing bugs and working on “legacy” code) and learn how to search online to find solutions to problems. Nobody cares if you cut and paste if you understand what it does and how it’ll solve the problem. You absolutely DON’T have to know how to do everything, just show willing to read up on the problem and find a solution. People don’t pay for software, they pay for solutions to problems they have.

Regarding devops and that side of things - it’s a great thing to know. Languages and frameworks for writing code come and go and everyone does things slightly differently, but EVERYONE needs infrastructure to run their systems on. And I mean EVERYONE! You can write the best whizz-bang app or website in the world but nobody will know if it doesn’t work and then scale once you become successful. Without infrastructure, you’ve got nothing.

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#34

Nice, congrats!
Missed this thread. I too switched career last year. I was a biologist working at university, but my contract was not prolonged and I realized that university in germany is a one way street with only limited contracts. Switching to industry turned out to be very difficult. Not many jobs in our area but too many people applying for them.
It was a thread here on elektronauts that made me look into coding for the first time, not thinking about career change but just out of curiosity. Never written a single line of code. @Ryan gave me some very valuable tips in the beginning.
I started learning web development at home with only youtube. I practiced about a year every day at home and luckily our state actually paid me to attend some courses.
Long story short, I got a job in july at a very nice startup 10 minutes away from my home. I‘m contributing in developing web apps with react and I really love it.
I‘m far from a good programer, it‘s overwhelming at times but also super interesting and rewarding so far.
I was doubting myself a lot in this journey and still do sometimes but from nothing to a job within a year was more than I could expect.
Anyway didn’t want to hijack this thread just give another story that learning programing yourself to actually get a job is totally possible, if anyone is considering this path.
From what I‘ve learned so far, web development is your best bet for getting a job without a lot of experience

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#35

Hey! Congrats dude! Happy to have helped!!! :slightly_smiling_face:

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#36

Hey, congrats. I’m in a similar boat. Taught 8th grade American history for just over 12 years before resigning this year when I felt like the expectations were unsustainable. Trying to explore some new possibilities and I’m starting an online Python course tomorrow and just see how it feels. Most of my computer programmer friends are confident I can do it, it’s just a question of if I enjoy it. A global pandemic seems to be a great time to consider some new directions in life and keep my head down.

Anyway, I’m happy to see some success stories here. Always good to draw on these positive vibes :slight_smile:

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#37

i’ll say that i don’t think it was essential that i attend a bootcamp, but i do think it provides a bit of legitimacy to your career change efforts in that:

  1. you have projects due by deadlines
  2. you have others to struggle with
  3. depending on the bootcamp, they provide a bit of assistance in preparing your resume / portfolio

yah, it seems there is a huge need for people to do that especially in the fairly new cloud space (e.g. aws, gcp, and azure). i’ve really been enjoying it and like that i’m supporting the applications without being responsible for new customer facing features :slight_smile:.

hehe, i’m glad i’m not the only one. during my bootcamp, i would often try and solve coding exercises without any help from the internet…though once i was in the industry, most often than not, i’d find my answer with a few carefully worded internet searches. a large portion of my days are often spent reading stackoverflow and documentation.

absolutely…i’ll also say that you shouldn’t feel beholden to becoming a software engineer. a lot of people will get into project management or other more people facing roles.

as for myself, i fell into this devops thing (e.g. cloud, site reliability, platform etc) where there is a huge need and lack of people to fill these roles. while there is a component of programming, much of it is just learning/understanding larger systems finding ways to ensure developers’ code runs with the least amount of friction. you get to find ways to automate things such as app build/deployments or alerting when something has gone awry.

since you’re starting that python course, i’d recommend you get a copy of “python crash course” and read/work on that as you go through the course as it’s a great introduction to using python.

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#39

Funny thing is, I get help from the Internet all the time. I just make sure whatever I lift off the internet actually works on my local machine and then the shared developer environment.

And of course, test the implementation with test cases that try to approximate how the code will actually be used.

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#40

Yeah… with all due respect, that’s not any easier than jumping into coding, and actually probably quite a lot harder. A PhD takes years, and you also have to be “good” at scholarship in a way that has nothing to do with most of the skills used at the BA/MA level. There’s really no point in getting a PhD from a program that isn’t top 20 (or really, top 10) nationally, since most departments are snobby and won’t look at you otherwise.

And let’s say all that goes well, and 6-10 years from now you successfully defend and graduate, depending on the field you’ve got at best a 50% chance of landing a permanent job, ever (higher for STEM fields, but that doesn’t sound like the OPs bag). Finally, on top of everything, the pay is really not all that great. It took me 20 years to make what kids with undergrad degrees in CS or finance make right out of the gate.

On the other hand, it’s a great job and lifestyle, and I wouldn’t trade it for just about anything :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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#41

yah, here was my pay journey from my last gig in education as a tech coach to what i’m making now:

  1. $60K as a tech coach (last job in education) in 2018
  2. $70K right out of bootcamp (they tried to offer $65K but i asked for more) in early 2019
  3. $80K with 2nd gig in early 2020
  4. $110K in the gig i just started

my number one tip would be to job hop to get raises quickly. job hopping also helps with gaining a wide variety of experience especially at a startup.

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#42

Hi there competent members of the human race, and congratulations on your successfully executed occupational maneuvering. I invite you to judge my life and give me your opinions!

I’m currently on furlough from a FOH job in events, i’m contracted 16 hours a week and bring home £800 a month which has been enough for me to scrape by semi-comfortably, saving nothing (but time). After I get evicted in March however, cost of living will definitely be going up along with the obscene disgrace that is the housing market.

I did music at uni, then spent 3 years or so in my early twenties getting really into databending in my spare time, and taught myself windows batch to control utilities like image magick and sox to create digital art. I ended up teaching myself Ruby specifically to build this project. It’s basically a DSL for various utilities to make databending more accessible, based around the linguistics of alchemical processes.

Of course I never finished it and forgot about it for a couple years but i’m just getting back to it because I never fully realised it’s potential. I think the foundation is strong, I bought one book (Practical Object Oriented Design by Sandi Metz) and my obsessive compulsive tendencies meant that I adhered (maybe too) strictly to some principles (DRY, modularity). I designed a couple of wordpress sites but I didn’t particularly enjoy that, especially not the SEO.

I enjoy automation and objected oriented design (all i know tbf). I’ve tried to do deep learning courses but I keep stumbling on the math. I am a fan of metaprogramming and find it pretty intuitive. I have high school level math, I know nothing about the industry, and I don’t know how to test. My questions are:

  • What opportunities are there (if any) for part-time work? I do genuinely enjoy coding but I still value time more than money.

  • What job titles most closely align with my experience/interests?

  • What should I learn - either skills, frameworks, or languages?

  • Could I expect to find any jobs with no relevant industry or education experience?

#43

2nd to last time I was jobless, I went to meetup.com and signed up for local tech meetups like the Ruby Users Group, a couple of the Javascript users groups, a Data Science group, etc. Some of them distributed pizza at the meetings so I got a free meal out of it half the time which is nice for a jobless person. That was how I was able to get a sense of what people were doing in the tech fields and find job opportunities. I eventually got recruited into my next job through one of those meetings.

Unfortunately, this was before Covid, and now nobody wants to hold group meetings indoors anywhere for obviously reasons. Maybe there’s a virtual one you can find. I attended a Javascript coding one about a week before I got a job offer for my current job.

#44

  1. i know people who have done freelance web dev work (e.g. basic static websites etc), but i don’t know if that’s something you’d be into. also, with things like squarespace and wordpress becoming more popular and easier to use, i think it’s getting harder to find those jobs unless you’re really good at it.

  2. that’s a tough one…i haphazardly fell into the devops / sre / cloud / platform arena where jobs are plentiful and lucrative. i like the work as i’m learning a lot of different tools / services finding ways to stitch them together into a working whole to automate different aspects of infrastructure. i don’t do any serious dev work, mostly a lot of bash scripting and the occasional python script. it sounds as if you’re looking for more of a strictly software engineering gig which are more competitive as the market is saturated with many subpar devs and not a lot of good ones. that’s where i think it’ll be very difficult for you to do it part-time.

  3. oh man, that’s such a ball of wax. i would keep doing what you’re doing since you’ve already built stuff in ruby and since it’s a capable full-stack framework. i guess my only recommendation here is to go all in with ruby…and if not ruby, some other popular language (e.g. javascript, python, etc).

  4. maybe? i would look for gigs in your area that are looking for ruby engineers and then figure it out from there. jump onto your local job hunt website and start the search…that’ll give you an idea of how much demand there is for the tools you know or don’t know.

i’ll reiterate that if you want to do this part-time, i think it’ll be harder to succeed. you’ll need to either create an awesomely awesome portfolio or slowly pickup work in the freelance community to build that awesomely awesome portfolio. oh, and about the math, i wouldn’t worry too much about that.

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