I didn't start in tech. I hold a Bac+5 (Master's-equivalent) in agricultural engineering from the State University of Haiti. A year ago, I made the decision to fully pivot into cloud and software engineering ; and I want to document that journey publicly, mistakes included.
Where I started
I began with the fundamentals: completed CS50W (Harvard/edX) to build a real foundation in web development, then earned the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification to understand the AWS ecosystem end to end ; compute, storage, networking, IAM, billing.
What I'm building
To make the learning concrete, I designed and deployed a full-stack school management system using Django and React ; handling authentication, role-based access control, and a relational database for student records and scheduling. It's live, and the repo is public: https://github.com/JuniorSEVERE-WEB/college_quisqueya-version2-.
Where I'm headed
I'm currently deep in AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA) prep ; working through VPC design, high availability patterns, and cost-optimized architectures. Terraform and Kubernetes are next on the list, since infrastructure-as-code and container orchestration are non-negotiable for the DevOps roles I'm targeting.
Why I'm sharing this
Career transitions are hard to do in isolation, especially outside the usual tech hubs. I'm based in Léogâne, Haiti, and I've found the AWS learning ecosystem (Skill Builder, Cloud Quest, Jam) invaluable for structured, hands-on practice without needing a team or a classroom. I'll be posting updates as I go, SAA exam results, what tripped me up in Terraform, and how the school management project evolves.
If you're on a similar path-career switcher, self-taught, building in public . I'd love to connect.
Top comments (3)
Fellow career-switcher from a completely unrelated field here (physical therapy, in my case), so this one hit home. The line about doing this in isolation, outside the usual tech hubs, is the part most write-ups skip — the hardest resource to find isn't a course, it's the feeling that someone like you has done this before. For what it's worth: your agricultural engineering background isn't a detour, it's an edge. The people who can connect software to a real domain — farms, clinics, logistics — end up building things pure-CS folks never think of. A full-stack school management system one year in, self-taught, from Léogâne? You're further along than you probably feel on the hard days. Keep documenting it.
You're right that the isolation part rarely gets mentioned. Most days it's not the technical learning that's hard, it's not knowing if the effort is even pointing in the right direction, with no one nearby to check against.
And honestly, I hadn't fully reframed the agricultural engineering background as an edge rather than a gap ,i appreciate you naming that. Curious how the transition from physical therapy has been going for you? Always good to connect with someone walking a similar road, even from a completely different starting point
The "not knowing if the effort points the right way" is the real loneliness — sharper than any technical problem, because a bug at least tells you it's wrong. Direction just stays silent. What helped me most wasn't finding a mentor; it was picking problems where reality answers fast. If the tool makes a coworker's day visibly lighter this week, the direction was right. Build for someone close enough to tell you the truth, and the silence gets a voice.
Agricultural engineering as an edge isn't a stretch at all. You already think in systems, constraints, inputs and yields, things that fail in the field versus on paper — that's most of engineering. The syntax is the easy part you can look up; the domain instinct is the part nobody can hand you.
Honest answer on the transition: I never fully "left" physical therapy, and that turned out to be the whole trick. I still treat patients and build the tools, so I'm never guessing what the floor needs — I'm standing on it. A pure developer would've had to interview me to learn what I already know in my hands. Your fields will do the same for you: the goal isn't to erase the old background, it's to become the rare person who has both. Glad to connect — different starting points, same road.