I'd love to hear if you've transitioned to tech from another career and why you decided to make the switch!
🌟Your answer may be included in my UndergroundJS keynote talk in August! 🌟
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Top comments (41)
Yup! I was a social media manager and pretty much disliked everything about it.
My wife was a teacher and she disliked that work also. She randomly fell into engineering thru a funny situation at a job fair she attended, and when I saw how much she liked it, I asked her to teach me some of the basics and then took those learnings and applied them to a bootcamp. Three years later, here I am!
I went from home health care to social media management to developer. My daughter has autism and needed to be homeschooled to make sure she had the best opportunity so I needed something I could do from home. That's where social media management came in. Then I heard about a boot camp in my area so I figured I would take her to see if she had any interest. She didn't and I did. So, here I am.
I just left 10 years of finance, the last 5 years of which as a professional adviser. I’m now a full time developer.
About 20 years ago I started learning Visual Basic, built basic websites, IRC scripts in mIRC and Eggdrop (in TCL), CGI scripts in Perl, more advanced websites in ASP, and currently PHP with a side plate of JavaScript, HTML, CSS.
Most projects I built were just for me but a few years ago I started building a full back-office system for my finance office, to automate tracking of clients, their products etc, so we didn’t miss repeat business, or fall behind on current business, could track KPIs, print reports, and so on.
I lost interest in finance and wanted to do something new but didn’t know what until I realised that throughout every job I’ve ever had, I was always developing something. I knew it would be difficult to find a new career as a developer but luckily I’d just spent over a year building a large admin system that I could use to prove to companies that while I had no commercial experience on my CV (resume), I did have provable code, so I created a demo copy with dummy data.
I’m now in my 5th month as a full time developer and really enjoying my change of career.
I was a teacher. I did teaching for 9 years before I made the switch to tech. I fell out of love with it over the years and eventually realized teaching wasn't a good fit for me anymore. At first I had no clue what to do next. I took a break and did lots of self reflection to figure out what to do next. After doing this, I discovered Skillcrush and eventually wrote my first line of code. That first line of code transformed my life and inspired to make the career change into tech.
I went from the international education industry (as a product owner/project manager) and was fascinated by what the dev team was able to do to create our online courses for teachers to teach English abroad. If I asked them to completely reconfigure a part of the course, they could, and it was amazing! I was so impressed that they were able to constantly learn new technologies and that they were always solving interesting problems. They also took their role of fixing any bugs that came up very seriously - I new that their career and craft were important to them. I now am loving that I get to solve problems and learn new things every day.
I used to be an insurance clerk, but was bored of it and had little hope of career progression. I got into Linux in 2006, then started toying with Python and HTML, before deciding I wanted to be a web developer. Finally made the jump in 2011.
I studied recreation management in college. While in school and after graduating I was a ropes course facilitator and camp counselor. I loved it, but I struggled to find full time work in the outdoor/adventure recreation space. After a few years of trying to figure out what I was going to do, I came across online courses for design and development. I spent a year using various online resources to teach myself to code. About a year later, I was hired for my first role as a developer. I have been in that role for just over a year now.
And you're a badass developer! So happy to have gotten the chance to work with you ❤️
Thank you! You are a badass as well and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with and learn from you this past year. You inspire me! :)
I changed careers 8 months ago from a Recruitment Consultant for a professional services company operating in the local government and construction sector, to an Accessibility Consultant for a charity promoting digital inclusion. While not a development role, knowledge of web development is essential so I’m continually trying to build up my existing skills.
I always wanted to do something in tech, and through my undergraduate degree, volunteering and personal experiences, I wanted that to involve empowering people who experience disabilities. However until now life had other ideas.
Having worked for over fifteen years in various banking, insurance and recruitment roles, it’s a relief to finally secure a role that aligns more with who I am. I’m also studying an MSc in HCI which has awoken all my excitement for tech that had been neglected for so long.
I've been doing it for the last 6 months. I was a filmmaker in the marketing industry. I'm still a filmmaker but not for the clients just for my personal projects as an independent filmmaker. However, both being independent and being a filmmaker doesn't make you alive on the financial side, especially in my dysfunctional country :) So I've decided to change my career. As a person who founded one of the biggest webpage and community about filmmaking in my country, I've had some basic coding experience in web development and graduated from a fine arts academy so front-end would be perfect for me! Nope! It wasn't. I've studied for a while on the web development and it was OK but it was kind of makeup and boring for me. Before the decision, I've met Python for a marketing project and I've fallen in love with it. So I've changed my mind and started to study on Python and back-end. It has been just 5-6 month, I'm still learning and developing projects but I love it! Here is my transition process that isn't finished yet :)
Lovely to see how many other folk have transitioned from different backgrounds, makes me feel a bit less weird..!
I worked in public sector arts management for several years then did a load of dead-end jobs I hated. 12 years ago, in a desperate move to get myself some sort of career, I took a course in software engineering and found to my surprise (at almost 30) that I loved to code. 🙃 🤓
6 years ago I was a Service Delivery Manager (think customer service representative, looking after contractual obligations, KPI's and ITSM principles).
I then decided to learn programming in my own time, and then swapped careers in the same company.
I went from being a guitar teacher, musician, and bartender to a developer. Mostly because I needed health insurance but turned out I really enjoyed it.
Yep! I was a translator first, then became a language tutor. There were hardly any permanent jobs so I was constantly ‘hopping’ between language schools. Translation jobs were far and between too! About 8 years ago I went to a PD session at the polytechnic where I was teaching English & discovered virtual reality. I was hooked & decided to learn about computers, programming & IT in general. I completed a diploma in IT but couldn’t commit to the coding classes as I was still working full-time in my teaching role. I also had to find an extra role as half of my teaching position just disappeared overnight! I became a part-time learning designer whilst completing the diploma. One year after graduating from the diploma course, I enrolled in a web developer bootcamp. Struggled immensely but kept going. A year and a half later, I was offered a junior dev role at an e-learning company. I’ll be using all of my skills and experience in languages, combining it with my newly acquired coding & technical skills. I couldn’t wish for anything better! Ah, yes, I start my new role in July (2019). It’s been a long journey but worth every step! Thank you for the opportunity to tell my story :-)
I worked in Film and TV as a Camera Assistant. Just got over the long work hours (out the house at 5:30am and would get home at 9:30pm) and pretentious people I was having to work with. Dropped everything and quit, and went travelling for 2 years. Decided to take up iOS Development. Got my first job this year! Much nicer life.
That’s awesome. Congrats on the new job!
Two years ago I was a French Language teacher (French foreign language). I liked it but I wanted to start a new career in a more dynamic and why not in a technical domain, although I have a literary background (Bachelor Degree in History).
I've always found Web fascinating, so I looked for learning Web Development. A year training and internship later, I found my first job as Web Developer. Now I'm working here for seven months and I really enjoy my new career.