Hello everybody. I just joined the community and wanted to write a post of how I have been feeling lately. So I am a 30 year old junior dev I have been coding for a little over two years now. I was working as a forklift driver when I first started getting interested in ITu first interest was to get my ccna so I could work in the back of the warehouse wiring up server racks. After doing some research I discovered programming and decided it was something I wanted to do. That was over 5 years ago. As a single father I was stuck I couldn't afford to take off work to go to school and didn't have alot of free time bc I was working 6-7 days a week 10-12 hour shifts then had to take care of my kids by my self when I got home. I would constantly think about how much I wanted to make the switch. In a weird way covid was a blessing for me bc it enabled to be able to stay at home and take classes for software engineering. I signed up when I was 27 but classes didn't start until after my 28th birthday. Two years later I received my associates with honors. I started getting imposter syndrome because of my age. There is so much to learn and I wasted so much time.I thought I had a great base set of skills but then I started feeling like all my projects were not worth much more than a todo list after seeing younger peoples projects and skills. Then to make it worse job after job kept telling me no. Things are starting to look up now after getting an android internship then a offer for a Java dev. But I was wanting to know if anyone has a similar story to mine. It would make me feel better knowing there are others that started their programming career in their late 20's earlier 30's
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Top comments (2)
You had the grit and determination to rebuild your life from scratch, while being a single dad no less. Don't discredit all that work now by comparing yourself to others. I've been programming for 12 years and if I compare myself to random kids on the internet I would probably feel bad about myself too. If you want to compare yourself to someone, compare yourself to you five years ago. Sounds like you're doing way better than that guy.
I do coaching/mentoring for tech. If you get to the point where you need some help, get in touch.
Thanks for the kind words.