Ask HN: I am in my late 20s looking to change careers. Any advice?
25 comments
Think about what is is you'd like to develop. "Developer" is so broad a term it's almost meaningless in the modern world. Do you want to work on logistics systems? Finance? Mobile apps? Social Media?
No wrong answers here, but if you're thinking about becoming a developer, it's probably worth narrowing down what it is that interests you, and learning about what sort of skills and prerequisites there may be. Finance for instance involves some regulatory stuff to be aware of (if not outright get licensed for). Payroll type development may involve interfacing with some VERY old systems (ie, consider learning COBOL). Mobile apps are much on the entire opposite end of the spectrum.
Sometimes it's worth perhaps finding more about the surrounding industry before just diving into a development job -- you could consider even taking a job in the field and making a lateral move into the IT side of things in this case, and perhaps avoid taking on a ton of education only to find you're not actually a huge fan of the industry you thought you wanted to work in.
Best of luck in any case!
No wrong answers here, but if you're thinking about becoming a developer, it's probably worth narrowing down what it is that interests you, and learning about what sort of skills and prerequisites there may be. Finance for instance involves some regulatory stuff to be aware of (if not outright get licensed for). Payroll type development may involve interfacing with some VERY old systems (ie, consider learning COBOL). Mobile apps are much on the entire opposite end of the spectrum.
Sometimes it's worth perhaps finding more about the surrounding industry before just diving into a development job -- you could consider even taking a job in the field and making a lateral move into the IT side of things in this case, and perhaps avoid taking on a ton of education only to find you're not actually a huge fan of the industry you thought you wanted to work in.
Best of luck in any case!
I didn’t start my career until my thirties, so it’s not like you’re late to any game.
Reassuring to hear :p
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Well, I went the opposite way and I would say I've had my fair share of career mistakes also. I would say that you gotta just do it, because there's really nothing worse than doing something uninteresting for decades. (Or even a few years).
At the same time, make sure developer is what you really want. I am transitioning out of being a developer because even though I loved that kind of thing in school, I find real-world development a lot different and not what I expected it to be.
What would you do if you could do anything in the world? Maybe that open-ended question will give you some ideas.
At the same time, make sure developer is what you really want. I am transitioning out of being a developer because even though I loved that kind of thing in school, I find real-world development a lot different and not what I expected it to be.
What would you do if you could do anything in the world? Maybe that open-ended question will give you some ideas.
I haven't been through it myself but I've worked with two people that I know didn't have tertiary qualifications (probably other beyond those two that I didn't know about). Those two people were hard workers and were some of the better people I've worked with.
If it's what you want to do, go for it. When I'm involved in hiring it's not something I'd care about.
If it's what you want to do, go for it. When I'm involved in hiring it's not something I'd care about.
Haven't done it myself that late, but at 18 I knew I didn't want to do what I had studied up to that point, but rather wanted to do programming, so I spent some years to get the necessary grades to go to uni and did that. I landed my first programming job when I was 30.
One of our devs worked some regular office job without any special education, started programming on his own, ended up taking a bachelor at a local college before getting hired by us. He was just shy of 30 then. Been with us for several years now.
So it's certainly possible. Now, I started programming when I was 12, and I could probably have done a lot of good work without the degree, but at least here it's a foot in the door kinda thing. Though if you do good work and put it visible on GitHub or similar, one would hope employers would consider that favorably.
Anyway, even though it took me several years longer to get going compared to others I know, I do not regret switching.
One of our devs worked some regular office job without any special education, started programming on his own, ended up taking a bachelor at a local college before getting hired by us. He was just shy of 30 then. Been with us for several years now.
So it's certainly possible. Now, I started programming when I was 12, and I could probably have done a lot of good work without the degree, but at least here it's a foot in the door kinda thing. Though if you do good work and put it visible on GitHub or similar, one would hope employers would consider that favorably.
Anyway, even though it took me several years longer to get going compared to others I know, I do not regret switching.
What sort of developer? If you're not being hired on specific technical merits (and even then) having good soft skills will go a long way.
Also, have you developed a healthy hatred for computers but still love to work with them?
Also, have you developed a healthy hatred for computers but still love to work with them?
When people get to do work that innately feels good to them, they will run to work each day, thrilled to give it their all. Jonathan Fields, host of one of the world's top rated podcasts, Good Life Project, calls this a “Sparketype”. It's the “DNA-level driver” of actions that most deeply fulfill us.
> https://sparketype.com/sparketest/
> https://sparketype.com/sparketest/
This requires contact information at the end, there seems to be no way to get results without them being emailed.
> I am thinking of moving full time to becoming a developer (I don't have an engineering degree, but have been learning on my own).
Have you considered getting an engineering degree? Late 20's isn't too late at all. What's your current job?
Have you considered getting an engineering degree? Late 20's isn't too late at all. What's your current job?
I would examine your feelings towards your current role and what your inner voice is saying about what you want. You may seek out a career coach or a therapist. They can help you process your feeling and develop a plan! You are not alone, many have been down this road before. It is a unique journey to yourself but worth it.
Ask yourself what is the opportunity cost to not switching careers?
Ask yourself what is the opportunity cost to not switching careers?
Yeah, I became a (mostly) self-taught dev at 23. I worked for a startup for free for a year, then did a small project for one, which then hired me.
FWIW I made a career switch in my late 20s. It involved going to grad school to be able to switch to a new career. It ended badly for me though because I graduated as the Great Recession was starting but that I could not have foreseen when I went back to school.
When you're in late twenties, you can start over in pretty much any field of work aside from maybe professional sports and military commandos. So my advice would be to not think about what you leave behind as much of a loss, but you do need to be convinced that the new life is good for you.
Personally what's helped me has been to talk to people in the field and read books or watch videos where people talk about their careers. Whatever field you might be interested in, that content is out there (at least in the US) to explain what a career is about in detail.
Personally what's helped me has been to talk to people in the field and read books or watch videos where people talk about their careers. Whatever field you might be interested in, that content is out there (at least in the US) to explain what a career is about in detail.
Go to university.
Get a science degree. Or engineering. I did science starting age 25.
Get a science degree. Or engineering. I did science starting age 25.
At 32, I had a Masters in English Literature (which I loved doing) and was working for a non-profit. I liked the organization and what it stood for, but I didn’t love my job and, more broadly, how my career trajectory was shaping up.
After dabbling in coding, which I fell in love with, I decided to go back to school for software development. I didn’t have the high school math grades to be a competitive applicant, so, while working full-time, I re-did all high school math over a four-month period —- finishing just days before the program’s application deadline.
A year ago, at age 34, I started the program. For the first time in my professional life, I feel I’m exactly where I should be. I couldn’t be happier with my decision.
Was it scary? Absolutely. But even scarier was the thought of looking back twenty years from now having not made the change.
If it piques your interest, go for it!
After dabbling in coding, which I fell in love with, I decided to go back to school for software development. I didn’t have the high school math grades to be a competitive applicant, so, while working full-time, I re-did all high school math over a four-month period —- finishing just days before the program’s application deadline.
A year ago, at age 34, I started the program. For the first time in my professional life, I feel I’m exactly where I should be. I couldn’t be happier with my decision.
Was it scary? Absolutely. But even scarier was the thought of looking back twenty years from now having not made the change.
If it piques your interest, go for it!
I did this transition in my late 20s, and it changed my life for the better. It wasn’t easy; I wrote about it here some years ago (I’m now almost 40): http://jeremyraines.com/2015/12/20/the-road-to-in-demand-dev...
There’s not a lot of concrete advice, more of a picture of how precarious it can be at the outset. It’s really about whether you really enjoy the work, so that you’re willing to keep trying when maybe you’ve expended what feels like a lot of effort, yet your mental picture of the career/life seems both distant and dissonant with your (lack of) feeling of mastery. In the end, for me, the doors were opened by meeting & working with/for the right people, but it was a grind to get to the point(s) where I could.
Lastly, there will come a point, which is subjective and tricky to identify & act on, where you transition from “I need to take what I can get to learn and stay in the game” to “Nah, I’m not settling any more; I’ll turn down things that don’t seem like I can thrive as a result”
There’s not a lot of concrete advice, more of a picture of how precarious it can be at the outset. It’s really about whether you really enjoy the work, so that you’re willing to keep trying when maybe you’ve expended what feels like a lot of effort, yet your mental picture of the career/life seems both distant and dissonant with your (lack of) feeling of mastery. In the end, for me, the doors were opened by meeting & working with/for the right people, but it was a grind to get to the point(s) where I could.
Lastly, there will come a point, which is subjective and tricky to identify & act on, where you transition from “I need to take what I can get to learn and stay in the game” to “Nah, I’m not settling any more; I’ll turn down things that don’t seem like I can thrive as a result”
I got railroaded into becoming a salesperson, and at 24 decided I wanted to become a dev, I worked on some side projects and never gave up the passion.
It might've taken me 10 years since then, but I've landed a senior SWE role.
How I would advise, is to focus on a small subset of things you like, with people/friends you like, be it music, cycling, whatever.
Focus on what you love, and as cliche as it is, something good will come out of it.
It might've taken me 10 years since then, but I've landed a senior SWE role.
How I would advise, is to focus on a small subset of things you like, with people/friends you like, be it music, cycling, whatever.
Focus on what you love, and as cliche as it is, something good will come out of it.
I went back to school in sciences at age 27. This is after flunking out of maths when I was younger because I never understood the point and had challenges outside of school that distracted me...
Graduated with a masters at 32 with advanced maths under my belt.
Started working at a startup at 33. Dir Eng by 35 owing to my time as a foreman in construction and remote geophysical exploration. Turns out managing people in those fields is more difficult than software and ended up being excellent preparation.
This is all years ago now but there is nothing systemic that has changed. Career switches can give you a superpower, or at least, another perspective. The key for me is honest work, tenacity and empathy. The rest is, as they say, details.
Graduated with a masters at 32 with advanced maths under my belt.
Started working at a startup at 33. Dir Eng by 35 owing to my time as a foreman in construction and remote geophysical exploration. Turns out managing people in those fields is more difficult than software and ended up being excellent preparation.
This is all years ago now but there is nothing systemic that has changed. Career switches can give you a superpower, or at least, another perspective. The key for me is honest work, tenacity and empathy. The rest is, as they say, details.
I changed careers from a liberal arts path at 28 by going back to school in CS, audit/non-credit to try to focus on coding, and also took practical networking classes at my local tech college. My area didn't have other quality training and online courses weren't cutting it.
I took the first job that would hire me, moving about 1,500 miles with very little money and no family support. If I didn't have and make a good support network of friends, I would've been homeless because I was fully broke my first months.
It took about 5 years to get established enough in support roles to start making real headway, but my career since has been relatively rewarding. I'm making more money but I'm also feeling a lot happier with the work that I'm doing.
I came through that in a different time (mid/late-2000s, housing crisis, but greener fields in tech than now) and it scared the hell out of me, but the alternative fear was greater, that I'd be geographically and financially trapped.
My advice is to be open, be social, be persistent, and above all be friendly. Even when you don't want to, even when it's hard. The connections I made in my first shitty underpaid startup tech-support job have been at least a small part of how I've gotten my last three jobs in tech. This is a very tight industry and the people you know in it can be, and become, unexpectedly powerful.
I took the first job that would hire me, moving about 1,500 miles with very little money and no family support. If I didn't have and make a good support network of friends, I would've been homeless because I was fully broke my first months.
It took about 5 years to get established enough in support roles to start making real headway, but my career since has been relatively rewarding. I'm making more money but I'm also feeling a lot happier with the work that I'm doing.
I came through that in a different time (mid/late-2000s, housing crisis, but greener fields in tech than now) and it scared the hell out of me, but the alternative fear was greater, that I'd be geographically and financially trapped.
My advice is to be open, be social, be persistent, and above all be friendly. Even when you don't want to, even when it's hard. The connections I made in my first shitty underpaid startup tech-support job have been at least a small part of how I've gotten my last three jobs in tech. This is a very tight industry and the people you know in it can be, and become, unexpectedly powerful.
I made the transition to developer in my mid twenties as a college dropout.
It has been net positive for my life. I've ended up at a FAANG equivalent company (i.e. big company and big salary), I'd describe my outcome as better than average.
Advice is hard to give without knowing your situation. When I entered the industry it wasn't that hard to get a junior position. This is not true today and so trying to enter is much riskier. I regularly help people enter the industry and have seen the barrier to entry raise over time.
I generally see six patterns of success:
1. The person has a network that will take a chance on them because they are a high caliber person (assumes some minimum level of skill)
2. The person has strong IT skills and uses their position within an IT org to gradually acquire coding and cloud (e.g. AWS) skills. They then get a dev job that is primarily cloud related.
3. The person has some other valuable skillset (e.g. accounting) and agrees to work at a startup splitting their time between coding and their existing skillset. Sometimes people need to accept reduced pay even relative to startup salaries to make this work.
4. The person goes back to school then gets a job as a fresh grad. This works fairly well but is expensive in both time and money.
5. The person self-teaches and makes one or more truly impressive projects. I've only seen one person do this successfully. They dove deep into a multi-user collaborative editing program, it showed really great technical chops.
6. The person goes to a coding bootcamp and makes some small projects. The success rate of this seems to drop every year and I don't think I can recommend it. In many ways this is not different from self-teaching except that most people lack the tools to successfully self-teach.
It has been net positive for my life. I've ended up at a FAANG equivalent company (i.e. big company and big salary), I'd describe my outcome as better than average.
Advice is hard to give without knowing your situation. When I entered the industry it wasn't that hard to get a junior position. This is not true today and so trying to enter is much riskier. I regularly help people enter the industry and have seen the barrier to entry raise over time.
I generally see six patterns of success:
1. The person has a network that will take a chance on them because they are a high caliber person (assumes some minimum level of skill)
2. The person has strong IT skills and uses their position within an IT org to gradually acquire coding and cloud (e.g. AWS) skills. They then get a dev job that is primarily cloud related.
3. The person has some other valuable skillset (e.g. accounting) and agrees to work at a startup splitting their time between coding and their existing skillset. Sometimes people need to accept reduced pay even relative to startup salaries to make this work.
4. The person goes back to school then gets a job as a fresh grad. This works fairly well but is expensive in both time and money.
5. The person self-teaches and makes one or more truly impressive projects. I've only seen one person do this successfully. They dove deep into a multi-user collaborative editing program, it showed really great technical chops.
6. The person goes to a coding bootcamp and makes some small projects. The success rate of this seems to drop every year and I don't think I can recommend it. In many ways this is not different from self-teaching except that most people lack the tools to successfully self-teach.
I did it at 36. It wasn’t easy on my own but I stuck to my plan. I probably spent 14K doing it and lost a year of income in total.
Today I both enjoy it and regret it. In the end it’s work. Sometimes the most enjoyable work and other times not as much.
Today I both enjoy it and regret it. In the end it’s work. Sometimes the most enjoyable work and other times not as much.
I had a co-worker that was a liberal arts background but did a React/JS bootcamp in 2018, got hired as an intern in 2019, and transitioned to full time in 2020 .. got promoted to a senior dev in 2022.
I guess my advice / observation is that meritocracy is alive and well in this industry, and if you put in the time and effort to become an effective dev then the jobs will find you.
I guess my advice / observation is that meritocracy is alive and well in this industry, and if you put in the time and effort to become an effective dev then the jobs will find you.
I teach people in your position in life. I recommend at this stage bite size steps in education. Find Colleges with 1 or 2 year programming curriculum.
This way you get to working sooner and see for real if this is what you want.
These programs tend to be practical in nature. More how to use a particular tools chain to develop in a specific set of languages. Less of the theoretical topics that a CS degree would give you.
You could learn more later and ratchet up your programming "status".
You could learn more later and ratchet up your programming "status".
Yet I feel I am not doing justice to my role/calibre. I am thinking of moving full time to becoming a developer (I don't have an engineering degree, but have been learning on my own). But I am unsure and scared. Has anybody been through this? What advice will you give?