How did you make the career pivot?

I spent almost eleven years in grocery retail as an assistant service manager. It was never really the plan to stay there that long, but I struggle with ADHD and traditional schooling as well as clinical depression. The job was just comfortable enough and paid well enough for my area to just... keep things the status quo.

And then, of course, the pandemic.

The eight or so years previous in my career, I had the occasional ugly customer, but it all just got so much worse. People were just so fucking rude and cruel for no good reason. My cashiers and baggers skewed to the 16-21 crowd and I had people making those kids cry on the front end at least once a week. Disgusting behavior, and I'd gladly go in there to defend them, but that shit gets to you after a while.

Unhinged lectures by conspiracy theorists popping into real life as though from a fucking Facebook post, threats to spit on us, constant Karen-like complaints dripping in condescension. It was like waking up from a nightmare when I realized I couldn't live like this anymore.

So, I looked up what it would take to get into IT and learned about Comptia certifications. I studied everyday for the A+ tests, no matter how exhausted I was because that was one less video or page to get through the next day.

I had a group of friends who knew how hard I was grinding to get out and they raised money for my second certification exam, and that whole memory is a bright flood light during an otherwise very exhausting and very dark time period of my life.

Passed the tests, applied for any and all entry positions on help desk, one month later and I got my first job in my new career. And I tell you, it's pretty much customer service all over again, but the sheer change in the way people treat their IT compared to their cashiers is night and day. It shouldn't be, but that alone has improved my mental health tenfold.

I still have work to do, more exams to pass, learning doesn't end in this field. I've been coasting a bit this past year, kind of taking the change in and slowly mulling over whether I want to go to school, but it's a fresh start that doesn't lead to a dead end unlike my previous job.

29 is not too late. I did it from product to engineering in my early 30s. Did take a substantial pay decrease.

4 years later and no regrets, I’m much happier and enjoy the work.

For language I would probably check the job market in your area. JS/Python is a safe stack though.

Learning a language isn’t hard, learning how to build something is. I’ve only looked at a few lines of python code but if you told me to start coding in python i’d be fine with it on the fly.

Check out app academy open and full stack open for free starting points. I can highly recommend both of them.

Does your company have an engineering team? You should make friends with some of them, let them code review your projects, ask to shadow them, etc. I’ve done that as both the engineer and wannabe at my previous company.

The market right now… not good. Especially entry level. I would try to utilize your network, existing company and your domain specific knowledge as much as possible to turn that into eng possibilities. It’s tough.

One route (I didn’t go but considered) was self teaching via the above programs then going for an online masters to give myself more credibility. With this job market it’s worth consideration.

I answered a similar question a few days ago here.

Like you, I didn't study CS or programming in college and made a career shift into programming. However, I did study engineering in college and was doing engineering in my first job. I was able to automate some of my work via excel macros in my first job, which is what got me interested in programming.

I ultimately got another job that was tangentially related to the engineering I studied, but still not programming. Again, I found opportunities to write programs to automate my job.

My next job was a true programming job! My biggest recommendation is to start a blog and just start blogging what you're learning. Post on a regular schedule, start building small projects and log your progress in your blog.

1. I don't know if things have changed, but I would recommend learning Python first. It's a good first language, but there maybe aren't a lot of places where you would be using Python. However, once you learn how to program, the language doesn't really matter (in fact, a lot of places will be fine if you know a programming language, even if you don't know the one they primarily use)
2. There are a lot of free courses online, which are fine. The best way to learn, in my opinion, is to build your own projects. Start with something small, and again, blog the whole process.
3. 100% its possible and common. I'm biased, but I think the best programmers are the ones with some other background.

I'm curious to hear about people who moved out of Tech. After 27 years in the field, the last 7 in Big Tech, I've found it to be a meat grinder for humans. The more senior you get, the more absurd the expectations, the more inhumane the conversations, the more soul-crushing the experience.

I just want to connect with humans, help them see who they could be, then, when they're so inclined, help them figure out how to get there from here. I'm pretty good at it, too. I did this as a manager in Tech for years. It's the other parts of management that suck: the ceaseless value-free meetings, the status reports, the "performance management" (management speak for: whipping people into shape or showing them the door).

I want to help people be happier, not be an active part of wrecking their lives.

In capitalism, at least in America, we too often place all of the responsibility with the individual. That's ludicrous. We all exist in systems. It's often the system, the structures, that are sick. The individual's issues are often a reflection of the structural issues. Sure, some responsibility lies with the individual. When systems are sick, I would try to change systems. You can imagine just how well that would go.

For all of you getting into tech, bear in mind that the expectation tends to be trust you're either growing by or your drying. The pressure gets more intense as you're in it longer. You may want to actively try to avoid this lest you find yourself, like me, seeking a way out.

Man I feel you. About a year ago I was trying hard to switch from mechanical engineering to network/IT stuff where my hobby is. I got my network+ and had a good lead on a new role that would pay nearly my current (at the time) salary. That fell through and the only things open to someone like me were entry level tech support and whatnot. Going down that far in salary was a non-starter for my family. I ended up finding a new role at a new company and si far am enjoying the ride!

Best of luck to you.

I made a drastic career change when I got laid off at the start of the pandemic. After over two decades of being a chef, I took the time to inventory the non-culinary skills I had developed and thought about the kinds of things that I would like to do in a new job. Truth be told, I had been looking to change careers for a while before 2020, I just needed a global catastrophe to force me to take the plunge.

I settled on technical writing since I enjoy researching a variety of topics and have a knack for distilling complex topics into concise explanations. I was a bit of an outlier among chefs in that I was great at writing clear policy and procedure documents and could communicate well with non-culinary folks. I was in my early 40s when I enrolled in some college courses and wasn't even close to being the oldest person making a change.

It's certainly possible that you'll take a pay cut and be limited to entry-level positions for a while, but I'd be willing to bet that some of the skills you learned in your market research career will give you a different perspective than your peers. I've been surprised at how many of the work habits that I developed in kitchens have carried over into my new role.

It was one of the scariest leaps of faith I've ever taken so if you're nervous about it, you aren't alone. It's also been one of the most rewarding decisions I've ever made.

I did it in 2 stages, I'm 38, female (does that make a difference?). I don't have a CS degree but I do have a BEng and MSc.

I went from a role that was a mix of project management and H&S in the 'adventure attractions' industry into software consultancy (for just over a year) then this year into software development.

I did CS50x during lockdown in 2020 and thought I wanted to be a developer but didn't believe I knew anywhere near enough, I thought about moving industry to something in tech as a step towards that goal though and I was fortunate that I hit it off with a company at a local tech fair which I'd attended in 2021 to learn more about the industry and what roles might be suitable. I met with them a few times and they ultimately offered me a job in consultancy mostly off the back of being 'the person in the office who is good at computers, and helps get it set up and train everyone' in my previous jobs. I started as a consultant in late 2021, and it was evident I was much more technical than my colleagues so it was easy to take opportunities to develop my programming skills and demonstrate I had the potential to learn more.

I confided my aspirations to work friends in the software development team who heavily encouraged me to speak to their head of department (one of the people I'd met at the careers fair), so earlier this year I (extremely nervously) asked him if there was any opportunities for me on his team and he said yes.

I am fortunate that the head of the software development department considers aptitude and potential as more important than already having experience in the stack so it wasn't an issue that I didn't know already know the languages or software they specifically used because I'd shown I had the potential to learn it. I've also since learnt that he seems to consider having the confidence to put yourself forward an admirable trait. I made a good impression at the tech fair by approaching them and being genuine and open about where I was and what I was looking for.

I sound really confident and together in this, I actually really struggle with confidence and every time I reflect on it I'm amazed I got this far, especially considering I left uni too low in self belief to even try applying for engineering jobs and just got an entry level admin role for minimum wage.

I am in my mid-30s, and I changed careers a couple of years ago. I went from working in agricultural research (which was a pivot in itself) to working as a multimedia developer in tech education. There are a few things that I believe helped smooth my path:

• Although I'd never worked professionally in this area, I have pretty extensive hobby experience in related areas. It was not hard for me to gather together a variety of samples for a portfolio.

• I have some other skills that, while not required in my job, I do think probably helped sell me as someone who could learn quickly in this area. For example, I am reasonably familiar with programming in a few different languages (again, due to hobby projects) and I know a lot of different software packages (also for hobbies).

• I switched careers while employment rates were very high.

• The big one: I had a friend already working in the industry who vouched for me. She has a skill set pretty similar to mine (art, programming, and tons of software experience) and, because we've worked on hobbies together before, she knew I could do the work.

Learning how to program on your own is challenging, but doable. A key factor, I think, is to understand how your mind works and lean into your skills.

For my part, I cannot memorize information. I just can't do it. I've never been able to do it. Instead, I flourish if there is a consistent system that I can immerse myself in and internalize in a deeper way. (For example, when I was a kid taking math classes, I was always dead last to finish tests because I couldn't memorize formulas and effectively had to derive them. When I studied German in high school, I could never learn the vocabulary, but I was best in class for grammar.)

For this reason, I found that C (which is a very uncomplicated language) was ideal for me as a beginner. There weren't a lot of different features to learn, and the lack of streamlining forced me to do every little thing myself, which helped me grok the concepts in the way that I grok best. I had a few false starts trying to learn C# and Python, but while they make it a lot easier to actually make stuff, I never got to that point because I was constantly getting lost with them. (I am OK with C# now, but even to this day, Python just does not mesh with me.)

The best thing I ever did was take the first half of CS50, which focuses primarily on C. (I dropped out around halfway through when they started doing Python and CSS because it was total information overload for me. However, many people find that the course actually gets easier at this stage.) It was very challenging, but also pretty fun, and it helped me get a good foundation in understanding of what a programming language actually is and does, which in turn helped me internalize concepts that I was really struggling to memorize before.

Spent a little over 10 years in restaurant kitchens BoH.

I pivoted into IT support, and started at the bottom. I found a niche in MS cloud space ~13 years ago, and have focused ont hat space since. I'm now running a financial institution infrastructure for a number of MS and AWS services.

I started from the bottom. Found a focus, and ran with it.

No formal education, no certs of note.

I haven't done it yet, but I chose to start the journey by hiring a career coach. A friend who heads an HR dept. at another company gave me the recommendation. The coach is helping me look introspectively at creating a skills inventory for both marketing myself better and thinking about what kind of jobs I should be looking for. Right now I don't know, I just know I need to get out of the industry culture I'm in, much like @BlueRaith.

I hear you on the intimidation of all the what-if's. It feels like I'm trying to stage the breakup with a 10 year relationship. But unlike deciding to be single, I have to have a job to keep fed & housed, and that's terrifying. And it's stressful to keep doing the work that I know I want out of until I have another job lined up.

I have inattentive type ADHD that went undiagnosed into adulthood so I was unable to obtain a degree after high school. I fell into tech support and felt like I was working my way towards systems administration, although I grew up wanting to be a programmer. After a couple of bad jobs there, one of the friends I had made along the way who knew I was skilled with Linux, contacted me and asked me to apply for a position at the place he was working at, which turned out to be about maintaining a custom ubuntu derivative. I managed to get hired, and while I have since moved on from that job, I have been a software developer ever since!

I left the military (intelligence) and am now working on my PhD in engineering and will be at a lab once I'm done. While there are some tips and tricks, I don't think there is any secret sauce to making a career change.

• Have a plan and don't make the career change arbitrarily. Talk to some people in the field you want to get into (aka network). Learn about sub-fields within the career that you want to work towards if you can. Know what qualifications you need.
• Money. Getting ready to make a career change often means front-loading some $$ to get the required education and/or training. Though a new career is usually more lucrative (hence the switch), it requires money. That said, have a financial plan.
• Depending the change and experience involved, you take an initial pay cut and that's just how it goes. Factor that into your decision.
• If you are married and/or have kids, consider them when making the decision. Making the change to leave the military and go back to school full-time was something my wife and I had prepared years in advance.
• Once again, network. Knowing the right people can go a long way.

As for your three questions, here are my takes:

1. This can depend heavily on what you want to do. Python is usually a good starting code. But, I will give strong nods to Javascript, SQL, and HTML. They are just widely used from a practical standpoint (I think they're the most used). I personally started with Matlab (thanks school) and then moved to Fortran, C++, and some Julia and Python on Linux.
2. Sure, there are courses and schools, but programming has so many resources and is something you can effectively learn on your own. Plus, unlike building a car engine, completing programming projects don't require a lot of resources. I feel the one of the hardest things to learn about programming on your own is how to program and work in a group/organization .
3. You can definitely get a solid career, but it takes time and work. And of course, while the opportunities are there, I would say software opportunities aren't as numerous as they once were (based on what some of my friends have said so this is just anecdotal).

I worked in heritage conservation/preservation, think documenting and preparing buildings for damage during the expansion of ISIS. It was an incredibly fun job for a while but in the end I felt like I wasn't actually helping the communities I was deployed into. I had a pretty unique skillset at that point, particularly around remote sensing and started looking towards other fields. My best friend is an ecologist and we would talk about how the tech I worked with could be applied to the natural environment.

We started creating community science projects, often times with small grants, while I was still working in heritage to see if we could get something off the ground. I realized I didn't understand the natural mechanism I was now assessing and went back to school to get a masters in the science/policy of environmental management. The program got me pretty well networked into the natural science community and let me explore some of the hypothesis we had about what was needed in the industry. I graduated in the spring of 2020 (not ideal timing) and launched a company out of my research during the program. It definitely hasn't been smooth - there was a period where I painted houses to make ends meet - but we're funded and running now so I can't complain too much.

The people that work in environmental fields are much more my kind of people. Whereas folks who work in heritage tend to be a bit stuffy and often upper class, nature based folks often match the stereotype being more laid back and empathetic. Very happy with the transition!

3. Even with such little experience, could I still build a solid career in the field?

I think others have touched on this, but I want to emphasize that tech jobs like what you're looking at have an incredible amount of wiggle room in regards to learning on the job. The place I'm currently working at definitely looks for someone who has a foundation in languages, but they also equally look for someone who knows how to learn. There are wizards out there that seem to have every programming book memorized, but some of them are unbearable to work with, either in general employee relations or in stubborn habits. Don't knee-cap yourself with doubt when a lot of the job is going to be learning on the fly and communicating during roadbumps. Obviously don't roll in without the basics under your belt, but don't sell yourself short, especially with market research in your back pocket since that is such a valuable indication on having a background in communication.

I'm not the most com-sci person here, but the tech job I did swing into improved my quality of life immensely, and I've found my ability to learn about my field of work is way easier when I'm surrounded by an environment that enables it.

You got this :)

Is there like a collectively agreed all-around language that everyone should start with?

No. I say pick a language that looks a little harder like Javascript or C#, as these are closer to most other languages than Ruby, Visual Basic or Python which are "easy" and human-readable, but their conventions result in code that doesn't really resemble other languages, even if the strictures and logic are the same. Pythonic Python won't help you with strong C++, but good C# will help with Javascript or Rust. In fact, I learned Javascript based on organization I learned in C#.

Is there a formal way to learn a coding language?

College courses or boot camps. They won't be everything, and sometimes in non-CS courses they make things too easy (your code should be tested not your memorization of concepts), but a C# class did more for me than I would've been able to in the same time.

Even with such little experience, could I still build a solid career in the field?

Sucking is the first step to being good at something.

I worked 8 years in IT support, during which I wrote documentation for users and my boss (though that wasn't my primary responsibility). During a time with a good manager there, I was able to dip into website and social media work. That led to working as a contracted 'marketing assistant' for a friend for several months, which led to a contract content writer gig for an MSP. I've been doing that for a couple years now. For over a decade, all my jobs have been through friends and acquaintances.

To me, that's a pivot from IT support to technical and copywriting. I'm still trying to figure out if I should just continue on the technical writing path or pivot into some other skills (Salesforce or HubSpot have crossed my mind). My main concern is finding flex work (3ish days per week) out of office that pays the bills. It doesn't have to be exciting.

If anyone has advice on how/where to pivot or questions about what other skills and experience I have, please reply!

I made a semi-pivot from paralegal work to legal operations. Both within the tech industry, though.

I didn't feel like I had to start from the bottom when I pivoted, primarily because legal operations is a relatively new field, so paralegal experience is relevant because it's close enough. Legal Ops is also a really great field for people with unique backgrounds - I don't have a college degree, but my real life work experience is valued highly by hiring managers in this area.

I think it helped a lot that I identified a specific software to specialize in, which I happened to enjoy working with. I could tell that the company that makes the software was about to have a huge boom in sales, so now there are a lot of companies using the software that are eager to hire people like me, especially since it's relatively new and not many people have experience with it. I don't really have to look for jobs anymore, recruiters find me when they're searching for the niche experience I have, and often they actually have attractive opportunities for me.

I've nearly doubled my salary from $75K to $130K since embarking on this career shift. I feel grateful for the opportunity and I'm much happier with my career than before.

Also, I was 30 when I made the change. This age isn't even remotely close to being "too late" for a pivot, I wouldn't worry much about that! I feel like it's actually good to have a number of years of work behind you when you make a pivot - it gives you a solid foundation even if the work is different from what you want to do next.