I followed my dreams and got demoted to software developer
[Ed. note: While we take some time to rest up over the holidays and prepare for next year, we are re-publishing our top ten posts for the year. Please enjoy our favorite work this year and we’ll see you in 2022.]
Almost one year ago, I began my new job as an associate software developer here at Stack Overflow. Before that, I’d been running the Product Design team, first as a manager and then as director of design. It’s admittedly an unconventional career change, but for me personally, it couldn’t have made more sense.
I’ve always loved figuring things out. The first time I remember feeling the problem-solving glow was in junior high in Algebra I. That giddiness that floods your stomach when you’ve been throwing your brain at something for a while, and then it finally clicks. In my senior year of college, I took an intro to computer science class as an elective with a friend out of curiosity. My friend hated it, but I remember sitting there thinking, there’s that feeling. It clicks.
Then that sort of simmered. I did a bit of front-end dev work at my first post-undergrad job (we’re talking basic HTML only). When I went back to school for Human-Computer Interaction, I got to do a bit more coding, mostly just Java, Arduino stuff, and Adobe Flex [RIP], but never more than that. When I started working as a UX Researcher after grad school, I thought, “Well, this is your career now!”
I genuinely think that my problem, for years, has been confidence. I was just a UX person, not a coder. Surrounded by only the most freakishly good developers at Facebook (and then at Stack Overflow), I pushed whatever fantasies I had about coding professionally aside.
Instead, I kept it as a hobby. It’s important here that I credit several different entities/people for keeping my interest in coding going:
- Ludum Dare for forcing me to stop getting tangled up in my own head and instead to embrace whatever horrible code flowed from my fingertips.
- Corona SDK (now Solar2D) and Löve2D for being extremely accessible and well-documented tools for game creation.
- Project Euler and Advent of Code for giving me super challenging yet achievable coding problems to do.
- Zachtronics and Tomorrow Corporation for creating coding games that helped me understand that the gap between current-me and developer-me wasn’t intelligence, just knowledge and confidence.
- Several of my Stack Overflow developer colleagues for being the first people to whom I admitted that I wanted to be a developer myself. They’ve all been so encouraging, supportive, and kind, and I can’t imagine starting this career anywhere else.
During these few years in which I’ve been coding in earnest on the side, I also found myself regularly discouraged and confused by the sheer number of possible things that I could learn or do. I can’t count the number of quarter-finished games and barely-started projects I have in my private GitHub repos (actually, I can. It’s 15, and those are just the ones that made it there). Without much formal education in this field, I’d frequently get lost down documentation holes and find myself drowning in the 800 ways of maybe solving the problem that I had. Finally, I came to the conclusion that I needed more structure, and that I wouldn’t be able to get that structure in the hour of useful-brain-time I had after work each day. I started researching bootcamps and doing budget calculations and made plans to leave Stack Overflow.
I went to my new manager last year to let her know that I was going to have to leave. I told her that I’d wanted to be a developer for a long time and that I’d need to go pursue that dream somewhere else. Her answer? “Well… have you considered pursuing that here?” That put in motion a flurry of frank conversations with my now-manager, evaluations of my skills, and ultimately a plan to take what I’ll call my vaguely useful and large blobs of knowledge and refine them into the building blocks of a career in development.
The areas where I needed the most work were largely back-end, which makes sense. In the games and projects I’d worked on, I never had to worry about storage, accessing data, or how to scale things properly. My manager put together a series of projects designed to build my knowledge in those areas. We used Flask as the basis for my projects, as the barrier to entry is low and I already felt pretty confident with Python.
Once I finished those projects, it was time to actually start digging into .NET and Stack Overflow. The leap from making fun little Flask apps to working on the Stack Overflow codebase was … a big one. The hardest part for me has been getting used to working on code that lots of other people had worked on. With my own personal projects, I knew why each line of code was there (or at least, I did at some point), and I knew what everything did. With a codebase that’s so large that I’ll never actually ever read all of it, I had to start exercising a whole new set of skills I didn’t know I’d need.
So that’s where I am right now: working on projects on the Public Platform team and getting better at understanding enormous, complex webs of code. I won’t lie, I feel incredibly lucky to be in this position. Without a snazzy portfolio, CS degree, or expensive bootcamp under my belt, getting this opportunity with a cold apply would have been nearly impossible. The moral of the story isn’t: “Hey, just work for a really cool and understanding company for three years and then see if they’ll demote you!” That’s not very practical. If you work in tech, however, don’t underestimate how much your job wants to keep you around and don’t be afraid to ask for the things you want. As I used to tell the folks on the design team, “The worst thing that will happen if you ask someone for something is that they’ll say ‘No.’ And maybe laugh at you.”
Most importantly, I was right: I thought I’d love writing code professionally, and it turns out, I do! Sure, sometimes I submit a pull request for review and am subsequently embarrassed by the oversights I’ve made. And yeah, occasionally (but no more than a few times per day!) I am absolutely positive I’m going to be fired for my obvious incompetence any second now. But I’m so happy I made this decision. If you’re thinking about this kind of career change yourself, then listen: you’re smart enough, brave enough, everything enough to make the career decisions you want to make. Don’t look back in ten years and wish you’d made a change now.
Illustrations by Alex Francis.
Tags: career advice, software development
84 Comments
Thank you for sharing your story, Kristina! I’ve been thinking about a pivot for a while and reading this has inspired me to pursue it.
I’ve had some similar experiences. I don’t know you but I’m very proud of you 😀 Best of luck!
Congrats, I also having the same experience after working for 3 years.
Thats weird i went the opposite way from software to design
God I relate to this article! 😂 I got promoted to tech lead and hate the work. I don’t want to babysit and train other developers, interact with vendors, be on the hook for every thankless task our project needs done, etc. I just want to be a code monkey again!
Congrats. You’ll be happier doing something you want to do, and happy matters. Good choice.
I did the same thing about 22 years ago. Now retired, with an original background in Maths and Fortran/Pascal/C I went from grunt programmer to a kind of marketing manager proselytising … a kinda computer thing … around the world right back to C/python/bash grunt programmer. I never regretted the move back to technical work. It’s my comfort zone and although I started to lose confidence in the later years as my skills became less and less leading edge, I was lucky to have chosen Unix as my base. Eventually, as a 66-yo working in a shop with mainly under 40’s (and mainly under 30’s at that) I decided to leave while I was valued and before I made a fool of myself. Thinking back, I think that loss of confidence was unwarranted and I could have continued – but now that I’ve left the city, we couldn’t be happier – even if I only get to contribute to open source projects now and then (and mow the grass!) But yeah – self confidence is the thing.
Great message. imposter syndrome is a definitely a thing too.
Demotion is fine, its a blessing in disguise kinda thing. Designation is just a ‘ ame’ they give you temporarily. The real intellectual growth is learning and following what you want to learn and apply, you will soon be have the Eng Manager or CTO level back
Wow! I’m positive you will do great, sounds like you’re a natural. Feeling an intense excitement when a solution to a coding problem fiinally dawns on you, like you said, is to me a sure sign someone can succeed as a developer. Because this feeling will make the time it took to solve the problem actually worth it and it keeps you going when everything looks a mess.
Are you among the ones who vote down other who ask questions you don’t like?
genuinely awesome journey story, thanks for sharing – keep doing that! please & thank you, of course – woohoo!
I have always been interested in programming since my high school days. Back in college I took a course in introduction to computer programming after the course I buried everything pertaining to computer, it was a small hell trying to master algorithms. Then came the covid -19 holiday. I properly utilized it by learning the basics from HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
I am most envious. Well done, thank you for sharing and I wish you the very best.
I have had similar experience .I am very proud of you as well!!!!
I like the story, if you can you should do what you enjoy 🙂 I dont like the “demoted to developer” though. Why is it a step down to be a developer? It’s just another job with another responsibility. Especially if it’s what you want to do, you got promoted to developer (“The manager who promoted to developer”).
You misread that one: She moved from being in a Director level position to an entry level one in a different field… Its not a jab at software development but a consequence of changing carrier paths at a higher level than is common.
Congrats on your career move, I think instead of trying to attract female talent the larger companies could do more developing from within like this. By providing a path for women who feel that they’re a coder living in a marketeers body, so to speak, hopefully they could be identified earlier on and get them in the right seat quicker than if they had to wait to realize it themselves. Not everyone would have the luxury of switching at a certain point if they’ve decided to start a family, etc. and cannot afford the difference in income.
Considering the cultural and social barriers that exist around computers especially at younger ages when most men are able to hone their basic IT skills, I’m sure lots of women are in this position.
Presumably Martijn’s comment is based on the articles title and I kind of felt that a little too?
after working as an Architect for 10 years after finishing college
I just shifted to coding dart awesomeness, i quite my job,, i have way less money,, but I’m the happiest person in any room
“… my problem, for years, has been confidence.I was just a UX person, not a coder, ” and “don’t underestimate how much your job wants to keep you around” are really, really great takeaways… especially for people in tech, and especially for people earlier in their careers, but also generally for anyone in any field at any stage. No one, no matter how on your side or well-intentioned they are, will look out for you interests they way you can — not least because they can’t peer inside your head or your heart. You’ve got to figure that out and speak up!
I got demoted from Senior QA Engineer to software developer 18 months ago and never looked back! It has been scary at times but I’m so glad I did it. Good luck!
Great story! Thanks for sharing it. I’m glad for you that your company wanted to give you a shot.
I love this story SO, SO much!
I ended up being lost in careers I thought fit me more, but realized how much I really want to learn software dev. I have so-so skills in Python, C++, Java, and been learning Ruby to incorporate it with all my HTML/CSS knowledge. So have been paying for skillshare/Udemy courses to sharpen up and ironically, getting good at research since many of them are outdated and require SO MUCH CRAP to even RUN.
Like Ruby/Ruby on Rails dev. The nightmare that is CMD, bundler, GIT, Node.js, Yarn, etc being needed to make everything flow correctly is UNDERSTATED in these courses and they only dedicate 20 min to it MAX when it’s POINTLESS to do tutorials being unable to actually CODE or generate correctly via localhost.
You gave me a second wind, so now back to getting my site to recognize home/index.html.erb!
Learning on my own feels just like that…OVERWHELMING. THOUSANDS of ways to go about something so always felt that was a lack of intelligence on my part, so glad to feel I’m not the only one.
Thank you for posting this! I needed the moral boost!
Inspirational story, Kristina!
Following your passion is always going to lead to a more fulfilling career than following the paycheck. Wishing you fantastic success as a developer and knowing you will love every minute of it!
I was into coding , then into design and then came back coding. Its difficult to stop yourself from coding when you are passionate about it.
Thank you for writing this Kristina. I am going through a similar process now, and hearing your story gives me confidence.
+1 People have different definitions for why companies exist, as opposed to everyone just freelancing. This career transition shows that companies are able to value transferable skills because they know what they are getting while they retrain you; it is hard for a freelancer to do this. But it is still a lot of work, perseverance and resilience on behalf of the individual. Apart from being interesting, it is a great blog post with some really good links.
That’s a great story! I have friends that went from manager non-IT role to full fledged developers, but this is a first story that A. happened withing single company B. happened with a product designer.
Also I am very interested on how you are coping with salary gap (I guess even in stackoverflow they do not have same paygrades for junior devs and for directors).
For me, personally, that is one of the biggest problems of changing the profession, so I would really like to hear your story 🙂
> My manager put together a series of projects designed to build my knowledge in those areas.
That’s super cool! Kudos to you for chasing your dreams and navigating the tricky path to get yourself into the job that’s the one you want — AND to your manager (and to the larger organization) for being amenable to, and actively supportive of, this kind of unconventional career move.
” … Without much formal education in this field, I’d frequently get lost down documentation holes and find myself drowning in the 800 ways of maybe solving the problem that I had. …”
Been programming professionally for 16 yrs now, and you know what? Still happens! 🙂
Only thing with someone else waiting for a result is that you eventually are forced to choose and climb back out of that hole.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Kristina. I can identify with several of the feelings you mentioned, and I feel a little more determined to keep working toward my own goals after reading.
You are a really good person! It comes through so clearly in your story, no wonder SO wanted to make a way for you. Good people make a good company. Congrats on your demotion :D!
p.s. I am 58, a former truck driver trying to learn coding on my own…I am a problem solver too, and you have inspired me on a day that I am hurting with the fear I can’t do it. Thanks
Stack Overflow may be unique in that they are willing to hire programmers, rather than engineers. I’ve been programming in Java since its inception in 1995 and Android since 2012 . I have five innovative apps published in Google Play, all with good ratings and I thought that that would be good enough to land a programming job. Wrong. It turns out that everywhere I applied to wanted software engineers, not programmers, and the only place that did hire me folded up after 8 weeks (they were desperate, I guess). So the moral here is that without a lot of knowledge of software engineering principles, forget about working for a good company (except maybe Stack Overflow).
You’re making the same mistake that many people make. You’re assuming that “programmers” and “software engineers” are two different occupations or professions. They’re not. They’re just different titles – often for the exact same job – given out by HR departments or by hiring managers who simply don’t know any better.
If you can show me a company where they have “software engineers” and “programmers” who are doing different work, I’ll show you a company that’s great at wasting resources.
At best, a “software engineer” simply has more years of experience as a programmer. That’s all. And as such, the correct terms that should be used are “junior developer” and “senior developer”. If you see companies looking for people with those job titles, you should definitely apply because they “get it”, and chances are that the managers who are in charge of the developers are not idiots with no software development background.
There’s no “software engineering” school, just as there’s no “programming school”. Most people who pursue higher education in this field tend to come from computer science. There’s no “engineering” involved in “software engineering”. I know because I’m someone who studied actual engineering in school, and I also happen to be a software developer with over 30 years of experience building applications on various platforms and operating systems.
Engineering and software development are two completely distinct fields, and I’ve never liked it when the two were intermixed as “software engineer” because that’s a nonsensical title. You can graduate with a computer science degree or an engineering degree. But you’ll never graduate with a “software engineering” degree, because there’s no such thing.
On the other hand, I left a job as a researcher to a post as a software engineer within the same org and I HATED it. No variety, no say in the higher level design, no meeting users, just endless tickets and submitting fixes – a real silo’ed job. It sucked hard – no fault of the people I was with. So I made my excuses and left after a month.
“When I started working as a UX Researcher after grad school”, see this really scares me and is at the same time a perfect representation of the current situation of the market.
Anyway, glad you are happy with what you are doing now.
Great story, but after all of that you’ve still got your head screwed on wrong. This isn’t a demotion — it’s a promotion. Programmers are the most intelligent, thoughtful, and valuable, members of any development team. Literally all other project roles can be removed and if you’re lucky you can still get working software, but if you remove the programmers, everyone else’s opinion won’t result in a single ounce of business value.
So, well done on your promotion.
Kudos to you for pursuing your dream and to your Manager for that positive response to your career aspirations!
I’m sorry but how could “to software developer” possibly be a demotion?!!!
Only perhaps if your title was previously “senior” and the same description perhaps.
I have been a software developer my whole career and I always wanted to be a “software architect”. However, even changing from that to “software developer” really isn’t a “demotion”. There will always be individual contributors. Don’t you think it would be silly to discount their contributions just because they are not part of a larger team? How many people did it take to write the rijndael or twofish algorithms? Don’t you think those alone are larger contributions to the world then most of us will make in our entire careers?
Don’t discount individual contributors. “to software developer” can never be a demotion.
Seriously, how can you not understand that the term “demotion” in this case is surely a direct reference to her salary?
Going from a “director” position to a “junior programmer” in terms of salary is definitely a demotion.
It is all about perspective. I went from CEO, to Chief R&D Architect, to Programmer/Analyst II and with each a pretty good raise to go with it. Titles don’t mean much. I personally have avoided “management” positions as much as possible, as they are more about babysitting adults that anything else, which is something that I hate to do.
I have written code since I was in junior high and picked up my first software job when I was 18 doing LISP. When I left, they offered me what would be about $78K today but I wanted to go to college. So I did the college thing, got 3 degrees, and ended up right back where I was before… making about the same money in the end. But at least I moved on from LISP. But that was in the 90’s. Now at 49 with 30+ years experience, I still prefer writing code over managing people. Personally, I would never want a job that contained the title “director”. I prefer the hands on development work over endless meetings to determine when to have more meetings… or spending my time doing tasks like approving time for vacations and medical appointments.
One thing that really like about software is that you can build something and sell it, license it out, deploy a Google Store app, etc. and make a decent living. But as a “director” or “manager” or anything, you are trading dollars for hours. So in my mind, going from “director” to “software developer” is a promotion.
One of us! One of us!
I secretly suspect many smart people would make great programmers and would enjoy doing it, they just don’t consider it because programming is weird, difficult and nerdy, and not something for “regular people” (or so the story goes).
I once drew up some (very technical) specifications in Cucumber to describe logic that couldn’t be expressed straightforwardly in code, as there were lots of database dependencies. I sent them to a few of my smart non-developer colleagues to ask them if they understood these specs, to see how viable it would be to get non-developers to assist in such matters. One of them not only understood them, but actually discovered a subtle bug in the logic and corrected it. Sadly I was unable to persuade her she’d make a great programmer. Oh well, can’t win ’em all…
Great story! I made a similar move myself, from finance/business to software development/data science, and I love it! So glad I made the switch. My days fly by, and I pinch myself that I get to “play” all day, solving programming puzzles, and get paid!
the story is very inspirational and it motivated me a lot
What a beautiful story, really. I’m inspired by you, and I’m talking seriously.
Thanks to Demyo, I want to be now an IT security expert, but I’m afraid of starting. Maybe I should do the same.
I was 13 years in pharmaceutical sales and marketing before I made the switch to developer (independent, remote contractor), for very similar reasons to yours. I did not have the advantage of being able to do that inside the company I worked for because I had already cut ties and moved halfway around the world. Without formal qualifications I focused efforts on building my profile and knowledge through involvement with open-source projects. I haven’t looked back, have been doing this now since 2008.
I also miss Adobe (subsequently Apache) Flex, but it does live on a little with the Apache Royale project (which is similar to Flex, and compiles as3 and mxml directly to javascript).
Thanks for sharing your story!
This is truly inspiring. When we take such decisions it is truly important to stick to your goals and never get anxious or doubt your decisions after initial failures. Making mistakes and failures is part of journey and also stepping stones. Good to know you are moving forward in coding. Keep it up.
What a story! Good that you followed your brain and came into coding. Truly inspiring for everyone who wants to be a software developer in mid of some other carrier.
I wish the best in this change and amazing start into the developing world. Solving problems is as addictive as it gets.
So hope you truly love it all the way through and have an amazing career.
🙂
That’s a lovely story. Wishing you the very best of luck. Everyone has imposter syndrome to a degree now and then because it’s impossible to know everything and still be a functional human. I chose to stay technical from the start of my career and, 25 years later, am still happy with my decision.
So you had an advantage to getting your job based on your clout and whom you know?
This sounds like corporate nepotism.
There is so much to be said for doing what you enjoy. I’ve been a developer for 23 years and, although my job does require me to wear other hats, I am very glad development is still the larger part of my job.
Good luck, I have been a developer for 30 years and so many folks think of that as a kind of a fail. You didn’t move up? Imo I did. I got to do what I loved for 30 years. I tried being a manager and hated it. Doing what you love to do you can’t really fail.
Wow! As old software engineer, I know it gets in your soul!
Very brave decision. Really appreciate for sharing this with us.
Thank you for sharing and being bold enough to follow your passion! I also “demoted” myself from a senior UX/UI role to junior developer after deciding to change my career. Likewise, I had worked tangential to developers and had a growing curiosity to learn their skill set. I am very fortunate to have landed my current job and learn from awesome senior developers.
Hang in there and know that first year is the toughest. Just remember, you will never go back to being a brand new, limited-knowledge developer from here. If you work hard, learn from everyone around you, and ask questions when you are stuck, you will progress. In the blink of an eye, five years will have gone by and you will have a full-stack toolset.
Kudos to Stack Overflow for cultivating talent from within and giving you this opportunity.
I would bet money this is actually an Ad to make devs apply for jobs at SO
the story looks so nice and great isn’t it. Too good to be true. Anyways marketing people can do any thing to sell so you may be right bro. if you want to check apply for a interview and tell them I want to improve my career and I don’t know things which you want me to know as of now… then you will get the REAL reply 🙂 kudos
Really inspiring story really appreciate you sharing
Maybe I’m a bit picky on the English but I’m always inclined to use the title of ‘Software Engineer’ in stead of ‘software developer’. A developer develops (i.e. he codes and that’s about it). A software engineers engineers software (he designs, he codes and he tests his software many different ways).
In my current squad people always use the title of software developer but that’s rather because of poor English. I’m afraid my contract will be ended soon when I’m going to use the title of manager for our CEO 😉
I got demoted from leading 40 people to being a software developer again too in 2020. It was my decision as well and one of the best I have made at work. Well done!
Actually, I am just planning such thing right now. For past two years I had two managerial positions (in two different companies).
And I realised I am miserable while doing it. I dont want any more to write personal reviews, I dont want to say subordinates they can’t take days off because we are late, I dont want to write emails explainig why something doesnt work, I dont want to spend my weekends wondering what clients will ask next and how we can do it, I dont want etc. And actually in these past two years I felt right only in those rare ocasions when I was writing code.
Will try to finish this one more project, a matter of 2 months I hope, and I’m finished with management and bureaucracy.
Obviously, I will take a big hit to my paycheck, but I think it is small secrifice – I cant see myself beeing miserable for the next 20 years.
Great post – says many of the things that are very often unsaid. Well done 🙂
I always remained in the trenches for my 42+ years in the profession, though I led projects and was at times in charge of very large systems. I always enjoyed coding and had little use for most of the management I worked under whether being employed or on a consulting assignment…
I guess it just depends on what you consider to be a demotion. I’ve taken a lot of demotions because they came with significant pay raises. Personally, if I get paid more but my title is a little less exiting and my responsibilities are less, I’d call it a promotion.
I once went from Chief Architect to a Programmer Analyst II, but got a $25K pay raise to do so. So I’m good with it.
I’ve also turned down management positions that paid less, the same, or up to maybe $2K more a year, but would have added a dozen hours a week and having to babysit half-a-dozen adults. I would rather not. So I’m good with not taking that promotion.
I guess the biggest demotion I have ever taken was from owning my own business for 10 years to going back to corporate work. It cut my income in half but not having to work 24/7 and risking my financial future on one bad contract, one bad employee, one employee mistake, or one lawsuit, reduced my stress by 10-fold and cut my hours in half. But I was able to take my first 2-week vacation in 10-years and have my weekends back. So, I was very happy to take the demotion from CEO to Senior Software Developer.
Great story Kristina. Thanks for sharing! I’m on the way to complete CodingDojo full-stack cert. Though I don’t plan to go for a developer role as a current VP of Product, I will maybe have to drop a step or two in transitioning to AI & ML ~type projects. Wish you the best of luck in the new gig!
Good for you! Do what you love and you will always enjoy work and excel at it.
I started in the 1960’s as a mechanical engineer and business major, but got hooked on programming in school so took a job for a major company developing their systems. At the time it was pdp 8 4K memory, no disk drive and only punched cards and tape drive I/O. But I loved it and progressed from business systems like payroll and accounts payable to process control software that was real time control of large plastics production plants. I got to travel around the world teaching and installing systems.
Was once offered a management job for more money but said I wanted to remain detail technical so they made me a senior specialist for the same money.
Now retired and tutor students having trouble with math in high school. I also love that.
Always do what turns you on! You’ll never regret it.
Hi Kristina, a long time ago I started my career as an ‘Information Architect’ which is why they called UX Designers in the early 2000s. I felt pigeon-holed and was really curious about coding. I made the switch, and after a long and successful career as a java-dev, software architect, CTO, i am back to… UX/UI design and implementation.
The world needs more people who can bridge the gap between coding and UX, stick with it, you will do awesome!
Good stuff! You’ll be fine 👍🏼👍🏼
beautiful <3 thank you for sharing 🙂
Great. Thanks for sharing
I like the ending words:
you’re smart enough, brave enough, everything enough to make the career decisions you want to make. Don’t look back in ten years and wish you’d made a change now.
And I prefer to delete the word career.
Great story Kristina. I also made the same change in my career. My “problem” was that I got promoted from coder to management, and then it spun out of control, with subsequent promotions until my job only consisted of reading status reports and plan budgets. I found myself in an incredible void being taken away from coding. So, I left my job as Director and went to work for another company as developer.
I tell people who don’t understand what I did… what do you think a painter likes to do? Paint of course. If you put a painter as gallery Director, there will be no more painting to do with their own hands. Sure, talking about other painter’s work is probably well within their realm of their knowledge, but it isn’t the same as grabbing a brush and creating a painting. The satisfaction is gone. Imagine if Da Vinci had “managed” staff to paint the Mona Lisa!!.
OMG What a refreshing story! I thoroughly enjoyed it and see much parallels with my career as well. (Not a CS major but an engineering major and in software support which I love a lot! ). At the end of the day what counts is how much the work ‘clicks’ with you as you put it so nicely.
Rub in our face your luck. I’m always happy to hear how fortunate people that already are in renown companies can continue their career inside them while outsiders need to go through technical challenges and other absurd tests to prove that they are probably more competent but still can’t make it.
Thanks for sharing and glad to hear you happy about the career change. This post resonated with me as I was promoted from Senior Engineer to Engineering Manager at my former company and found I was a lot less happy and fulfilled in that role. I ended up leaving the company (for other reasons as well) and work again as a senior developer, and its much more fulfilling. At the end of day, I would trade that happiness over any amount of money or “visibility” of role. My current company likes to describe your career as a “jungle gym” instead of a “ladder” and I think that analogy really hits home.
I am going through a pretty similar experience. I’ve always really been into tech but I didn’t really know how much I like the figuring things out as you described them until much later in my life, partly because I never really had much interest in math, so I rarely studied it in school, leaving me with only average grades in that subject. So my confidence to become a software developer was always really low and I just kinda got pushed into a completely different career that I just accepted because I was still pretty young and not sure yet what I wanted to do.
After several years though, I did start to regret that I never pursued software development and at some point decided to just make the switch but unlike you, I had never really done any coding, together with thinking about how I had always only been average at math, I was just still really uncertain if it’s the right choice. Nevertheless, I took coding classes and there I really realised just how much I like it. That feeling you described about something finally working after having tried for so long, is something I’d been feeling so often while at that school. Right now, I’m doing an internship at a company as a software developer and hopefully, once I’m finished with this, I would really like to go actually study CS at a university.
There’s still quite a bit of uncertainty and lack of confidence but that I did so well at that school and that things at my internship are at least not going badly, has been a really big confidence boost for me and making me feel more reassured that this decision wasn’t a mistake.
Wow, I have really enjoyed reading this, I can really relate with the feeling of not being capable or intelligent enough to code. And your story has just motivated me to do more coding.
I just love that finally you are able to embrace and do what you always wanted to do, kudos to you and your career goals
That’s inspiring, thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing and glad to hear you happy about the career change,It takes; a lot of dedication, consistency and hardwork to get where you are today.
I’m glad you found your niche. I found it interesting that you mentioned problem-solving as an attractor, since that is not the way most developers I’ve come across think about it (building something, designing something, enabling something is what I’ve heard most often). I did think of it that way at first – and actually still do – but for me it has become the same problem over and over and over again. Because of that, I would very much like to get *out* of software development and into something that has a kind of creativity that meshes better with the way my interests have evolved. You have a passion I never had, so I’m sure you’ll have continued success and enjoyment.
Rub in our faces your luck. I’m always happy to hear how lucky people are already in famous companies
repay
I can relate. I was 62 years old. Sr. Project Manger. Hated my job and wanted to go back to my roots as a developer. Of course, that involved learning all new technologies and having young kids look at me sideways.
But, for my own peace of mind, had to it. Cut to the present – I am 65 and Sr. Developer. Still coding and loving it.
Good luck on your journey.