Let me start by setting the scene. There I was, July-something 2014 with a Bachelors in Marketing in one hand and the 'world' in the other. I actually had to take the day off for my graduation as I had already secured a role at one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. I had been working there since March (and bunking all my lectures that followed, too). At that point in my life, I figured I had it all worked out. The hard work paid off and I'd surely become the next Rupert Murdoch if I played my cards right, or so I thought.
"Let's See How It Goes"
Now, I'm not here to point fingers but reading Captain Hindsight's report really struck home that my lack of confidence and judgement in my advertising prime days really paved the beginning of the end. I decided to study marketing because I loved the thrill of new product launches, idea-generation and content creation. This was pretty much how my first role was sold to me but just like a back-road car dealer, the engine light turned on straight after leaving the forecourt - "sold as seen" as they say.
Opportunity Costs
Maybe I watched too many episodes of Mad Men in the run-up to my first job but boy, was this a far cry from Don Drapers board meetings. Spreadsheets, spreadsheets and surprise, more spreadsheets - end of job description. The role in itself was of an analytical nature. The basic gist of it was, the advertising agency ran digital campaigns devised by the Don Drapers of the world and my job was to report back how well it was doing based off clicks and conversions. It's an over-simplification of course, but you get the general idea.
Many spreadsheets and copy+paste PowerPoints later, I realised this wasn't for me. But where does one go? was the thought of the day, everyday. Here I was, aged twenty-one with a stable job straight out of university whilst others around me struggled to even get acknowledged by recruiters. Am I just overreacting? I wish I could go back in time and tell my young self then, no.
Nearly a year and a half into the role, I quit. I decided I want to step back and reassess what it is I want from life. I heard of other University colleagues get roles in actual marketing roles - where they actually sat around a boardroom and discussed how things were marketed. In the advertising world, we call a sect of these people 'media planners'. I decided to chase this title and was met with a, well a whole lot of disappointment. Again, I wish I had the confidence then to learn to say no and hold my own.
Every recruiter I met with completely ignored my want to go down the planning route. It was always "but you have experience in x and y" or "the industry is saturated with planning roles, capitalise on the skills you have". Alas, I caved in and after a few months of trying to 'find myself', I joined another agency doing the exact same thing I did before. Same spreadsheet, different day.
The Turning Point
Roll on a few years and I've had a few stints in different agencies working on the largest brands in the world. Don't get me wrong, I was good at what I did, albeit being highly unmotivated for most of it. I kind of just accepted my life to be as it is, gave up fighting the system of Adulthood and just rode the HMS Life ship head-on into the waves best one could.
My last role in advertising had a love-hate symbiotic relationship with Google. We used their data and in return they had access to our clients data and so on. I worked on a challenging client who was seeing conversions drop, despite the continuous injection of cash quarter-by-quarter. Queue the Google Analytics squad meetings. I was fascinated by watching Googlers from all across the globe run Lighthouse reports and try to debug every JavaScript error that our client site presented on the Console. This is the real deal, I said. I sat back and watched what was the Avengers of Development take down the Thanos that were my clients. Nothing anecdotal, everything factual.
Side Quest: It's worth noting at this point that I dabbled in HTML, CSS and JS growing up. Ever since the dawn of the MySpace era, I would regularly change online news site headings to convince friends and family that I was the Kevin Mitnick of the Dev Tools. I even did a few online courses so I can make my WordPress themes look better. A true backseat developer.
Back to the main story, we worked Google consistently over a few months until we brought in an external software consultancy firm to do their magic. Again, I watched with fascination as focussed eyes sat behind MacBooks with "It Works On My Machine" stickers glued to them worked their wizardy using 'code'. It was this turning point that I realised "Damn, I'm not even in the wrong seat, I'm on the wrong bloody bus.".
All Aboard The Bootcamp Bus
After much deliberation with myself, I finally pulled the plug on the advertising industry and left with my head held high. During my research and mainly through my numerous googles of "how to get into tech as a career changer", I noticed a growing trend in the bootcamp scene. Depending on your said bootcamp, you did anywhere between nine-to-twelve weeks learning everything you need to know to become a web developer. I took the plunge, signed up and was ready to report to base in October of 2019. Nine-weeks had passed and lo-and-behold, I learned nothing.
Now, before bootcamp 'babies' (as I recently heard some call themselves) get into attack formation, let me explain why I learned nothing. I came from a non-STEM background without any true exposure to actual development. I didn't know anything about the command line, tooling, packages, libraries and so on and so forth. The pace of these bootcamps is literally "we'll teach you one concept per day, it doesn't matter if you don't get it, just do the tasks and one day you'll get it". That day never came, not for me at least. I'm not here to bash bootcamps - I know many people have completed bootcamps and gone on to successful career starts, but maybe the teaching style didn't align and unfortunately, it wasn't for me.
The Lonely Road Ahead
Post-bootcamp, I decided to completely pursue a different development angle. The bootcamp heavily revolved around backend Ruby development, whereas I saw myself enjoying the front-end side of development more. So, with a notebook in hand and freeCodeCamp open, I decided to set sail on new seas and reach land steadfast. A few weeks had passed and then COVID-19 swallowed the ship like the Kraken. Not only did the job market flip upside-down but my personal life took a hit too. I really git commit -m "idk pls help" on my turbulent start to a software engineering career.
Months passed and lockdowns ensued. There was no sign of COVID-19 letting up. Coffee shops closed and Meetups stopped leaving me to fend myself in my loft bedroom at my terminal, day and night turned into weeks and months, literally. Unemployment and an uncertain future really set home. Did I make a mistake leaving my old career? Now, I'm not going to pretend that I'm a bibliophile so I just quickly googled 'self-doubt quotes' whilst writing this up and this one pretty much sums up how I battled my mental health at the time:
"Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will" - Suzy Kassem
Powerful stuff, hey? It's safe to say that doubt really did set in. I saw job description after job description and constantly told myself "I'm nowhere near ready". It got to the point that reading 'success stories' became a routinely disliked activity. I just wanted to land a job as a developer, it seemed like everyone else around my social media circles, ex-Bootcampers etc did. Imposter syndrome really is a b*tch.
$ cd BackToUni/CompSci
During my periods of self-doubt and tutorial hell sessions, I learned more about my learning style. I was someone who wanted to know the why, not just the when. Reflecting back on my bootcamp, not knowing why certain processes were done in a specific way is most likely why I wasn't getting it in the first place. I want to take it all apart first and put it back together my way.
Don't get me wrong, I love frontend. I love the fact that you can visually see changes being made instantaneously but I also love building things. Building software is exactly the reason I decided to make the switch. How can I possibly learn to fly if I haven't even learned how the engine works? This is what I told myself. I had made the decision that I wanted to learn it from scratch, all the way from the beginning the best way I knew I could: university.
MSc Computer Sciences
I'll spare you the boring details but I searched for months on paid university-style courses that would help me understand computer science from the ground up. I considered a Bachelors but three years full-time (or six part-time) just seemed exhausting. Plus, there was also the fact that I didn't possess the right entry requirement grades to enlist anyways so that option was scrapped quite swiftly.
Many a Google's after, I found a distance-learning, fully remote Masters in Computer Sciences at the University of York specially catered to career-changers or those from a non-STEM background who had a degree of professional experience behind them. For once, I fit the bill. Perfect. I did my due deliberation, sent off an application and within weeks I was told I was accepted onto the programme and will start promptly January 2021.
At the time of writing, I just finished my first semester covering Algorithms & Data Structures. Boy, was that tough. But that's a whole other 10-min read DEV post, so watch this space.
Side Quest 2: To be clear, I embarked on this Masters for my own aspirations. I wish I could turn back time, focus in Maths and Information Technology at school and actually pursue what was then a passion of mine ever since I laid hands on the VTech Pre Computer Power Pad back in '96. Unfortunately, I don't have access to such technology or the funding to make it happen so I make do with what I have. I know there may be some raised eyebrows but I want to clarify two things:
I'm not a gatekeeper. I don't believe education in its own right should determine who gets what job and who doesn't.
I did not embark on the MSc to better my chances of getting a job. Sure, it may have its advantages but it could also bring disadvantages. Who knows?
The degree programme itself is two years part-time with an excepted graduation date sometime in 2023. It pretty much crams a Bachelors degree into abstracted concepts with the intention of having the student 'think from a business-led approach'. Yes, we learn programming languages with Java being the first but again, it's more theoretical than functional. Overall, I'm happy being a 'traditional student' again - it's brought back the motivation that I had once lost and that's the most important part.
To Infinity & Beyond
Over a year has passed since I left the bootcamp and I've gone through trials and tribulations, both on a personal and career level. I've changed languages, frameworks and attended a few unsuccessful interviews. But, looking back I wouldn't say I wasted time. I was too caught up with 'getting the job no matter what', but I needed to just sit back and realise that this is a new journey and all good things take time.
For now, my plan is simple. I'm following the frontend path once again with a core focus on JS and React. In the background alongside holding down a 9-5 in a non-technical field, I'm learning all-things algorithms, data structures and tossing between Java or Python as my backend language of choice for the foreseeable future. I've even thrown algebraic expressions in the mix too (this will be your friend if you decide to go the MSc route, too). I have a working plan to land my first web dev/frontend role and then an onward one-year plan to go full-circle with a software engineer/full-stack engineer role, merging my frontend experience with all the backend goodies I've picked up on the way, constantly reminding myself of the age old adage: failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
Le Fin
Changing careers and breaking into tech affords you no luxuries nor respects your personal time, it's hard work and it's exhausting. I have my off-days but you're only human. Have a plan and somehow manage to stay up-right all the way whilst making your way to the top of the castle. I know the road ahead won't be easy, but as Spongebob found out in Season 1, Ep: 35 'Rock Bottom', all you need is a glove-shaped balloon and a sprinkle of motivation to see you back up top.
If you can relate somewhat to nouvelle de moi, I hope I've conveyed that the moral of the story is that changing careers is hard, but it's not impossible. The only limit is the one you set yourself.
Shameless Plug
I'm currently early doors in the #100DaysOfCode challenge and have been tweeting my progress daily. If you're considering changing careers, have changed careers or just looking to AMA, here's the link you're looking for:
👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/BuiltByDan
Top comments (1)
Wow, congrats man! May you achieve all you aspire to!