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Ricardo Martins
Ricardo Martins

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Career changing

Where am I

Hi Folks, I'm 33 years old and almost 2 years have passed since I started getting into this game. I Started this for curiosity but suddenly this became more serious, so serious than I'm changing my career right now.
I had almost 10 years on chemical engineer field and worked in Germany before. Now that I came to my home country things are different and I felt the necessity to change my professional life.
Frontend world is getting crazy with so many things to learn. It's constantly changing and for folks like me, this is just madness.
In January I joined in a new concept of Digital school in Porto ( The New Digital School) where we learn a lot of Ux/Ui than development but its still good for the growth as a frontend development in my perspective.
Right now, we are starting approaching the industry in order to get out the first job in the tech world, and I'm super anxious, question everything, thinking if I'm capable but at the same time I feel that I need to get in and validate all I have learned.
I would like to know how was your experience and how you dealt with this, especially folks that have passed through all this career change process.

Top comments (4)

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jfrankcarr profile image
Frank Carr

I moved from logistics management (my military training) to software development in the late 1980's. There are differences now, of course, since the web wasn't really around back then, but a lot of things are still the same.

I'd say the most important thing is to always be learning something new. You can't let your knowledge and skill stagnate. For example, my first programming job was writing in assembly language and C. It's now getting close to 30 years since I programmed in those languages. If I had tried to stay with just those 2, I may not have a programming job now.

The second thing is learning how to fit into an organization and team and make a contribution to its success. This can be rather difficult at times but it is essential.

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fmmricardo profile image
Ricardo Martins

Thanks Frank Carr for giving your input. I answered you. You can see bellow.

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leob profile image
leob

I'm sure it is overwhelming in the beginning if you're entering this field, but if you've learned Chemical Engineering then you should for sure be able to pick up frontend development! I did a good deal of chemistry in secondary school and university, and I think it's way more complex.

But nevertheless it also takes time and effort to become good at development. Do you only do frontend or also backend? What do you use for frontend dev, React, Vue, JS in general?

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fmmricardo profile image
Ricardo Martins

First of all, thank you both for getting your input on this conversation.
For now, Frontend is more than enough. Of course that with javascript you kinda can get into both worlds, but let's save it for later.

I'm trying to deal with React, and actually, I'm challenging my self on that by doing a project for a client.

As Frank Carr said about fit into an organization is actually not easy but essential. But the thing is... knowing upfront that I will never be 100 % ready, I am constantly asking, is what I know enough to get my first job???