Ask HN: Former engineers, how did you transition your career to software?

Post by ruairidhwm » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 11:08 AM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #10

ruairidhwm wrote: post #8

Worked as a lawyer but was coding on the side. I started making legal technology products and selling them as SaaS. Then I decided I loved that way more, moved to Spain, started doing freelance development, and eventually got hired full time by a client. Since then I've changed jobs a few times, but love what I do and have never looked back.

You went from SaaS to job, while many are trying to do the opposite. I’m interested to know whether you kept them going and why you didn’t go full time on them?

Sure - I just didn't make enough money from it. Looking back, there was potential but I didn't have enough experience to grow the product, and my technical skillset wasn't anywhere close to the level I've reached working as a full-time software engineer.

At some point I'd look to doing a SaaS again, but I'm happy working on other stuff just now and improving my software engineering skills.

Post by javaIsGreat » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

Canned from my first sales job, during my second sales job spent time on freecodecamp and other sites like that but still was very intimidated by bugs and learning new tools.

Did a bootcamp, but luckily was kicked out of bootcamp for failing a test and got my money back.

Did a field engineer job where i travled to different factories to help install robots. Still not traditional software engineering.

Did a free bootcamp, worked as a teacher at the free bootcamp (most fun ive ever had in my career even though it was only 3 months),

Worked as a software dev (really just managing off shore devs) for a big consulting company at a bank for 1.5 years. Low pay, 1 of about 10 American citizens in department of about 5000 technical staff at bank, weird job.

After this, finally got a nice dev job which i am happy with.

All in all, took about 3 years after i got laid off, until getting to the job I am happy with now. Getting through recruiters in those initial stages is very hard, but after you get professional experience that barrier pretty much disappears.

Re: Ask HN: Former engineers, how did you transition your career to software?

Re: Ask HN: Former engineers, how did you transition your career to software?