I need serious advice regarding career change.

[Javfly33]

What would you choose ?

I am at a critical age ( 26 years old ) and wondering If I should do a drastic career change.

I have some experience in coding and I know that with the help of polishing a bit more my portfolio and doing maybe a coding Bootcamp I could land a job in < 1 year in my current city.

Right now I am working in a very large enterprise , which is half public/half private. Imo the majority of wage-slavery positions here are fundamentally:

- Little to zero mentally demanding and intermediate physically demanding

or ... you can go to management positions (Like the one Ive been the past month) and you can get:

- Little Intermediate mentally demanding and physically comfortable, basic skill , the ability of management people and "pushing" people to work to make sure shipments get delivered up to date (Since my company is half public, lots of people here can't be fired easy, so this makes that the boss doesn't have much power most of the time, so Stage Green management here WONT WORK, you must work On Red/Orange attitude if don't want to be treated as a bitch here).

Summary of my current company:

Benefits:

- Stable position on company, ( kinda unstable in management ( but there's been a lot of people too that have been on management, and I have also the possibility of taking a exam and becoming a manager of an office permanently). )

- 6 additional days of vacations each year

- If you bite the bullet and have a Red/Orange personality, the rest of the job is pretty Ok and I don't think is that stressful, you can become comfortable, clock out (7 hours and half) and you are done.

- It serves pretty good the purpose of paying the bills while I am in this city working on my LP

Cons:

- Meh Salary, with little possibility of going up even if you work there for years

- The more time you spend in this company, the more "enslaved" you become to it, since you don't develop another skill than that one of the company) ).

- My personality tells me that I could fit more on a more "scalable" type of role.

 

Summary of what I think programming/software development would be:

Benefits:

- Salary according to your skill, the more you become better the best you will get paid.

- You are not "enslaved" by the company. If one day you think the company is shit you have learned and polished a skill that you can later sell to another better paying (or better treating) company. 

- There are some stage green software dev companies.

Cons:

- Almost surely will be more mentally demanding (but Im not sure if neccesiraly that means more stressing, which is what i don't ultimately like) 

- To get to a management role I would to work a lot of years or create my own company.

- Ultimately I want to create my own business and I don't think it won't be related with programming so ultimately I don't plan to program for my entire life as a living. 

 

Please tell me what you think. It would be nice if people who work on software dev comment and share if they would have changed career from a boring-little mentally demanding job to a programming one. 

 

[InfinityBeats]

My opinion somewhat contradicts the above post, so maybe that will give you some hope.

I'm currently a software engineer at what I would call a stage green company, but I don't want to drop the name of the company for privacy reasons. Everyone at the company is extremely nice, everyone works from home, there is absolutely no stage red/orange leadership, everyone is self motivated and encouraged by positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement, pay is above average for the industry, and I would probably say above average vacation days as well. The only thing I dislike about it is the days are 9 hours long (8 hours plus 1 hour lunch).

I would say most of the other developers here are above average in terms of skill and passion, but I definitely am part of the minority that isn't very passionate lol. I would describe my views towards coding as: I'm generally happy to do it for the money, sometimes I get into decent flow states when I'm working on something and its fun and time passes fairly quick, it can feel pretty good to solve problems and see the result of your work, but sometimes I want to throw my computer out the window. To add on to that, what truly exposes my lack of passion is that if I were to be able to retire right now and never work again, I don't see myself ever coding again just "for fun" or "for the challenge". I would be totally cool with never doing it again. Also, I sometimes really feel a disconnect between myself and my coworkers who are more nerdy in general and are actually passionate about coding, but again that is another downside that I'm totally willing to accept at the moment. I'm also new at this company, so maybe I'll be able to connect more as time goes on.

But basically, I'm doing exactly what you seem to be planning to do. I have known for a long time that my life purpose has been music, because I know that's what I would be doing if I was retired and had nothing better to do, not coding. I've tried to pursue this in a few ways in the past that didn't work out, but I'm currently trying a new approach with music production and documenting my journey of it on youtube (shameless plug to my new youtube channel ).

But yeah, the main reason I disagree with @impulse9 is because like he said, 99% of the code in the real world sucks, and there is tons of unskilled labour. That means probably the majority of programmers don't have their heart in it, and that's fine. The select few that are seriously passionate will definitely succeed way more, getting huge paychecks, starting their own companies, working at FAANG companies etc., but there is absolutely room in the industry for people who are just trying to pay the bills. That being said, you still need to be good. I'm not very passionate, but I'm a pretty good programmer relative to my experience, and I know that I will get way better as time goes on.

Remember, passion helps with skill, but ultimately skill comes from experience, which you can definitely gain by just putting in the work. 

[InfinityBeats]

To also add to the above: 

I'm also about to turn 26, so you're a little behind me, but I really don't think you're too late. (I got my first coding job when I was 23).

I also went into software for the same reasons you did, mainly the idea that coding is a skill that you can develop, and the more you develop this skill, the more benefits you can gain - for example: more money, more vacation time, remote work opportunities, better hours etc. 

Being 26 I'm sure you remember runescape. Well I absolutely loved runescape when I was a kid, and I'm basically trying to make my life feel like I'm playing runescape. I want to develop skills and allow the advancement of those skills to allow me to get more money and to basically give me more freedom and power in life. 

Coding is a perfect skill to develop like this, but the problem is my heart isn't in it. But for the time being, that is okay because the benefits from my software job have more and more (pretty much in direct proportion to my skill level) been allowing me to align my life more to what I want it to be, until hopefully one day I won't have to rely on it anymore. 

 

[Bob Seeker]

Good thread.

maybe your management skill will help you if you decide to start a company in the future in order to break out of wage slavery.

 I’m thinking straight programming is not the most immediate way to earn good money, but can be if you stick with it
 

[Javfly33]

17 hours ago, InfinityBeats said:

My opinion somewhat contradicts the above post, so maybe that will give you some hope.

I'm currently a software engineer at what I would call a stage green company, but I don't want to drop the name of the company for privacy reasons. Everyone at the company is extremely nice, everyone works from home, there is absolutely no stage red/orange leadership, everyone is self motivated and encouraged by positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement, pay is above average for the industry, and I would probably say above average vacation days as well. 

LOL. That sounds so alien compared to the company i am ?? 

Thanks @InfinityBeats and @impulse9 advice. I Will take into account the good and the bad. Very juicy info helps a lot.

[InfinityBeats]

@impulse9 But just the fact that you get hired to fix peoples code shows that there are plenty of people out there who are making a living coding without having the same level of passion as you. You might be at the expert/master level, but that doesn't mean the industry is only open to people like you. There are still toooons of people with careers in software development simply for the reasons OP listed. They are good reasons, and at this point in time, they make software development one of the best 9-5 type jobs to have in my opinion.

I also disagree that the only way to get good at something is to be passionate. For attaining mastery? Maybe. But simply becoming good at something is mostly just a function of experience and time put into whatever the skill is. Passion doesn't always have to be the reason for putting effort into something. Sometimes there are simple logical reasons like the ones OP listed, as well as the ones I considered for myself that have worked well to motivate me to continue improving so much.

If anything, passion is just the cherry on top that can take you from being good at something, to becoming a master, but it doesn't sound like @Javfly33is looking to become a master at coding, it just sounds like he's looking for a career change that can make his life a bit better, even if this new career isn't the ultimate goal.

So based off that info, I would say yeah, it could definitely be a good idea for him to put some serious effort into making a career change, and ultimately find a job somewhere starting as a junior developer, and stay in the industry for however long until he has the resources to start his business or whatever. There is plenty to learn about business as well by just getting a new job/switching industries which could help him a lot in the future if he does end up starting his own company. 

I honestly think the main thing for him to consider is just whether or not he can handle this type of work mentally, because yes it can be mentally draining, but to be honest, tons of other things in life are as well. There are a million different circumstances in life where we have to learn new things and problem solve which is basically all coding is. If he can handle that stuff and can handle sitting at a computer all day, I think he should be fine.

[InfinityBeats]

2 hours ago, Javfly33 said:

LOL. That sounds so alien compared to the company i am ??

It felt very alien to me too at first compared to everything I've experienced before in terms of jobs, as well as what I've seen with some other peoples 9-5s, but these types of companies definitely exist, even if they're not all like this.

To make it even better, the mission of my current company, again without getting too specific, is basically to help other people escape wage slavery or at least supplement their income through their creative skills. So on top of a good work environment, it feels good knowing that I'm contributing to a company that is actually beneficial to the world, rather than knowing that I'm contributing to some pointless company that just sells people bullshit and extracts money however it can, but sticking around anyway because I need to pay the bills.

I think there plenty of other companies like this which you can't expect to immediately work at, but once you develop some decent skills, you can start being picky. The job demand in the industry is insane. I wasn't even looking for a job when these people hired me, it was just one of the many recruiters in my linkedin DMs that I decided to reply to because the offer actually sounded interesting, and they ended up hiring me. Again, I don't LOVE coding, but I really don't mind it and the benefits of doing this type of work/having this skill are extremely valuable. It almost doesn't feel fair to see other people struggling so much to find work, meanwhile I'm constantly ignoring or shutting down recruiters with only a few years of experience under my belt. 

[Javfly33]

@InfinityBeats Thanks , you really have motivated me. 

[InfinityBeats]

@Javfly33 Cool. I just want to remind you not to make any impulsive decisions haha. If anything, just start working on your portfolio for a few months and see how that type of work makes you feel.

I think a big factor here is also how long you think you would stay in a career in software before you could possibly switch to sustaining yourself with your LP. If you realistically think you could do that in 5 years or less, I probably wouldn't bother with a career change, since you do seem pretty comfortable at your current job. If we're talking 10+ years, then a change in career could be a good idea, but I also just re-read your original post and you say you don't have much stress at this job which is honestly pretty important. Switching careers would be stressful, and depending on where you land your first job, that job could be stressful for a couple years until you develop enough skills to be able to find a better one. Ultimately, it might be better to just channel that effort and stress into working on your LP more while you just stay comfortable in this current role, but I guess that still depends on some other factors like what your LP would be and how close you are to achieving it. Just some more food for thought.

[Javfly33]

@InfinityBeats Yeah, I understand. My LP is very ambiguous yet and I Dont see It until some long time of previous self development and Discovery.

My current doesnt stress me much because its an assistant role But It probably Will change and i would get moved and promoted to manager of a whole Office, which definetely would elevate stress. Since I've been so little in this job, Honestly is VERY hard for me Tell if the stress Comes from my own making (anxiety disorder), the job, or the fact that the challenge (job) overpowers so much my skill, or even the fact that you have to deal with a lot of people and adapt a leadership role and Im not used to It.

What makes me more motivated to change IS the fact that the job Will be Boring as fuck once i get used to it and especially that the company seems a shitty one.