You can hack your way into IT by cleaning up your CV, follow some free tutorials on YouTube and do three projects in React (a famous JavaScript library).
This is beside the point. You can even hire a private tutor or get a 9 grand loan and do one of those bullshit intensive courses. The solution is not to cram more information into your brain. The solution is to change your habits.
Developers are special. They are prima donnas willing to quit their job if the coffee machine is broken. They also earn above average salaries and some of them are even rich. A lot of them are depressed and some or them are doing meaningful work. Becoming a software developer is hard because it entails changing your old habits and forming new ones. You need to learn to feel comfortable not knowing things and feel stupid. You need to learn patience and how to search on google. You will sit on a chair in front of your screen and stare for hours. You need to relearn how to learn new things especially if you are over 30. Learning is hard. It’s boring. You need to like what you learn to resist. How can you possibly like the new domain you don’t know anything about? What is you motivation? Why do you wanna get into this industry? For money? is not worth it then. For reputation? is not worth it then.
You need to find your motivation. A good one or you don’t have a chance.
I joined this industry through some inertia. My mom wanted me a uniform guy, my father anything that involves being in a office, maybe a teacher. All my peers were leaving for the big city to study computer science. I’ve been dragged into this world by chance. I’ve started as a web designer and ended up being a software engineer. My motivation was to escape the small city. I moved to Bucharest then London at a young age by myself. I was not interested in how much money I would make. I was attached to the idea that getting involved in various projects will give my life a meaning. I did not have a direction. I was motivated to escape my condition and become a better self. I dream to be a billionaire but that’s another story. My point here is that I had a motivation. Maybe for you this is stupid buy it was good enough to keep me going through the hard nights when I worked on endless projects and tutorials. I absorbed the information over the years without feeling being punished. You need to find your motivation. A good one or you don’t have a chance.
You don’t need maths to achieve a good career in IT.
Fast forward 20 years I ended up helping people to get into IT. It’s hard to learn an old dog do new tricks. Half of my “students” gave up. They could not accept the grind, the boredom, the persistence, the sustained effort. If you don’t have a passion for computers is even harder. The hardest thing was that they questioned authority. By authority I mean doing their homework in time. I always engaged in fast career changes. A fee people managed to get their dream job within months from starting but most of them gave up. Let me say it first. I never rushed anyone but telling them that they have to study 6 to 12 months was not gonna cut it. Everyone wants fast results and I have a trick. Hard work and focus. I trained people for free and my only request was always to be announced in advance if they wanna take a break or quit learning. They never did it. They know they have a lifestyle to maintain before they decided to change their career. They never thought that was hard to change a few aspects of their lives. Coding is easy. It just takes time to process information and to practice. It’s not magic. You don’t need maths to get yourself into the IT industry. Also, to get a job these days is pretty easy. All you meed to do is to want and have a reason to do it alongside with the required motivation.
Build your habits while being young for when you become stubborn.
I met a doctor at a wedding and he told me that as soon as someone enters their practice, by just looking at how they walk he can tell if the person is healthy or not and more importantly if they had an active life. I was not impressed by the story. I asked him to give only one advice for a lengthy healthy life. His advice was: build your habits while being young for when you become stubborn. If you are doing 100 pushups a day in your 20–30s then you might have a chance to still do a few in your 70s. Healthy habits for a healthy life.
I am telling you to build habits before even embarking on this IT career journey. At your current workplace start doing things better, choose harder tasks. Start asking questions. Not asking questions will slow down your potential and you might even lose a job here and there. Be curious! Start reading daily. I read pages and pages everyday. Not because I am a software engineer addicted to growth but because I have this habbit. Start reading news on websites like Hacker News, Hacker Noon, The Register. If you find them boring then think twice. Coding requires creativity as well. Start thinking outside the box. Start taking charge of things if you are not doing it already.
Anyway, getting into IT is hard because it’s not about you but about your habits or for a better word, the lack of your habits plus your motivation.
Having said that, I witnessed how people from being a barista or a warehouse worker went into IT in a matter of 2 months. It’s not impossible. Just hard. Keep grinding and get on with reading everyday something about the subject.
You need to have balls. Go there and break things. This is how you will learn to code. Staring a the screen hoping to write perfect code will not work. Coding is messy. Go break some code then call it a day. And by the way, don’t take it personally when things don’t go your way; you are not the first one to have such problems. Close your laptop, have a beer, chill. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Peace,
Tino
A quick note based on one of the comments received here: Let’s be clear, the doctor is referring to physical bodies while coding requires a certain mind and mindset. While bodies are slowing down with age, brains can be kept well trained and even develop later on in life. I am not suggesting and I don’t believe elderly people or seniors or middle aged people are not capable to be on par with younger people or even surpass them on various subjects. Motivation, stubbornness are individual traits and are not automatically affected by getting older. Most of my students who quit changing their careers were in their 20s and 30s. However, I have to mention that I experienced a high rate of eagerness and pro-activity when I worked with kids teaching them basic coding. Also, on the developers stereotypes, these are my collected stereotypes and my unique experience. Not all developers are the same and I did not have the chance of meeting all of them. I also should have read more books on the subject before publishing this article however I did not have the patience and I wanted to share this with you now.
