| High level highlights typed out way too fast: I dropped out of college early as I just wasn't mature enough / ready for that kind of thing / + I suspect ADD made it kinda hard to manage. I got lucky and fell into a job where I worked in tech support, for some high end networking equipment for mainframes, later for data center related equipment. Good career, very good pay, but still tech support. I found I worked with engineering teams really well despite being not the most technically proficient person among the teams I worked in (good documentation and being honest with the engineering teams gets you pretty far with them...). So much so that that I eventually rethought my college experience where I wanted to learn to code but at that time classes were "here's a book on C ... now I'll read from the book at you". After 20 or so years company I worked for was bought out (that's a whole series of stories) and by then I wasn't so sad to be in the group that was being laid off. I got lucky and got paid out better than most people in the US receive so I felt like I had a chance to make a change. Honestly I suspect money / comfort in changing is really the biggest factor in serious career changes, for me the payout took care of that to some extent. IMO rando promotion to management is not a "SERIOUS" career change. The changes that involve "starting over" to some extent is where the big changes are. I wanted to stay in technology but also "make things" not just fix things for customers / sales who couldn't be bothered to config something correctly / and so on. So again I thought of working with the engineering teams and decided to take a shot at coding. I found web development was surprisingly accessible / tons of resources on the internet compared to my "read the book at you" college experience. I started learning on my own and eventually took a coding bootcamp (oh man that's another series of stories). In the bootcamp class I found that older me responded to classes completely differently than younger me. I was now ECSTATIC to have someone drop some knowledge on me every day, it was a completely different experience than college. I was honestly very sad when it ended I was enjoying it so much. I would have loved going back to college on a more formal track after the camp, but family, income, just don't allow for it. After the bootcamp I got a job at a fairly small company and have been happily coding away for a number of years now / expanding my skills / doing new things. I get to make things all on my own, apps, services, try new things etc. It's great. |