[hellotheretoday]

I sure hope not. I did my degree in CS in 05 then burnt out, got a masters degree in counselling psychology, and have been doing outpatient since then. Recently I’ve been getting a bit bored there so I brushed up on python and picked up some freelance work on the side

It was pretty tough to get my foot in the door. I had nothing on my resume since 2007. But the abbreviated version is that I put together a portfolio and kept trying and eventually got something. Then that went well, and I got another. Hoping to keep the momentum. Will see how it goes I suppose. Keeping my practice going in a smaller capacity just in case and will maintain my license probably forever. I may go back to school as well but I’d prefer to avoid that at this age as I’m a little older than you

[Jigjig]

Out of curiosity, what kinds of businesses were you submitting your portfolio to, and what kind of work were you finding freelance from that? Asking as someone looking at this route but not sure where to start.

[hellotheretoday]

The slightly less abbreviated version is that I did a bit on upwork and eventually freelancer.com. I found postings there were far more forgiving than trying on indeed or similar sites which basically just shut me out 100% of the time. It took a bit of time and taking some menial tasks but I was able to build up a profile and and some solid references especially from 2 bigger contracts that were quite involved

Initial jobs were fairly simple automation tasks and from there moved towards my niche which is data analytics/data science. I was given the advice to try to pick a niche and stick to it rather than just do whatever and jump all over the place so I tried to stick to that. It was helpful I think; in the initial stages when I didn’t stick to that I ended up researching and learning a bunch of stuff that wasn’t really relevant to my end goals. Hth