[Ologn]

I stayed in IT, so it was not a massive career change, but I went from being a Unix systems administrator to being an Android programmer.

Advice? It took longer to get a job as an SWE than I had anticipated. I kind of stumbled into being a Unix sysadmin way back when and didn't give much thought into getting my first SWE job paying a real salary.

In hindsight I would have paid more attention to college internships (although I don't know what companies make of someone 30+ on an internship). I was enthusiastic about Android when it came out, and at this point I'm happy I focused on it, but if I had been studying Javascript and React instead of Java and Android I might have gotten a job sooner. Also, I was doing my own projects and did not think to work for some small company for low pay, but eventually I did - I made a little money, got a little experience and had something to put on my resume and talk about in interviews - and I was upfront with them that I was not planning to stay for many years (I wound up staying about a year and eight months, longer than I had anticipated).

So my advice would be to think about how you're going to get that first job on the career path, beyond the idea that you'll go to college (or training) and study hard. I went to college and studied hard, and even was doing a lot of my own projects as well, but in retrospect it took longer to get that first job with a decent salary than I had anticipated.