| I changed careers five years ago. Up until that point of my life, I'd primarily worked in customer service jobs despite having a B.A. What I did: 1) found the first job I could in the Seattle area (it was a call center job) 2) attended tech / startup community events (meetups, hack days, etc) 3) got lucky by meeting helpful folks in the tech community 4) worked on side projects on nights and weekends to grow my web development skills 5) found my first paying freelance dev work 6) found more paying freelance dev work 7) took a webdev job at a startup From there a lot more has happened, but I've been in a webdev role ever since and continued learning new skills and taking opportunities to grow and contribute. This is only one story and one perspective, but I hope you find a way out of the problems you're facing. |
This really is the key to doing what you love. "Hanging around" leads to opportunities, whether it's through open source contributions to a project you like, pestering people at meetups, being a particularly keen and vocal user of a product you love.