Career Change from No experience

Community Careers, Journeys, and Stories
#1

Hello All;

I’ve recently started working through CodeAcademy, having completed a few of the courses multiple times now and aspire to start a software development career. However, the problem is that starting as an entry level software developer is definitely not in my family’s budget and a lateral step would be equivalent to a “Level 3 developer”, which in my company is basically a senior developer.

Any advice on how to… develop the skills to make a lateral or smaller step down with no professional experience in development? I’m not much of a web design person, for I have the artistic creativity of a 6 year old. Functionality is closer to my heart. I’m the type of personal that looks “past the paint job”

Also, does anyone know of open source projects that would be good to reach out to for mentoring / learning more about professional development?

Thanks!
Devin

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#2

You’ve not said whether your current role with your company is as part of their IT staff, but if you’re already in the IT team then you might be able to get some experience applying your skills by asking them if you can help with some basic stuff.

Might not be the most interesting or technically in-depth stuff, but they might have some relatively straightforward work they’d be willing to give you to free up more experience resource for other jobs.

Alternatively, if you have any local co-working spaces you might find some local coding meetups which could help you build your skill set and get some experience. For instance, there’s frequent Ruby meetups and co-working near me.

:slight_smile:

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#3

Thanks!

Apologies, I work as an Incident Manager, so yes in the IT side of things. Will definitely try to keep reaching out. I have before and internal company politics put a stop to that unfortunately.

Co-working spaces - is this like buildings such as DoSpace? I’m not familiar with the term but a quick google brought that up.

I’ve been looking through Meetup, so far times haven’t aligned very well.

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#4

Ah, ok. That’s a shame about the office politics. :frowning:

I had to look up DoSpace, but yeah that looks like the kind of thing I was thinking of. I haven’t done it myself, but I do have a friend who’s frequently jumping between various co-working locations to get stuff done with other people, mostly revolving around Ruby, which is why I thought it might be helpful to mention it.

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#5

Definitely appreciate the feedback. Office politics often ruins a lot of good team building.

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