How I got into the software industry

I began to write this as what i have learnt so far in my transition to the industry but i felt i should write up on how i actually got here and the post became longer than i would have liked so I’ve decided to split them up and will do a follow up of my life in the industry so far.

Crossroads

I had two choices at school of what I wanted to do, one being to continue education and go into computer science and the other becoming a plumber. At the time, I felt I didn’t enjoy education and learning overall (which would later be because of suspected ADD) and I became a plumber.

My journey as a Plumber

I did an apprenticeship in commercial and industrial Heating & Ventilation, then went into doing residential work in plumbing and gas before becoming self-employed.

I did well self-employed and in fact still do some work for my existing customer base, but something didn’t feel right.

I’ve always enjoyed work and been passionate about it. Whilst being a plumber, I picked up other skills such as:

• Joinery
• Plastering
• Electrics
• Building

This felt different from school because I wanted to absorb as much knowledge as I could. I was passionate about making and creating things and spent most of my free time outside of work learning other plumbing tricks and other trades.

Side note: I hate painting, it’s one of the few jobs in the industry I just found extremely boring to do.

The Turning Point

Eventually, though, I was going to work and the initial self-employed excitement had worn off. Slowly, jobs such as hanging radiators or the more typical plumbing work became boring and routine.

The best way to describe it would be like driving a car: at first you focus on everything but then it just all becomes one and you don’t need to think about changing gear etc.

I would listen to podcasts and later realised that if I can listen to a podcast whilst working, my brain isn’t engaged enough.

Discovering Programming

At the time I hadn’t figured out the root issue of why i no longer enjoyed work and continued on and with not enjoying it for the first time in over 10 years. However one thing at the time i thought i needed or wanted was a website, I looked into some of the self-built websites and they didn’t have some of the styling or features I wanted so I thought I’d look into building one myself. I initially went down the themes and WordPress route but again I didn’t like the feeling of being restricted so I started to research how websites are built to see if it was something i would be interested in. During this research I came across The Odin Project which is an Open Source Web Development curriculum which was highly well regarded. I started the course and started to really enjoy it. Being self-employed, I could dictate my own hours and I started to take less and less work on because I was fixated on the digital world of building stuff. I wanted to learn more. My curiosity eventually took me away from web development and I came across another course ‘Harvards CS50- Introduction to Computer Science’ which is the entry-level CS course they teach at Harvard taught by David Malan which starts with using the programming language C, teaches you about algorithms, memory, data structures, Python, SQL, Web (highly recommend it).

The Transition

At this point, I was working the minimum amount to cover my bills but wanting to program and learn more with all my available free time. I now knew I wanted to pursue this as a career and looked into the best ways into the industry, what I was told my best chances were to get in was through web development so I continued with The Odin Project. Whilst following this course, I began to get adverts for ‘bootcamps’ which caught my attention so I looked into this as an option. I ended up joining and completing ‘Northcoders’ and then getting my first paid job as a full stack software developer.

Reflections

It was the correct decision. I enjoy going to work again, I love learning about everything related to software. There’s too much to learn in my lifetime which means I will never hit a skill ceiling which I felt I had hit in my career as a plumber.

For me, it was the perfect switch. I get paid to learn and I still enjoy coding in my spare time just as much as before I started. My goals have changed since starting though, but after a year of trying multiple software avenues, I now know which areas I want to pursue.

I will do a separate post for what I have learnt during my time as a software engineer so far because I’m conscious of this getting too long.