Unlikely Career Switch into Software Engineering

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all right folks we're going to the YouTube comments this is from Happy Vapor 4670 all right this says started making web pages for friends and family since I was a kid in the 90s somehow I ended up in the Alaska Seafood industry okay uh then I started a family about 7 years ago and I've just been working OD job since recently I went back to school and have been learning Java databases webdev I have no fun I'm I need I don't know how to interpret that as like I don't enjoy doing that or or they mean that they're so busy that they don't have time for fun I don't know based on how I'm reading this so it's going to be hard I have to make an assumption as I go through uh right now I average about $22 an hour running Walmart deliveries and

I'm seeing local job listings offering $20 an hour I'm assuming for junior devs I'm often left wondering what the hell I'm doing going back to fishing is not an option what the hell should I do I'll be 40 in a couple of years okay great question thanks so much for sending it in um I obviously I can't tell people how to live their lives or anything like that I can just give you my perspective and my experiences and all that so um just a friendly reminder if you want questions answered leave them Below in the comments or send them into Dev leader on social media I'll keep you Anonymous that's also my main YouTube channel uh that has edited video videos instead of me just rambling either in this office or driving in a car and uh I also do live streams on that channel every Monday at 700 p.m.

Pacific so let's chat through this um couple things uh one we have something regarding like a career switch we have something regarding sort of age right um I want to talk a little bit about those things we have pay being compared um the no fun part I want to maybe just make a comment about that near the beginning here and then we can move on um because if it's I'm not having fun doing Java databases webdev then I would say I don't know why you're doing it right like if if it's because hey it's software development is supposed to be like the really high paying job like you can make a lot of money being a software developer but if you don't enjoy it like Ju Just I would highly recommend you find something else that you enjoy um easier said than done I suppose

but like if you don't enjoy it I don't know why you would be spending more and more time trying to do it personally that's more of like a Phil philosophy kind of thing and how I would approach life but if it means instead like I'm just very busy I I understand and acknowledge this person has a family that they started right so that was seven years ago uh based on their work they're working full-time they're also trying to go back to school to um you know to go through development so maybe they're saying I don't have any time for fun in which case I would say yeah like sometimes um I think a lot of people probably know who Alex Heros is um some people hate him some people love him um but he had a quote and I'm going to butcher it but he

talked about um you know how him and his wife kind of go through things cuz they're both very successful from like a business perspective financially right but they talk about like seasonal busyness and saying that like um sometimes going through stuff means that you're going to have a busy season and that might mean like this isn't forever this isn't the new Norm for forever but it's the new Norm for now and you have to kind of have a conversation with your partner about like look like this is going to be more demanding for a period of time this is why I get on the same page for that um but perhaps this is a a season of busyness for you right you have your family you have your job you have school and then you're going to have this period where you're trans I'm assuming

you're transitioning from what you're doing to try and apply for for jobs and development and I don't know if you're layering that on top of all this at the same time because that's going to be tremendously busy so maybe that's what it means by no fun I'm not sure but I would just say like if if you're not enjoying it maybe not for you if it's just a matter of like shit's really busy right now help um then I would say yeah like you know try to try to stick it out if you really enjoy what you're doing and uh hopefully see good things on the other side okay um going back to some of the other points though on maybe like the career switching and the age stuff I would say um there are I don't have tons of examples on my main uh

Channel Dev leader but there's a podcast there and if you just want some examples if you scroll through some episodes um you'll see that there are people that I've interviewed that are career switchers that have switched you know between the ages like 30 and 40 um I don't have it it's on my other podcast Channel that I have not been doing podcasts on but um uh former colleague and a good friend of mine interviewed someone named Brian Jenny can't remember what age I can't remember the exact story but basically he was driving a cab he was driving a cab and I in the story he was saying like he was based on where he was picking people up or maybe it was Uber sorry if I have that part wrong but um was driving around people and asking them what they're doing and stuff and

started hearing more from software developers I was like I'm going to look into that and he is now a successful software developer I think he manages engineering teams he has a I I don't know if it's his like side hustle or main hustle now but uh he has a a company called parcity that helps other software developers and career switchers like be successful like it's totally doable I realize that might not be the most common story but like it's doable right and there's other people if you watch some of those podcast episodes um there's a guy that I really look up to his name's um oh my God I remember his YouTube channel I feel embarrassed right now cuz I don't don't edit these his YouTube channel is called code wrinkles Dan um he's got like a hyphen hited last name oh it's so embarrassing

I'm sorry code wrinkles on YouTube he's awesome uh he's a career switcher and he switched I think in his early to mid-30s um if you watch that episode uh if you look in the comments if you're watching it on YouTube look in the comments there's uh Karen pay who uh is a net developer on and I see her all over Twitter uh she commented on it and she she switched careers you know very late so to speak um so it's it's entirely doable right I know there's going to be people that jump into these comments or they're watching this and they don't even want to comment they're like it's like the Market's cooked or whatever kids say these days um there's no more jobs everything's over that was before that's not now I I don't know I'm running out of energy to try and like

defend this stuff but like if you work towards it you can make things happen I'm not saying that it's easy right don't please don't confuse it's possible and it's doable with it's easy because those aren't the same things and that's not what I'm saying it was not easy before and it's certainly not any easier right now but it's definitely possible okay so um I think that if if you're discovering that this is an interest for you and you're able to make the time and you're enjoying it then like absolutely by all means continue to focus on it right um going back to what I said a little bit earlier about like a philosophical thing I've said this in other videos I'm of the mindset that if if you're thinking about what you like your career and your life okay there's going to be in my

opinion there's a balance here where like if you had a lot of money and you didn't have to work then you could just do whatever you wanted with your time on earth right um unfortunately many of us don't achieve that in our lifetimes where we're just like I have enough money to do like to never have to work again so I can do literally anything I want um which means that most of us have to work a large portion of our lives so do you just do something that you don't like doing for the majority of your life or do you try to work towards something that you will enjoy and make that a part of your life I'm of the mindset the ladder is a better option right I'm not everyone but that's my philosophy is like if I'm going to be doing this

stuff for a long time I might as well try to find things that I like to do because that's going to be a large part of my life so if you're enjoying this stuff I would say like yeah like maybe consider it right I don't there's going to be people that will comment about agism and things like that or that it's much harder because of the competition and like these are all things that exist and don't make it easier um but you know for all the people saying it's not possible I can point to other people that have done it maybe they have something special that they can tell you that they did but if you want to watch those podcast so it's people will talk through at least in the first like 10 to 15 minutes they talk about their career Journey so uh

I would recommend checking out my main Channel Dev leader going through some of the podcasts you'll see that people have good success stories about that um okay now the other part to this was about the pay um so where to start on this um pay is going to be extremely uh dependent on your location on the planet okay so I'm making assumptions here I'm making assumptions this person's in the US I don't know right it doesn't say $22 us an hour I'm just going to assume the US um so they're talking about working at Walmart doing deliveries for that and seeing Junior Dev do jobs for $20 an hour so less um I'm speculating here okay entirely speculating but if we were to consider the the career trajectory of Walmart deliveries from a pay perspective um I don't I don't know is it a unionized

thing and there's like you can see like in X years here's where you'd be at maybe maybe that trajectory looks good and you're happy with that I don't know I don't have any experience at all in that space it would be stupid of me and wrong of me to try and comment much more than that aside from speculating and saying you could go maybe you can go look that up and see and see if you're content with that it's not for me to say um because I don't know and I'm not you um on the junior Dev jobs so what $50 an hour is roughly $100,000 a year salary because I don't I don't know hourly rates I've I've never worked as a software developer with hourly rates um so if $50 an hour is $100,000 a year then 20 is what going to be

like 40 uh 40K a year to start um and that might not feel good but I would say that the the ceiling I'm and again I'm making assumptions here because I don't know about Walmart deliveries but I I suspect the ceiling is going to be much higher for a software developer and maybe I shouldn't even say ceiling because that's too much of an extreme the I don't know enough I don't know enough of the words for like statistical analysis here but um because I don't even want to say the average I want to say that the um there's a probably a larger there's probably a better opportunity to make more money as a software developer compared to uh Walmart deliveries I'm guessing but I think like with many jobs a lot of this is going to based on time and effort uh some luck in

terms of promotions and like opportunities and things like that um and again I don't I'm biased here because I don't know about Walmart deliveries but I'm assuming that the the likelihood of like good opportunities for promotions and raises and stuff like that is probably pretty low and in order order to be climbing you know climbing the ranks in terms of pay raises and stuff like that in that career path is likely just like consistent time in in roll I'm guessing which means if you love doing that work and you're looking at that trajectory you might be totally content saying hey I got to be here for another 10 years and I'm going to be making 50k or $50 an hour I have like I don't even know how to to start guessing at this but if that was a trajectory that you could see and

you were like yeah I like the work and in 10 years I'm good with that then then great right I don't know like no no argument from my side um however if you were like I like the software development path and you're starting at say the 40K a year which you know roughly $20 an hour let's say um could you get your foot in the door work at a place for a couple years uh be applying the entire time to other places to try getting up to like 70 80k a year uh and then get that and be applying to a couple other places the whole time to try and get up to 100 or over 100k a year I think it's very possible I think it's very possible because people do this I'm not and I'm not saying it's easy people on the internet

have a really difficult time with like hearing me or other people say like things are possible and conflating that with easy I hope you didn't hear me say easy at any point aside from saying it's I'm not saying it's easy um but it's possible right people do this so my my take on this would be that especially if it's something that you are interested in doing that you like to do that um if you can put in the time and the energy into software development and you can um be kind of thinking about career growth shopping around to apply to different places right um and really kind of navigating things from that way you can probably find that you'll you can go past that $20 an hour um I would assume well within like that 10-year kind of window that I just made up in

the the earlier comparison so I that would be my recommendation but like it's not professional advice or anything like that I think that at the end of the day you have to do what you love to do and if you don't know you have to try until you find things that you love to do or at least find things that you like to do more right um it's a journey for sure but my recommendation or kind of the Direction I Would point you in is you know probably the software development path I think I'm but I'm biased I think it's an awesome you know space to be working in I love the fact that we can work in many different domains right you can work in finance you can work in healthare you can work in government you can work in like gaming you can

work I work at Microsoft doing backend infrastructure like there's there's so much stuff agriculture like it just you name a domain right and you need software for it so I think there's lots of opportunities that way so that's my advice here happy Vapor 4670 I hope that helps and a friendly reminder that if you want questions answered you want my perspective on it then leave them in the comments or send a message to Dev leader on social media and I'll see you next time take care