“Why choose software engineering as a career path?”
As I begin my journey into software engineering and web development. I have found myself being asked the same question repeatedly. “What made you want to code/Why did you choose software engineering as a career path?” While those are great questions. The answer can be a bit lengthy! It was not just one thing or another it was an accumulation of all my interest, along with things I find come very naturally to me!
Former Jobs & Trying to make my own path.
I have worked a good number of jobs in my life. I can say that while they all had their pros and cons of working at these establishments, I always found myself in my spare time thinking about what I really wanted to do as a career. Each time I would start a new job that really had nothing to do with my actual interests or hobbies I would immediately know “This is not what I want for a career.” I’ve never had a problem working hard ,and moving my way up. There was always like this missing feeling like it’s just not doing it for me. All my life the biggest consistencies I’ve had is my interest in tech, always trying to figure out how things work behind the scenes, and the joy of being creative and the satisfaction of building something from the ground up! Nothing in these jobs were fulfilling any of this.
Being introduced to code & learning how to begin my career.
Now I saw my first bit of code when I took a Pokémon digital ROM on my computer and opened it up down to the files. Now while I was changing how the game was supposed to be run and following YouTube tutorials on what everything meant, I was feeling like a badass hacker! Now in retrospect it wasn’t much hacking involved if at all ,but it felt like it to me! I was like this is fun so I began to go down Google rabbit holes of “What is code?”, “How does it work?”, and “Can I make a career out of this?”. Now obviously I knew you can make a career out of it ,but the question was important because at this time I was just about to turn 27 years old. I have a full time job , I do not have the time or money to go to college for four years to get a degree. So I sat it aside and would occasionally come back and do more research on it. The more I would do the research the more I’d be at my day job thinking about how that is what I wished I was doing! Then one Saturday morning i wanted to test it to see if I actually enjoyed it. So I pulled up a 12 hour YouTube video on introduction to Python, (never heard of it before, just knew it was a coding language) and i sat down used the IDE of Pycharm and about an hour in I was hooked. I made the decision to start doing research on how to be able to pull schooling off and what options someone in my situation has!
Finding Flatiron School
It took about 1 hour of doing research for schooling to come across a strange concept. This concept is the ‘Bootcamp’ , lo and behold the first one I came across was the Flatiron school. As I went through their website I became more and more skeptical. “This can’t be real, you can complete courses and get a job in such a short amount of time!”. I actually began to research if this was just a big elaborate internet scam that had not been caught yet. After about two hours of research I reached the conclusion it was real ,and when i came to that conclusion i felt the greatest pit in my stomach. That pit came from the feeling of “Wow, I can really make this happen. I can do this and pursue something I enjoy and am passionate about!”. The biggest draw back was that I always want to be the most prepared. In my head, this course was so fast paced I need to know the ins and outs of coding before I started. Then as I was on the Flatiron website I came across a section called “When to apply?”. In that section was exactly what I needed. It spoke about not waiting the experience is not needed, and that people tend to do what i was doing trying to have all the knowledge before going into it! They explained that there is no need for that there would be no technical interview ,but more of a personality interview. So, the moment I finished reading that page I applied! Three days later I did my interview! Two days later I was accepted! Because of Flatiron school my life path changed completely in one week ,and I could not be happier or more grateful for it!
Pre-Work
The grind of phase one is starting for me and I could not be more excited! The pre-work was so enjoyable ,and I found myself doing it for fun and for hours. When I am working on code, figuring out labs ,or working on a project an entire day will go by ,but it feels like I’ve been working for two hours. I could not be happier with my career path choice ,and I could not be happier with the school I chose for it. Flatiron is the most welcoming, helpful, open, and friendly environment I could have ever asked for! Even when you are making the most obvious mistake ,but you can not see it they make you feel ok about not seeing it. The environment breeds success and community! I am not the person to suggest things to people or tell them that they should do something. But if someone reading this is interested in going into software engineering, I employ you to look into Flatiron school. They know how to make environment feel so comfortable which I can not imagine is a common occurrence in the fast paced tech industry!
Thank you for reading and learning a bit about my story and the reasoning why I choose software engineering! I hope you have a wonderful day, do not forget to smile and tell some one you love them!