Should I quit my current job and move to programming field?

Forums › Off topic › Should I quit my current job and move to programming field?

nerox

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#306079 26-Jun-2023 11:57

Guys it is my first topic, not sure if this is the correct place.

I have been employed in the Telco industry for 4 years, initially starting in tech support and eventually transitioning to an account manager position.

The salary is not too bad(around $70K per year), but I have not found any enjoyment in this job. Despite others around me claiming that I am adept at handling sensitive individuals, I actually despise doing so.

I have been contemplating a shift to the technical field for the past year and have utilized my free time to study programming skills. Now I have completed somes React tutorials and can develop a backend admin console using React. However, I feel that my learning progress is slow, and I lack practical work experience.

I have come across a boot camp that offers an opportunity to work in a genuine working environment. I am considering quitting my current role so that I can fully dedicate myself to studying and working in that boot camp.

But my partner has expressed concerns about the current job market, advising me to remain in my current position. She suggested that if I am seeking higher pay, I could explore opportunities in project management. I have been monitoring available positions on job search platforms for the past few days and have found very few junior developer job openings.

Do you have any advice or recommendations for my situation?

gzt

17104 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#3095053 26-Jun-2023 12:53

when you say 'programming' are you referring to web development or not yet decided?

nzkc

1571 posts

Uber Geek

#3095055 26-Jun-2023 12:56

Is there an opportunity to move to a IT development role within your current organisation? This would likely be the safest (probably easiest too) route into that field. Certainly the least risky :)

If your current organisation will not support this then my current thoughts on a boot camps are this:

You are never guaranteed a job at the end of it
You'll only ever learn a high level view of the language(s) they teach you
Teaching concepts isn't always covered (e.g. Objected Oriented patterns) and you will still have to do that yourself (and TBH a lot of these only really become solidified with experience)
It does show a willingness to learn and change fields from the individual which is a great positive

Disclaimer: I've never used boot camps, Im just providing my views on having interviewed some people who have used them.

Reanalyse

381 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3095066 26-Jun-2023 13:56

I would stay in your current role and study to get industry level certifications. You do not need to be working in the field to achieve these.

In your case would suggests studying for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam, followed by the AWS Developer Associate. AWS skills are portable.

Well respected certifications, and easily studied at home at reasonable cost (recommend Joseph Phillips on Udemy for video training) and Whizlabs for mock exams and hands on experience in their labs.

I have seen family members follow this path with great results

reven

3743 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#3095070 26-Jun-2023 14:13

As someone who hires junior/intermediate developers somewhat frequently. Ill tell you what i mostly look for

github page
- i want to see your code
- this is a huge plus if you have this
linkedin page
- i want to see who endorsed you
- i want to see your job history / how long you stayed somewhere (doesnt really apply to juniors, but hey if you got non programming experience its good)
technologies you know
qualifications

I put qualifications at the bottom, its important, but not as much as the others.

After that, I'd give you a technical written test to actual test your knowledge of stuff.

Now from my experience, web devs get paid the least. if you just want a basic react role, yeah they are a dime a dozen. These will top out in pay, but start roughly at same spot,

For a junior around 50-65k a year. For intermediate full stack, 100k+. A senior in todays market seems to be around 150k

jonb

1771 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#3095076 26-Jun-2023 14:23

Reanalyse:

I would stay in your current role and study to get industry level certifications. You do not need to be working in the field to achieve these.

In your case would suggests studying for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam, followed by the AWS Developer Associate. AWS skills are portable.

Well respected certifications, and easily studied at home at reasonable cost (recommend Joseph Phillips on Udemy for video training) and Whizlabs for mock exams and hands on experience in their labs.

I have seen family members follow this path with great results

I would agree, your current role is not a bad jumping off point for moving into project management, testing, BA or implementation. Azure fundamentals is a good Microsoft equivalent of the AWS path above, together with some SQL knowledge is a good base for knowing what you are talking about in conjunction with a PM/Agile qualification (or a Business Analyst equiv). Find out what cloud provider your telco mostly uses. With just a basecamp level programming cert you are competing with new graduates, and at a disadvantage if moving into a new industry area at the same time. Also if it seems you are not naturally gifted at it (I'm not). Comparison I'm currently doing implementation in healthcare software from testing background, basic Azure, SQL, html/xml, domain knowledge. PMs would be earning more, for me have avenue to earn more with the Azure side.

marpada

475 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3095179 26-Jun-2023 19:30

nerox:

But my partner has expressed concerns about the current job market, advising me to remain in my current position. She suggested that if I am seeking higher pay, I could explore opportunities in project management. I have been monitoring available positions on job search platforms for the past few days and have found very few junior developer job openings.

I'm afraid your partner is right, the market is at a global low: tech layoffs, incoming recession,... Also traditionally it's hard for junior developers to put their foot on the door, specially after borders are open again, as companies can easily hire migrant senior devs, so quitting your job without something lined up would be a very risky move.

I don't mean to discourage you from shifting careers specially if you enjoy the area, but unless your current job is affecting your mental health I would strongly recommend you to be strategic about the transition and keep preparing for when the market conditions are favorable, in the meantime keep up-skilling, grow your network, build a porfolio, attend meetups, find a mentor...

nerox

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#3095200 26-Jun-2023 22:41

gzt: when you say 'programming' are you referring to web development or not yet decided?

web development. Well that is the only field I've been trying so far

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nerox

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#3095203 26-Jun-2023 22:55

nzkc:

Is there an opportunity to move to a IT development role within your current organisation? This would likely be the safest (probably easiest too) route into that field. Certainly the least risky :)

If your current organisation will not support this then my current thoughts on a boot camps are this:

You are never guaranteed a job at the end of it
You'll only ever learn a high level view of the language(s) they teach you
Teaching concepts isn't always covered (e.g. Objected Oriented patterns) and you will still have to do that yourself (and TBH a lot of these only really become solidified with experience)
It does show a willingness to learn and change fields from the individual which is a great positive
Disclaimer: I've never used boot camps, Im just providing my views on having interviewed some people who have used them.

Unfortunately not very likely. I am working at a small ISP that only had 12 employee. We do have a contract developer who help us on the website development. The company website were based on wordpress and magento.

I've talked with my boss about it but he wish me could stay on my current role.

I agree with your opinion about the bootcamp, but this specific bootcamp call GradSpace I found is also a software development company. They provide intership opptunity to their student and allow them to participate in their real commercial project. My plan was undertaking an 6 months intership with them and hopefully I can levelup my skill to get me a proper developer job.

nerox

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#3095205 26-Jun-2023 23:05

Reanalyse:

I would stay in your current role and study to get industry level certifications. You do not need to be working in the field to achieve these.

In your case would suggests studying for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam, followed by the AWS Developer Associate. AWS skills are portable.

Well respected certifications, and easily studied at home at reasonable cost (recommend Joseph Phillips on Udemy for video training) and Whizlabs for mock exams and hands on experience in their labs.

I have seen family members follow this path with great results

Thanks for this mate, but can you give some explaination on why you recommend me AWS? I had limited experience with cloud, and considering my existing role and experience I was thinking project management might be the best path for a smooth transition.(sadly this seems to be hard my verbal English is bad, English is not my first language)

nerox

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#3095207 26-Jun-2023 23:12

jonb:

Reanalyse:

I would stay in your current role and study to get industry level certifications. You do not need to be working in the field to achieve these.

In your case would suggests studying for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam, followed by the AWS Developer Associate. AWS skills are portable.

Well respected certifications, and easily studied at home at reasonable cost (recommend Joseph Phillips on Udemy for video training) and Whizlabs for mock exams and hands on experience in their labs.

I have seen family members follow this path with great results

I would agree, your current role is not a bad jumping off point for moving into project management, testing, BA or implementation. Azure fundamentals is a good Microsoft equivalent of the AWS path above, together with some SQL knowledge is a good base for knowing what you are talking about in conjunction with a PM/Agile qualification (or a Business Analyst equiv). Find out what cloud provider your telco mostly uses. With just a basecamp level programming cert you are competing with new graduates, and at a disadvantage if moving into a new industry area at the same time. Also if it seems you are not naturally gifted at it (I'm not). Comparison I'm currently doing implementation in healthcare software, approx $100k, from testing background, basic Azure, SQL, html/xml, domain knowledge. PMs would be earning more, for me have avenue to earn more with the Azure side.

Mate is your current role require a lot of verbal communication? The reason I am concerned with PM path is my verbal English is not good enough for me to managing the peope or deal with those non-tech people. This is also the reason I want to stay in the tech field.

nerox

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#3095208 26-Jun-2023 23:20

marpada:

nerox:

But my partner has expressed concerns about the current job market, advising me to remain in my current position. She suggested that if I am seeking higher pay, I could explore opportunities in project management. I have been monitoring available positions on job search platforms for the past few days and have found very few junior developer job openings.

I'm afraid your partner is right, the market is at a global low: tech layoffs, incoming recession,... Also traditionally it's hard for junior developers to put their foot on the door, specially after borders are open again, as companies can easily hire migrant senior devs, so quitting your job without something lined up would be a very risky move.

I don't mean to discourage you from shifting careers specially if you enjoy the area, but unless your current job is affecting your mental health I would strongly recommend you to be strategic about the transition and keep preparing for when the market conditions are favorable, in the meantime keep up-skilling, grow your network, build a porfolio, attend meetups, find a mentor...

I agree your opinion on the market. The available job on seek is apparently less than 6 months ago. But like you said companies can eaily hire migrant skillful devs with more experiencs, I worry about if I just study parttime without getting a real industry expeirience, I'll never able to competite with those migrant devs.

nerox

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#3095209 26-Jun-2023 23:27

reven:

As someone who hires junior/intermediate developers somewhat frequently. Ill tell you what i mostly look for

github page

i want to see your code
this is a huge plus if you have this
linkedin page

i want to see who endorsed you
i want to see your job history / how long you stayed somewhere (doesnt really apply to juniors, but hey if you got non programming experience its good)
technologies you know
qualifications

I put qualifications at the bottom, its important, but not as much as the others.

After that, I'd give you a technical written test to actual test your knowledge of stuff.

Now from my experience, web devs get paid the least. if you just want a basic react role, yeah they are a dime a dozen. These will top out in pay, but start roughly at same spot,

For a junior around 50-65k a year. For intermediate full stack, 100k+. A senior in todays market seems to be around 150k

Can I ask a dumb question, how do you differentiate between a junior and an intermediate developer? Or how many years of working experience were required for a junior developer become an intermediate developer, like averagely?

timmmay

20574 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3095233 27-Jun-2023 07:17

Reanalyse:

I would stay in your current role and study to get industry level certifications. You do not need to be working in the field to achieve these.

In your case would suggests studying for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam, followed by the AWS Developer Associate. AWS skills are portable.

Well respected certifications, and easily studied at home at reasonable cost (recommend Joseph Phillips on Udemy for video training) and Whizlabs for mock exams and hands on experience in their labs.

I have seen family members follow this path with great results

As someone who has worked in AWS for 5+ years, the market is really variable. At times there's a lot of demand, at other times it's dead. There's a fairly steady demand for cloud engineers. The thing about cloud engineers is you don't just need skills in cloud, you need a wide range of skills - windows, Linux, networking, a bit of programming or scripting, etc. Coming from a development background can help, but isn't essential.

Adrian Cantril training is excellent for beginners, as it assumes very little starting knowledge.

Azure seems to be more steadily in demand, particularly in Wellington / government.