But a software developer? Never.

My father’s career has been successfully built on the sweat and hard work of his entrepreneurial mentality, and he had imparted that mindset over to me. I was always inspired to build my own career like him but in a different line of work.

That’s when I was introduced to online marketing.

The Online Marketing Drudge

It was first brought to me by the big fancy online ads on how to make money online. As a 17 year old kid who wanted to play games more than work, the idea of having to only put in a few hours a week (after years of hard work 24/7), it sounded like a dream come true!

I paid what little I had from my part time job for an online course and went through it in a few weeks. I was ready for the income!

I dabbled in a couple ideas and landed on one that I thought would combine my hobbies with affiliated products and went to work, and I was absolutely loving it! The layout planning, the designing, the linking and organizing pages and posts; it was all so much fun!

…until I was just writing blog posts.

While I liked writing, I realized that this was the boring part of the whole thing. Thinking my website needed a redesign, I went back to the exciting creation of building a website.

The Big-Idea Moment

I wish I could say it happened after the first or second redesign, but no.

It took 3 redesigns of my original website and the failed startups of over 5 other market products to realize that it was not only the blogging that I enjoyed, but the actual building of a website and creating it from imagination to life.

I did not fully dedicate myself to coding quite yet, though.

I decided that I would instead primarily work via Wordpress and gain clients through the free builds of some friends and family’s websites for businesses and hobbies.

The company grew locally, but nothing huge. Nevertheless, I was having the time of my life. Building things from (almost) scratch was so fun and made me feel like I was living my purpose.

The Next Big-Idea

In the coming years, working a full time job became inevitable. It didn’t take long after to find the woman of my dreams. We married and I settled my roots in the company I was working for with doing designing on the side.

It wasn’t perfect, but still getting to live out some of what I enjoyed.

While trying to build the side business to become a sustainable income, by happenstance I started working as an on loan for the corporate office. I had some accounting classes under my belt, so they threw me in to fill some shoes while knocking out extra projects.

I finally landed a full time job in an accounting position and enjoyed the team I worked with. I had some opportunities to prove myself with adding some automation to the projects they gave me.

Automating everything became my obsession.

And they caught how much I was enjoying it, so they made me spearhead a project that would automate so much of our work that it would reduce our hourly work by 40-60 hours a week! It was not easy, but I loved every second of it.

Attempt #1

After working in accounting for about 2 years, a Software Developer Intern position opened up in our company.

Thinking this could be my break, I started asking around about the position: what languages do they use, what the culture is like, etc. All the signs pointed to that this would be a promising career path.

I started pulling all of my web designing resources together to showcase everything that I had done. I was ready!

Or so I thought.

The interview came and the HR-related questions were simplistic enough. Then they got into the technical questions, and it was in that moment that I knew I understood very little in development.

HTML and CSS was not very impressive to a company that had most of their work done primarily on the back-end (a word I didn’t even know the full definition of until then). While they appreciated the work ethic, they went for another interviewee who had actual experience in the area they were looking for.

To say I was devastated is an understatement, but I took it as a challenge for the next time.

The Daily Grind

A very successful developer (we’ll name them Bill) in our company decided to give everyone that applied an idea of what the day in the life of a software developer looked like. They did a several week course on the basics of programming in the language they use most at their business.

Over 30 people came to the first meeting, but quickly fizzled down to right under 8 people after several months.

I along with several great students showed the most promise and were recommended for the next upcoming internship.

All while I was waiting for the next opening, I scoured the internet for the best free and paid classes I could take in the languages we used at our company. I would get up and study for an hour before work and then studied for another hour during lunch.

Where Hard Work Met Opportunity

It was about 1 year later that another position for an internship opened up, and it was right then that I was ready to share my newfound knowledge to the team.

Remember Bill from earlier? They were actually pretty high up in the company and put in a good word for me! I could not believe my ears!

I prepped and studied every technical question I thought they would ask me, and ask me they did!

I walked out of there super confident in how the interview turned out.

Waiting for the answer felt like forever, but in reality was only a couple of weeks.

I got the call and was proudly told I had gotten the job! It took just another month to get my back position filled and I could head on over for the beginning of my new career!

And I haven’t looked back since!

Onwards and Upwards

If you’re reading this and have thought about making a career change to software development, I highly recommend it!

If you’re afraid of the length of time to get there, let me encourage you with this thought.

If it takes 2 years to get to where you want to be, but you have to study for it and it’s so long away, 2 years are going to pass with or without you studying. So do you want to be in the same place you are now in 2 years, or do you want to push yourself and get to a position that you would be happier in?

All the great things aren’t easy, but they are worth it.

I hope you enjoyed my story!

Let me know what your story is in the comments!