Before I begin to dive into the “how” and “why” I wanted to become a software engineer, I think it’s important to talk about the actions and decisions leading up to my career change.
MY PREVIOUS LIFE
For the past 8 years, my life and career revolved around the fashion industry. I had worked for a number of international brands, holding titles that ranged from Account Executive to North American Sales Director. I loved the industry and the creative side of taking a piece of fabric and seeing it transform into the beautiful suits and sport coats that I would present to my clients. This industry allowed me the opportunity to travel all over the United States and Italy, and along the way I met some great people while maintaining great relationships with my clients and competitors.
However, about two to three years ago I began to see a massive change in business attire. Everywhere from the tech industry to finance, offices began to loosen their dress code and “business casual” became the new standard for business attire. Gone are the days when people would dress up to go to work, to a sporting event or even to see a play.
Iterating Over My Options
Living through, and seeing this transition, I began to think of other career paths that I could explore given my finance degree and my fashion sales background. Unfortunately, a lot of companies in tech sales, ad sales and other industries want you to have experience in that specific field.
After a lot of rejected applications and a lot of frustration, I asked myself “what industry would allow me to be creative, work from anywhere in the world and be recession proof?” The answer: Software Engineer. So, starting in early 2019 I began to research the path to become a software engineer.
An Array of Confusion
At this point, I was excited to find a new career that would offer job security and be in demand for a long time to come. I would have the opportunity to work in any industry and utilize my skills to make a difference.
Shortly after I began my research, I became overwhelmed with all of the programming languages out there, not knowing which to actually learn. If I went on one site, they recommended one language, if I went on another site, they recommended a different one and so on. At this point I became very frustrated and disheartened, so I decided to forget about the career change.
A Covid {“kick” => “in the hash”}
I was one of the millions of people to lose their job due to the Covid-19 pandemic and it was a very tough blow to my self-esteem. After working for nearly a decade in the fashion industry, I thought that I would be on the short list to get rehired when businesses reopened. That was not the case.
One silver lining as a result of my layoff during the pandemic, was that it allowed me the opportunity to research all of my interests to see which career path I’d like to pursue and again the answer was, software engineer. I knew that I needed to dive head first, join a school and submerge myself in the world of tech and programming.
A :symbol of Hope
Having spent some time researching apps, websites, online courses, bootcamps, university programs, the Flatiron School arrived during one of my Google searches. After investigating the website, reading reviews and asking friends in the tech world about their reputation and quality of graduates, I quickly realized that Flatiron would give me the best opportunity to learn software engineering and prepare me for a job after graduation.
I am currently two weeks into the software engineering part time program with the Flatiron School and have been impressed with their curriculum, the inclusion of everyone in my cohort and, the energy and commitment of the instructors. The overall atmosphere makes even a student like myself (with no prior coding experience) feel welcomed.
