“Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.”
Margart Shepard
I’m an admirer of logic and reason. It is the basis for why I became a mathematics major in college. I love the theory behind the math. I loved writing proofs and solving equations. It goes hand in hand, that, I am passionate about solving puzzles, trouble-shooting issues and problem solving. These are all things that I knew I would experience with coding, which is why I decided that becoming a software developer would be a great fit for me.
I was previously in project management at an imaging software company. I’d been working in project management for about a dozen years and my role there changed about 2 years ago when I was transferred to a technical project manager position, working with the software teams on their projects. This was significantly different from my previous project management position where I owned a product from sales through delivery. What I missed in my new position was all of the trouble-shooting and problem solving that I was very involved with in my old job. I’m a doer and I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to fix or create in this new role.
So, I needed to find a way to get back into the creative process. Where could I go from here? And I’d been wondering about the few computer science courses that I took my senior year in college (a lifetime ago!). I had thoroughly enjoyed them and found the coding rewarding, but at that point, I felt it was too late to pursue a career in software development…I was almost done with my degree and didn’t have any interest in extending my college years. I was ready to get out into the world. But not having pursued my options in software development has always been something that has plagued me. Would I have been good at it? Would I have enjoyed it? And now, could I swing going back to school to pursue that goal?
I’d heard several stories in the few months leading up to starting at Flatiron that inspired me to really consider pursuing a career overhaul. Two in particular stand out. The first, I met a woman at a pottery convention that, in a previous life, was also a project manager. After three years on the job that she described as “soul sucking”( no offense to project managers), her and her husband took out a second mortgage on their house so she could quit her job and become a full time potter. Talk about a leap of faith! And the second person I’ve known for a few years, but had never sat down to hear his whole story, so I took him out to lunch to get all the details. He was a colleague of mine, at the company where I was a project manager, who had successfully navigated the path of completely changing his career. He is a musician, with a Masters in Music. Five years ago, he took advantage of the tuition reimbursement program that his employer at the time offered and spent the next 4 years slowly acquiring a degree in software development. And now he has a job as a software developer and he is great at his job and he loves it!
These stories spurred me to look into what options were available to me to do the same thing..to take the leap and recreate my career into something that I would find rewarding and exciting. My musician/software developer colleague recommended Software boot camps and suggested that I talk to another colleague who had been enrolled in a boot camp and also worked for one at the time. This colleague endorsed Flatiron School, as her alma mater and employer.
All that said, here I am, excited and ready to launch this next chapter in my life as a software developer!
