How to Become a Developer in Several Years

The world has a wealth of blog posts and books written about how to switch careers to software development in a matter of 5 or 6 months.

But this might not be the path for you.

What you’ll find here is excellent content about:

• someone who hasn’t yet become a developer as a career
• someone who has spent several years exploring their existing career before deciding for sure to switch
• someone who has decided to take the long route and do a second bachelors degree instead of attending a coding bootcamp

If this sounds good to you, then read on!

My first career

My first career has been a relatively successful one as a CPA.

The relatively successful part accounts for the long time it took me to make up my mind to commit to a career change, since in a lot of ways, being an accountant is a pretty sweet gig.

A couple years ago, I was lucky enough to work as an accountant with a team of engineers, including software developers.

After exploring my options as an accountant, I eventually figured out that I didn’t want to work as an accountant supporting engineers. Instead, I want to actually be part of an engineering team, problem-solving and developing new products.

Accounting has been a good career path for me, and I don’t regret doing it. I expect my existing skill set to complement a computer science degree in my career shift, rather than being something I no longer use.

The second bacherlors degree

My journey into coding started with some coursera classes on python, and then expanded into some paid classes with Pragmatic Studios and General Assembly.

Coding bootcamps are all over the place these days, and when I was first toying with the idea of switching careers, I thought that would be the way to go.

None of the bootcamps I looked into were really a great fit for me though. There are a lot of reasons, but for brevity, I’ll stick with the big reason which is that, before switching careers, I want to feel more confident when switching careers that I understand more of the underlying nuts and bolts of computer science.

Many people have asked me why I would do a second bachelors degree, instead of a masters degree, but the simple truth is that an accounting degree just doesn’t share enough in common with computer science to jump right into a masters degree in the subject.

Why this blog?

Mostly, this blog exists because I enjoy blogging and writing about what I am learning.

Eventually, I hope I’ll have some tips and tricks to share from the projects I’m working on, but for now, it’s just observations on doing an undergraduate degree in my 30s and the classes I’m taking.