My Career Journey: Re-entry

I re-entered the software industry twice. Once from school, the second time, a decade and a half later after a lengthy pause.

Entering the software industry the second time has its own challenges. Everything I knew would help me and also work against me.

One - salary: I knew what I was worth before. Accepting a salary less now would hurt.

Second - experience: I programmed in a different language the first time and basically taught myself on the job. The software industry changed and the programming language in demand now is different than the programming language I knew.

Third - competition: the software industry got way hotter than when I entered from school and everyone wants in. The whole “technical interview prep” is an industry in itself. Programming bootcamps where you can attend for 12 weeks and get a job in the software industry.

These are tough challenges.

For the salary - in a way, this is totally out of my control. The company dictates the salary on the offer. I have to work with what I got. I know I can increase my salary applying for jobs with higher offers. At the time, this worked against me because of expectations.

Experience - I leaned into my previous skills as a developer and instead of trying to re-learn the old language, I leveraged the old skills into learning new programming languages.

Competition - when you can’t beat them, join them! The whole software industry was booming - companies were doing everything they can to attract talent, like hosting meetup.com events at their offices after-hours, and giving out free beer and pizza to attendees or all-night hackathons. I joined the competition through these events and made friends with them.

Similar to before - once I figured out what my heart wanted, I could not slow things down. Soon enough, I meet a startup CTO while waiting in line for a my badge at a meetup event and the next day I’m interviewing with their company.

Life happens when you’re aligned with your heart.