3 ms·

Agreed. I don't know what the OP's situation is, and he might need some counseling to deal with an underlying issue, but his intended career move I cannot in go

Agreed. I don't know what the OP's situation is, and he might need some counseling to deal with an underlying issue, but his intended career move I cannot in good conscience recommend to anyone. It sounds like he's burnt out, a little scared, and needs to do some soul searching. Maybe swallow his pride and go back to basics to get some help. If he had said he wanted to do something like become a teacher or tech tradesman of a different kind, that would be a different story, but legions of people in the low-paying, low status, dead-end entry level jobs he is describing can only dream of rising into IT employment, and there are plenty of "coding bootcamps" to "help" them get there. This guy already has an opportunity that millions dream of, and though his grip on it may be tenuous, he needs help in firming it up.

brailsafe 9y ago
The parent comment, though I didn't see it, seems to have sounded incredibly toxic. But to address your sentiment, this is not a permanent career move necessarily and I don't want to sound like I'm taking a career in software for granted. This is part of my attempt to go back to basics, things I missed, things that might help me become better at working in general but also give me some perspective on this field from the outside. Really the simple question could be framed as "Hey I've got this resume that's filled with a bunch of frameworks and other software experience I have. How can leverage some things from this experience to apply at jobs the most people would be getting as their first job." -- or something
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  The general impression in hiring is that staying current with software skills requires continual effort. I think the gap on your resumé should you leave the industry and later want to return will be a considerable self-imposed hurdle, and not easy to explain even if you get interviews, and you will likely struggle even harder than now. You are going to make your own decisions and far be it from me to tell you how to lead your life, but that's my honest opinion. Maybe you can find a non-dev role where having development experience is extremely useful? For example, customer success/support on a SaaS product often is very difficult to fill with human to human contact employees who can diagnose front end bugs a customer might be seeing, run some data queries... stuff that would otherwise result in a long turnaround for an answer by putting in a support ticket with engineering. Support staff with technical chops are extremely hard to find and high value add in enterprise software. I think you can find something more productive that plays to your strengths horizontally in the types of orgs you have been working for instead of dropping in the hierarchy of industry skillsets altogether.

brailsafe 9y ago

The parent comment, though I didn't see it, seems to have sounded incredibly toxic. But to address your sentiment, this is not a permanent career move necessarily and I don't want to sound like I'm taking a career in software for granted. This is part of my attempt to go back to basics, things I missed, things that might help me become better at working in general but also give me some perspective on this field from the outside. Really the simple question could be framed as "Hey I've got this resume that's filled with a bunch of frameworks and other software experience I have. How can leverage some things from this experience to apply at jobs the most people would be getting as their first job." -- or something

lr4444lr 9y ago
The general impression in hiring is that staying current with software skills requires continual effort. I think the gap on your resumé should you leave the industry and later want to return will be a considerable self-imposed hurdle, and not easy to explain even if you get interviews, and you will likely struggle even harder than now. You are going to make your own decisions and far be it from me to tell you how to lead your life, but that's my honest opinion. Maybe you can find a non-dev role where having development experience is extremely useful? For example, customer success/support on a SaaS product often is very difficult to fill with human to human contact employees who can diagnose front end bugs a customer might be seeing, run some data queries... stuff that would otherwise result in a long turnaround for an answer by putting in a support ticket with engineering. Support staff with technical chops are extremely hard to find and high value add in enterprise software. I think you can find something more productive that plays to your strengths horizontally in the types of orgs you have been working for instead of dropping in the hierarchy of industry skillsets altogether.