That’s totally reasonable but just be aware side projects have severe diminishing returns after awhile. Unless you are shipping complex software as part of a te

That’s totally reasonable but just be aware side projects have severe diminishing returns after awhile. Unless you are shipping complex software as part of a team it is not preparing you more. You will still be junior. The exception being if you invent NPM or some similarly massive FOSS contribution. But if you could do that you wouldn’t be asking if there is hope for you. The sooner you write code with other professionals for money, even part time, the better off you will be when you make the switch. Personally I haven’t done side projects in years and it has come up zero times in startup, consulting, and FAANG interviews. Once you have experience pretty much nobody cares and until you have experience no matter what you do, you will still be junior. Writing code and building things is the easy/fun part of being a developer but its the other stuff that matters. Also I came from a non-traditional background and have lead teams on quarter billion dollar projects. Once you prove you can ship nobody who matters remotely cares about other, preliminary or proxy credentials.