I worked in food & beverage management for a decade before deciding to switch careers and become a software engineer. I did go back to school (but that's becaus

I worked in food & beverage management for a decade before deciding to switch careers and become a software engineer. I did go back to school (but that's because I had never finished originally) but it doesn't sound like you would need to. The key is to find a good interim step to bridge where you are now and where you want to be. What I did initially was find a job in a tech support-like capacity, I then used what I was learning in school to write applications to improve some things in my department. After about a year and a half I had a decent amount of non-academic software I had written between the stuff I was writing for work and side projects I did for fun/experience. Once I was nearing completion of my degree and started interviewing for developer/engineer jobs I found most people interviewing me weren't interested in what I had done in school, what they were interested in mostly was the software I had written for my employer at the time and to a lesser extent side projects I had done. tl;dr version is you probably don't need to go back to school, just find something where your current credentials will get you in the door, write stuff that makes life better for the people in your company, and be patient. Hope that helps! Good luck!