Switching to a Career in Technology
Today, I am going to be talking about switching to a career in Technology. People switch careers for many different reasons. One of those could be a lack of interest in the course they studied in school — many people fall into this category. Other reasons include being underpaid in their current job, lack of passion in the career they’re trying to switch from, the threat of their current job being possibly overtaken by a machine soon, a misalignment between one’s career and personal core values, lack of fulfilment or requiring a challenge. The thought of switching comes to a lot of people, but most people actually defer or delay making the move because they are not quite sure how to go about it. I’m going to share a little background about myself and how I switched careers.
Communique:
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I actually studied Electrical and Electronics Engineering in school, but I took an interest in a coding course that I took during my second year and then decided to go into coding right after school. It was quite tough as I had literally no experience. Even though the coding course in my second year was fascinating to me, I had to study and memorise hard to pass it. Anyway, I went through some coding courses online and taught myself for a couple of months before joining a boot camp.
Starting programming right after school was super new — it was quite hard, to be honest. And I had to spend time self-learning, trying to understand and retain concepts on my own, getting frustrated a lot of times, feeling excited at new learnings, discovering flimsy syntax errors made after long hours sometimes and so much more. To be honest, it was a challenge for me. It wasn’t a walk in the park for sure, yet discovering and learning new things made it exciting for me.
There are a couple of things I definitely learned from experience transitioning and to be honest, I actually believe I probably had it easier than some other people who studied or have worked in fields, not remotely close to software engineering. For example, Accounting, Medicine, and you know, so many other courses like that. However, I believe that some of the thoughts I share might be useful in helping you with an easier switch into a tech career.
So there are four major things I’d like us to look at today. The first one is to look before you leap. Nigerians will say shine ya eye. Now take time to figure out your whys. Why do you need this switch? Evaluate what your reason is for making the change. Are you unsatisfied with your current job or your work environment? Do you just need a change in jobs and not necessarily a career change? Or maybe what you need is really just some days off or do you actually feel unchallenged? Try to figure out why you need this because it would help you stay focused once you make the move.
Another thing to consider is the possibility of combining your current skills with tech. Now you might not need to completely switch into a technical role. For example, if you are into finance, you could use some knowledge of data analytics to become a financial analyst. You could channel your passion for products and services into getting into product management in the tech space. You could channel your interest in sales into building a career in sales engineering. Bottom line is to identify where you are and how a switch in career would help you get to where you want to be.
More importantly, you want to do some research and then some more. And this research is in two phases. First, you want to research the different career paths, the tech and soft skills needed, the jobs out there in the industry and identify which areas spark your interest. There are technical and non-technical roles in software engineering. With the technical roles you are fully involved in writing code, and building software to solve complex problems and build products. With the non-technical roles, you will be involved in other roles outside creating technical solutions. For example, being a product manager involves creating awareness for the product and increasing conversion rates by using tools like email marketing and social media marketing. Another non-tech role is the UI/UX designer, which involves creating designs for the products, choosing the colours and creating the blueprint for how they will look across devices. The second type of research that I recommend is to identify the people who work in the same space that you’re interested in. And you want to identify these people both physically and virtually. For me, what I did here was that I reached out to friends and friends of friends that I knew were programmers. I literally bugged and asked them tons of questions about the field, and some were able to share resources that I could study and learn from as well. Doing research will help you know where you are and identify what you need to grow.
Another thing that I think is also equally important is learning how to learn. This is especially important for tech roles. Now if you’ve had some computer science knowledge in school, learning to program might not be unnatural to you. However, for someone with a different (unrelated) background, you will need to practice a lot when learning how to code. Reading is great, watching videos is great, listening to Rewire With Susan is awesome, but you have to get your hands dirty by actually coding. Code alone, pair programme…just code. Also, identify what works for you. What kind of resources help you assimilate faster? What times of the day, do you retain stuff the most? Is it first thing in the morning when you wake up or after a great dinner at night? So basically just figure out what it is that works for you and stick with it. Every once in a while you could also change your routines so that you don’t get bored.
Finally, and not least important is networking. You want to network both physically and virtually. Now if I’m being honest, I mostly connected with people in my field virtually when I just started, because I think I was shy and I’m probably still a bit shy. That’s why this is not a video podcast. But I think that physical networks are great. With physical networks, you can join communities, go to meetups, attend relevant conferences, even though these are all virtual now — thanks to Corona. But other things like subscribing to blogs and connecting on LinkedIn are great ways to network. Networking will help you build and maintain useful relationships in the field, and possibly allow you to have a mentor which could be a huge win for a beginner. With a mentor, you would have a bit more structure to your learning. And if you’re committed you would absolutely grow faster.
That’s all I have on today’s episode. Are you considering a switch or have you recently moved into the tech space? What are your challenges? Share your feedback with me in the comments section. Also, make sure you share this episode with a friend who might be looking to switch into tech.
See you next week. Peace!
