I learnt to code at 27 - AMA

[OliviaSoprano]

Before anybody tells me to get over myself - I do know that there is absolutely nothing special or interesting about this! But women are still so under-represented in tech and I think far too many see it as an area that is "not for them" / a career option that wouldn't even be worth considering. I felt exactly that way three years ago but then I tried it and realised that I bloody love coding and now I'm working full time as a software engineer and really enjoy my job.

Just thought I'd start this in case there is anybody out there who may have questions about what's actually involved or how to go about starting to learn the necessary skills (or anything else obviously, it's AMA!)

[GittishMuseum]

Thank you so much for giving me something to look into. I’m really interested in how people use computers. Obviously accessible language and functionality to understand that is going to be key. And in a democratic world we’d all have computer access and ability and so I’d love to work in some way in assisting that happening.. thank you!

[ErrolTheDragon]

Our infodev people have to have a good grip on html and css, which some people think of as 'code'.

[ErrolTheDragon]

There are all sorts of different aspects to 'coding'. Pretty obviously you're not going to want to get into scientific algorithm design. But you might find a role in something like interface design.
At the really wordy end, not exactly coding, good documentation bods (aka InfoDev, User Assistance etc) are worth their weight in gold imo. Could you take raw documentation written by coders and 'subject matter experts' - often who don't have English as a first language - and turn it into clear comprehensible material? If you're able to discern the quality of a scientific paper even though presumably you don't deeply understand the statistical methods, this might fit you well.

[GittishMuseum]

I’m old (40s) and feeling in need of a change. I like what the challenge of coding and it’s working culture sounds like and that it sounds relatively meritocratic to get into and wondered if anyone had any advice for me? Does it sound like I would have the ability, being terrible at maths? I won’t be offended if you think I’d be too words-focused to get anywhere in coding! I’m useless at GCHQ puzzles unless they are wordplay ones, although I find them interesting and have a go at them. I’m not a cryptic crossword person, just bog standard crosswords, though I have very little spare time for any kind of puzzling. I don’t think I’m sounding like I’ve got the right sort of brain but because I know so little about coding I just thought I would ask!

[GittishMuseum]

Here’s a question, I’m not a lawyer but in another life possibly might have been have studied it a bit but ultimately focused on English literature and language by listening to bad advice and went into PR. So I love word-for-word detail and meaning analysis. I love using strategy and small-p politics at work (if I was the journalist what would I want to know? If I emphasise this aspect what will they ask us about that other (much more tricky) aspect?)
but I am unfortunately very worried by numbers and have been ever since school. I scraped a pass at GCSE maths.
However I love what numbers can tell us and am fascinated by what little I know of science (and maybe tech?) working culture. As in, always being evidence-based, being able to read a scientific paper and tell if it’s good quality or not, critiquing the methodology used to answer the questions, I like the idea of the analysis of it all.

[thistlescot]

What course would you recommend for a complete beginner on code academy @OliviaSoprano ?@OliviaSoprano

[Stayingstrongish]

@Fluffycloudland77 really sorry to hear that about your dh. Thanks for helping us on here.

[Fluffycloudland77]

educational sites like W3Schools work well on a tablet for initial practice, just to see if you like it or if when you hit a problem do you battle on or give up/do you get a buzz when it works or not?

I did a coding bootcamp but dhs health took a serious turn for the worse on my last session and my life’s very different now but in a bad way.

Other people on my course had a job offer exactly 7 days after finishing. The ones who are pursuing jobs have jobs. Others are off doing yet another course.

Theres not just coding there’s cyber security too or cloud practitioner. YouTube’s a useful resource.

[Threebutterflies]

Hi I would love to have a go at coding . I don’t have a laptop so will need to buy one. Does it have to be a particular one or can I just use any old cheap laptop? What programs do I need on there to do the coding ? As you can tell I have absolutely no idea about this ! Worth a try though .

[BelgianSleuth]

@Fere How did the rest of your course go with Makers?

I only found this thread last month which inspired me to start free courses on Codecademy, would be great to hear if anyone else new to IT/career changer has tried the bootcamps. TIA

[Fluffycloudland77]

PM’d you @OliviaSoprano.

[OliviaSoprano]

@Miniature8

what are the salary expectations for somebody after finishing a tech bootcamp? Also, are you able to give a realistic potential salary trajectory for a person like you who entered the industry without a degree in the relevant field?

When I did my bootcamp (Summer 2019) we were told to expect/aim for > £25,000 with £27,000 being the average first salary. In reality most people in my cohort who I spoke to about this expected more (around £30,000 as a minimum) and it was the general consensus that the figures told to us by the careers team were low balled to manage expectations. I had no idea, being in the unusual (even by bootcamp standards) position of never having had a salary at all. The most I had ever earned was £9.65 per hour as a restaurant manager. My bar was therefore very low as I secretly expected that I would be laughed out of the room when it came to actual interviews and the real world of work as my CV was just so flimsy (university drop out, no job longer than 6 months). I didn't really believe people when they told me that this didn't matter in the tech world like in other industries. I went along with it as it was my only hope but deep down doubted it was much more than bootcamp propaganda.

So I was completely and utterly flabbergasted when I got my first job offer from one of the very first jobs I applied to and the number put forward during the "negotiation" was £45,000 + 10% bonus. I had very boldly gone in and said I expected £30 and I thought that was pushing it...

I will say that this wasn't the norm. I got extremely lucky as I am not some kind of coding whiz kid/ genius type but just got hired by a massive American company that pay extremely well. Most of my fellow bootcampers (who did well and took to coding and went on to job hunt seriously) probably averaged something more like the £30 that we were expecting.

It's famously true that junior developers don't stay in jobs long though and that is because this number will get a lot higher very quickly if you work hard but only if you move jobs. My yearly income including bonus is around 60 now and I would expect most to be earning something like that at 4-5 years. Some more and some (the ones who don't care or don't really like the work) never more then ~40.
Eventually, if you carry on progressing, want to work your way up and stick at it you will move from mid level to senior roles and you will be on 70-100 (or much higher if you get a job at Google for eg). This could take anywhere from 5-10 years I would say (though I'm sure there are many exceptions to that). And then there are more senior roles and more specialist roles and roles with silly names like "technical evangelist" and you can move up or to the side and be earning six figures. Or of course, you may end up somewhere earning a lot less but in a company that you really like or on a product that you're really passionate about.

This is of course all very approximate and there is a massive amount of variation depending on a myriad of factors but will hopefully give you some idea.

Sorry - that ended up much longer than I was aiming for!

[Miniature8]

@oliviasoprano what are the salary expectations for somebody after finishing a tech bootcamp? Also, are you able to give a realistic potential salary trajectory for a person like you who entered the industry without a degree in the relevant field?

I'm considering this route as a career change and find it hard to get info on this. TIA

[AbaloneShell]

What a great thread - really interesting stuff & resources, thankyou @OliviaSoprano & other contributors. I did the inaugral TechUp Women course devised by Prof Sue Black (of Saving Bletchley Park fame) in 2019/20 & found that an excellent way to learn fast-track across a variety of areas, especially as it was supported by Durham, Notts, Edge Hill & York universities & was mostly remote (so do in your spare time) but had 4 weekends we attended with speakers & workshops & socials. We also got a mentor. I'd recommend it to any graduates wanting a funded (ie free as it's sponsored) programme they can mostly do around work (but you do need a lot of spare hours for the months it runs to do the modules, it is very intensive). There were mums with babies doing this too which was great to see! Not sure what programmes they have running currently as they depend on sponsors etc & adapt to fit, but well worth a look.

[Fluffycloudland77]

You might have found it harder to retain knowledge when recovering though. Which would affect your confidence.

You can’t do two government funded courses concurrently but after the boot camp there’s lots of Level 2 courses in things like mentoring, counselling skills, leadership skills you can do online.

[Fere]

Tomorow's the day 10 of my Makers FT course. We are learning so much. I can see my progress and my attitude changing as well.
I regret not coding more when I was waiting to be admitted but I had Covid for several weeks and wanted to recover properly.
I can confirm that practice is everything when learning to write code.
I can also see that everyone is working at a slightly different pace. It is very interesting to do pair programming every day with a different, random, person from our cohort.
This is a compulsory part of our every day. We are given a longish problem to solve during each week. And between 2PM and 6PM we are on a Zoom call coding together. An amazing way to learn from each other, bounce ideas off each other and get to know others.
Especially now, with courses all being remote it is the only way to feel like we are in it together.
We are on a 2,5 week long break for Ch.
I arranged to do daily coding with one of the guys I met 3 weeks ago in person. We seem to have similar attitude to learning and easy going personalities. We are aiming for 6 hours tops of coding wvery day, to pace ourselves, with longish breaks.
I guess we will take Christmas off and will do the same from the 27th, and then again after NY.
We haven't decided what we will do for sure but quite likely go over some exercises which we haven't finished during the last 2 weeks to make sure we haven't missed anything.
The learning process is supported by a massive "library" of resources so we won't run out of things to do.

During the whole 12 week course there's very well thought through support for mental health, and teaching about soft skills which I can see as a benefit for me in long term as well.
For instance we have meditation every day after lunch at 13:45 for 15 minutes, led by our Chief Joy Officer. She also gave our cohort two talks, one about giving feedback to our peers, and the first one was about Emotional Intelligence. She also shared with us a lot of materials for self study.
Lots to take on and learn from her and other coaches. It is really up to each of us to make the next 12 weeks useful.

I am very happy that I took on this challenge. My brain hurts sometimes when I am learning new stuff, but all feels right.

[Miniature8]

How are things going @fere ?

[Fere]

I should add 4 weeks was a pre-course. The real course starts on Monday.

[Fere]

Week 4 Makers - it was in some ways less challenging, because we were learning a lot about refactoring and many steps were explained and then were followed up by a group of exercises. Over all our tasks this week were much easier than last 3 exercises from the previous week.
I realised that I overcomplicate my work by trying to achieve everything at once. Refactoring helps. It clarifies tasks covered by each line of code, simplifies it and makes it more readable. It feels boring at times but feels good when you can see how much your code can be improved by you.

We are also starting to work on our CV's! My CV will go on our github account so it is easy to access by the Makers recruitment team.

Yesterday we were given the coming Monday's, the first day of the course, schedule.
We are starting at 9:15 tomorrow. Every day of the course includes 30 min meditation at 2PM every day. I think it will nicely break our day into two parts.
I received my MacAir, those Macs are is loaned to us for the duration of the course to help us to get used to work on them. Most Frontend developers use Macs in their workplaces. I set it up and although it took most of my day yesterday I am glad I got it. Keys are in different position on Macs keyboard, and there are different shortcuts to memorise.

We covered a lot of concepts in the 4 weeks so far. I can imagine doing the same exercises in any language I am going to learn and it would put me in a good position for advancing them.
I am making prep for food for my meals, I like cooking but can't imagine wanting to spend evening in the kitchen. Will walk my dog instead :)

[Fluffycloudland77]

cohort

[Fluffycloudland77]

Harvards online CS50 course is good for explaining things like Booleans that you may have not covered in school. It's a free course and very entertaining.

Looking back 80% of our secondary teachers were near retirement and had started early. I can see why, it must have been hard teaching groups with a co-hort of people who genuinely didnt care about grades because they were going to work in dads business at 16 but the rest of us suffered too.

When it's explained by someone who has a really good understanding of it it's much easier to understand.

[GerbilCurse]

Yes, I've done it for the last couple of years. Managed to get all 50 stars last year. I really enjoy it, although it's quite far removed from the sort of development I do in my work.

[OliviaSoprano]

@ShinySquirrel

Hello and yay! Good for you. I hope you are enjoying it so far.

[OliviaSoprano]

@GerbilCurse

Do you do advent of code?

@GerbilCurse I have intended to do advent of code a few times and then not stuck with it! Do you do it?

I've started an online course in C++ instead this year as it's been too long since I've learnt something for its own sake rather than for work. Use Go at work which I very much enjoy but I would quite like to get a bit of an understanding /proficiency in a low level language (something you definitely don't get from bootcamps in my experience).

And yes to the maths things, it is definitely a desired/necessary skill in a lot of roles. Just not all by any stretch of the imagination (and I think that is the misconception).

[ShinySquirrel]

I've really enjoyed this thread, and I've started making my way through freecodecamp. I'm only doing the basic HTML exercises, but everyone has to start somewhere. Just commenting to say hi.