There’s Always a Solution, You Just Haven’t Found It Yet

Career transitioning has become a common thing to do nowadays. You no longer have to stay attached to a single decision made at a fragile age, that back in the day determined our whole career life.

Moving past old preconceptions and beliefs, choosing a different career can be even more challenging. Our fast-paced world is constantly changing industries' behaviour, leaving professionals in constant need to adapt to new or different demands. With every new need, there is a new skill to learn.

The good news is there are always driven people willing to conquer these new challenges. And with such an interesting field as software development, believe us, there are quite a few to conquer.

At Sensidev, many of our colleagues have different backgrounds and software development hasn’t been their first choice. Curious to find out what has determined them to follow this course, and especially — how have they done it, we have conducted a series of interviews to discover.

Meet Ioana, currently frontend developer, previously… well, that’s a longer story. Find it out:

1. Where did you work before/ what is your other professional background?

I have played a lot with my skills in the past, from tourism to recruiting and finally my last role before Sensidev was at a different software company, where I worked as Assistant Manager (more like an Office Manager).

2. What was your first step in transitioning to tech? And what triggered the idea of a career in this industry?

I have always been attracted to tech stuff. I started playing with it years ago with small stuff like installing windows, re-softing mobile phones and just pushing every button or option on various apps because I was curious how and why it works the way it does. Later on, being surrounded by developers at my last workplace I said “why not dare for more”, after all, how hard can it be, right? (Haaaahahhaahhaaa little did I know).

One of my colleagues offered to mentor me and walk me through the learning process, and so we started a year-long journey of a few hours per day practising and learning.

3. They say the best skills are transferable skills, especially when transitioning from one department to another, or moreover from one career to another. Which are the prevailing transferable skills that stood by your career transition?

I think curiosity and perseverance are the most important. Curiosity to learn daily and perseverance to keep trying until you find a solution for your problem. I love saying “I make software, software doesn’t make me”, whenever I find myself stuck with a problem I can’t fix I tell myself “there has to be a way, there’s always a solution, I just haven’t found it yet”, usually this works, and eventually I do solve it.

4. There are a lot of programming languages out there and many different job paths to pursue. How did you choose yours?

I did some research, talked to people already working in tech (QA manual, QA automation, frontend and backend, recruiters and so on) to understand what their jobs look like, I wanted to have all the data before making a decision. For once, I wanted to decide my own path, knowing what will be out there expecting me. Ultimately I felt attracted to Frontend and React as a framework, and luckily these are also in high demand at the moment.

5. If it were to make a mini step-by-step guide for somebody experiencing the same needs as you did (when you took the decision to go into a different career), what would this look like?

Arm yourself with a lot of patience. It takes people years to learn what you are trying to learn in a few months, it’s going to be harder before it gets easier and most importantly do not let yourself lose motivation. Start with the small stuff, and eventually, the big stuff will become easier to understand.

6. Name a skill that is 100% needed in a tech career 🐱‍💻

For me, it was stubbornness, coding will challenge you every now and then and trigger your patience, but you need to be stubborn to succeed. Does the current career path better align with your values and goals? Why or why not?

Switching to dev life was the best decision I’ve made so far, my only regret is not doing it earlier. I just love how people work together, I mean how many fields have things like StackOverflow where people join their forces to find a solution for someone’s code challenge. “If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.” Mik Everett said, and I feel it’s the same with coding. My fingerprint (a small piece of my code) will forever be somewhere on the internet.

Anything else you'd like to share with us?

For anyone reading this and thinking about reconverting: YOU TOO CAN DO IT! :)

Looking to transition to a dev job? Check out our career openings!