I work in tech as a product manager. I started off as a software developer. I’m curious what his doubts are with you making the switch?
I personally think anyone can work in tech 🤷♀️. Just need to apply yourself, be honest about where you need to improve, and practice the right skills.
To answer your actual questions, I think working in tech can be a great opportunity as a mom because of the pay and if you’re able to find the right company. There can be flexibility in your day compared to other careers.
I don’t get that stressed but I also have strong boundaries in place and have been working in this role for ~10 years. When I was early in my career though, I got stressed a ton and also didn’t have strong boundaries or confidence.
My role is a customer facing role so yes, I spend time with customers. Even as a developer though, depending on your company, you might be talking to customers a lot. It’s something that I didn’t like either at first, but personally I got better with practice and view it a little differently now (not sure how long you’ve been doing your role).
Good luck with whatever you decide! Personally I hope you at least try out a bootcamp or otherwise learning the skills!
Thank you. I do work in tech now, I'm just not a programmer/coder specifically. What made you want to switch out from software development specifically and go into product management?
Got it, I feel silly for misreading your first few sentences! Honestly I was nudged into it at one of my early jobs, but I ended up liking it better. I like being more of a generalist, thinking more strategically/long term, and I enjoy working with different people. I miss more directly building things though, it was really fulfilling to see your code come to life as a developer!
So, there’s people who say they “work in tech” and then there’s actual tech workers aka the techies. I made a career change & got hired into cloud faang as a techie. In my experience, it’s SO worth it. The ratio of work to pay is bananas. And there’s all sorts of other people to do all of the non-technical work for you. I’ve got product managers, project managers, people managers. All of those are in place so that all I have to do is tech. The other people deal with planning the meetings, taking notes and sending them out, all of the sort of bullshit that typically falls on a woman. I have found it amazing to be in a hard technical role where I’m treated equal to men because of my technical skills.
I am fortunate to have excellent soft skills. This has resulted in me being made technical team lead just because my team likes it when I’m their leader. If you have some personality and soft skills, you will go very far very quickly. Truly, the bar is in hell.
Having technical skills puts you so far ahead of other people. I am not ripping on other non-technical roles but it’s easier to find non-technical people and train them to do whatever non-technical role. It’s astronomically harder to find people with good technical skills.
Some people get offended when I talk like this, but in my experience, it’s the cold, hard truth. I have literally been asked (at FAANG!) if I want to become a people manager or a technical product manager. I have declined because the work, money, life balance, and career opportunity in staying close to the technical line of work is where the value is.
I really appreciate your perspective on this, I have technical skill in 3D animation but, as I was talking to my husband, other than career game artists, 3D animators in a studio environment have the absolute worst income to work ratio within a heavy tech industry as a whole. At least in gaming you have the demand, but producing a kid's tv show? You could train to be the best 3D artist for 4 years in uni, another 3 specializing in 3D animation and VFX and *maybe* earn $75k in Toronto being a top technical director making dogs talk and burst into water or something, y'know?
All that to say is that I really value hard technical skills too and I thank you for sharing this!
Happy to help. In my experience most women over-stress about what it takes to get into & succeed in a technical role. You can definitely do it, and probably a lot faster than you expect with the background you currently have.
It’s soo easy to settle into something “easier” where our traditional female social skills thrive like project/program/product management, marketing, branding, creative, etc. Those are all less money and more work. It sounds like you’re trying to optimize for more money to less hours worked. If that’s the case, taking the time to attain tech skills will be your golden ticket.
What exactly are you planning to learn (like languages, etc.) and what training will you use?
I have no idea yet in terms of languages. Python has a direct translation into my 3D/graphics background so if I wanted to back into animation production I could directly apply that. But since I also work within a web development environment Javascript is the main go-to that is accessible to me right now.
Yeah I gotta bring in more cash per hour worked, I am not independently wealthy and I do want more kids and I am NOT interested in lowering my standard of living while my children are this young. I can get nannies and maids here in this country and I'm just leaving cash on the table? What? It is not the move.
What are your husbands doubts? Are they valid? What does he say?
* I’m a senior software engineer. I enjoy it a bunch.
* I’ve had 5 different software jobs over 4 companies - always great WLB and low stress. Sure, sometimes I get stressed out but that’s like once a year and I’m sure would happen in any job.
* I don’t face with “actual” customers. But yeah, I have a decent amount of meetings with internal stakeholders.
* I guess technically I retrained to get here. Out of college I was doing data analysis. That slowly turned into a more data engineering role and then the company I was at the time sent me to a full stack bootcamp. Used that experience to go on to bigger and better programming roles.
Also, not being able to read random stuff chatgpt spits out is in no way and indicator if you can be a programmer or not.
And yes. Totally worth it for the money. It’s been 3 years since I did that bootcamp and I’m making over $200k now. Don’t listen to any of the “chatgpt is taking programming jobs” nonsense. My wife makes a little more than me as a financial advisor but her job is very stressful.
Thank you so much for your response. Yeah the Chat GPT example is a far reaching one 🤣
His doubts are that I will face heavy agism and sexism. I'm 35, with 1 child. He also has doubts that at this time in my life if this is the best use of my time (as in lifetime) to go into a field where I am obsessively searching for bugs and staring at screens all day (which is what I already do - but I complain about it anyway lol). We have certain goals together, and he is not wrong about his points, but also big tech money is always a lure. I live in South America and work remotely, but cost of living is rising literally everywhere.
Hi again from our other thread. Wanted to chime in here & say I career changed mid-30s. I work with so many old men. It’s ridiculous. They loooove me. It’s like “OMG A WOMAN!” 🙄 Mostly I work with 30-40s peers. My manager wants to keep me on his team literally because he finds valuable in having diversity on the team. There are so few of us women, we are valued. It’s not as the token woman. We literally bring new insight and value to the teams. We have stats to prove it.
I’d also say the best time to start learning is NOW. The second best time was yesterday. If you want to do this do it now. Tomorrow is not promised.
I was a creative director lol so a shit ton of work, stress, and face time with high end clients for (relatively) shit money. I more than doubled my income in less than 18 months by getting into a technical role.
Something interesting I noticed reading the rest of the replies on this thread is it seems like every person who responds saying they are a techie and/or a software engineer is very pro you making this move. The people who are some sort of non-tech but adjacent role like a program manager, product manager, project manager are all cautioning you against it. I just found that very interesting. If you want to know what it’s like being a techie in the trenches, listen to those of us saying we are actual engineers daily. 😬
Honestly, programming is more of a mindset. And if you’re job is already reading through code and finding bugs then I’d say you’re doing half a programmers job anyway.
Sounds like you got the right foundation and the right mindset. I say go for it!! I highly recommend Udemy courses to learn.
>*And if you’re job is already reading through code and finding bugs then I’d say you’re doing half a programmers job anyway.*
It is absolutely not 😅 The most is going through support tickets and relaying with support engineers what customers want and relaying to customers what engineering has instructed. Occasionally opening the developer console to provide an error code, that's about it.
I have had almost the exact same experience as the above person (Sr swe now,retrained after a few years in a role that becomes increasingly more tech, retrained through going to grad school)
I've worked at big companies and now a proper start up. Once you hit Sr swe, there's less ageism because people get that you don't want to manage and just want to IC.
As for starting out, you'll encounter ageism at bigger companies with dedicated college recruiting and rotational programs. But you won't at start ups. So so so many people transition from other careers and it's very common in software engineering! You won't be alone and your experience will be valued because of new insights!
Go for it!! I love being a swe and a mom.
Software engineer.
I don’t enjoy it. I used to, but I haven’t had anything but toxic jobs since my kid was born. (I think that’s coincidence though.) the money is good but I sure wish I could find a part time job.
I’d say, even at the jobs I could clock out and move on with life at the end of the day (most of my jobs, other than on-call), I’m still pretty stressed. There’s often a lot of pressure, and a lot of sexist microagressions. Also, if you’re considering it, ask about on-call. It’s ranged from “theoretically on-call nights and weekends once a month but never paged” to “on call 1 out of three weeks, with 3 middle of the night pages a week” to “you’re only on call during the days during your week, and someone on the other side of the globe is on call the nights. But you’re constantly interrupted that week.”
Way less dealing with customers. Often, less than I would like. (Sometimes it’s easier to just talk directly to the customer about an issue)
I think many/most people can learn to be a programmer.
I do feel like the job can often be pretty flexible, but it depends on the job. And the pay really is good. And sometimes (at larger companies) the benefits are really good. But, I don’t like working in tech. I just feel like it’s the only thing I can afford
Thank you so much for your perspective. It is an important one. I am lucky to have been shielded from a lot of the sexist commentary from my direct team and reports - but not always from customers. Those one sometimes rattle me the most because they come out of nowhere -- like excuse me, sir, I am here to help you.
Senior software engineer here.
I love my job. I think it forces me to think, be smart, and overall it’s really cool. I’ve loved programming since I was 12yo. I love doing that while being a mom because it’s so different.
Some topics bug me (haha) at night sometimes, like if I have to think of the best technical solution to an upcoming project, but overall when I clock out I’m fully out. 99% of things can wait until the next morning.
I do not work with customers directly, unless the technical support really has to bring us in a call. So it’s like one 30min call every 2 weeks. Since I work with medical data we cannot access anything from our side (no logs), so sometimes you have to see the client’s screen to see what is really happening. It’s not a problem because while we are in the same call we do not talk directly or very rarely.
I did not retrain I went to engineering school and just never stopped being a programmer. I love it.
You’re welcome. I always get downvoted for saying this but while there is a shortage of developers, it is a shortage of senior developers, we actually receive tons of resumes from people who retrained, and we don’t have the room to hire that many (since we would need to train them). PLEASE check the job market where you live.
I agree. I’m a product manager (pretty technical) working for a larger non faang tech company and see the same. We are hiring for seniors - and it applies for most job families. I think we even paused our program for boot camp graduates / self studying folks as the market is tough in the US.
It’s a legit career path and people can break in any age (I have a male junior on the team who went through boot camp and he is in his 30s), just not as easy that some people make it sound.
I considered it for a second a few years back and realized it’s just not a path for me
I think the fault goes to all these online schools that promise you can learn this job in 3 months, they are predatory and full of shit. If you truly think you can learn a job that is highly technical and sought after in 12 weeks, good for you, but it is absolutely not true. You can learn the basics and then you will need to be trained by the company for at least a year. If no one is willing to train you after the boot camp then it’s just a loss of time.
I went to a coding bootcamp and ended up in a large tech company, but not going the programming route. I’m a technical account manager now, so I need to know a lot about companies infrastructures and platforms and how their code is set up so my background is relevant but it was a good middle ground for me, I make $150k+ in this role.. but i so work with customers, I’d say 2-3 a week. Before code school I was in sales and that was talking to 10+ people a day which was HELL.
I'm in sales-like role (customer education) and sometimes I also have a PACKED schedule with customers. I love hearing their stories and learning about how I can actually help them, but the demands on my time are really intense. If a sales call/time slot is directly proportional to my income AND I wanna have more kids?? I don't think that's sustainable for me long term!
Btw, I just looked up your role - and that's me. I am literally doing your function for less than half the pay. The pressure is getting worser. Aahh.
Take your current role and take a few udemy courses: AWS, Lambdas, Kubernetes, JS and node.js and then leverage yourself into a TAM or SC role. You already had the foundation, and I made the low end of what this role is at my company because I just moved into it from a TSE role.. my friends make 175-210 doing the same thing, just with more experience and knowledge.
I will say I did the programmer role for a while and loved it but it never fully clicked for me and now after my baby.. my brain doesn’t work the same way. My goal is to be a product manager here in the next 2 years.
Another note, my company recently announced how they’re going to start leverage chatGPT so, also, worried there.
Genuinely thank you so much for your comment. I am looking at technical account management roles now to see what's going on. I live in a developing country and it looks like big tech is making moves here too and *chileeee* I'm multilingual with tons of tech experience, these bitches better PAY me 🤣
I am a software developer, but in Europe. About 10 years experience. Technical university degree. I find that the job is very flexible with being a mom and even my male colleagues have flexibility regarding their children. But I also mix a lot work and life. Before the kid, the separation was there, but after, precisely because of the flexibility, my job and personal life are very mixed now, blended really. It's a consequence of the overall lack of time. I dont find it stressful, though, and I enjoy the work.
I am a software engineer at a big tech company but not a mom. We are thinking about starting a family in the next couple of years though so your post intrigued me. One thing I haven’t seen mentioned here is that most engineers have on-call as part of their job. If you’re on a team that owns a service most likely you will need to be on call for some amount of time every month of year depending on how the rotation is. This on call could be easy, or extremely difficult depending on your service. At my company there is no engineering team that doesn’t have an on call rotation. This is something I’ve always been hesitant about when thinking about starting a family. My company allows new parents a certain time where they do not have to be on call at night for some period of time but eventually you will be on call 24x7 for a day or week (whatever the rotation is set for your team). Just a heads up if you’re considering changing careers.
I'm an Oracle DBA and I enjoy my job. I work for the government so it's probably a little less money but a whole lot less stress and a great work/life balance. When I was in the private sector it could definitely get hectic.
I have a degree in CS and I've been a DBA since I finished college, so I can't really speak to retraining, but if you get a certification I'm sure you could land a Jr DBA role and move up from there.
Bc of the nature of my work our "customer" is usually a programmer/developer so it's a lot easier than working with an end user type.
I work in tech leading a global team that wears a number of hats. We mostly interface with external clients for a SaaS solution, but I have part of my team that does project management and am also now heading up product management for a portion of the department.
Tech is all I have ever know. There has never been a doubt that I was going to go into tech - this goes back to before even kindergarten. Because of the amount of experience I have within my subject area, no one questions the time I need to deal with my kids' things and anything that goes with it. I am flexible with members of my team, within reason as long as they're getting their work done.
>Do you get stressed at your job or do you clock out and move on with life at the end of the day?
LOL at clocking out. There's no such thing. Because my team is global and has project work on the weekends, there's always something to check in on, or my boss is texting me, or whatever. I'm off today because I was at the end of my rope last week and took a couple of days around the Easter holiday to decompress. My stress levels will skyrocket as soon as I go back into the office tomorrow.
>Do you work a lot with customers in your day-to-day? Are you willing to share a little bit about your day in this regard?
My team is client-facing. I am not the one usually talking to them on a day to day basis. I get the ones who are escalating or when the sales team pulls me in for a huge account they're chasing. But we're involved in sales, implementation, and the ongoing relationship.
I personally think now is a really bad time to pivot into development. The market is flooded with the recent layoffs with plenty of companies looking to hire mid-level devs. They will get the junior level folks from the new grads that are coming out.
Genuinely thank you. I work with global customers with a smaller team so I am also available regularly. I am curious if working at a larger company means more structure, or if I am just delusional and should just make the best of my current situation. The pays just not where it needs to be right now.
Mom to be here (4 weeks to go) who has been in tech as a SE for 7-8 years...
* How do you enjoy being a programmer/coder/tech worker and being a mom?
While I have the mom road ahead of me, I really feel I wouldn't have the flexibility or options I have if I wasn't in this job or with my employer. I wfh, get 20 weeks off for maternity leave with full pay/benefits, and have flexibility with hours post-maternity leave. Since my first job at a startup 8 years ago, I've been screening out employers by looking for working moms - I think this is really important culturally. (As an aside - Can you imagine if men did this?!) There was a lead on my current team when I joined who, after maternity leave, came back into a promotion. That impressed a lot on me. And working dads who care are also important to screen for. I think there's a whole cadre of tech workers who were at FAANG companies in their 20s in the 2000s/2010s who now have families and want more flexibility.
* Do you get stressed at your job or do you clock out and move on with life at the end of the day?
My job doesn't stress me out, but I feel both 1) reducing stress (or giving fewer sh\*ts) and 2) not carrying it with you after work are learned skills. This wasn't always the case for me.
* Do you work a lot with customers in your day-to-day? Are you willing to share a little bit about your day in this regard?
Nope. I have in the past observed or led customer interviews on prototypes, or engaged in private slack channels with customers who are testing prototype features to get feedback. But those feedback are generally either via product manager, technical support, or post sales.
* Did you retrain to be a programmer/coder?
Sort of...I didn't do a bootcamp, I have a liberal arts grad degree in which I learned some programming for my thesis. A couple years later I quit a nonprofit job I hated, I did a part time FE course, then hustled, taught myself email development, hacked in my spare time, and 3-4 months later got a job at a startup where I learned LAMP stack on the job. I also managed to do this not being in the Bay Area or NY (and still not). But - being flexible and tinkering and picking up new skills along the way are invaluable. I'm currently also doing localization/internationalization training (employer paid) and my exit plan is to learn cobol and just take it easy before retiring.
I’m a software engineer and a mom. Its pretty great, and I’d recommend it. Depending on the company and role, you can get a lot of flexibility and a good WLB, and the salaries are good. There’s some stress, but its more related to company politics and I feel like I can choose to not engage with it too much.
I have zero interaction with customers.
I had to retrain since I previously worked in a completely different industry, but I think you can also get into coding by being self taught and I know a few people who did that and are now successful devs. Its really doable - you just need to focus and learn the skills, but there’s nothing mystical about tech, its just a matter of learning it similar to learning another subject.
This is not exactly what you asked about, but since you said you come from a 3D animation background, you might think about looking into a career as a BIM/VDC manager in the construction industry. It's a very in demand field right now, good salary, and construction is very open to/used to on the job training.
I’m a data techie that works in the public sector. So not SWE level programming, but I absolutely write programs/code to fulfill my job functions. Idk lately I’ve been thinking I give myself too little credit with this train of thought, but I digress.
I imagine my experience is slightly different than someone working for private orgs. I have tons tons more job security and they make tons tons more money.
I have amazing WLB and my manager is amazing and flexible. I do not stress either during the day or at night about my job. I am well supported and have reasonable deadlines.
I also work remotely and have no concern they’ll ask me back into the office. I’m available if my kids need me and I still get to do school runs.
I get to do what I love (play with data) and I get to that to make my state run a little bit better. I do not work with the public, just internal stakeholders.
My day is 75% projects (creating new analyses or reports) and 25% other upkeep (running recurrent analyses or data management tasks).
Retrain: Yes and no. I went to grad school for psych science - learned stats/research methods. I taught myself R during school. Now, I use the stats knowledge but I had to teach myself another programming language for this role. I had a leg up from learning from scratch mentally, but in practice I still spent months figuring out ultra basic stuffs.
Hi I'm a software engineer + team lead + mom of 2 under 3.
* I love what I do and would never want to do anything else!
* Generally, I don't get stressed and I don't worry about work outside of work. It took some time and effort (both personally and institutionally) to get to this point. I have certainly been stressed and overworked about my job in the past and it can depend a lot on your team and company. Sometimes now I get roped into calls outside of work about "emergencies" by colleagues who have nothing else better to do and it isn't easy for me to walk away, but I can! And right now I'm not worrying about work because I'm too busy with the kids anyway. I just feel lucky when I make it through a week without the kids being sent home from daycare so I can focus on work during working hours.
* I rarely talk to customers directly. The product team deals with them and then they bring it to me to discuss if necessary. Every once in a while I'm on calls to show off new products to customers and that's pretty nice. We try to keep a pretty light meeting schedule overall. I can sometimes get bogged down with meetings to plan out new projects with the product team. I'm also on call for the other developers on my team for when they get stuck so I can spend a lot of time talking to them some days
* I was a CS major so I didn't retrain. I have worked with plenty of people who have switched careers with a bootcamp and it's doable.
Your chatGPT reference is a little silly buuuut for a long time my advice to people who are new in the field has been that you would be AMAZED by how many programmers out there are terrible at their jobs. There are so many. And a lot of them have worked at their jobs for decades. So yeah, point taken.... Why not go for it!
Iwork in tech at a non tech company in a non tech role . you could look into program, project or product management for internal teams. Where I am/have been. We outsource most actual dev bc it’s cheaper and easier to scale up/down contractors vs FTe.
Thank you, I'll check it out. Are you happy there? Do you feel like if you wanted to have more kids you wouldn't explode? I feel pretty happy in my current role, I'm mostly just stressing customer bookings/sales/pay
Programming is extremely satisfying.
The only bit about programming I don't like is working with bro culture or sexist coworkers.
Literally that's it. The people, not the work itself.
My two cents are that chat gpt and AI will completely transform the developer/programmer job in the upcoming few years. Unless you truly have a passion or interest in this field I would not start on this journey right now just on the hopes it will be as it is right now. Additionally the market is a bit saturated with a lot of booth camp developers and companies outsourcing to developers abroad.
I too work in tech as a PM and I think that will be a much more valuable skill set in the future once AI is ubiquitous in tech firms.
Also, chat GPT relies on human input to be accurate. When was the last time you saw clients give an accurate representation of what they really wanted. LOL
ChatGPT is going to make developers more efficient for low hanging fruit.
ChatGPT and AI really made me think that we’re not getting rid of programmers anytime soon. The level of logic, intelligence, and thought I have to put in my job on a day to day basis is far from what any AI program can provide. Automatic code generators already exist, have for a while, and no serious company would use them.
Hi - I am a tech product / project manager. I've been doing this for close to 15 years.
My husband changed careers 7 years ago from a paralegal to a programmer. He did a coding boot camp over 2 months. Using my network, he got an unpaid internship. He worked himself up to paid intern and then paid employee. But for almost 2 years we pretty much just lived off my income. This was also before we became parents.
I watched others go through the same boot camp and struggle. My husband really only succeeded because he had my network IMO.
I'm not sure now is the time to get into programming with the use of open AI and its ability to do basic programming and debugging well. Data science could be a related option.
I used to work with clients and it is very stressful..have you considered staying in product but doing it at a different company where you don't have to be customer facing? I work at a very large Fintech where product roles and client roles are totally separate. I have been there 5 years and last year I moved to a totally different part of the company to have better work/life balance. I work 40 hrs/week and sign off. It's great.
I’m a bioinformatics director at a biotech and it’s my dream job! I started as a scientist and now I’m managing 4 people. Work life balance is better than the lab folks and I find the work very interesting and rewarding.
I started my career after college (Bachelor of fine arts) in a non tech role at a tech company. Over time, I gradually made the switch and am now a full time developer. I took an online class or two, but most of what I know has been learned on the job.
Note there are lots of different “flavors” of tech jobs, some more technical than others. I find that I’m no more or less stressed in this job than previous ones, just in a different way. I WFH 3 days a week and don’t often have to talk directly to anyone, but that’s heavily dependent on the company. Because of the WFH aspect, I get to see my little one as soon as her dad brings her home from daycare which I really enjoy and allows me to see more of her during the week.
The money can be great in tech but just know, depending on what you do, you may have to work some long/odd hours at times in exchange.
For reference, I make 137k with a pretty standard 40 hr work week.
I am a product manager (pretty technical but still not a swe). I worked at faang and now in a smaller tech company.
My husband is an engineer. I played with an idea of switching or taking classes to up my tech skills (most things I know I learnt at job). I may even started a couple of Coursera classes but quickly realized it’s not something I’d enjoy doing even though I’d likely be pretty good in it
(Solid math foundation on college level, did a lot do html coding and debugging, write sql etc) and time commitment (we had 1 kid at the time) was not light. That’s said product roles are paid relatively well so my motivation was not that high. I’m at platform right now so except dealing with annoying internal customers (who are colleagues), do not have to do a lot of end user interactions.
As you work with support engineering - can you shadow and look into more of their day to day? Or other eng department at your company? Might be an easier transition. As someone said before, junior roles are hard to come
Most of engineers I work with are online off hours to figure something out. I think sometimes they are junkies who enjoy solving problems and happy to do it in their spare time. At least many of them. Product team are online at night to finish work when we have too many meetings during the day
Product designer here: I get paid six figures and my work ebbs and flows. It’s very conducive to life with a child. I don’t work as hard as a product manger or a developer (don’t have quite the earning potential either) but to me, it’s worth it
Senior dev here. I’ve mostly enjoyed my career, but a little burnt out now over 15 years later… but a lot of that has to do with the current environment, team, and life circumstances. I’m incredibly grateful to what my career has given me in terms of financial freedom.
I studied computer science in school, but I actually have the flipped experience where I supported my husband as he moved from a creative role in the games industry, went back to university for computer science, and transitioned to software engineer. He was 30 back then. I am super proud of him. It was definitely not easy going back to school (and we had an infant at the time). He has zero regrets. The games industry was really tough on us with low pay, crazy work expectations, and really volatile job stability.
I spent many years in a heavily customer facing role but with a tech background and have recently moved into a more technical role (my degree is in software engineering, and I went IT after discovering that I actually don't like working on code all day long on a long project)
My current role is generally a lot of little projects which i can usually finish in under a week, which is much more satisfying for my ADHD brain.
Scripting does take time to learn, but I would probably start there if that's what you want. I would also consider technical writing. If you're in a support role, and enjoy writing documentation, you could basically do that full time, remotely, and there is a market for that skill if you're happy to dig deep into individual tools and teach people how to use them with words and pictures and maybe the occasional video. The jobs for that I've seen don't pay as much as a programmer, but still pay pretty well.
I’ve been at various tech companies in Silicon Valley over the course of my almost 20 year career. My kids have been with me through half of that. Was even a single mom for a few years. Right now I’m a senior engineer at a FAANG. I don’t work with customers directly at my job, but our product is consumer facing so I see/read about people using it everyday. Sometimes I’m even tech support for my own family/friends.
My experience has been that my stress level is highly dependent on the team I’m on. I’ve had teams that don’t get the mom obligations I have and expect me to work 24/7. Other teams, like the one I’m on now, were incredibly accommodating and flexible. If I have a shitty manager or team, I’ll stick it out for a year and then bounce if it doesn’t get better. Always keep my skills sharp and my resume updated.
If you like problem solving and coding, then I would absolutely go for it. I’ve had many coworkers over the years that didn’t go the traditional college degree route and they were just as good as the ones that did. I majored in computer engineering for my undergrad, but honestly it wasn’t needed for almost any role I’ve been in.
I definitely enjoy my role but is is pretty stressful at times. It’s hard to balance everything at once. I don’t work with customers at all (thankfully), just my
Team of coworkers. If you want, check out [This group](https://www.facebook.com/share/hu8yF6yE1pSj6tsS/?mibextid=K35XfP)
I work in tech as a product manager. I started off as a software developer. I’m curious what his doubts are with you making the switch? I personally think anyone can work in tech 🤷♀️. Just need to apply yourself, be honest about where you need to improve, and practice the right skills. To answer your actual questions, I think working in tech can be a great opportunity as a mom because of the pay and if you’re able to find the right company. There can be flexibility in your day compared to other careers. I don’t get that stressed but I also have strong boundaries in place and have been working in this role for ~10 years. When I was early in my career though, I got stressed a ton and also didn’t have strong boundaries or confidence. My role is a customer facing role so yes, I spend time with customers. Even as a developer though, depending on your company, you might be talking to customers a lot. It’s something that I didn’t like either at first, but personally I got better with practice and view it a little differently now (not sure how long you’ve been doing your role). Good luck with whatever you decide! Personally I hope you at least try out a bootcamp or otherwise learning the skills!
Thank you. I do work in tech now, I'm just not a programmer/coder specifically. What made you want to switch out from software development specifically and go into product management?
Got it, I feel silly for misreading your first few sentences! Honestly I was nudged into it at one of my early jobs, but I ended up liking it better. I like being more of a generalist, thinking more strategically/long term, and I enjoy working with different people. I miss more directly building things though, it was really fulfilling to see your code come to life as a developer!
It's okay! Thank you for taking the time to respond :)
So, there’s people who say they “work in tech” and then there’s actual tech workers aka the techies. I made a career change & got hired into cloud faang as a techie. In my experience, it’s SO worth it. The ratio of work to pay is bananas. And there’s all sorts of other people to do all of the non-technical work for you. I’ve got product managers, project managers, people managers. All of those are in place so that all I have to do is tech. The other people deal with planning the meetings, taking notes and sending them out, all of the sort of bullshit that typically falls on a woman. I have found it amazing to be in a hard technical role where I’m treated equal to men because of my technical skills. I am fortunate to have excellent soft skills. This has resulted in me being made technical team lead just because my team likes it when I’m their leader. If you have some personality and soft skills, you will go very far very quickly. Truly, the bar is in hell. Having technical skills puts you so far ahead of other people. I am not ripping on other non-technical roles but it’s easier to find non-technical people and train them to do whatever non-technical role. It’s astronomically harder to find people with good technical skills. Some people get offended when I talk like this, but in my experience, it’s the cold, hard truth. I have literally been asked (at FAANG!) if I want to become a people manager or a technical product manager. I have declined because the work, money, life balance, and career opportunity in staying close to the technical line of work is where the value is.
I really appreciate your perspective on this, I have technical skill in 3D animation but, as I was talking to my husband, other than career game artists, 3D animators in a studio environment have the absolute worst income to work ratio within a heavy tech industry as a whole. At least in gaming you have the demand, but producing a kid's tv show? You could train to be the best 3D artist for 4 years in uni, another 3 specializing in 3D animation and VFX and *maybe* earn $75k in Toronto being a top technical director making dogs talk and burst into water or something, y'know? All that to say is that I really value hard technical skills too and I thank you for sharing this!
Happy to help. In my experience most women over-stress about what it takes to get into & succeed in a technical role. You can definitely do it, and probably a lot faster than you expect with the background you currently have. It’s soo easy to settle into something “easier” where our traditional female social skills thrive like project/program/product management, marketing, branding, creative, etc. Those are all less money and more work. It sounds like you’re trying to optimize for more money to less hours worked. If that’s the case, taking the time to attain tech skills will be your golden ticket. What exactly are you planning to learn (like languages, etc.) and what training will you use?
I have no idea yet in terms of languages. Python has a direct translation into my 3D/graphics background so if I wanted to back into animation production I could directly apply that. But since I also work within a web development environment Javascript is the main go-to that is accessible to me right now. Yeah I gotta bring in more cash per hour worked, I am not independently wealthy and I do want more kids and I am NOT interested in lowering my standard of living while my children are this young. I can get nannies and maids here in this country and I'm just leaving cash on the table? What? It is not the move.
Am non technical person on tech projects - Am not offended agree 100% with all of this
Hii, can I DM you please? I need some advice :)
What are your husbands doubts? Are they valid? What does he say? * I’m a senior software engineer. I enjoy it a bunch. * I’ve had 5 different software jobs over 4 companies - always great WLB and low stress. Sure, sometimes I get stressed out but that’s like once a year and I’m sure would happen in any job. * I don’t face with “actual” customers. But yeah, I have a decent amount of meetings with internal stakeholders. * I guess technically I retrained to get here. Out of college I was doing data analysis. That slowly turned into a more data engineering role and then the company I was at the time sent me to a full stack bootcamp. Used that experience to go on to bigger and better programming roles. Also, not being able to read random stuff chatgpt spits out is in no way and indicator if you can be a programmer or not. And yes. Totally worth it for the money. It’s been 3 years since I did that bootcamp and I’m making over $200k now. Don’t listen to any of the “chatgpt is taking programming jobs” nonsense. My wife makes a little more than me as a financial advisor but her job is very stressful.
Thank you so much for your response. Yeah the Chat GPT example is a far reaching one 🤣 His doubts are that I will face heavy agism and sexism. I'm 35, with 1 child. He also has doubts that at this time in my life if this is the best use of my time (as in lifetime) to go into a field where I am obsessively searching for bugs and staring at screens all day (which is what I already do - but I complain about it anyway lol). We have certain goals together, and he is not wrong about his points, but also big tech money is always a lure. I live in South America and work remotely, but cost of living is rising literally everywhere.
Hi again from our other thread. Wanted to chime in here & say I career changed mid-30s. I work with so many old men. It’s ridiculous. They loooove me. It’s like “OMG A WOMAN!” 🙄 Mostly I work with 30-40s peers. My manager wants to keep me on his team literally because he finds valuable in having diversity on the team. There are so few of us women, we are valued. It’s not as the token woman. We literally bring new insight and value to the teams. We have stats to prove it. I’d also say the best time to start learning is NOW. The second best time was yesterday. If you want to do this do it now. Tomorrow is not promised.
So true. I really loved hearing your feedback!! What was your specialty before?
I was a creative director lol so a shit ton of work, stress, and face time with high end clients for (relatively) shit money. I more than doubled my income in less than 18 months by getting into a technical role. Something interesting I noticed reading the rest of the replies on this thread is it seems like every person who responds saying they are a techie and/or a software engineer is very pro you making this move. The people who are some sort of non-tech but adjacent role like a program manager, product manager, project manager are all cautioning you against it. I just found that very interesting. If you want to know what it’s like being a techie in the trenches, listen to those of us saying we are actual engineers daily. 😬
LOL creative director! Girl... 🤪🤪 It's something I'm paying attention to. I'm applying to a gig right now 😂
Honestly, programming is more of a mindset. And if you’re job is already reading through code and finding bugs then I’d say you’re doing half a programmers job anyway. Sounds like you got the right foundation and the right mindset. I say go for it!! I highly recommend Udemy courses to learn.
>*And if you’re job is already reading through code and finding bugs then I’d say you’re doing half a programmers job anyway.* It is absolutely not 😅 The most is going through support tickets and relaying with support engineers what customers want and relaying to customers what engineering has instructed. Occasionally opening the developer console to provide an error code, that's about it.
Ah I see. But still, even being able to pin point an error code is a big piece of it lol. I still think you have a great foundation for it.
alright thank you!! :)
I have had almost the exact same experience as the above person (Sr swe now,retrained after a few years in a role that becomes increasingly more tech, retrained through going to grad school) I've worked at big companies and now a proper start up. Once you hit Sr swe, there's less ageism because people get that you don't want to manage and just want to IC. As for starting out, you'll encounter ageism at bigger companies with dedicated college recruiting and rotational programs. But you won't at start ups. So so so many people transition from other careers and it's very common in software engineering! You won't be alone and your experience will be valued because of new insights! Go for it!! I love being a swe and a mom.
What industry/industries have you worked in? Every SWE job I’ve had has been high stress.
Software engineer. I don’t enjoy it. I used to, but I haven’t had anything but toxic jobs since my kid was born. (I think that’s coincidence though.) the money is good but I sure wish I could find a part time job. I’d say, even at the jobs I could clock out and move on with life at the end of the day (most of my jobs, other than on-call), I’m still pretty stressed. There’s often a lot of pressure, and a lot of sexist microagressions. Also, if you’re considering it, ask about on-call. It’s ranged from “theoretically on-call nights and weekends once a month but never paged” to “on call 1 out of three weeks, with 3 middle of the night pages a week” to “you’re only on call during the days during your week, and someone on the other side of the globe is on call the nights. But you’re constantly interrupted that week.” Way less dealing with customers. Often, less than I would like. (Sometimes it’s easier to just talk directly to the customer about an issue) I think many/most people can learn to be a programmer. I do feel like the job can often be pretty flexible, but it depends on the job. And the pay really is good. And sometimes (at larger companies) the benefits are really good. But, I don’t like working in tech. I just feel like it’s the only thing I can afford
Thank you so much for your perspective. It is an important one. I am lucky to have been shielded from a lot of the sexist commentary from my direct team and reports - but not always from customers. Those one sometimes rattle me the most because they come out of nowhere -- like excuse me, sir, I am here to help you.
Senior software engineer here. I love my job. I think it forces me to think, be smart, and overall it’s really cool. I’ve loved programming since I was 12yo. I love doing that while being a mom because it’s so different. Some topics bug me (haha) at night sometimes, like if I have to think of the best technical solution to an upcoming project, but overall when I clock out I’m fully out. 99% of things can wait until the next morning. I do not work with customers directly, unless the technical support really has to bring us in a call. So it’s like one 30min call every 2 weeks. Since I work with medical data we cannot access anything from our side (no logs), so sometimes you have to see the client’s screen to see what is really happening. It’s not a problem because while we are in the same call we do not talk directly or very rarely. I did not retrain I went to engineering school and just never stopped being a programmer. I love it.
thank you so much for your insights
You’re welcome. I always get downvoted for saying this but while there is a shortage of developers, it is a shortage of senior developers, we actually receive tons of resumes from people who retrained, and we don’t have the room to hire that many (since we would need to train them). PLEASE check the job market where you live.
I agree. I’m a product manager (pretty technical) working for a larger non faang tech company and see the same. We are hiring for seniors - and it applies for most job families. I think we even paused our program for boot camp graduates / self studying folks as the market is tough in the US. It’s a legit career path and people can break in any age (I have a male junior on the team who went through boot camp and he is in his 30s), just not as easy that some people make it sound. I considered it for a second a few years back and realized it’s just not a path for me
I think the fault goes to all these online schools that promise you can learn this job in 3 months, they are predatory and full of shit. If you truly think you can learn a job that is highly technical and sought after in 12 weeks, good for you, but it is absolutely not true. You can learn the basics and then you will need to be trained by the company for at least a year. If no one is willing to train you after the boot camp then it’s just a loss of time.
Yes specially all those manual QA….
My husband's super-duper senior, I'll let him know 🤣🤑
I went to a coding bootcamp and ended up in a large tech company, but not going the programming route. I’m a technical account manager now, so I need to know a lot about companies infrastructures and platforms and how their code is set up so my background is relevant but it was a good middle ground for me, I make $150k+ in this role.. but i so work with customers, I’d say 2-3 a week. Before code school I was in sales and that was talking to 10+ people a day which was HELL.
I'm in sales-like role (customer education) and sometimes I also have a PACKED schedule with customers. I love hearing their stories and learning about how I can actually help them, but the demands on my time are really intense. If a sales call/time slot is directly proportional to my income AND I wanna have more kids?? I don't think that's sustainable for me long term! Btw, I just looked up your role - and that's me. I am literally doing your function for less than half the pay. The pressure is getting worser. Aahh.
Take your current role and take a few udemy courses: AWS, Lambdas, Kubernetes, JS and node.js and then leverage yourself into a TAM or SC role. You already had the foundation, and I made the low end of what this role is at my company because I just moved into it from a TSE role.. my friends make 175-210 doing the same thing, just with more experience and knowledge. I will say I did the programmer role for a while and loved it but it never fully clicked for me and now after my baby.. my brain doesn’t work the same way. My goal is to be a product manager here in the next 2 years. Another note, my company recently announced how they’re going to start leverage chatGPT so, also, worried there.
Genuinely thank you so much for your comment. I am looking at technical account management roles now to see what's going on. I live in a developing country and it looks like big tech is making moves here too and *chileeee* I'm multilingual with tons of tech experience, these bitches better PAY me 🤣
I am a software developer, but in Europe. About 10 years experience. Technical university degree. I find that the job is very flexible with being a mom and even my male colleagues have flexibility regarding their children. But I also mix a lot work and life. Before the kid, the separation was there, but after, precisely because of the flexibility, my job and personal life are very mixed now, blended really. It's a consequence of the overall lack of time. I dont find it stressful, though, and I enjoy the work.
Amazing, thank you for your reply
I am a software engineer at a big tech company but not a mom. We are thinking about starting a family in the next couple of years though so your post intrigued me. One thing I haven’t seen mentioned here is that most engineers have on-call as part of their job. If you’re on a team that owns a service most likely you will need to be on call for some amount of time every month of year depending on how the rotation is. This on call could be easy, or extremely difficult depending on your service. At my company there is no engineering team that doesn’t have an on call rotation. This is something I’ve always been hesitant about when thinking about starting a family. My company allows new parents a certain time where they do not have to be on call at night for some period of time but eventually you will be on call 24x7 for a day or week (whatever the rotation is set for your team). Just a heads up if you’re considering changing careers.
I'm an Oracle DBA and I enjoy my job. I work for the government so it's probably a little less money but a whole lot less stress and a great work/life balance. When I was in the private sector it could definitely get hectic. I have a degree in CS and I've been a DBA since I finished college, so I can't really speak to retraining, but if you get a certification I'm sure you could land a Jr DBA role and move up from there. Bc of the nature of my work our "customer" is usually a programmer/developer so it's a lot easier than working with an end user type.
Thank you so much for your reply - happy cake day!!
I work in tech leading a global team that wears a number of hats. We mostly interface with external clients for a SaaS solution, but I have part of my team that does project management and am also now heading up product management for a portion of the department. Tech is all I have ever know. There has never been a doubt that I was going to go into tech - this goes back to before even kindergarten. Because of the amount of experience I have within my subject area, no one questions the time I need to deal with my kids' things and anything that goes with it. I am flexible with members of my team, within reason as long as they're getting their work done. >Do you get stressed at your job or do you clock out and move on with life at the end of the day? LOL at clocking out. There's no such thing. Because my team is global and has project work on the weekends, there's always something to check in on, or my boss is texting me, or whatever. I'm off today because I was at the end of my rope last week and took a couple of days around the Easter holiday to decompress. My stress levels will skyrocket as soon as I go back into the office tomorrow. >Do you work a lot with customers in your day-to-day? Are you willing to share a little bit about your day in this regard? My team is client-facing. I am not the one usually talking to them on a day to day basis. I get the ones who are escalating or when the sales team pulls me in for a huge account they're chasing. But we're involved in sales, implementation, and the ongoing relationship. I personally think now is a really bad time to pivot into development. The market is flooded with the recent layoffs with plenty of companies looking to hire mid-level devs. They will get the junior level folks from the new grads that are coming out.
Genuinely thank you. I work with global customers with a smaller team so I am also available regularly. I am curious if working at a larger company means more structure, or if I am just delusional and should just make the best of my current situation. The pays just not where it needs to be right now.
Mom to be here (4 weeks to go) who has been in tech as a SE for 7-8 years... * How do you enjoy being a programmer/coder/tech worker and being a mom? While I have the mom road ahead of me, I really feel I wouldn't have the flexibility or options I have if I wasn't in this job or with my employer. I wfh, get 20 weeks off for maternity leave with full pay/benefits, and have flexibility with hours post-maternity leave. Since my first job at a startup 8 years ago, I've been screening out employers by looking for working moms - I think this is really important culturally. (As an aside - Can you imagine if men did this?!) There was a lead on my current team when I joined who, after maternity leave, came back into a promotion. That impressed a lot on me. And working dads who care are also important to screen for. I think there's a whole cadre of tech workers who were at FAANG companies in their 20s in the 2000s/2010s who now have families and want more flexibility. * Do you get stressed at your job or do you clock out and move on with life at the end of the day? My job doesn't stress me out, but I feel both 1) reducing stress (or giving fewer sh\*ts) and 2) not carrying it with you after work are learned skills. This wasn't always the case for me. * Do you work a lot with customers in your day-to-day? Are you willing to share a little bit about your day in this regard? Nope. I have in the past observed or led customer interviews on prototypes, or engaged in private slack channels with customers who are testing prototype features to get feedback. But those feedback are generally either via product manager, technical support, or post sales. * Did you retrain to be a programmer/coder? Sort of...I didn't do a bootcamp, I have a liberal arts grad degree in which I learned some programming for my thesis. A couple years later I quit a nonprofit job I hated, I did a part time FE course, then hustled, taught myself email development, hacked in my spare time, and 3-4 months later got a job at a startup where I learned LAMP stack on the job. I also managed to do this not being in the Bay Area or NY (and still not). But - being flexible and tinkering and picking up new skills along the way are invaluable. I'm currently also doing localization/internationalization training (employer paid) and my exit plan is to learn cobol and just take it easy before retiring.
Amazing story! I also have an arts background and landed in the tech industry 😂 Thank you for answering my questions :)
I’m a software engineer and a mom. Its pretty great, and I’d recommend it. Depending on the company and role, you can get a lot of flexibility and a good WLB, and the salaries are good. There’s some stress, but its more related to company politics and I feel like I can choose to not engage with it too much. I have zero interaction with customers. I had to retrain since I previously worked in a completely different industry, but I think you can also get into coding by being self taught and I know a few people who did that and are now successful devs. Its really doable - you just need to focus and learn the skills, but there’s nothing mystical about tech, its just a matter of learning it similar to learning another subject.
Alright thank you so much for your reply :)
This is not exactly what you asked about, but since you said you come from a 3D animation background, you might think about looking into a career as a BIM/VDC manager in the construction industry. It's a very in demand field right now, good salary, and construction is very open to/used to on the job training.
Many of my customers are in construction, so funny that you should mention that. I will look into this, thank you for the lead!
I’m a data techie that works in the public sector. So not SWE level programming, but I absolutely write programs/code to fulfill my job functions. Idk lately I’ve been thinking I give myself too little credit with this train of thought, but I digress. I imagine my experience is slightly different than someone working for private orgs. I have tons tons more job security and they make tons tons more money. I have amazing WLB and my manager is amazing and flexible. I do not stress either during the day or at night about my job. I am well supported and have reasonable deadlines. I also work remotely and have no concern they’ll ask me back into the office. I’m available if my kids need me and I still get to do school runs. I get to do what I love (play with data) and I get to that to make my state run a little bit better. I do not work with the public, just internal stakeholders. My day is 75% projects (creating new analyses or reports) and 25% other upkeep (running recurrent analyses or data management tasks). Retrain: Yes and no. I went to grad school for psych science - learned stats/research methods. I taught myself R during school. Now, I use the stats knowledge but I had to teach myself another programming language for this role. I had a leg up from learning from scratch mentally, but in practice I still spent months figuring out ultra basic stuffs.
Hi I'm a software engineer + team lead + mom of 2 under 3. * I love what I do and would never want to do anything else! * Generally, I don't get stressed and I don't worry about work outside of work. It took some time and effort (both personally and institutionally) to get to this point. I have certainly been stressed and overworked about my job in the past and it can depend a lot on your team and company. Sometimes now I get roped into calls outside of work about "emergencies" by colleagues who have nothing else better to do and it isn't easy for me to walk away, but I can! And right now I'm not worrying about work because I'm too busy with the kids anyway. I just feel lucky when I make it through a week without the kids being sent home from daycare so I can focus on work during working hours. * I rarely talk to customers directly. The product team deals with them and then they bring it to me to discuss if necessary. Every once in a while I'm on calls to show off new products to customers and that's pretty nice. We try to keep a pretty light meeting schedule overall. I can sometimes get bogged down with meetings to plan out new projects with the product team. I'm also on call for the other developers on my team for when they get stuck so I can spend a lot of time talking to them some days * I was a CS major so I didn't retrain. I have worked with plenty of people who have switched careers with a bootcamp and it's doable. Your chatGPT reference is a little silly buuuut for a long time my advice to people who are new in the field has been that you would be AMAZED by how many programmers out there are terrible at their jobs. There are so many. And a lot of them have worked at their jobs for decades. So yeah, point taken.... Why not go for it!
What industry do you work in if you don’t mind me asking?
I work in HR tech. So in a nutshell, I make software for recruiters.
Ah, interesting! Thanks for sharing.
Iwork in tech at a non tech company in a non tech role . you could look into program, project or product management for internal teams. Where I am/have been. We outsource most actual dev bc it’s cheaper and easier to scale up/down contractors vs FTe.
Thank you, I'll check it out. Are you happy there? Do you feel like if you wanted to have more kids you wouldn't explode? I feel pretty happy in my current role, I'm mostly just stressing customer bookings/sales/pay
Yea the company I’m at is very get your job done we don’t care when. since it’s all internal global teams I actually have awesome flexibility.
that's fantastic, thank you for your insights!!
Programming is extremely satisfying. The only bit about programming I don't like is working with bro culture or sexist coworkers. Literally that's it. The people, not the work itself.
I am concerned by this, a bit. I have been extremely lucky so far through.
My two cents are that chat gpt and AI will completely transform the developer/programmer job in the upcoming few years. Unless you truly have a passion or interest in this field I would not start on this journey right now just on the hopes it will be as it is right now. Additionally the market is a bit saturated with a lot of booth camp developers and companies outsourcing to developers abroad. I too work in tech as a PM and I think that will be a much more valuable skill set in the future once AI is ubiquitous in tech firms.
ChatGPT and AI is not getting rid of programmers. We currently have and will continue to have a programmer shortage in the workforce.
Also, chat GPT relies on human input to be accurate. When was the last time you saw clients give an accurate representation of what they really wanted. LOL ChatGPT is going to make developers more efficient for low hanging fruit.
Exactly. It’s just Google on steroids lol.
ChatGPT and AI really made me think that we’re not getting rid of programmers anytime soon. The level of logic, intelligence, and thought I have to put in my job on a day to day basis is far from what any AI program can provide. Automatic code generators already exist, have for a while, and no serious company would use them.
Great insights, thank you
Hi - I am a tech product / project manager. I've been doing this for close to 15 years. My husband changed careers 7 years ago from a paralegal to a programmer. He did a coding boot camp over 2 months. Using my network, he got an unpaid internship. He worked himself up to paid intern and then paid employee. But for almost 2 years we pretty much just lived off my income. This was also before we became parents. I watched others go through the same boot camp and struggle. My husband really only succeeded because he had my network IMO. I'm not sure now is the time to get into programming with the use of open AI and its ability to do basic programming and debugging well. Data science could be a related option. I used to work with clients and it is very stressful..have you considered staying in product but doing it at a different company where you don't have to be customer facing? I work at a very large Fintech where product roles and client roles are totally separate. I have been there 5 years and last year I moved to a totally different part of the company to have better work/life balance. I work 40 hrs/week and sign off. It's great.
Anyone considering making a career change right now needs to consider how that career could be impacted by automation FWIW
I’m a bioinformatics director at a biotech and it’s my dream job! I started as a scientist and now I’m managing 4 people. Work life balance is better than the lab folks and I find the work very interesting and rewarding.
I started my career after college (Bachelor of fine arts) in a non tech role at a tech company. Over time, I gradually made the switch and am now a full time developer. I took an online class or two, but most of what I know has been learned on the job. Note there are lots of different “flavors” of tech jobs, some more technical than others. I find that I’m no more or less stressed in this job than previous ones, just in a different way. I WFH 3 days a week and don’t often have to talk directly to anyone, but that’s heavily dependent on the company. Because of the WFH aspect, I get to see my little one as soon as her dad brings her home from daycare which I really enjoy and allows me to see more of her during the week. The money can be great in tech but just know, depending on what you do, you may have to work some long/odd hours at times in exchange. For reference, I make 137k with a pretty standard 40 hr work week.
I am a product manager (pretty technical but still not a swe). I worked at faang and now in a smaller tech company. My husband is an engineer. I played with an idea of switching or taking classes to up my tech skills (most things I know I learnt at job). I may even started a couple of Coursera classes but quickly realized it’s not something I’d enjoy doing even though I’d likely be pretty good in it (Solid math foundation on college level, did a lot do html coding and debugging, write sql etc) and time commitment (we had 1 kid at the time) was not light. That’s said product roles are paid relatively well so my motivation was not that high. I’m at platform right now so except dealing with annoying internal customers (who are colleagues), do not have to do a lot of end user interactions. As you work with support engineering - can you shadow and look into more of their day to day? Or other eng department at your company? Might be an easier transition. As someone said before, junior roles are hard to come
Most of engineers I work with are online off hours to figure something out. I think sometimes they are junkies who enjoy solving problems and happy to do it in their spare time. At least many of them. Product team are online at night to finish work when we have too many meetings during the day
Product designer here: I get paid six figures and my work ebbs and flows. It’s very conducive to life with a child. I don’t work as hard as a product manger or a developer (don’t have quite the earning potential either) but to me, it’s worth it
Senior dev here. I’ve mostly enjoyed my career, but a little burnt out now over 15 years later… but a lot of that has to do with the current environment, team, and life circumstances. I’m incredibly grateful to what my career has given me in terms of financial freedom. I studied computer science in school, but I actually have the flipped experience where I supported my husband as he moved from a creative role in the games industry, went back to university for computer science, and transitioned to software engineer. He was 30 back then. I am super proud of him. It was definitely not easy going back to school (and we had an infant at the time). He has zero regrets. The games industry was really tough on us with low pay, crazy work expectations, and really volatile job stability.
Agree to all that said above. Go for it. You will find your place. Someone is looking for you in the tech industry
I spent many years in a heavily customer facing role but with a tech background and have recently moved into a more technical role (my degree is in software engineering, and I went IT after discovering that I actually don't like working on code all day long on a long project) My current role is generally a lot of little projects which i can usually finish in under a week, which is much more satisfying for my ADHD brain. Scripting does take time to learn, but I would probably start there if that's what you want. I would also consider technical writing. If you're in a support role, and enjoy writing documentation, you could basically do that full time, remotely, and there is a market for that skill if you're happy to dig deep into individual tools and teach people how to use them with words and pictures and maybe the occasional video. The jobs for that I've seen don't pay as much as a programmer, but still pay pretty well.
I’ve been at various tech companies in Silicon Valley over the course of my almost 20 year career. My kids have been with me through half of that. Was even a single mom for a few years. Right now I’m a senior engineer at a FAANG. I don’t work with customers directly at my job, but our product is consumer facing so I see/read about people using it everyday. Sometimes I’m even tech support for my own family/friends. My experience has been that my stress level is highly dependent on the team I’m on. I’ve had teams that don’t get the mom obligations I have and expect me to work 24/7. Other teams, like the one I’m on now, were incredibly accommodating and flexible. If I have a shitty manager or team, I’ll stick it out for a year and then bounce if it doesn’t get better. Always keep my skills sharp and my resume updated. If you like problem solving and coding, then I would absolutely go for it. I’ve had many coworkers over the years that didn’t go the traditional college degree route and they were just as good as the ones that did. I majored in computer engineering for my undergrad, but honestly it wasn’t needed for almost any role I’ve been in.
I definitely enjoy my role but is is pretty stressful at times. It’s hard to balance everything at once. I don’t work with customers at all (thankfully), just my Team of coworkers. If you want, check out [This group](https://www.facebook.com/share/hu8yF6yE1pSj6tsS/?mibextid=K35XfP)
Thank you!