Career change advice/guidance

Question

Hi tech savvy beautiful minds. I am thinking about changing my career from Network engineer into software development. At this point in networking, i feel like there is very less room to grow and even this field wants a person to have a good understanding of programming nowadays while on the other hand, its fascinating how web development or SE field is growing and giving you a lot of opportunities and job security.

Being at 35 and with all my experience in networking, do you think it would be wise to change my field? I am mostly afraid of reaching out or applying for these job because i am afraid i will be rejected based on my age and with no solid working experience in webdev or SE field. Also, if you think enrolling into a bootcamp or Masters in CS would help make my case strong, i can even put some thoughts into those ideas. If you have any good resources to learn from, please share them with me. I need your help to make this decision especially though your knowledge and life experiences.

Thank you in advance for all the help.

madscience · Accepted Answer

There's another thread going on right now about someone who's considering leaving their current job to pursue a CS Master's as well and there's some great tips in there about how to handle it. I'd recommend checking it out: https://www.levels.fyi/community/thread/6CAasw/masters-vs-current-job

In terms of your specific situation, I don't think it's too late necessarily to change your role, but it may be a bit more difficult than folks who've done so earlier in their career. I'd say the best way to showcase your skills without having the specific professional experience as a software engineer is to build relevant projects for some of the roles/companies you're looking to apply to

Career change advice/guidance

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