

Career paths when your starting from the edges - king_mob

So i&#x27;ve held off on asking this for awhile, as it seems to be a question that would just answer itself given enough time and effort, but what the heck. First off, excuse the extensive preamble, but it&#x27;s relevant, and i have a feeling it describes a few peoples experience not just my own.<p>So i&#x27;m 29, never made it through uni, basically through a lack of any kind of work ethic (there were always bands to play in and beer to drink), so non-graduate i guess you&#x27;d call it, but around 5 years ago i decided i in fact wanted a career, and a job that stimulated and inspired me.<p>Cue the next 5 years of basically retraining myself to have a work ethic, to be dedicated to learning on the job and in my own time, and generally putting in the hours that i should of the first time round when i was 18-20. Now i&#x27;m working as a sysadmin&#x2F;network engineer&#x2F;support desk jack-of-all-trades in a small hosting company.<p>I&#x27;m self taught in almost everything, i learn in JIT fashion when a problem comes along, you learn how to fix it on the spot, although i&#x27;ve taught myself programming in my spare time rather than because i had to.<p>Long story short - i&#x27;m deeper into the industry than i have ever been, and i understand a lot more than i ever did, but i&#x27;m worried now this is it, manning support desks and helping people set their new iphone up to work with their company email.<p>A lot of the threads on HN about career paths are from young(er) graduates, or people who got into a startup early on and have the experience on their CV. So my question is this, how would someone coming from the opposite direction, older, not a graduate, no professional experience, think about breaking in to the industry?<p>I&#x27;d like to think it would be as simple as: keep coding, learn the frameworks, contribute to projects and start your own to build up a portfolio of work. But is that naive?
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mfalko
I would be interested to hear any responses as well. I've followed a similar
path. I dropped out of college at 18 and played traveling ski bum for a few
years. Then I moved across two states and decided to get my life straight.
I've since been working my way through college, but I feel like I'm in the
exact same position. I have a rough idea of what I should be doing to become a
better programmer and get into the industry, but after five years on this
treadmill I feel like I'm missing something.

