
Ask HN: How to transition from business role to coder - biz2coder
I&#x27;m in my late 30&#x27;s and have been in business roles since leaving college. I&#x27;ve done moderately well in that role, founding a YC backed startup, gaining B2b customers, raising seed round and leading two crowdfunding campaigns totaling nearly $1MM. I&#x27;ve always been miserable doing that work, and burned out really badly when my startup eventually failed.<p>On the side I&#x27;ve coded since college (where I did maths) and always enjoyed that. I&#x27;m entirely self taught and have focused on hacking things that work rather than any solid software engineering skills. I&#x27;ve built a few MVP&#x27;s for startups, including one android app that got 400k downloads (but not great daily active usage). I&#x27;ve built stuff in Java, Javascript, Rails and Python.<p>I&#x27;m considering pivoting my career full-time into a software role and looking for advice on whether to do that and if so how. Questions I have:
1. Will it be frustrating going into entry level jobs in a young industry?
2. How should I find jobs and how will my background look to an employer?
3. Should I do a bootcamp or go back to school or something like 42&#x27;s program?<p>Appreciate the communities advice. Thanks!
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ecesena
Interviewing for large companies should tell you if you're ready or not.
Chances are not, if you don't have a formal CS edu, because the typical
questions are not to make something that works, but to describe algos and data
structs.

I think you'd have better chances entering in a large company in a product,
non-eng capacity, and then transition internally. That's always seen very
positively, and you can get all the support you need.

The alternative is to found another startup and stay technical from the very
beginning, you should have a good network to do so.

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badpun
Please consider that software engineering roles almost universally have little
in common with happy hacking at home. They’re frustrating, tedious work. They
still might be a better fit for you in the end than business roles, but I’d
recommend finding some software engs who would be willing to speak to you
candidly about the job.

