From Nanny to Software Engineer in 2 Years Flat
Hello, world!
I’ve now been working full time as a software engineer for a little over a year, and I thought it would be a great time to reflect on how my life has changed since I first started learning to code back in 2020.
In 2020, I was working through a master’s program to become an elementary school teacher while also working 50+ hours per week as a nanny. I always had a passion for learning, and I loved working with kids, so I thought being a teacher would be the right move for me long term… That is, until the pandemic happened and on top of the already low wages teachers were paid, they now had so many added responsibilities.
The level of burnout I saw in teachers and even in my classmates in my masters program was startling to say the least, and it really made me question if this was the right career for me.
I decided to take a break from school after my spring semester, and I started thinking about what my next moves could be. I felt really stuck, so I sat down, and I wrote a list of all the adults I admired and wanted to be like. You know what they all had in common? They all knew how to code.
I never thought I’d be able to learn to code because I was such an artistic and creative person. I always excelled in literature and history classes, and the hardest subjects for me to get through were always math and science. I studied theater in undergrad, and I never even considered trying to learn computer science because I assumed it would be “too hard”.
I don’t know what possessed me to take on the massive feat of learning to code, but I decided that the choices I’d been making weren’t helping me to reach my full potential, and if I wanted changes, I’d have to do something drastic. I signed up for Codecademy, started teaching myself HTML and CSS in March of 2020, and never looked back.
You’d think the rest is history, right? Well… sort of.
Unfortunately, in 2020 I was already drowning in student debt, and working as a nanny was really fulfilling but not the most lucrative career. I spent a lot of time worrying about bills and making pros and cons lists for attending a coding bootcamp.
After teaching myself the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for 6 months, I felt like I wasn’t going to learn much more on my own. I needed help. I needed more time. More than anything, I needed structure.
My partner and I hustled hard, working crazy hours, picking up side gigs as Uber Eats delivery drivers, and creating one of the strictest budgets I’d ever had in order to save up enough money for me to be out of work for 5 months — enough time to go to a coding bootcamp and *hopefully* land a job in tech.
It was a massive leap of faith, but I did it! In April of 2021, I worked my last day as a nanny on a Friday and started a coding bootcamp two days later. I learned more than I possibly could retain, made connections in the tech world, and even built out a portfolio.
Along the way, I discovered my love of frontend design, cried a lot, and almost quit over 30 times. But I graduated three and a half months later, and landed a job a month after that.
Was it hard? Yes.
Was it worth it? Absolutely.
In my first year at my current company, I got certified as a Salesforce B2C Commerce Developer, finished my first client-facing project, and now I’m about to onboard for my second project!
I miss the families I used to nanny for with all of my heart, but now I have the means to plan a wedding and (eventually) start a family of my own.
To anyone thinking about learning to code — if I can do it, you can, too.
Thank you so much for reading! If you have any questions about this article, you can reach out to me here or on Twitter. Happy Coding! 😊 💻
