From the flight deck to code
Tags: Aviation, Development, Programming, Bootcamp, Career Change Coders

Photo by Oskar Yildiz on Unsplash

The Last two years

2020 to 2021; who will forget these years. I say, “until 2021”, but maybe I will be sitting here in 2022 talking about the last 3 years, but I’m optimistic.

The last two years have been a rollercoaster, not only for me, but for everyone. Like many in my position, I have made a complete career change, or reversion one could say. I’ve had to think long and hard about the direction my life is going in and where it should go from now on.

Pre-2020

Flying my mum for the first time.

I was on top of the world, just started a new job the year before, and things were going great. I moved to a new city and joined a new airline. Originally, I am from Jersey, a small Island off the coast of France, I knew I wanted more, I felt that I was limiting myself on the island. In 2019, I joined easyJet, moved from my tiny ATR onto the larger, Airbus A320. I was happy, flying from the now closed and repurposed vaccine centre at Tegel Airport. I was exploring Europe and meeting new and wonderful people. A dream career, and I was living it. Even now, I would not talk anyone out of becoming a pilot. I was, one could say, in the ideal situation, living in a fantastic city, earning a good salary and flying a plane, something many can only imagine or dream of doing.

Post-2020

The pandemic rolled on, I was still employed and happy, though we all knew the inevitable was coming. The company had hinted, and now they delivered. Through my door popped a letter, no postmark, no delivery address, just my name. The first fateful words glaring from the top of the page, “We regret to inform you…” anger, denial, resentment, and relief flooded the WhatsApp group. For me, it was the latter, I was relieved that I finally knew, as not knowing was painful. I would love to be able to say that I was not devastated, though that would be a lie. I started analysing what I could or would like to do, all I knew is I was happy in Berlin and I had no plan on leaving. Herein lies the challenge with my chosen career, it seldom allows you to settle. If I wanted to stay flying, the chances of finding work in Berlin was low; Germany’s aviation hubs are Frankfurt and Munich.

Before I flew, I was a PHP Laravel dev and loved it, although my passion was always to go flying. I had continued to dabble with coding and development during my time flying, but for fun helping family and friends with their web development needs.

I knew I still had these skills, unfortunately I had not followed the industry closely for years. Not only that, I was anxious to launch myself back into it, I felt out of depth, I didn’t know what to expect. Friends suggested that I should enrol in a Bootcamp, so the next day, I signed up with Le Wagon. It was the perfect place to rediscover my skills, learn the industry changes that I had missed, (such as JS ES6). I didn’t even know this had happened, and still thought “var” was the go to for defining a variable. I met some remarkable colleagues and friends. We worked on a final projects, and I was lucky enough to lead a dynamic and talented team. I used my old skills to enhance our web app, while learning new ones about team and project management.

The Future

I am still unsure what my future holds, I may launch a start-up, join friends on their projects or freelance and build my skills and portfolio further. All I know is I for now am happy I am still living in this fantastic city, working alongside incredible people. This article is about me, but I want it to be an inspiration to those many former colleagues who find themselves looking to something else but feeling as lost as I was. We may go back to flying, or we may stay where we are, but there is always something more we can learn and build upon, and that what we do today is not our limits.