From Lab to Web - The Beginning
Tags: career, devjournal, codenewbie, watercooler
Published: 2023-05-29 10:43:40

This series is a summary of how I experienced the career change. Like what were the considerations, and what tips I picked up for successful job hunting. This blog series serves as an outline for a meetup presentation, which I gave at the end of May tom y fellow bootcampers.

## The Beginning
Originally, I graduated as a geologist and environmental engineer, and I completed the latter in Denmark, where I ended up staying. I worked in an environmental analysis laboratory for 6 years as a lab technician, chemical engineer. During my maternity leave, I was "bored," or rather, my mind craved some challenges amidst all the baby talk and peekaboo. I was looking for a hobby that I could do with the materials I already had and in stolen moments. I had a couple of relatives who worked or work in IT, and they recommended the path of web development, specifically. They were right; everything was there, and you could easily start online. So I dabbled in HTML and CSS.

After the maternity leave (which lasted for 8 months), I went back to work, but in a different position that I didn't really like. Despite expressing my desire to regain my previous position at work, unfortunately, it didn't happen. That's when the idea of a career change started brewing in my mind, but I didn't feel brave enough yet, and I wasn't sure if development was the right path for me (especially with just a little knowledge of HTML and CSS). So I looked for an affordable part-time bootcamp. It was a bootcamp in Hungary (where I'm from), completely online, 2 afternoons per week for 5 hours in all. It was feasible to do it alongside work, and the best part was that we followed a structured curriculum. That was something I missed in self-study. 

After a few months, due to personal reasons, I realized that I didn't want to be a lab technician and wanted to break free from that industry. I knew that job hunting with 8-year-old diplomas and zero experience wouldn't be great, so I contemplated switching careers altogether since I was in the same place. Plus, I enjoyed development more; it was full of challenges (as it always is in the beginning), but since the tech industry is constantly changing, I knew it would always be filled with challenges. And that's what I always craved.

##Challenges
So I knew I wanted to change careers, but how? The part-time course was already paid for (3 + 4 + 3 months). My family saw two options:

1. Continue as before, alongside work. While not feeling great at my job and, as a result, being able to dedicate less time to learning. This would make the career change slower, but financially, nothing would change.
2. Quit my job and invest 120% into learning, treating it as my "new job." This would likely lead to faster progress, but we would lose one income. 


![Staying in current job or go for the unknown](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/4rwieuccbikjsmxe3k4p.jpg)

Fortunately, it was possible for me to quit my job, and that's what I did. My new job was 8 hours a day of practicing, struggling with the curriculum. Luckily, I managed to establish a routine and system, so I actually sat down to learn for several hours every day. However, after a while, I felt quite lonely. My husband went to work, the little troublemaker went to daycare, and my classmates also went to work. So I couldn't really share my successes or failures during the day. I knew I had to start networking to reduce this kind of loneliness. As a first step, I arranged a weekly practice session (called JS Seance) with my classmates, which brought us closer together and helped a lot in terms of coding and building friendships.

## Motivation
Motivation is essential for a career change, and fortunately, I didn't lack it. The reason might be occasional bouts of guilt (the family's financial situation changed due to me), and my personality also played a role. I'm the type of person that once I set my mind on something, it has to happen. I had decided that I wanted to change careers, and that was my sole focus. In fact, my biggest goal was to get a job in the IT industry in that same year when I started, regardless of the location or salary. I had to be part of the tech industry.

This kind of attitude was evident in my exam projects, which will be elaborated in the next section 😊

Thank you for reading this personal part! How and why did you get into development? Let's share our personal experiences!