Sergey told why at 43 he left business and became a developer in an IT company, and described what difficulties one should be prepared for.
How I decided to leave my own business for development
I graduated from the institute with a degree in Information Systems and Networks and for the next 20 years, together with a partner, developed my own business for the supply and maintenance of legal reference systems. We did not have any developers as such, but we had our own technical support, which installed reference and legal bases for clients and eliminated problems in their work. I did everything from recruiting new employees to dealing with suppliers and customers. During these 20 years I have accumulated a very wide technical horizon: I started working back in the days of MS-DOS, floppy disks and the first versions of Windows. I understood and knew a lot from the IT field, but then I did not have any systemic and deep knowledge in order to earn money by programming.
Since relatively recently, all reference systems have moved to the online format, and we stopped working directly with the databases themselves. Thus, our business began to shift towards consulting accountants and lawyers, our main clients. I didn’t like it: I’m not interested in consulting, and I don’t consider myself a professional in this area. As a result, my partner and I decided to go out of business. At that time I was 43 years old.
I had to think about what to do next. I wanted to do something with my hands, work on my own and not depend on strangers. Many people have the misconception that a businessman does not depend on anyone, but this is not so. You are dependent on your employees, customers, partners, suppliers, government and a dozen other factors. Programming in one way or another accompanied me all my life, and I began to think in the direction of this area. There is a fairly high demand for developers in the market, and I realized that I could jump on the “IT train” and achieve something, even if I'm over 40. I had examples before my eyes: several of my 33-35-year-old acquaintances time finished courses on Java in Innopolis. Now they are all experienced developers and successfully work in IT. I wanted to repeat their path. After all, since they were able to change their profession,I could do the same. I was also strongly motivated and spurred on by success stories on CodeGym. I dreamed that someday I could write about my own successful experience, and now I am telling you about my path.
What I love about programming is that every hour you spend reading tutorials or watching video tutorials takes you one step closer to your goal. It seems to me that IT is generally such an area where all investments in personal growth are paid off with a high probability. In business, it is more difficult to see the results of your work, in contrast to development, and for me it has always been important.
Of course, it was scary to end the business that I had been doing for 20 years, and it was completely unclear what would happen next. But in just a few weeks, the fears were gone: I looked at vacancies, saw the popularity of development languages and assessed my prospects in a few years. All my life I did nothing but learn something new, so I quickly realized that there was nothing to be afraid of.
The former business partner doubted this whole idea and said that young developers would "crush" me and in general it was too late to change my life so drastically. But I didn't really listen to him. You need to think not "I'm already 40", but "I'm only 40". There is at least 20-30 years of active life ahead, so I did not speculate about where I am now, but thought about where I would be in a few years.
For me, the most important thing was that my family fully supported me. At that time, we lived in Orel, but my eldest daughter was finishing 11th grade and wanted to enter a Moscow university. She was actively preparing for the Unified State Exam, participated and won all-Russian Olympiads and all kinds of competitions. I was motivated by her desire and efforts, and I just could not give up. In addition, the financial cushion left over from the sale of the business allowed me not to work for several months and devote all my time to training.
It only remained to decide on the language. The choice fell on Java. This is not the youngest language, so it already has a large community formed and you can find many courses and resources for self-study. And the number of vacancies hinted that it was worth studying.
How I studied: independently, with a mentor and in courses
Self-study
In the summer of 2018, I started learning Java. At that time, I did not have a job as such - I had already transferred business matters, and I managed to devote 4-8 hours to study every day. I started with the CodeGym resource. I solved problems, watched training videos, read. I independently reached level 20 out of 41. There were no problems with the materials: you can always find something useful on the Internet. It's not for nothing that they say that the main skill of a programmer is the ability to google. You can learn by yourself, you would have a desire and, most importantly, time.
But I soon realized that without support and a mentor, development is not going as fast as I wanted. You seem to have done everything, but I'm not sure that you chose the right solution and, perhaps, everything could have been done better. I was tormented by doubts that I was missing something, and there was no one to ask.
Mentoring program and first projects
Soon I found the Java Mentor project , and learning went faster. I no longer communicated with a bot on the site, but with a living person. Experienced mentors provided feedback on assignments, conducted code reviews, and explained mistakes. In February, I even attended a two-week Java Bootcamp hackathon in St. Petersburg, where I finally worked as a team on a small project.
After the hackathon, I qualified for an online Java EE course at Innopolis University . Everything here was serious: a very tight schedule of classes, a mentor from an IT company, a real and large team project (we were developing an analogue of a virtual trading platform).
Thus, I already had two projects under my belt. It doesn't matter that it was not production and they weren't paid for. Anyway, this was my real job. I advise all newcomers to IT: do not write a "training project" in your resume, rather indicate what exactly you did and what results you achieved, for example, "implemented a data sorting system", "improved system performance from 50 to 100 requests per second". In the same way, you should not evaluate yourself as a specialist and indicate on your resume that you are June or middle. Just write "Java developer". They will evaluate you already at the interview, of which there may be a dozen, and in one company they will give "juna", and in another - "signora". Therefore, it is always better to focus on your real achievements and results.
First offers, moving to Moscow and working at EPAM
After the course in Innopolis, I received a state diploma on professional retraining. In September 2019, they started calling me for my first interviews with companies-residents of Innopolis. A life hack that I remember as a businessman - even if you don't know the answer to the recruiter's question, you shouldn't say “I don't know”. This is very deafening to the ear, and it seems that as a specialist you are not very good. Try thinking out loud about the problem to show your thoughts, or tell them that you will definitely figure it out later.
It turns out, a year after I dropped everything and started learning Java, I had three job offers on my hands. They called me to a middle position, but I didn't want to work in Innopolis - it's very far from Orel. But there were no suitable vacancies in my hometown either. The question arose about moving.
One fine day recruiters from EPAM contacted me. I myself did not even apply for the vacancies of the company, because I still doubted my abilities. At the interview, I tried not to get nervous and set myself up that there was nothing wrong with the interview. Everything went well, and I was invited to work in the Moscow office of EPAM. The company gave time to find an apartment, partially helped with relocation, and my family and I moved. For the first three weeks, I calmly studied internal materials and systems. It was lucky that my manager worked practically at the next table, and I could turn to him for any question.
In the office, mostly guys under 30 work, and sometimes young colleagues glanced at me, they say, what is this uncle doing here. Plus , Impostor Syndrome has not escaped me.: I could not understand how they even took me here, it seemed that I was out of place. Then I realized that always when you come to a new company, also to a large project, at first you feel uncomfortable. And that's okay! Sometimes it's easier to ask and save time, yours and your team's, than to sit and dig. If, for example, in an hour you did not even understand how to complete the task, it is better to ask your colleagues. Do not be afraid to look like a fool, no matter what regalia you have.
Despite my good managerial experience, now I'm interested in developing in the technical direction. I am currently working on a large auto insurance project that is going into production soon. I don’t read any directly fundamental works on Java, but I try to systematize all the new knowledge that I get in the process.
What has changed since I started development
One of the biggest advantages of IT for me is the ability to work remotely. We have a distributed team, and we worked in this mode long before the crisis. I can work from Orel, Moscow and anywhere, as long as there is Internet and equipment.
I have absolutely no regrets about my decision. Especially now, looking at what is happening all over the world. IT is a very rapidly developing industry, but at the same time it remains one of the most stable. Despite all external circumstances, including the current crisis, I know that I will be in demand in the coming years. The demand for developers is only growing, and this is probably the main plus of the IT sphere in our difficult days.
Useful resources for aspiring Java developers
CodeGym is a very good resource for beginners with little theory and many tasks. To understand whether Java is right for you or not, what kind of language it is, how it works and how complex it is, it is better to find a resource. All my friends who came to programming at one time started with CodeGym.
EPAM regularly runs free Java courses .
Books
- Learning Java by Katie Sierra and Bert Bates is a book for beginners not only in Java, but in programming in general.
- The Java Philosophy by Bruce Eckel.
- "Java. Professional library. Volumes 1 & 2, Kay Horstmann and Gary Cornell.
- "Java. The Complete Guide ", Herbert Schildt.
- "Java. A Beginner's Guide, ”Herbert Schildt.
- "Java Basics", Nikolay Prokhorenok.
- “Grock algorithms. An illustrated guide for programmers and the curious ”, Aditya Bhargava is a very good book for understanding basic algorithms.
Video resources
alishev - YouTube channel with video tutorials.
A free Stepic course on the basics of Java web development.
letsCode - YouTube channel.
Lecture "Fundamentals of Java Development" .
Author: Eliza Ilyazova