How I became a software developer in my 30’s without a tech degree or any relevant work experience:

Four years ago, I got my first job as an iOS developer. My formal education was clinical psychology, I had no relevant work experience and no tech degree. None-the-less, I managed to land my first software engineering job offer. For the past 2.5 years I’m part of a great startup and for the first time in my life I can say that I love my job.

Here’s the road I chose to take:

First step — trial and error

About six years ago, I was just about to complete my Masters degree in clinical psychology. The last couple of years of the university and hands on experience with treating people were intense. I knew I wanted a break from psychology. I developed several interests over the years such as analyzing people’s behaviour, finance, investing…
With the “The Road Not Taken” poem in mind I knew I had to try something new!

I then decided to try out things that might both make me happy and at the same time provide for a decent living. I started a position as a business analyst, but felt It was not right for me and after several months I decided to move on . After that, I worked for a while as a sales/business development on a temporary project, until it ended. I Then decided to build something of my own and started to plan a business model, however, after realising it was not a viable business I decided to move on.

After about 2 years of wondering around, I thought I failed and felt like I wasted the last couple of years but in fact it was a critical point in my life, as those experiences actually helped me to figure out a few things.

• I realized that I had to work in a creative/entrepreneurial line of work.
• I realized that I wanted to influence people and create things people can benefit from.
• I realized that I loved technology and I was missing the use of technology in every single job I ever had.
• I realized that I want to build great things and influence people experiences

And most importantly: I realized that I want to help build a great company both for the workers as well as for the customers.

Put those insights together plus some more self exploration — it then hit me: I want to be a technological entrepreneur! I immediately decided to develop a diverse skill set that will help me accomplish this goal.

So I had to go work in the booming startup industry, get some experience and start or join some great new venture I believe can make a difference!

Now I had to decide how to do it…

Second step — deciding which path to take

I thought I had several options for finding my first startup job, with my skill set. The most obvious was product management. At this point I already knew several people who made the transition from psychology to product and although I knew very little about the job itself I understood the advantage I could have. Even though I had no programming experience what so ever, I always loved computers and gadgets and enjoyed building them and taking them apart..

I’m not sure exactly why but programming felt right even if it was less the “obvious” road to take, plus I understood the importance of understanding programming even as a product manager as well as an entrepreneur.

I thought that I would give it a try and worse comes to worst — if it won’t work out for me, I will fallback to product.

Now I had to decide what to learn, but that was easy… I love Apple products, I love using them and I love the idea of creating something that people could use on their day devices.

So I chose to become an iOS developer.

Third step — learning to code

I thought about taking a course in one of the schools that offered an iOS development courses but decided to explore the internet first and understand my options. I wanted to begin with exploring what I can do on my own. I enjoy theory and reading/listening to audio books but I knew that I learn best by actually doing.

I took a Udemy course which sounded about right for me, something like “iOS development — learn by building real apps”. And some basic programming courses on Lynda by Simon Allardice

For the next 3 months I spent about 10 hours a day learning , finished the basic course assignments, read a lot of extra material and started to build my long term learning resources.

This is how I deal with every new thing I want to learn — understand what I want to know, find the best resources to learn from and invest heavily in learning.

Forth step — Getting my first iOS development job

I thought I will learn several more months and then try to get a dream job at a technology startup.

However, as I knew from life experience, things don’t always worked out that way and I want to have more control over things. So I decided to start job hunting and planned to take anything with any salary just to get some experience.

I got an interview with a software agency owner. He was really straight forward and told me that he doesn’t care about my education or anything like that — they have a test they give to any junior developer applicant. If I pass the test I can start working there. So I had a specific goal now!

I asked if I can come to the office because I knew that will make me more committed and there were several important sources of knowledge there, mainly other developers, online resources I can use and the office culture that I wanted to get to know.

I worked hard and when I managed to build a simple app and felt I understood what I was doing (I can say today that I didn’t), I took the exam. It had some theoretical questions about Object Oriented Design, some iOS specific questions, mathematical/algorithmic questions and a home assignment which I completed.

Things went my way, I passed the first part of the exam, handed over my code for review and guess what? I got my first iOS development job!!!

The salary wasn’t great, the hours were long but I knew I had began a path towards my lifetime goal…

Fifth step — today

I knew that job was not my final goal I looked at it as a few months internship. After some time in that company I went to work at an international startup company. I wanted to see and learn about different stages of a startup life and it was a good chance to join a development team of a medium size startup. I hoped this will help me explore a development team that had several developers on each platform (iOS, Android, Web). And this will be the first time working for a “real” startup. We were 3 developers on the team and the code base was huge. It was a really interesting opportunity but eventually both sides understood I needed more time to learn and that was not possible there.

I went job hunting again with the thought of finding a company that wanted to invest in a young developer. I got an interview at a new Silicon Valley based startup. They were looking for an iOS developer that will work alone on their app. With my little experience at that time It was hard to make the leap of faith and take the responsibility of being a sole developer of a new product, but it sounded really promising and I had a great “click” with the technical co-founder so… I became the 2nd technological employee and got a chance to experience a young startup company life. There I could bring all my skills to work and develop much more then my software skills. I had to do everything from product, technology decisions, recruitment decisions and even some design.

Today I’m still the lead iOS developer of that startup we had grown tremendously in revenue and in team members and it looks like the sky is the limit. I’m sure I contributed to that growth and the leap of faith from both sides turned out great. I had the chance of growing with the company as a key player, I gained experience in many things like team building, work processes, company culture and much more - which is exactly what I’m looking for.

It was and still is, a hard road, but who would have thought that a psychologist could become an IOS developer?

Well, I did… and it turned my life around in incredible ways.

This story is published in Noteworthy, where 10,000+ readers come every day to learn about the people & ideas shaping the products we love.

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