Jumping into New Waters

Before starting my current role, I had more than 10 years’ experience working within software development in financial services, primarily focusing on .NET and backend services.

The sector was what I knew and had got used to, but after many years I decided to take the leap and move into a world that was completely different. I moved away from finance to become a software engineer in an emerging sector at a fast-growing company, Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) vendor, AppLearn.

Deciding to take a leap

I’m not the type of person that likes going out of my comfort zone. So why did I move into a sector that was completely new to me?

Well, my need for change was much greater. I felt I was stagnating in my current environment. I wanted to learn and broaden my horizon’s and be in a company where I could really have an impact. I wanted to get involved in all the stack, not just backend and really get some exciting experience. So, I decided to jump into new waters.

I knew I wanted to learn new tech and how other sectors operated. I knew I still had a lot of skills and experiences to offer. I also felt, really, it’s a person’s attitude and ability to learn quickly that really adds value. Luckily for me, I found that increasingly more and more companies are also realising this too.

Dev candidates are not going to have the whole tech stack. Most will need a degree of upskilling. Fortunately, I found that today there is an appreciation that actually, your soft skills and attitude are just as important. In fact, your different background is an opportunity to introduce new ideas and approaches.

AppLearn understood and really embraced these points. They recognised that a lot of software skills are transferrable. Bashing out syntactically correct code at the speed of light is not enough. Your experience and ability to create clean, well designed, tested, maintainable, resilient code is more important. And all those things can be learned across all languages.

Embracing your attitude and transferable skills

If you feel like you need to grow and find a new job, but you are worried about if you can make it work, here are some points to help you make that step:

Attitude will see you through:

· Your passion to grow and learn is something your future company should really value. Nothing stays still in tech, and your enthusiasm to learn will always be needed to stay ahead.

· Recognise that a lot of hard work will be involved, but be up for the challenge. Your determination and willingness to learn will show through.

· Building good software is best done as a team. Your skills that have enabled you to work well in teams through the good and the bad will always be required and valued.

· Call on times where you had to learn something new very quickly in the past. Even a small example can give you the confidence to know that you can take on the challenge.

Transferrable software skills to call on:

· Experience in paradigms you have used, such as OOP or functional

· Experience of applying software principles, like SOLID

· Clean code practices, such as KISS, YAGNI, DRY, etc.

· Approach and experience in ensuring quality e.g. unit tests

· Experience in different architectures e.g. microservices and monoliths

· Experience in ensuring secure, reliable and resilient systems

Delivery experience worth referencing:

· Have you used agile frameworks before in a team? What about scrum or Kanban?

· What deployment frameworks have you used? Have you used CICD?

· What testing environments have you used to ensure quality?

Making the change

When I decided to embrace this new opportunity, my background in other sectors gave me an advantage of having a fresh approach to the work and bringing new ideas to the table. If you can be confident to make the change, it can be incredibly rewarding. You can — and will — make it work.

A final piece of advice to note is in the job specification itself. If this is more open, rather than long and prescriptive, it is a good hint that the company is flexible. It’s a sign the organisation has a culture that values positive attitude and a passion to grow and learn. The world of tech is really fast paced, but if you can find a place like this and match it with enthusiasm, you’ll have no problem getting and staying ahead.

I have been at AppLearn about a year and half now. Did I make the right decision? Absolutely. Has it been easy? No!

It has been hard work to skill up in new languages and services — and I’m still learning! But I love that I am constantly learning new things. I love that I’m given the space to go ahead and crack on with it. And I love directly seeing the impact of what we are producing together as a team.

So, in short, embracing your transferable skills and taking on challenges is something I’d encourage all people in all sectors to do — not just tech. By broadening your horizons, you can find and enjoy all sorts of exciting opportunities.