DAZ</codes>

Home » Blog » Career Change

How I Changed To A Career In Software Development

Written by DAZ on Fri, 2 May 2025
careerweb developmentrubyrails

At the start of 2024 I decided to change careers. After over 20 years teaching maths and computer science I decided to turn my passion into a profession and become a software developer. I had always loved coding and enjoyed teaching it, but was finding my hobby more fun than my day job and wanted to do it full time. And it turned out to be a great decision. I'm nearly a year into my first role as a Rails developer and have loved every minute of it!

It wasn't completely straightforward though ... the job market is very competitive and I needed to give my resume a full rewrite! I also needed to work on my LinkedIn profile. At first it was hard to get noticed - I had zero experience and couldn't even get an interview! It's that classic problem of how do you get any experience when even junior developer roles are asking for you to be proficient in over a dozen technologies? The many rejections were disheartening at times, but I just kept plugging away and spent every day working on my coding skills.

Recruiters get a bad rap at times and I had my fair share of some that wasted my time, but there were also some that were really helpful in opening doors and helping me apply to companies. One of them mentioned that I should put more focus on the fact that I could program in Ruby and use Rails. Once I did this I started to get more traction and landed a role soon after. Focusing on a particular skill really helped, especially one where there was some demand.

I joined the local Ruby User Group which really helped with networking. All the people there were really welcoming and gave me lots of helpful advice, including some hands on coding experience.

My top 5 tips for anyone looking to change careers or find a software development job are: