Career Pivot


Personal

Updated Feb 10th, 2021

When I was in college I told myself that if things weren’t going great career-wise I would fall back on law school at 26. Well that didn’t happen and now I’m 30 and still don’t have it figured out.

Today I started with an open notebook paper and wrote down “selling value” as crucial to my success. I listed closing the deal and commercializing value under the word selling. Under providing value I wrote down Motion Graphics / Video editing / Web development and design, Financial planner, job (operations, programming).

I then looked up different job opportunities on indeed.com. searches included financial planner 68 jobs Motion Graphics 12 jobs video editor 15 jobs. I then looked at data analysts 997 jobs Java developer 601 jobs software developer 776 jobs it security 2200 jobs financial analyst 630 jobs software engineer 1600 jobs. The salaries for these positions were also much higher: IT security 114k, SQL Developer 81k, Java developer 89k, software engineer 75k.

It seems pretty clear that IT skills are in high demand and pay very well.

I’m about to put my financial career path behind me and move forward with the IT route. How could you not have to look at this data and not decide to make this decision.

Combine this with the fact that most of the financial jobs I see are really sales. I am not a sales guy and honestly I’m not a huge people person. What I am is analytic. Programming is like building spreadsheets but on steroids.

The problem with the financial world is the lack of the validation and the lack of building something tangible. You could have a great idea but until it gets validated in the market it doesn’t really mean much. That could take a lot of time. And you still don’t know if you’re right until it is validated. And the market can be irrational for a lot longer than you think. You can have a great idea but the market could be acting irrational. When I stopped trading and started thinking about motion graphics and web development I was super excited about the idea of working on something tangible at the end of my hard work I had something to show for it; a video a website, etc.

No I didn’t go to school to become a developer but I can do anything I set my mind to. I am good at learning and up to the challenge.

Self directed study can be a path to success. I have often said that going to college to get say a Spanish degree or foreign language degree is dumb because you can learn it on your own at a much cheaper cost and as long as you know the language people don’t need to see a degree they just need to know that you know the language. Programming language is no different if I can learn the languages all I need to do is prove that I’d learn the languages I don’t need a fancy degree to show me that.

A coding boot-camp may not be a bad idea either, it is the backup plan to self-directed study. The average length of a coding boot-camp is 12 weeks and the average cost is $12,000. On the surface it seems like a good investment. I will pursue the self-directed route first and if that doesn’t work will try a coding boot-camp before a formal degree.

Higher wages for developers may provide an opportunity for an early retirement with an aggressive enough savings plan. The nature of web development and the onset of the pandemic offers more potential for remote work and the flexibility that comes with that.

You can’t be stuck in your ways you have to adapt and evolve. I look at this new opportunity. I’m not completely disowning the world of Finance as there may be overlap and the experiences gained in the field will serve me well. For Example, there is a financial company called Forex Factory here in Tampa that has a programming job available for $100,000 per year.

My goal now is to learn as much as possible. Download information into my brain like in The Matrix. This is my specialty.