Discussion on "Bartender to Full Stack Engineer - How did I make it happen? 🍸 => 💻"

Gabor Pfalzer · 2021-12-28T15:15:18.788Z

Hello everyone! 👋 My name is Gabor, I live in London, United Kingdom. In early 2020, I lost my new job as a bartender. Never been unemployed in my life for more than a few weeks, and I was very confident in my skills in my chosen career. Thanks to w...

This is very inspiring, Gabor. I'm currently working in finance and trying to break into tech. I think what's more challenging than solving technical problems is the loneliness where none of your peers are into coding.

But glad to see so many people here are on a similar path! I believe we can all end up in our dream places.

Hi Gabor,

One of the most inspiring articles I read in a long time! Thank you so much!

My personal journey is quite different from yours, but you asked for comments from a "senior" perspective, so here we go.

I am in this game for 27 years now, also learning how to code at the tender age of 11 or some such and founding my first software company at 20 (and because of this eventually dropping out of college without a degree). It was quite the trip with a lot of ups and downs, but still standing after all those years and still loving what I do.

What I can tell your readers here from my experience:

The market for software engineers (also junior) has never been better. It is extremely hard to find good people and all companies I work for struggle to staff their projects. This will not change any time soon.
The best colleagues I knew over the years have been career changers like you, who brought in their experience to an otherwise rather homogenous work environment.
Degrees or certificates are much less important in the software industry then in other fields. What matters most is your track record (of projects or jobs) or - lacking that - your portfolio and proof of work.

So I would also emphasize some of your points:

If you are new with no track record to show, find some topic that you really care about and build something around this.

Your D&D app (which being a DM myself, I would love to check out btw) is a perfect example. Start and solve all problems you encounter by googling and trying things out. This is what 90% of software development is all about anyways.

"HelloWorld"-kind tutorials are good for learning but irrelevant as a showcase. Rather go for a bigger (even if eventually unfinished) project where you really put your own thoughts and heart in.

The market is huge, so apart from "software" try to define what industry you want to work in. Entertainment / Games? Web / e-Commerce? Finance? Big Business or rather the small Startup?

The workplaces you find will be hugely different and this can make all the difference from a job you love vs a daily grind. If as a career changer you liked your former work and there is any IT in there - why not focus on it? Bring in what you know.

I mean as a bartender you can probably innovate with a bit of tech - be it reservations, ordering via app, ordering your own custom cocktail though an app. You know your workflows best. I bet with a bit of research you will find a couple of companies who specialize in this and they will want YOU even if the next guy is the better programmer.

The jobs are there. Guaranteed.

Thank you very much for your response Tobias, I really appreciate the insight, you confirm quite a lot of my suspicions I'm having.

I strongly agree with you, recommending to work on strong, complex projects with active problem solving, and I love the approach of using your past niches and interests as a focus for projects. Helped me building the trading app, I love working on anything role playing based, and I have multiple future side projects planned in bartending and hospitality, once I gained some experience. There are some pain points nobody is even trying to address. I am loving my current job, and working really hard on that particular product, so that is where my focus is at the moment.

I would love to show you the D&D app, but unfortunately, we decided not to finish it. It was using an old (3.5) version of D&D that not many people use it anymore, and for the new versions, there are official, free alternatives we don't want to compete with. It was a blast to build it, benefitted us both, and we will find other cool projects to work on on the side :)

Thank you again for weighing in, I always love to see a more experienced opinion, adds a lot of value to the post. Keep pushing everyone, the jobs are there!

Your story gives me strength to follow the path I chose, and reach destination at the end, even when sometimes it seems impossible.

I hope this helps! Best of luck to your journey, and feel free to reach out if you need any help, or just some encouragement.

Very well written post, real good insights into the journey it took to get that engineering role.

teatv.ltd hellodear.in

Thank you, really glad you enjoyed it!

What an incredible story! It proves that humans can do everything they have in mind!

Keep thriving, happy new year Gabor Pfalzer.

Thank you! I really hope I can read a lot of success stories like mine, this time next year. If I contributed to any, it was worth writing this down :)

Your journey was really tough. Nevertheless, you did it. Congratulations. Keep it up. It was definitely a nice read and inspiring as well.

Thank you Raj! In my personal opinion, I think I got away with it pretty cheap. Considering all the stories I hear from people in different parts of the world, I consider myself extremely privileged. I hope my point of view helps though :)

It was very inspiring. This really says that there will be fruit for all my hard work. thanks for sharing this ^_^

Thank you! Definitely so. It's not an easy thing to do, and there are going to be frustrations, but it's a lot easier to deal with them, if you expect them, and know how to tackle them head on. Fingers crossed for you, keep working hard!

This is so inspirational Gabor 👏. I recently started guiding/teaching my non-technical friend web dev and I love sharing stories like this with him 🙏

Very glad to hear, thank you very much! It's so much easier if we help each other, I'm looking after a couple of friends as well like that. The industry desperately needs fresh talents, and employers who give them their first chance. Thank you!

I must say that we have some realities in common: I moved to a new location (Germany, but just this year) and faced with the realities of a different language, though I smashed an advanced exam in it. Also, my first article so far on this platform about how I became a web developer.

So I'm trying to make up for my portfolio in 2022 since I committed this year pretty much to travelling/the langauge. But I'm always building mediocre or simple apps and I wouldn't say I've gone outside of my comfort zone. I think I need a nudge, your "extra mile" kind of mindset and especially not being afraid to do things more complicated.

Inspiring story, by the way. Thank you!

Hi John! Congrats for the advanced exam, hats off. I did almost 2 and a half weeks of German in elementary school, that was about enough for this quarter of the century. I am thinking about picking it up at some point, even if only for my surname. People trying to speak German to me sometimes is kind of a recurring theme.

Good luck with building your portfolio. Once you are ready to share, I would love to have a look. Taking an extra step with my projects proved incredibly useful for me. If you find it difficult to start, I would recommend to start small, but step ahead, like I did with my mini projects. Very simple stuff, that has something special going for it. Then you can build up for larger ones. When it comes to an interview then, you will have a clear reason to talk about anything you build, and a strong answer of what did you learn from it.

I'll check out your article as well! Thanks for reading!

Wow that was a pretty incredible story Gabor Pfalzer I read the whole article from start to finish! Probably one of the best articles I have read in 2021.

This is proof that anybody can transition into tech you just need a plan and lots of free time and determination to reach you goals. Going hard is the best way to cover all of your bases and get you re-skilled and fast!

I did something similar too when I was between jobs and struggling to get back into a tech role. I was relentless with my learning and blocked out the toxic negative people who believed that I was not good enough. Proved them all wrong and here I stand now completely changed and on a good path.

Thank you Andrew, glad you enjoyed it! 🙏

I know exactly what you mean... and this way of learning is probably something I'm good at. I'm very glad it put me in a position, where I am having tons of responsibilities and immediate impact, straight in my first position. I just really hope it won't discourage people, I honestly think, somewhere around half of this should be enough to land an entry level job.

What an amazing journey!

That made for such an in-depth, inspiring read. Thanks for taking the time to write all this up. This is seriously going to inspire many self-taught developers to do the same!

I really hope so. At was very nice to write this out of myself at the end of a very successful year. It ended up being incredibly long (so was the year), but I tried to keep it very much in context. Everyone will have a different story for sure, but themes could be very similar.

Thank you Gabor for sharing your story!

I'm sure it'll inspire others to follow your path.

Enjoy your First Christmas Holidays! 🎄

Thank you for reading! It's finally a nice season of the year ⛄

This is next level inspiring. Speechless!

Let's hope it helps people get started, or push through. 🙏 Everyone in this knows exactly how had is it to keep going, with no end in sight.

Very well written post, real good insights into the journey it took to get that engineering role. Really impressed with your approach to it all and thanks for the help so far!

Thanks Luke! The pleasure is mine :)

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