Well I am in Week 6 of the online, part-time Software Engineering coding bootcamp at FlatIron and I had every intention to write this post earlier but I have honestly been quite busy with managing course work and daily life but as they say, better late than never. So here we go. I wanted to document my journey in becoming a software engineer / web developer as sort of a diary for myself to reflect on later and maybe also as an inspiration for other individuals who are thinking about making a similar move. I’ll start off by saying a little bit about myself. I hold two degrees, a B.S. in Geology and a M.Eng in Petroleum Engineering. I am a Petroleum Engineer by experience and profession and have worked in the oil & gas industry (upstream side) for nearly 15 years. I was born & raised in Texas and although I have no family in the oil & gas industry it kind of fell into my lap after undergrad as I ended up taking the first job offer that I received after graduation which just so happened to be in oil & gas. From there, I discovered that the money in oil & gas is quite good and that sort of hooked me into it. I did have quite a passion for it as well which motivated me to enroll in graduate school to pursue my Master’s in Petr Eng while working full-time. But then came the downturn..
In 2015-16 oil prices began to drop dramatically from ~$120/bbl to ~$20/bbl. This was the biggest oil crash the world had seen since the 1980’s and it resulted in an alarming number of job losses in the industry. Unfortunately, I was one of the job loss statistics. I was working for Chevron at the time as a Deepwater Drilling Supervisor where I spent half the year on a ship in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico approximately ~200 miles away from the nearest landmass. I did this for 3.5 years and gained experiences that I would never have gained anywhere else but when oil began it’s dramatic slide, I was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was drilling offshore exploratory oil wells which cost anywhere from $300 million - $500 million a piece and were simply drilled for long term company growth (they did not generate any revenue). So needless to say, when oil crashed so did the need to drill highly expensive exploratory wells. I received my layoff notice in April 2016 and even though I had a pretty good idea it was coming beforehand, it was still a tough pill to swallow. I suffered the usual symptoms of losing a job: anger, depression, fear, etc and I did some traveling to try and clear my mind and with the hopes that the industry would rebound sooner rather than later. It did not. I was out of work from the oil & gas industry for a total of 1.5 years and during that time I took some side jobs in food delivery, catering, & bartending (I had never tried it and had always wanted to do it). It was during this time that I started to reflect on my interests and passions which I think was helped propelled by working in a completely different industry than I had ever worked in before. After about the 1 year mark of being laid off, I started to seriously think about a plan B career because I began having serious doubts that the industry would ever rebound.
I cannot remember exactly how I initially found out about coding bootcamps but it was most likely during one of my web searches where I got curious about jobs in other industries. I remember when I first found out about them I was very impressed with the focus on the practical, skill oriented curriculum they all shared. And with further research I began to discover just how much learning material (and lots of it free) was out there for computer programming in general.
I couldn’t technically classify myself as a complete beginner to programming because I had taken an entry-level programming class in Turbo Pascal when I was in undergrad. But to say I knew much about programming at all would definitely be an overstatement. My knowledge pretty much consisted of knowing what a variable and a loop was. So when I re-kindled my interested in programming I decided to do what most people with an interest in something would do, I sought out free learning material. It was at this time that I discovered free coding classes at places like Code Academy, FreeCodingCamp, etc. I started taking a couple of classes with the goal that I would try to determine if programming was a fit for me or not. And it was right about this time that I got a LinkedIn message from a former colleague of mine in the oil industry. He reached out because he had started his own oil company and was looking for some help. It was definitely inconvenient timing as I had just really sparked my interest in programming but the toll of 1.5yrs of no salary had taken its toll on my finances. So I decided to meet him for breakfast which turned into a job offer to join his company. So in July 2017 I decided to rejoin the oil & gas industry and put my dreams of becoming a software engineer on hold. Even after accepting the job offer I had a feeling deep down that I had a passion for software engineering and that the opportunity to do it would come again. Well fast-forward another 1.5 yrs and in December 2018 I decided to quit my job to enroll into FlatIron’s coding bootcamp.
It was a really tough decision to quit my job and give up a good salary but I knew that if I didn’t pursue my dreams I would regret it later in life. So I enrolled into FlatIron two weeks after quitting my job and I immediately started on the pre-work material for the bootcamp. I originally was enrolled in the February 2019 cohort but after finding out that I had to move in March, I decided to switch to the March 2019 cohort instead so that I would be able to focus all my time to the course. And I am very happy that I made that decision. The first two weeks of the bootcamp were basically review from the pre-work material so it was pretty relaxed but when Week 3 hit that’s when things began to get challenging. By Week 4 there were some challenging labs that made me question whether I was meant to become a programmer but with persistence & stubbornness I persevered through it. And now looking at Week 6 and beyond, I am confident that I can accomplish these challenges.
So why did I really choose software engineering? Well I didn’t mention it yet but I was a huge computer nerd back in middle school, high school, & college. I spent a good part of my high school years playing online games back when online gaming was really just beginning (Doom 2, Warcraft, Starcraft, Quake, EverQuest, etc). With all of this time devoted to being on computers, programming just felt natural. Also once I discovered what types of jobs were available to programmers and the quality of life and flexible schedule / location aspects they offered, it really appealed to me even more. I guess it didn’t hurt either when I found out that software engineers make decent salaries as well. Through the free coding classes that I took I found programming to be a really nice mix of problem solving, creativity, and engineering all mixed in together. And with my engineering background it gave me the satisfaction of hands-on problem solving that I was used to. So all those factors combined together lead me to decide that software engineering was a good fit.
As Week 6 begins I am starting to gain more confidence in my ability to conceptualize and understand the material. I still feel very challenged and uneasy as well at this point, but I feel like my understanding of the basic concepts, especially around Object Oriented Programming, at this point is fairly strong so hopefully it will assist my learning down the road. So what do I hope to accomplish from this bootcamp? Well first off, I want to gain a strong understanding of programming in general and learn enough so that I can continue my learning of programming after graduation. Second, I would like to land a job as a web developer / software engineer after completing the FlatIron course. And lastly, I am hopeful that software engineering will be a fulfilling lifelong career that will challenge me mentally as well as provide me with enough earnings to live a comfortable life.
So to end this post I guess I can say that if anyone has the desire to pursue their dream, especially in becoming a software developer, they can do it. I have given up a very nice salaried job and all the comforts that come with it and am now living pretty much like a poor college student but I know that it will be worth it in the end. So if my post hasn’t inspired you to pull the trigger on following your dreams yet, just remember: you only get one chance at life so you better make it count.
Best of luck in your journey and I will try to keep you updated on mine.