So I started considering a job in software development around October 2014. All I had with me were:

• First year computer science
• Mechatronics engineering (MATLAB and similar)
• Two years of PLC/SCADA/Cicode programming
• 9 months of being stuck on site and poking around with Linux, VPNs, vim, bash

Not too bad considering.

I have a extremely large appetite for self learning and research if something interests me enough, so for the next few months I applied for various software roles, while self learning. Codecademy, The Odin Project, The Rails Tutorial were part of it.

At the same time, applying to more control systems jobs was my other fulltime job. You know, in addition to my existing fulltime job of trying to be a software developer.

I suppose I lucked out in the end. I managed to score a role at The Frontier Group! At the end of the day, it was not my feeble attempts to learn software development that got me the role, it was a combination of the following things:

• The drive to learn something new
• The initiative to switch careers
• The ability to fit into the company culture
• My existing knowledge in mining and engineering

The actual role was not a development role unfortunately. I was employed as an ‘analyst developer’, which focuses on data analytics for various clients (usually mining). TFG is, however, mainly a web development company, and I hoped by just being I would have the opportunity to learn skills that I needed to be able to hold my own in this new industry.