How to get a Tech Job in Less than a Year

From non-tech to all tech, why learning to code was the best career move I ever made

In December 2017 I was going through a redundancy process at an organisation I really cared about for a job I absolutely loved. I worked for a crisis project helping people in Leeds who were facing severe destitution. Every day brought a new heartbreaking story or social injustice to our door. It was fast-paced, emotionally draining but incredibly rewarding. Being privy to the challenges and barriers that the most vulnerable people in society face, especially during these times of austerity, continues to inform everything I do; and while we didn’t change the world, we made a lot of lives better.

But money in the third sector is tight and restructures are common. The roles of many get consolidated into one person and cuts have to be made. This is what I was faced with three days before Christmas when I was told I was being let go.

Being unemployed during the most expensive time of the year is gut-wrenchingly stressful!
I had moments where I was a complete mess and I was taking stock of what I was going to do next. By chance a few weeks prior I came across an ad for a local event that would change my whole life. It made me excited, it made me scared but it gave me something to work towards. It gave me hope.

In the weeks leading up to my redundancy, I heard about an event the broadcaster Sky was hosting. The event was Sky’s Get into Tech day. A fantastic initiative aimed at getting women into tech from non-technical backgrounds by teaching them how to code and maybe getting a job out of it at the end of it — very appealing considering my situation!

Up until this point, I had never written a line of code in my life. I have an undergraduate degree and a masters degree both in what I like to call ‘mega-humanities’ subjects. I have never been on Facebook, I don’t have Instagram, Whatsapp or Snapchat and my mobile phone is an ancient Nokia which can’t access the internet. I wasn’t what you immediately thought of when you thought ‘software developer’. Yet something was alluring about the tech industry, particularly coding, which seemed to have a mystical quality. Programmes written in the digital world can come to life and be a tangible output in the real world — modern wizardry!

Even though I could barely contain my excitement about seeing what the tech industry could offer me, I kept it a secret that I was going to Sky’s open day. I was worried that someone would convince me that it was a silly idea to even think about retraining for a career in tech considering my background. I had always assumed you need a computer science degree to work in tech so I was still grappling with that misconception myself, let alone trying to justify my choice to others.

When I arrived at Sky’s office I was in awe. The third sector didn’t look anything like this and I was duly impressed with the atmosphere, the coffee bar and the videogame set up — you know, all the important things!

We had tours around the building, talks on why tech was great and why Sky was wanting to recruit more women into the industry, and we did a few pseudo coding exercises. We were told to expect an email if we’d been shortlisted to the next stage of interviews for the Get into Tech course in due course. On the day they said over 300 women had applied for the course and they shortlisted it down to half (those shortlisted were invited to the open day I attended) and then out of those 150 people there would be 18 places available on the course. Not great odds.

I must have checked my email every five minutes in the week that followed until finally, it landed in my inbox…..

“Thank you for coming…”

I didn’t get through to the next round. Despite being gutted that I didn’t get on the course I knew I had well and truly fallen in love with the industry. It didn’t matter that Sky didn’t want me, I was going to get into tech regardless.

I spent the next few months teaching myself HTML, CSS and JavaScript like it was a full-time job. My life was entirely devoted to FreeCodeCamp, CodeAcademy, Youtube videos on coding and I even enrolled on a short course in Manchester held by coding bootcampers, NorthCoders. Every spare minute was spent learning to code while everything and everyone else in my life got thoroughly neglected.

It was all great fun making cat apps and card games until it wasn’t fun anymore. I had hit the dreaded learning curve and the concepts I was learning got harder and harder. I spent more time gritting my teeth at broken code than revelling in the glory of a well-executed function. I’d curse my sausage hands for every missed semi-colon or spend hours correcting syntax errors from unforgiving languages. Coding was becoming a chore and I’d sit at my computer either screaming or crying. I started to think that this was all a mistake. That I had wasted my time, neglected my family and for what? If I got stuck I had no-one to ask for help and I’d lose days on a broken line of code.

That’s when I decided to go find my tech tribe. I had spent too much time in isolation on my coding journey. I needed to ask someone:

“Is it supposed to be this hard?”

“I’m I kidding myself that I can retrain for a career in tech in my 30s?”

“What does ‘job ready’ look like?”

“I am I hyperventilating right now?!”

I knew carrying on in this way would lead to burnout and then I’d end up giving up and all those hours, weeks, months of teaching myself to code. It would have all been for nothing.

After a quick Google I found out that Leeds has quite the buoyant tech community! Fantastic! Now where to start….?

Leeds caters to nearly every flavour of tech that you could want. Love PHP? There’s a group for that. Interested in AI? Like to code with coffee? Get out of bed for .NET? I had plenty to choose from.

I’m indebted to fantastic groups such as CodeUp Leeds who take the time to host coding lessons (for free!) in a friendly and supportive environment. Wonderful women’s groups such as She Does Digital and Ladies of Code were fantastic for not only putting on technical talks, but also address wider issues such as impostor syndrome, embracing failure and giving me some inspiring female role models to look up to — many of which came into tech from a non-technical backgrounds like me.

I found in my tech tribe, people who loved to geek-out on tech, people who had gone through the same highs and lows of learning to code, who also wanted to strive for an inclusive digital space.

I was welcomed not in-spite of my newness to the industry, but because of my newness. People wanted to be mentors to me and give me advice because they knew what it was like to start on this tech journey. I’ve never come across an industry that has been so geared to seeing its peers succeed.

It was during the Leeds Digital festival that I realised I had made the right choice in my career change. I had such a blast attending and I must have gone to over twenty events, covering loads of different topics (another thing I love about tech — it’s so varied and ever-changing).

One event that stood out for me was The Big NHS Digital Breakfast. They gave a fantastic talk about all the great work they were doing digitally within the NHS. I was drawn to the idea of tech for good and I knew from my own experience in the third sector, that there was a huge digital divide out there that companies we’re acknowledging. Maybe that could be my tech calling?
I was delighted to find out that they had a graduate scheme. Their graduate scheme isn’t your typical graduate scheme as to apply you don’t need to have recently graduated (bonus, I graduated years ago!) and you don’t need a computer science degree to apply for a tech role (double bonus!). I was straight online and put my application in the same day.

There was quite a lot of shortlisting tests to go through but I passed every round and got through to the assessment day.

It was during the interview that I realised how far I had come in my journey into tech. I told them about all the hours I spent learning how to code, my dedication to retraining, all the groups I had joined, the conferences I attended, how I wanted to help people with tech and how much I had fallen in love with all things tech.

I was proud of myself in that moment and I was confident I had just as much right to be there as any computer science degree.

NHS Digital must have thought so too as I was offered the graduate role which I accepted instantly.

It has been a little over 18 months since I started my journey into tech. I’m still getting used to referring to myself as a developer. Not every day has been amazing but it has been a whirlwind journey that I am so glad I took the risk and retrained for.

The tech industry has presented me with so many opportunities that I never had in any of the other industries that I have previously worked in. Tech has enabled me to set up my own code clubs at NHS Digital to teach our non-technical staff how to code (future post to follow!). I’ve had people ask to invest in me financially to bring my ideas to a wider audience. I’ve become a public speaker to inspire others to consider a career in tech. I am a tech activist fighting for digital inclusion and I have become a role model for other women in tech. In tech, I feel like I have a voice and the tools to make a real difference — The best part is that I’m just getting started and I cant wait to see where this journey will lead to next.

I hope I can inspire you to consider a career in tech regardless of where you are in your life. As George Eliot once said:

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