When the teacher becomes a student: an honest guide to becoming a developer

Some developers always had the ambition to work in tech, others take the more scenic route. Changing or starting a new career can be a hard time. I did this transition over four years while being a secondary school teacher. As a teacher you gain a strong insight into how a diverse group of people learn. When applying these skills to my own career change I picked up lots of tips and tricks for anyone looking to change career or improve their learning. Having a strong knowledge of how to code is not the only thing that gets you and keeps you in a job as a coder but it’s pretty important.

Being a student on evenings and weekends, and a teacher as the day job was a very stressful but rewarding time. While it was a lot of (mostly) enjoyable work, having strong foundations in picking up new knowledge was extremely helpful and in an ever changing and evolving profession such as tech this is an invaluable skill. This became even more apparent once I started my role as a junior software engineer in a programming language unknown to me!

The more people that are able to learn effectively the better for everyone. How else are we all meant to keep up with that new JavaScript framework?

Bio

Ed is currently a Junior Software Developer at Bluefruit Software, his first tech job. He’s been there for half a year and before that spent four years teaching music at a secondary school in London while learning to code in his spare time.

In the journey to becoming a developer Ed also started a podcast, A Question of Code, with the aim of answering some of the more common questions that people ask when learning to code.

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