Hi Campers!
I want to learn programming (web dev/full-stack?), but I don’t have much time for it. Few hours in the morning and evenings aren’t enough. I am currently working from 9 to 5 in warehouse. I don’t like this job and see no development prospects there.
What do you think about leaving job and learning at home full-time? I have some savings to survive few months, but I am a bit afraid a bit.
Thanks for any advice,
Kuba
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I am all about taking risks! Chances are, you will not be good enough in a few months to get a programming job, but with hard work you could be well on your way. Those are just the CHANCES though. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it.
If you decide you want to play it safe, try an evening coding bootcamp. Otherwise, keep learning on your own with the few hours you have each day. Above all, don’t give up if you decide it’s what you want to do, no matter how long it takes.
Those are your options. May the Force be with you!
Do you live on your own? If you have someone supportive who you could stay with to reduce costs, that might be an option. Just make sure that before you become a burden of any kind, you are sure that this is what you want to do.
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I live with my parents, so it wouldn’t be so bad. Coding bootcamps are very expensive in my country and there are no local ones.
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I did it myself. I quit my full-time job which paid decently and became a self-taught, fulltime, student of code.
My best advice is figure out what expenses you can do without for at least a year and have at least a year’s worth of savings. That way any emergencies will not wipe you out completely and force you to go back to work.
Also, when you finally take that leap of faith, spend more time reaching out to your local community. Whether it’s through LinkedIn or Twitter. If best face-to-face. Rule of thumb is, for every hour of coding you should spend two hours networking.
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In that case, it sounds like you’ll either need to save up for a bootcamp, switch to going to a school, or be self-taught, unless you’re able to find a personal mentor who can help you along (tough to find).
Sounds like you will just need to make a decision!
When I began learning, I was newly married with a baby on the way, working full-time, going to school full-time. Now I work full-time as a front end engineer. It CAN be done.
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You can do it, but I suggest you don’t quit.
For start, 3-4 hours a day could be good, later once stuffs get serious, you could take job as junior/rockie dev at somewhere and continue serious and pro courses.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Just keep the end goal in your mind! I got offered a job working in care today, I vowed I’d never work in care again after 5 years as a carer… but the hours are good for me; 3 12hour shifts a week, that gives me 4 days off a week to study and to finally achieve the goal of working with code! Keep learning and heading towards your goal, you will get there!
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I left my job to code 24/7 was a big risk but I don’t regret I was just really unhappy and wanted to learn javascript and work as a developer.
After six months I decided to apply for a couple of jobs, I got my first technical interview and it was successful. I don’t know if I’m going to get the job but I’m so happy now and I regret not quitting before.
That’s my experience I don’t want to tell you what to do!
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What if you would change from working full-time to part-time? At least you would not be putting yourself into this risky situation of ending up with no money and no income stream. However, in the other hand, if you would leave your job completely, you would be forced to learn programming and find a job/projects to do asap, so this would be like a kick in the ass and motivation at the same time. However, I know from my experience that in most of the situations additional stress does not help to cope with the problems and just makes everything worse. So I would think that the best is to find the middle point in this situation.
About learning programming, even though bootcamps are very helpful, I’m not sure if you can afford spending money on them. Better option would be to look for interactive learning sources which would teach you the theory part and allow to do practical tasks at the same time. In this way you would feel more confident that you do not only have the knowledge but actually know how to do things. An example of such sites could be CodeCademy, Bitdegree, and even here on FreeCodeCamp.
Good luck for you and just don’t let your hands down!
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I’m considering the same. I’ve rarely taken risks in life and now I’m a 44 yr old janitor. I’ve worked various jobs/shifts and never seem to carve out adequate time for study… Constantly having to stop in the middle of good run to go to work or else I’m too shattered to even think straight when a shift is over. Keep us posted!
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Even though I have started my coding lessons but not completed it, I plan to quit my job soon. I have a car and will be pat timing as a Uber cab driver to cover some bills. It will be temporary and once I’m able to get my first coding job, things can onle get better from there. Goodluck mate.
It’s painful when doing a job that you don’t like or don’t see any future.
However, programming as a job could be painful and boring too. Carefully decide to leave the current job if you can’t easily get a new one to cover the living expense.
Set a short-term goal for yourself to learn programming skills, and see how it goes. Good luck.
It’s hard to learn full time. Especially at the beginning when you got problems with the basic errors and got stuck on one line of code for 2 days. Thats the most frustrating and tiredsome thing in learning programming.
I totally understand. I’m actually taking this risk too. I work a seasonal job that goes down for a few months in the summertime. I’ve been there for the past 2.5 years and it’s only made me miserable. I’m taking a chance this year. They went down in the end of May (so I was laid off along with the other seasonal workers), so I’m on unemployment atm. But, so far I’m working on the 2nd certification and plan on finishing all 6 by the end of August. They plan to go back up around August 17th, but I’ve decided not to go back and dedicate the rest of this year to getting prepared for a dev job. I have enough savings to last me about 6 months once my unemployment runs out, so I know I have time.
I would say that life is too short not to take risks. I’m taking this risk because I know it’s something that I absolutely want to do and be apart of. I’m not trying to sway you either way, I’m just saying that before you take this risk, have a plan of action and give it your 100%. Good luck! 
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Hey I just quit and I’m going back to school full time. I"m also taking advantage of all these certifications that are offered for free on this site. If your disciplined and starving… not just hungry motivated but starving motivated and you put in the time then you can do it. A mentor is honestly what you want. I am fortunate enough to have my wifes father and her uncle who actual owns a pretty successful business. I do not work for them but the advice and direction i have received has put me months ahead of where i should be starting out. But stay on it and make sure this is truly what you want to do and that you can comprehend some of the more complex stuff, if so then go for it! good luck
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