Should I stop or continue?

I don’t know if I should continue with the curriculum here at free code camp. The curriculum is great, however my personal situation is kind of questionable for the coder or programmer route. I live in Fort Smith, Arkansas, a town I can only describe as a small, scaled down version of Detroit. The only real jobs that are around here are in manufacturing, however all of the manufacturing has been leaving at a steady pace since the great recession. To give an example, the oldest manufacturer in the city, acme brick, just announced they will shut down their factories in the area here. Ever since the manufacturing left drugs like meth and crack have taken their place. What businesses are left are seen as corrupt along with the people who run the city. I graduated with a finance degree with the idea i would get my CFA someday, and that I would have been some financial big shot. However, due to the fact that the city is a massive crap hole I couldn’t find work in that field without some form of nepotism or cronyism, so I decided to teach myself how to code. The only downside is there aren’t any real tech companies that are close by. What I’m really trying to ask here is, with the terrible economic conditions of the city, my degree in a non-STEM field, and the lack of tech companies near by, is it worth continuing the free code camp curriculum. Am I going to put in all the hours and hard work for nothing and find myself in the same place I found myself in before I started, or am I going to somehow get lucky and some employer is going to ignore the fact that my degree is in finance and completely self taught?

If you learn X, but there are no jobs for X, how are you going to work unless you move?
This has nothing to do with FCC, or learning to code, just a life question you should be asking yourself due to your current predicament.

Considering your current predicament there are a few things to consider.

  1. You might need to move to find work, if there’s no work. Regardless of what you specialize in, or what live skills you use, if where you live lacks those sorts of job, its going to be basically worthless. Saying your willing to relocate helps when applying for jobs. (Remember you always have the last say even if you get a job offer)

  2. Luckily, development work is one of the few fields that can be done 100% remotely. Obviously you still need to find the job, and this also works against you, as you will need to complete for jobs against everyone anywhere in the world (more or less) So learning to code is defiantly a “way out” if you aren’t able to find local work.

  3. Remote development is difficult if you starting out tho, since if you know nothing how to work remotely you will have a tough time getting training since you can’t go to the next cubical and ask for help. It really depends on on the employer and your own set of skills.

  4. You can always work for yourself as a freelancer, but this is risky as being your own boss usually is.

I would want to close by saying that if you know your stuff, you know your stuff. If your a good developer you can get hired anywhere, regardless if your self taught. But, if the economic conditions are not well where you live, you might have to move to get that opportunity, or look into working remotely.

Goodluck :smiley:

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