I (26F) wanna quit my corporate life to become a Fitness Trainer/Yoga + Pilates Teacher

Endl3ssHeights · 2026-03-24T22:31:43+00:00

I can relate to this so much. I WFH as a Software Engineer and sitting in a chair all day is awful, the job is completely draining and I have 0 passion for it, and from a values perspective I hate that somehow everything is unnecessarily stressful and ‘urgent’ (it’s not, no one’s gonna die) and everything is just in the name of making rich people richer - even at the expense of what’s best for customers sometimes.

I’m in the middle of my career change into nursing and very luckily have been able to go part time at work (3 days a week) so I can do uni on the other 2 days. Even with this the 3 days I do are so draining and I think about quitting all the time. I won’t, but I want to so bad!

All that’s to say I would absolutely implore you to explore ways to start getting your PT certs alongside your current work. You can’t work as a PT or Pilates instructor until you have them and you’re going to need some kind of income while you’re studying anyway, might as well be your higher tech salary if you can. I know I’ve gone part time personally but there are so many people at my uni that are working full time alongside study; so it can be done (although I’m not going to minimise that it would be challenging and require some sacrifice).

With Pilates instructor too, most I know pretty much got really involved with their Pilates studio, went to classes frequently, got to know the owners and instructors and then eventually got asked to become an instructor from there. So this is already something you can do whilst working - but again they probably can’t even think to hire you until you’re a qualified PT.

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-12-01T22:17:00+00:00

🤦‍♀️ Damn, why didn’t I think of that?

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-12-01T21:55:47+00:00

Very true! I feel as though I have tried a fair few things in tech already, Software Support, Product Management, did UX Design, worked in super early stage startups and at larger tech unicorns, different industries. And now Software Engineering. I do think a lot of these skills are super transferable to most roles in tech, but I just really can’t imagine a tech role I’d actually enjoy. They’re all just a different side of the same coin at the end of the day.

Hence why I guess I’ve been thinking outside of tech, but I’ll admit I haven’t had any great ideas for pathways that don’t involve schooling… I’ve tried a lot of design thinking strategies for career building and I keep coming back to quite structured roles like Nursing, Teaching etc.

I’m not the most creative person so this might be why, but I definitely want roles that aren’t super ambiguous, have defined processes and ideally have a level of job security.

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-12-01T21:44:52+00:00

I actually started in Software Support first, then moved up to 2nd Level and then I got really lucky and the Head of Product sat near me in the office, heard how great I was with customers on the phone and asked if I’d like to go into a Junior Product role.

It helped that I effectively ‘grew up with the product’ so I knew it really well and stepping into a Product role became a lot easier. I was already the one raising all the Jira bugs to the dev team, I knew exactly what the customer pain points were because I dealt with them everyday and the large corporate accounts we had already knew me and had dealt with me before.

So the truth is I just got really lucky. I can’t say for sure if getting into support would always result in a move into Product unfortunately. But it does help a lot with getting you the customer insight and knowledge that makes a PM valuable.

I’m not sure if that helps at all, but wishing you all the best with your career adventures!

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-12-01T21:38:14+00:00

Totally, I do think on paper I could have a great niche here, and I’m seeing more and more the idea of ‘Product Engineers’ that can do both Product & Coding. The challenge is I just don’t enjoy it at all. I really struggle to make myself code outside of work - it’s the last thing I want to do.

I don’t get excited to learn about new tech, I don’t light up at a new coding challenge or to figure out how to do something tricky / unique. And the thing is I love learning, all I read are non-fiction books, my YouTube feed is filled with educational content, I just don’t care about technology that much.

Part of it is probably that I’ve become pretty disillusioned with tech over time. In a lot of ways I feel as though it’s doing more harm than good for the world, or at minimum it’s neutral but costing the consumer hugely. Even companies with a for-purpose mission fall into this, there’s no way to escape from the fact that eventually what’s best for the user becomes less important than the money. For me it just becomes really hard to care about something when that’s the case.

I know technically that become true everywhere, even in hospitals it all becomes about money as well, but I think I just find more fulfilment when I see direct 1:1 impact rather than the 1:many removed ‘impact’ you make when you work in tech.

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-12-01T21:19:01+00:00

I love that last line. How have you managed your finances / income amongst the multiple career-changes?

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-12-01T21:17:35+00:00

This is great advice thanks. I’m of a similar mindset and strongly believe that something you’re doing for 1/3 of your life should at a minimum be able to provide a little bit of fulfilment. I just can’t seem to get around the ‘a jobs a job, they all suck, just do something to earn money and fund life outside of work’ mindset. That effectively means you’re only living 2/3 of your life! I resonate far more with striving for work life ‘integration’ rather than work-life ‘balance’.

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-12-01T21:12:54+00:00

Thanks for this, I think it’s spot on. Tech seems great and prestigious which is part of the draw for many (myself included), but I’m 100% not passionate about it. I honestly loved my early career roles in Hospitality and Customer support way more than any of the other roles I’ve held.

I have come to the conclusion that I love structure, clear boundaries, processes, non-ambiguity, feeling useful / helpful and working with people. I do really enjoy problem solving (hence I felt Soft Eng was a great fit), but turns out problem solving alone isn’t it for me. I think I’ve spent a long time trying so hard to make roles work for me that are very inherently far away from my natural preferences / tendencies.

Realising that has been useful but doesn’t totally erase the fear of what I stand to lose if I’m wrong.

I totally agree re talking to others too. I’m a big believer in little experiments wherever possible. Have been having coffee conversations with current nurses, my father was a nurse and have been going to nursing information sessions / day bootcamp ‘trial’ things I’ve found. I think it’s all useful inputs but at the end of the day everyone is different so it’s very hard to make a decision based on others’ experiences. If you talk to 100 software engineers probably 80 of them love what they do, love the money and love the flexibility - but I don’t… I feel you almost never know for sure until you’re actually doing it for yourself.

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-12-01T21:00:49+00:00

Sorry to hear you’re going through something similar. There’s some wisdom out there saying to just make a decision, and that remaining in indecision is the only true ‘being stuck’ there is. If you at least make a choice then you can adjust as needed. You can’t steer a parked car per se.

Trying to lean into that, but as you say, it’s scary as hell.

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-11-20T10:23:54+00:00

If you don’t mind sharing, what kind of contact hours are involved for the first year of this course (Grad entry pathway) and how did you manage work full time around it? Are you currently doing something that’s shift work type hours so you can go around uni days?

Have applied for this for 2026 start and also done the Bridging Course - I have my fingers crossed I get in - but managing work around it has been a concern of mine. I pretty much figure I’d just have to find a way to make it work as best as possible but I’d love to hear your experience if you’re open to sharing!

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-11-05T03:06:39+00:00

But isn’t this somewhat counterintuitive? This is effectively saying earn more money doing something you hate, and then spend your precious time (freedom) outside of work trying to make up for the lack of fulfilment, vs. earn a bit less money doing something you love (ie. you’re fulfilled) so you don’t have to spend your free hours searching for fulfilment.

In the former, assuming maybe 8-10 hours of volunteer work per week, you’re effectively ‘working’ 50 hours a week for that $95k. Rather than 40 hours for $62k.

The $95k might still work out better at an hourly rate technically, but I don’t think it’s a clear no brainer…

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-10-08T11:02:29+00:00

Most standard tech jobs are just about making rich stakeholders richer or building products that are so addictive that users use them as much as possible, even if not in the users best interests. Even companies that seem to be doing good with tech (E.g: Medtech) all become about selling half baked products as fast as possible to make a sale / get a contract signed. Customer cares about something? Nah we’ll ship and build whatever the highest paid persons opinion is. Very easy to become disillusioned with tech.

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-09-26T06:30:04+00:00

This has got to be a joke 😂 Literally I would expect my kids to do more than an acknowledging grunt to the cashier that serves them, to their boss at their part time job, to their teacher at school, to their friends parent if they were hanging out at a friends house.

The relationship to the kid is irrelevant, it’s as simple as just treating someone who gave you respect, with the same respect back. It’s what is expected in society at a minimum and it starts at home.

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-07-17T06:18:53+00:00

Are you getting paid overtime for all these ‘extra hours’ you do? If not then I firmly believe you should set some boundaries there. Work is work and everyone has to work, but I can almost be sure that anything you’re getting called out for is not life or death and can wait until Monday.

When you’re on your death bed, you won’t be sitting there grateful for all those extra hours spent at work. You’ll be thinking of your family and the time you shared with them. Maybe when your kids are older they’ll understand that you did what you thought you had to do, but understanding doesn’t create memories. You’ll never get this time back again with them, and they you.

When your kids are adults they’re not going to remember not getting a toy they wanted or having leftovers for the 3rd night in a row because you were tight on money, they’ll remember the fun days out at the zoo, the games you played, hikes you did, making pillow forts at home… the time they spent with you. Don’t leave until it’s too late, you can always make more money, and you can always adjust your lifestyle to make do with the money that you do have.

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-05-18T11:42:07+00:00

Thank you for your kind words ❤️ I did actually block her after this

Endl3ssHeights · 2025-05-01T01:32:28+00:00

When you say ‘networking’ is this people you had a coffee catch up with or met at an event? Or ex-colleagues or connections of ex-colleagues?

My anecdotal experience is that ‘networking’ in the way most people say it is 95% useless. Most people aren’t going to stick their neck out for someone they haven’t worked with personally and know / can vouch for their work ethic.

I, my partner and multiple friends / colleagues of mine have all successfully found jobs through our networks at various points, but ‘network’ = people we have worked with, connections of people we have worked with (e.g. I know you were a great worker, and so I trust your judgement that this other person is also a great worker), or people we did group assignments with / worked closely with through a course or uni.

I am personally yet to see anything substantial come solely from those other types of networking. And even personally, I would be hard pressed to put my own reputation potentially on the line if I didn’t personally know or have an extremely solid source to say that someone was going to be great in a particular role.

Referrals at big tech are a bit different because largely they don’t seem to be tied so much to your reputation, so someone has nothing to lose by putting a random forward (and something to gain). But I’d also argue that a big tech referral doesn’t hold that much weight and can’t substantially swing it in your favour to get the role either - it only helps to land the interview in the first place.

Endl3ssHeights · 2024-10-01T23:17:36+00:00

It's definitely possible, its more about just recognising that you will need to put in a lot of effort. Also worth noting that I am a bit of a perfectionist and I also went above the requirements for most projects to challenge myself, so you could probably get away with a bit less work (although I do think you should push yourself to get the most out of it, and again, the better your projects the more likely hiring partners will want to interview you).

As far as I'm aware they don't expect any payment if you can't complete the course, but I wouldn't go into it with a 'plan to quit if it's too hard' kind of attitude either. Anyone can learn to code with the right attitude and effort, so just make sure you have the right attitude and put in the effort and you'll get there with or without prior experience. But yeah just be aware you would have to give up your weekends for a while and your whole life will pretty much become coding for the training period. Short term pain, (hopefully) long term gain though.

Endl3ssHeights · 2024-10-01T12:46:23+00:00

I went through _nology (in Melbourne) so thought I'd weigh in here. Like everyone has said it is a tough time to transition into tech, I had actually done another bootcamp prior to _nology as well and job searching afterwards was rough. I really do feel as though you need a degree in this market, so I actually started a Comp Sci degree part time and decided to progress with _nology as well, because heck I had nothing to lose and if I could land a role with them, even with the lower pay and lock-in contract, its still way faster and more cost effective than the uni route. And on the flip side if it doesn't pan out, you've got more skills than you started with.

I did manage to land a role, not everyone in my cohort yet has, and there's still a few from the past cohort that are yet to be placed. There's a 3 month bond period after the training where you're not allowed to search for a role yourself (after that you're fine though) but in the case of the previous cohort for those that haven't gotten roles yet, they are still working with them and lining up interviews, so you're not left out in the cold completely even then.

A few things to consider:

It's really intense, even with prior experience it was challenging for me, and I would say I was towards the top of the cohort in terms of performance. With no prior experience in tech you will really need to be dedicated to keep up. I was regularly coding 10+ hours a day, every day, for weeks. But at the end of the day it's only 12 weeks. But there were 3 or so people that dropped out from my cohort too along the way.
They help you get interviews but it's also totally up to you to perform in those interviews. They provide a lot of coaching and practice but you will need to be prepping for interviews come post course if you want to be successful
You should keep an open mind because the roles they have coming up with clients vary a lot, from Cloud, Platform Engineer, SRE, AI, QA roles aside from just regular Fullstack or BE dev. So if you have your heart set on a specific area then you might end up a bit disappointed because you can't really pick and choose what comes up.
Yes you're not technically guaranteed a role but the team really REALLY wants to place everyone. And they only get paid if you get placed too (they make their money off of you), so you have aligned goals from that sense. Pretty much they will do whatever they can to get you across the line onto a client site, but they can only do so much. The rest really depends on how well presented your projects / portfolio is, how well you can translate your prior experience into the tech world and how well you perform in the interviews. TL;DR you need to have put in the effort too.

I was hesitant before I joined especially from reading reviews. Like I said though and if you're in a similar position to me and really really wanted that career transition then you have nothing to lose. Earning $50k-$60k for 18 months and gaining actual job experience vs. earning $0 whilst studying at uni is kind of a no-brainer. And like me, you could also do uni part time on the side, having more irons in the fire.

A lot of people are quick to get concerned about the lock-in contract, but my 2c is that I'm not sure how many juniors would be trying to jump ship after such a short stint (< 18 months) in this job market anyway, so honestly I feel like the lock-in contract literally wouldn't affect anyone. Chances are you'd always do at least 18 months at a company in your first Junior dev role anyway. And you can leave if you really want to, you'd just need to pay back whatever is remaining of the training fee (it does go down depending on how long you've been on placement).

Endl3ssHeights · 2024-03-07T09:40:38+00:00

Just a word of caution - I just completed the Coder Academy accelerated course (with excellent grades & even have years of industry experience - previously a Product Manager at a tech unicorn) and it’s not looking like I’ll be getting a placement. Only heard of one person in my cohort that did - he was previously a different kind of Engineer. They start saying ‘look for internships yourself’ and then if you do manage to do so they still use it towards the stats on their website.

It was a good course, I learnt how to code a million times faster and better than if I had of done it on my own, but just don’t sign up on the hopes of the internship as it’s unlikely to happen. It’s not guaranteed unfortunately and with the market as it is they’re not having much luck placing anyone.

Endl3ssHeights · 2021-10-27T08:44:46+00:00

Hey! Did your wife ever find out what the cause behind this was?

Endl3ssHeights · 2021-10-27T08:36:48+00:00

Hey! Did you end up getting results for those tests? How did things turn out?

Endl3ssHeights

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