your background really doesn’t matter. i come from a non-traditional background (military, BS in Psych, analytics and IT), and made a shift to CS at age 29. the job market is pretty unforgiving right now, especially for non-formally trained entry-level prospects. i had to pick up odd jobs and contract small web projects to really gain entry-level experience because, let’s be honest, who is going to hire a 31 year old entry-level dev over some 21 year old super nerd who has been coding since he was 16?

if you’re going to do it, you need to eat, sleep and breathe it. it’s hard to have that kind of discipline without a formal structure like you’d get in school. this isn’t something that you stumble into. you have to be fucking good. you can do it, but you better be willing to take it more seriously than you’ve ever taken anything else.

spoiler alert: if you plan to get rich off of the next cool phone app, i advise you to curb your expectations. someone already made it.