Hey, you got a few minutes? Ok, let’s talk about The Plan.

In January, I quit my job to pursue a path in software development. I didn’t really know then that it was called “software development.” I’m still not particularly married to that job title or role, strictly speaking, but a lot of other roles stem from that one so it’s not a bad place to start.

(I am married to Josh, though! I wasn’t when I started. Pretty cool, huh?)

But be ye more educated than I:

credit Brandon Hays 2015 RubyConf talk, full slides here

Knowing very little about the tech industry, I made several key assumptions going into this journey.  In this post I’ll detail how these assumptions have panned out (and in a follow-up post I’ll talk about where things go from here).

Assumptions:

1. I can learn to code in a year
2. I will be job-seeking in a year
3. I can tailor a program of free resources and paid classes for less money and time than the cost of graduate school
4. As long as I can build software, the amount of math I’ll need to know is minimal
5. An all-women learning environment is preferable to co-ed (but not a deal-breaker).
6. MOOCs will be a great tech resource for learning computer science
7. Meet-ups will be a great way to network, make connections, and find job leads

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