HACKER Q&A
📣 Woadray

30 years old attempting a career change, advice needed.


I just turned 30, quit my job as I want to pursue some other adventures in my life. I'm from one of the poorest country in the world, Madagascar, but I've been living and working in France for the last 12 years. I came to study and stayed when got offered a job as an accountant. The thing is, I miss my country and going on vacation is not enough anymore, plus my parents are getting older, I'd rather be with them. I have enough savings to live there for a long time, without working thanks to exchange rate, but I'd rather not take more than a year off. After reflecting on what I like, and what I could do (given the pandemic crisis going on), programming for a living seems like the way to go. I can hack some quick and dirty script here and there but that's it. Now I want to do it rigorously, and have a already made a plan for that (link at the bottom). My end goal, if things go the way its planned is to find a job and earning between 600 and 900 dollars a month. - I know have to have some projects built so I can stand out. But for now I'm thinking of what I could do that is meaningful enough and not just a random stuff that has been done a thousand times, by following a YouTube tutorial.

- Beside my plan, what do I need to know to get hired? (by the way if you know some good java open source codebase I could study, please link them)

- How low/high are my chance of getting hired by a foreign company while living there? Anyone that was in the same situation please reah out.

- Freelancing, creating a business are other options, so if you have any tips on doing that don't hesitate.

I speak french, and I like to think my English is ok (tell me otherwise so I'll add that to my study plan), so communication should not be a problem. As for internet, believe it of not you can get what's advertised as "fiber" for 55 bucks a month, 100Mbps up/down on paper.

Link: https://github.com/Woadray/bootcamp/blob/main/courses.md

  👤 rajacombinator Accepted Answer ✓
Your English is good but your plan is bad. You need more content, more structure, and a 3 year multi stage plan. (Of which 1 year is focused around getting employed.) Acquire some credentials. You are aiming too low. Anyone with the aptitude to be a professional programmer can earn a lot more than $900/mo.
👤 keiferski
I’m not sure what if accounting exams / knowledge transfer between France and USA/UK, but I would strongly suggest trying to find a remote job as an accountant or even just a bookkeeper. These jobs are available and you’ll have a much easier time than retraining as a programmer.

This is a good place to start looking:

https://remote.co/remote-jobs/accounting/

👤 killtimeatwork
$600-$900 a month is, assuming billing 60 hours per month, $10-$15 per hour. This is the very low end of the rates that third-world freelancers charge for development (mostly web) on places like upwork. If I were you, I'd probably try to go this way instead of aiming for a remote full time position - getting into a junior remote position with zero programming background and no CS (or even engineering) degree will be very hard. But, you can learn web programming on your own, build cool websites and use them as proof of competence on upwork. It can take a while to get established, but you said you have time. The end goal is to leave the upwork grind, by either getting the recognition among a network of clients that trust you and send work your way, or being offered a full-time position with one of the clients.

Disclaimer - I've never actually tried to freelance on such sites, so I don't know how brutal the market is right now.

👤 shubik22
I haven’t written Java in my day-to-day for quite some time now, but the first thing that came to mind for a good open source Java codebase is Guava by Google: https://github.com/google/guava

It’s a collection of core libraries for Java that I believe should have a lot of useful patterns/concepts to learn from.

I also highly recommend Effective Java by Joshua Bloch (https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Java-Joshua-Bloch/dp/013468...). An incredible text for any kind of programmer, and even better if you’re specifically interested in Java.

Good luck!

👤 Raed667
Since you're in France, check the bootcamp école 42[0] could be a great way to both learn development and do some networking.

0: https://www.42.fr/