I recently had the pleasure to serve as a section leader for Stanford’s innovative Code In Place program. This global program was taught by Stanford instructors for people with no prior coding experience. Students covered the first half of Stanford’s introductory computer programming class going from scratch to writing Python projects to read and process data files and images. More than 80,000 people started an application for the course. Acceptance was only limited by the number of section leaders who each led weekly live sections in groups of 10 people.

I’ve long been an advocate of lifelong learning. It’s a large part of what excites me about running a startup (the opportunity to learn from wearing many hats). It’s why LegUp is a strong advocate of internships that allow bootcamp graduates to gain real-world programming experience. At the end of the course, a few section leaders led AskMe Anything sessions. I wanted to share summaries from people looking to continue their software learning and careers.

How do I start a career as a software developer or data scientist? How do you think about this change in your 30s or 40s?

I’m a continuous learner and believe it’s never too late to pick up new skills. I started the process of learning about and made a transition to startups in my 40s. When thinking about a transition like this mid-career, my question back is — what are you more passionate about? I’ve found you can never go wrong following where your passions lie. It will help you put in more effort and give you more satisfaction in your job and in life.

When thinking about a transition like this mid-career, my question back is — what are you more passionate about? I’ve found you can never go wrong following where your passions lie. It will help you put in more effort and give you more satisfaction in your job and in life.

Code In Place gave students a great foundation with Python. It’s a popular language with many available libraries to build upon for data science or general programming projects.Beyond that, I’d recommend not only taking classes such as introductory Machine Learning, but also doing some side projects. When I got back into programming a few years ago, I started with a simple project — building an Alexa-based voice application for Blackjack. I used this project to play with new technologies such as Machine Learning. I built a data pipeline to analyze how people played against the “book recommendation” which uncovered the 100 most misplayed hands. I then wrote a feature that let people improve their game by practicing those hands. If you can find a passion project like that, this type of end goal can help you stay with learning as you take theory into practice.

As you continue to learn and practice your development skills, publish your work on a public forum like Github. This shows others that you are practicing your skill and can even serve as a sort of resume. One tip — even if it’s a project that you’re working on by yourself, be sure to open (and resolve) issues as you go. This gives people reviewing your project a quick view of the history of your project. It also helps, especially if the project is incomplete, to show that you are aware of what features and issues need addressing.

Do you recommend people start their development careers at a large company or a startup?

It depends on the individual. Startups are great for giving you freedom and ownership. But they suck forgiving structured best practices to follow. A large company is great if you learn best by following laid-out best practices or focusing and iterating on well-defined problems. Startups are a good option if you’re a self-motivated learner, learn best by doing, are not afraid to fail, and are able to learn from those failures. They give you far more responsibility and experiences than you would get otherwise.

#software-development #working-parents #startup-lessons #lifelong-learning #career-advice #deep learning