James Pfeifer successfully transitioned into a coding career at age 39. After earning an Associate of Science and volunteering in his new career field, he landed a job as a junior software engineer.
His timing was good.
At a time when many are suffering angst over spiraling rents and higher prices at the gas tank and grocery store, Pfeifer is content.
“I’m happy with what I’m doing,” he explains. “Money isn’t an issue for me right now. That in itself is a pretty good feeling.”
Pfeifer, who lives with his wife Kristin and four children in Oldsmar, didn’t always have it so good. When he sold car parts, he earned salary and commission. In the best of times, that was $15,000 less a year than he started at in coding.
The transition, however, didn’t happen overnight.
Always technically minded, Pfeifer’s journey began with the motivation to write a Google Drive client to use with his Linux operating system. Then it took him four years to earn his degree; some credits didn’t transfer to St. Petersburg College when his schooling was interrupted by the family’s move from New Jersey to Florida. Then there was COVID-19, when he became a stay-at-home dad because it just wasn’t cost-effective to work and pay for the children’s childcare.
The final leg of his journey was volunteering at Code for Tampa Bay, where he gained the confidence and experience he needed to make his final leap into coding.
“It can feel very overwhelming once you start getting into it,” he acknowledges. “It really isn’t so bad.”
Higher pay scales and flexible working conditions have been a draw to the career field. And coding camps have proliferated, offering to expand your coding skills or train newbies without a college degree, or without one in computer programming.
These coding careers go by a variety of names. Popular ones are software developers. Front-end developers. App developers and full-stack developers.
Indeed.com lists 12 of them, ranging in pay from some $53,000 for a computer systems engineer to more than $108,000 for a full-stack developer.
Whatever its name, the career has been somewhat intimidating to some people who didn’t learn it as children. That has helped give rise to a number of training alternatives for those who want to transition into the field for higher pay or job flexibility or expand their skill set or beef up their skills.
“Arbitrary barriers” have been keeping “really smart people” from getting into the tech industry,” asserts Chris Morancie, a co-founder, the CEO and chief product officer of LT3 Academy, which offers pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeships in coding.
“There seems to be a high level of mysticism that actually surrounds tech careers,” he explains.
In reality, getting into coding is doable – even for those who didn’t learn it as children.
“You can work your way into this. You can learn your way into this,” Morancie asserts. “People can do this stuff.”
Learning coding through pre-apprenticeships
LT3 Academy was born out of a need Morancie couldn’t fulfill.
Before the COVID breakout in 2020, he was looking to hire mid-level to senior developers for the Digital Operations Factory, a subscription service for companies seeking digital transformation (automation).
Only one out of 100 passed the interview stage; about 90 percent of the applicants were from outside of the country.
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