Quitting My Job and Learning to Program

Pulling the Ripcord

About 6 months ago I quit my job to dive head first into the startup world. I made the decision in December, gave two weeks notice, and moved from Atlanta to NYC in January.

Why I Quit

I worked as an investment banking analyst, helping financial services and technology companies raise money and make strategic decisions. As a liberal arts major in college with business running through my blood, it was the perfect job for me right out of school. I wanted to learn as much as possible about the business world in the shortest amount of time, and there is no question investment banking is a great place to do that. I learned a ton.

However, after a steep learning curve for the first 6-9 months, the job became repetitive. The long hours became increasingly painful as I didnā€™t feel like I was getting much out of the job besides a nice paycheck. To me, the most valuable part of any job, especially right out of school, is the learning opportunity.

Thatā€™s why I chose investment banking.

Itā€™s also why I quit.

Why Programming?

What I Told People (Including Myself)

I want to build my own apps. Coding is the ā€˜literacy of the 21st century.ā€™ There are 25x more startups looking for engineers than business people. I want to be closer to the product.

How it Actually Went Down

In reality, I decided to learn to program because I thought itā€™d be a great way to break into the startup world. Startups are hot, and itā€™s hard to find a job as a biz dev / financial analyst. I figured it would be a good way to differentiate myself from all the other bankers and consultants. My plan was to move to NYC and learn coding basics for a month or two while looking for jobs. Worst case I figured Iā€™d spend time learning SQL and position myself for a data analyst position.

So What Happened?

I didnā€™t stick to my plan. After meeting with potential employers and doing some ā€˜casual internships,ā€™ I began to realize excel is excel, financial statements are financial statments, and while itā€™d likely be more fun analyzing numbers and data for a startup (and in a hoodie), it wasnā€™t going to be drastically different from what I just left.

At the same time, I began to fall in love with building stuff. First I used my basic HTML and CSS knowledge to build a landing page for a mobile app Iā€™m working on. Next, I learned Javascript and JQuery to add fun client side interactions. The more time I put into it the more stuff I was immediately able to do. It was awesome.

ā€œThe people who actually learn to code donā€™t do it because they think they should. They do it because they had no other option. It was either learn or fail.ā€ - Vin Vacanti, Yipit

Fast-forward 6 months and Iā€™m getting ready to launch a web app that was ā€˜just another ideaā€™ a little over a month ago. Iā€™ve never learned so much in such a short time. In the past 2 weeks alone Iā€™ve learned how to integrate Facebook, Foursquare, Google Maps, and Stripe (payments) into the site.

Stumbling on Happiness

Although I didnā€™t see it coming, I canā€™t explain how happy I am to have stumbled upon the world of coding. The work is challenging and rewarding in a way that is unlike anything Iā€™ve ever done.

Iā€™m extremely exited to continue this learning adventure at the Flatiron School over the next 12 weeks.

Build, break, learn.