As the coronavirus pandemic plunged the UK into its worst recession in 300 years, causing carnage across swathes of the economy including the construction, entertainment, hospitality and manufacturing sectors, many people had little choice but to rethink their careers.

I was one of them.

I’d been comfortable in a relatively well-paid job as a chief subeditor for the weekly aviation magazine Flight International for years, but as travel ground to a halt and events were cancelled, suddenly, our revenue was under threat.

Although I’d been happier in my job since the title’s acquisition by a new publisher in 2019, there had been ups and downs over the years when I’d longed to be made redundant.

I’d made a few half-hearted attempts to change career but in a demanding day job – and amid relative stability in the wider world – there was no obvious “push factor” to motivate me to move on.

I knew I was stagnating – and that opportunities to develop digital skills in my job were lacking – but felt I needed time and space to think properly about what else I might be able to do. So, when the opportunity to take voluntary redundancy with a decent payout arose, I seized it.

In October 2020 I became one of the record 370,000 UK employees to become redundant over the third quarter of the year.

After weighing a few options, the prospect of a job that combined creativity, future-proofing, flexibility to work anywhere in the world and good earning prospects convinced me to take the plunge and re-train as a web developer.

Making headway

I had my doubts at first. Was I doing the right thing? What if the money ran out? How would I support a family with two kids? What if I earned much less once I did find work?

For a middle-aged dad with responsibilities, starting again from scratch is no small thing.

At times I felt I was just not getting it – particularly JavaScript, which really broke my brain on many an occasion.

And when I did finally grasp something, I found it hard to retain. I felt like Homer Simpson. Every time I learned something new, it really did seem to push some old stuff out of my brain!

It was a lonely task in the beginning, too. I didn’t know anyone in the tech sector, but as I soon discovered, meeting people wasn’t hard.

There are lots of networks you can use and I quickly made new connections, starting with Udemy and LinkedIn, then using Slack, Twitter and the forums on freeCodeCamp.

In the new year, I lined up some freelance and contract work from my two last employers, which meant I could worry less about burning through my redundancy – and I started actually talking to people with experience.

They explained that all developers struggle to remember what they don’t use day in, day out, that you spend a lot of time looking up solutions when you can’t figure something out for yourself, but you need to try to understand how those solutions work to make better use of them in future.

Seven months on, I’m still learning, but have passed a few milestones and made some good friends. In March, I completed the JavaScript algorithms and data structures certification from freeCodeCamp and am now working towards the front end development libraries qualification .

Other courses I’ve looked at and tried have pros and cons – and what works best for individuals depends very much on how you prefer to learn.

But freeCodeCamp’s courses have a number of things to recommend them: high-quality content divided into bite-sized chunks that can take a few minutes or several hours – depending on how much head-scratching is required!

There is tons of reference material and access to forums where you can ask questions and meet people. And it’s completely free.

Against the backdrop of chaos created by Covid-19, many have seen the past year as one big push factor to change their lives , with engineers switching to school teaching, hairdressers becoming fortune tellers and IT consultants reinventing themselves as life coaches.

Making that jump is daunting at first, but one thing I’ve found really heartening is how positive and encouraging many people I’ve met in the technology sector are.

Refreshing change

It may be down to personality types and a reversed balance of labour supply versus demand, but it’s a far cry from the sector I came from. There is a genuine desire to give people a “leg up” into this industry.

I’ve had a few people offer to teach me things for free on calls and via chat platforms – and have now found an excellent mentor through freeCodeCamp, with whom I have regular contact and weekly calls.

The positive experience I’ve had through this relationship has convinced me of how valuable mentoring is – and is why I am supporting iamfreeCodeCamp , an independent initiative that aims to promote the activity.

And without freeCodeCamp, I wouldn't have met Eduardo Vedes, a freeCodeCamp alumnus who has provided me with invaluable support on my coding journey.

So thanks to Quincy Larson, for the great work you and everyone at freeCodeCamp are doing! It is a brilliant resource and I can't recommend it highly enough.

I hope to be able to mentor others when I've gained enough experience. In the meantime, I'm supporting freeCodeCamp with a regular donation. For the time being, it’s one way I can give something back.

The current climate has opened up many opportunities for a fresh start – but a willingness to step out of your comfort zone is vital.

As Paulo Coelho puts it: “We have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.”

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