After spending over six years working as a civil engineer doing estimates for construction projects, Pritisha Kumar was on the verge of being promoted to a senior level position when she started to consider switching careers. For years, her developer friends had been telling her about the perks of the job: constantly learning new things, solving exciting problems, working flexible hours, and having the freedom to work from anywhere in the world.

Making a career change is never easy, especially for someone who considers herself “very risk-averse,” so it took three years of research and doing “informal informational interviews” with her developer friends before she decided to take the plunge and study software engineering at Springboard.

Now, Pritisha is a software engineer at Dialpad, a company that provides cloud-based business phone systems, and she is excited to try out the digital nomad life. “My dream is to work from a small apartment in Tokyo,” she said.

I was a professional designated civil engineer. In Canada, we need the designation to practice engineering, and I was basically doing project management on major infrastructure projects in my town. These were glamorous bridge building projects, and it was really fast paced, really exciting. But after six years I found that it was just more effort than it was worth. I was nervous to make a change because I'd been in construction for so long, I really liked stability, and I'm pretty risk-averse, but I was open to looking for something else.

A few of my friends are developers and they’ve been telling me for a couple years how great the industry is and that I should try it out. They would hear me complain about my industry quite a bit because there were some really challenging aspects of civil engineering, especially for my personality. So I'd been informally interviewing a bunch of my developer friends for several years, and finally, I was starting to feel more comfortable with making that change and decided to take a detour from civil engineering.

I took a first-year programming course for my engineering degree and I really enjoyed it. I was initially turned off from pursuing a degree in computer science because I thought it would be heavy on logic and mathematics—something I didn’t think I would necessarily enjoy. But when I heard from my friends about what the day-to-day life of a developer is really like, I started to like the idea of it. I really liked the flexibility, the fact that you can be located anywhere. I love the idea of being a digital nomad where you don't have to be tied to one place in order to provide value.

I also liked the industry mentality of being very growth-oriented, but at the same time being supportive of each other.

I took a first-year programming course for my engineering degree and I really enjoyed it. I was initially turned off from pursuing a degree in computer science because I thought it would be heavy on logic and mathematics—something I didn’t think I would necessarily enjoy. But when I heard from my friends about what the day-to-day life of a developer is really like, I started to like the idea of it. I really liked the flexibility, the fact that you can be located anywhere. I love the idea of being a digital nomad where you don't have to be tied to one place in order to provide value.

I also liked the industry mentality of being very growth-oriented, but at the same time being supportive of each other.

As I said, I'm pretty risk-averse when it comes to making a big change. I was getting close to a senior level as a civil engineer. If I was going to take this leap of faith and go back to being a junior, I wanted to make sure I did it right. Springboard definitely made my shortlist. I really liked that it wasn't ridiculously expensive—most bootcamps expect you to pay the same amount you would for a new car right from the get-go. Being a Canadian student, Springboard was the only company I found that was willing to give a job guarantee to a Canadian student. The other bootcamps only offer job guarantees to students based in the US.

It gave me a sense of security and that was what I needed to take that last step because it was such a big, scary decision to leave my previous career.

I really loved the course curriculum. For one thing, I loved that it was self-paced so I could go faster or slower based on my needs, or spend more time on specific subjects. I found the video lessons to be super engaging. I was expecting boring, dry lectures, but it was really interesting and well done in terms of building on the knowledge we already had.

The exercises were really doable and the teaching assistants were amazing. They helped me with all the weird setup issues I had. I never felt too scared or too alone because I knew I had that support.

Mentorship is always a matter of compatibility. The first mentor might not always be the right person. I ended up switching mentors a little later in the curriculum, but I still got a lot of value from both my mentors and had the chance to really pick their brains.

The most value I got from my mentors was asking questions about their day-to-day life, trying to understand the working conditions and general expectations. I had crushing imposter syndrome, so it was really helpful to have industry mentors to paint a picture of what I was walking into.

I am really thankful because I felt like the Springboard curriculum gave me a really good, broad foundation for the kind of mainstream technologies that are out there. But to actually start in a job where they have a full codebase was definitely overwhelming. Essentially, Springboard taught me how to swim, and then I was put out in the ocean and I had to put in the work myself to use those skills that I learned.

Springboard can’t prepare us for every single job out there—each role is very different. One thing I learned from studying engineering is that, generally, an education program won't teach you the specifics, but it will give you the tools you need when you land a job.

It’s about having the right mentality and knowing when to slow down. My issue was allowing myself to become overwhelmed, which is when the impostor syndrome sets in. But it's completely normal; I've been told that even senior developers have imposter syndrome. Slow down, breathe, take the problem apart and deal with it in bite-size pieces. Also, people are really helpful and understanding in general in this industry. A developer told me that if you've been working on one particular thing for an hour and you're still stuck, that's when you need to ask for help. Basically, I've been trying to use that as my reference.

I’m on the analytics team. Since I’m still fairly new, I’ve been mostly working on bugs, but I get to learn different parts of the code base. I've actually really enjoyed it even though the things I'm working on are minor. I get to learn how this part of our code base works. In a month or two, I'll start to work on features for the product. But surprisingly, I’ve really been enjoying working on bugs because I get to dig into the codebase and explore.

The Springboard curriculum really pushed us to network and I was terrified of networking. I’d never done any real networking prior to Springboard, but the networking is what saved me, and I ended up receiving several job offers. It required patience because it’s a process. Dialpad was the first company I applied to, and I’m glad because it turned out to be a really good company.

I see the job hunt as a numbers game so I was expecting to get a hundred rejections, but I actually had a really good job search process.

I met a manager at a networking event and she ended up pushing for me really hard. When it came to networking, I had to take care of myself and my endurance because I'm an introvert. I was very clear with myself that I'm not networking with these people to get a job from them; I am networking in order to get to know them and their company.

The most valuable part of my Springboard experience was the engaging learning material, the video lectures, and being able to use my new knowledge in the assignments. It gave me a chance to see that I actually like this. I liked that it was much more hands-on instead of being too focused on theory. I felt like it was quite representative of the day-to-day work of a software engineer. I felt confident that my enjoying the coursework at Springboard meant that I would likely enjoy actually working as a developer.

It took me about three years to really finally take the leap and switch careers. Honestly, I never believed it when people would say that it's possible to enjoy your full-time work. I thought they were disillusioning themselves, but it's real. It's absolutely real. Make backup plans and have a safety net if you need to so you feel comfortable and safe to make that change. I still love civil engineering, I still visit my former coworkers, but now I’ve found a more compatible fit, and I never would have had that experience if I didn’t take that leap.