How to switch career to IT

In this article, I’ll discuss a recipe for moving from other professional field to IT.

Last 13 years, I’ve been working in IT—pretty much programming in one form or another. It’s my first career, so I don’t have my own experience in the transition I’m talking about here — I’m mostly summarizing my ideas based on industry experience, what I see could be useful in the teams I worked on & stories of people how I met after they did successful switch.

When I talk with non-IT friends who try to change a career, I see them mostly focused on building up technical skills: by doing some course, signing up for bootcamps or studying on their own. There is good logic to it— they look forward to get a technical job, and they build up skills those jobs require. That’s for sure a good idea, and will payout in plan I describe too as well — it will make you better prepared to move up the ladder.

Step 1: identify IT providers in your current industry

No matter what field you are working currently in, there are already many IT companies active in this space. For us, the most interesting are companies that are building products dedicated for the industry, and companies that try to ‘disrupt’ it.

In case of product building, this could be companies behind:

• CAD for engineers
• point of sale software for retail
• healthcare innovations