An Anecdotal Guide to Pivoting Into Software Engineering

Switching career paths is often messy and uncertain. It takes hard work, grit, and a lot of time for individuals to successfully break into a new field. Here's how three people did just that.

Nicole is a B2B marketer and travel writer from Malaysia. Previously in travel tech, she now works with startups and VCs around the world.

A career change is never as straightforward as a 10-step plan or whatever the next viral blog post says about career switching. In fact, these periods of transition are often “messier and harder than anticipated [because] it’s hard to know what path you should be on, especially when the destination is unclear,” says Herminia Ibarra, author of Working Identity.

In an interview with The Psychologist, she notes that people on the brink of a career change can articulate very clearly what it is that they no longer want and what it is about their roles that no longer suit them. However, people tend to have a harder time understanding and identifying where they’d like to move to instead.

According to Herminia’s “Working Identity” theory, what we do impacts who we are, how we perceive ourselves, and how we convey that to others. Your “working identity” is therefore formed by the work you do, the relationships and organizations that form your work life, and the story you tell about why you do what you do.

Leave a Comment