Am I Cut Out To Be a Developer?

Let’s face it, money is a big attraction in development. If you’ve considered becoming a developer because you think earning a 6 figure income, maybe even working from home, is a great way to be the mom you want to be while contributing in a meaningful way — you are not alone. The salary for a mid-level developer is enviable. It’s the best in the market and it can be an attractive feature for a career in tech. I’ve said this before though, money alone will not be a big enough driver of success to attain and maintain a developer position. So what does it take to be a developer? Are you cut out to be one?

There are three things that really drew me to development initially. I loved the hard problems and the way my mind was challenged to figure out what the solution would be. I also loved the efficiency of programming. Knowing that we as humans could input numbers and make the computer to the un-fun manual calculations was exhilarating to me. I hate minutiae. The third thing that really drew me to programming was that the career was in high demand. I knew I could get a job.

That was super important to me as I was working my way through college waiting tables and I had loans to pay off with zero desire to continue with my serving career. I wanted to be instantly hire-able. It’s an admiral quality in a career — to be hire-able — but it wasn’t the only reason I selected this path. I actually took my first programming class as a way to get out of taking a basic Microsoft Office class. I just loved the content so I continued down that…